Interview

Without photos, even a perfect work of architecture can feel incomplete: it's a mute poet, a star without her close-up. Visual Acoustics, a new documentary about the late Julius Shulman, shows how one photographer not only captured and popularized but also helped create American modernism over the course of his 70-year career.

See the full article on Art in America.
(LEFT: CHEMOSPHERE HOUSE, 1960. COPYRIGHT J PAUL GETTY TRUST)

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Carey Mulligan in An Education, courtesy of Sony Classics

Based on a Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy) adaptation of a memoir by Lynn Barber, An Education is a coming-of-age story about a precocious high school student (Carey Mulligan) set in early-sixties London.  We talked to director Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners) about the much buzzed-about Ms. Mulligan and the perils and pleasures of postwar youth.


DARRELL HARTMAN: A lot of the buzz for this movie has been focused on the lead actress, Carey Mulligan. What made her right for the role?

LONE SCHERFIG: It's heartwarming to look at her, and she also pitches things really well–there are no false notes in her performance, and that's important for a film like this. The comedy in the film is something you get if you want it, but we were not looking for a comedian. We were looking for someone with a low-key acting style who could get Jenny's innocence and carry a film, who you would be able to identify with.

HARTMAN: She's got this sparkling, girlish quality. And yet, especially when she speaks, there's something very adult about her.

SCHERFIG: It's both. It's someone who can jump forth and back in time–the way London did, actually. And it's much easier to communicate with someone who has the intellectual skills that Carey has. She's bright, and that makes her nice to be around.

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Good documentaries have a lasting effect on the viewer; few, though, have changed the lives of their subjects as much as Anvil! The Story of Anvil, out yesterday on DVD. (PHOTO CREDIT: BRENT J. CRAIG/ANVIL!)

Since its theatrical release last April, Sacha Gervasi's warts-and-all portrait of two aging Canadian rockers has been turning Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner into the metal stars they always dreamed they would be. Anvil! (also the name of the band) has been described as a non-fiction This Is Spinal Tap, and Michael Moore called it the best documentary he's ever seen. It certainly has everything–arguments, teary confessions, and laugh-out-loud moments, and is anchored by what must be two of the most likeable and persistent guys to inhabit the metal world. Even after they missed the boat that Metallica, Megadeth, and Bon Jovi jumped on, Anvil kept playing shows and recording albums. Gervasi's film traces a somewhat disastrous European tour they embarked on shortly after Lips's 50th birthday, complete with near-empty shows and overnights at the airport.

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A fact-based character study of the infamous  Michael Peterson (Tom Hardy)–known in the press as "most violent prisoner in Britain"–Bronson explores one man's metamorphosis from a small time hood into a skull-crushing modern folk legend.  It's a breakout for film for Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose Pusher trilogy offered an unflinching journey into Denmark's drug underworld. (Next up: a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation starring Keanu Reeves.) Below, Refn discusses the influence of Hans Christian Andersen and filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and explains why violence in his films is "never funny." (PHOTO: TOM HARDY IN BRONSON, COURTESY OF MAGNET RELEASING)


DARRELL HARTMAN: Did you know anything about Michael Petersen, a.k.a. Charlie Bronson, before you made this film?

NICOLAS WINDING REFN: I certainly didn't. I really came about it by chance. The producer who'd been distributing my films in the UK called me up one day and said he'd just acquired the rights for a movie he'd been trying to make for many years. I got interested in it and decided to write it, because what had been written wasn't very good. It was one of those lad films made by middle-class men for middle-class men. I had no interest in that.

HARTMAN: This movie is being compared to A Clockwork Orange. Thoughts?

REFN: It's very kind. I don't understand the comparison so much, but I could see why certain people would refer to it. I think it has to do with that kind of pop culture anti-authoritarian figure, and the violence and classical music. But the person I stole everything from to make the movie is Kenneth Anger. This is a combination of Scorpio Rising and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. It's very basic visual poetry–and sexual ambiguity, homoeroticism, erotic violence.

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