Andrew Haigh: ​‘I try to make my char­ac­ters as com­plex and messy as possible’

45 Years may only be his sec­ond fic­tion­al fea­ture film, after 2011’s Week­end, but British direc­tor Andrew Haigh has already estab­lished him­self as a man who cre­ates char­ac­ters that feel ripped from the real world. In his lat­est, Char­lotte Ram­pling as Kate and Tom Courte­nay as Geoff con­jure up a mar­riage that is rich with the weath­ered pat­terns of a shared life. LWLies found Haigh to be a good-natured and thought­ful con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist when we Skyped him in San Fran­cis­co. He talked about empathis­ing with his char­ac­ters, the neces­si­ty of obses­sive focus and the dif­fi­cul­ty of bal­anc­ing a cre­ative life with a nor­mal one.

LWLies: What are all the stages you go through and how long does it take to cre­ate char­ac­ters that feel so real and so lived in?

Haigh: It takes me a long time. It’s fun­ny you say that because, I know that sounds so filmmaker‑y, but I do feel that they are real to me. I would nev­er want to make a film where I don’t deeply empathise with every­body in that film. I com­plete­ly empathise with Kate and I com­plete­ly empathise with Geoff. They are like con­ver­sa­tions that I would have in my head, almost like two sides of the con­ver­sa­tion. To come up with the char­ac­ters I just spend a lot of time think­ing about who these peo­ple would be, try­ing, I sup­pose, to put as much of myself as I can into those char­ac­ters. Even though I’m not a 69-year-old woman or a 77-year-old man, I feel like I under­stand the strug­gles that they are going through in try­ing to under­stand who they are. I always approach all of my char­ac­ters on that basis of try­ing to make them as real and com­plex and messy as possible.

So are you talk­ing to your­self in the street and in the bath?

Maybe not on the bus but before I write any­thing, I just kind of live with the char­ac­ters for a lit­tle bit. For me it’s just work­ing out what type of books they would read and what music they like, their pol­i­tics, their phi­los­o­phy of life and all of those lit­tle things that define us. Where they would like to go on hol­i­day? The things that they would pre­fer to do. I think if you build up enough of those small­er things, sud­den­ly the char­ac­ter comes to life and it’s just a lot eas­i­er to write under those circumstances.

To immerse your­self so com­plete­ly in a world that doesn’t exist in order to then ren­der it cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly you prob­a­bly have to shut out the actu­al world to a fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant degree. What are your tech­niques for block­ing out the real world so that you can build your own one?

I think it’s very true, when you’re try­ing to cre­ate some­thing you do have to do that. I don’t know how I do it but I do do it, basi­cal­ly by not see­ing any­body or ever going out and just stay­ing indoors. Then, when I’m shoot­ing all I think about is this world that we’ve cre­at­ed. It does take an enor­mous amount of focus and ener­gy because, you’re right, I want to cre­ate some­thing that feels very real and lived-in but of course it’s still not real, it’s a fake con­struct that you’re build­ing. I just try to do every­thing to try to make it feel like this is the real world and this is some­thing that is true.So you have to make a sac­ri­fice which is every­thing else that’s going on, you have to push it back?

Yeah and I also think it’s the hard­est thing about. It’s prob­a­bly the same for lots of peo­ple that are writ­ing books or mak­ing films or artists or what­ev­er it is. Your cre­ative life is so dif­fer­ent from your nor­mal life of doing your wash­ing and going out and hav­ing a drink and doing things that you do with your life. They’re always in con­flict with each oth­er. I find that a hard thing, some­times, to bring the two togeth­er. You get so focused on a project that the rest of your life just falls apart and you don’t give it the time that it needs. There’s no point hav­ing a suc­cess­ful cre­ative life and then hav­ing a fail­ure of a real life so it’s try­ing to bring the two together.

That sounds like a mad­den­ing ongo­ing process.

Exact­ly. And it’s hard for the peo­ple that are around you. I think it’s hard for my part­ner. Every time we have din­ner I’m talk­ing about, ​‘Oh, you know, I’m think­ing this about the char­ac­ter,’ and, ​‘What am I going to do next in the new film?’ and it must be infu­ri­at­ing. I know it’s infu­ri­at­ing but I can’t find any oth­er way to do it than that. You have to let it com­plete­ly over­whelm you, for me any­way, to be able to try to make it work.

Down­load the 45 Years issue of LWLies Weekly

Your work is the Katia in your relationship.

Yes, inter­est­ing. The thing is, what real­ly struck me about the orig­i­nal short sto­ry, ​‘In Anoth­er Coun­try’, when I read it and what I want­ed to do with the film, it’s like, you can go through life and everything’s like, ​‘Oh it’s fine. It’s all great. It’s fine.’ Then there’s just those things that hap­pen or those moments or those days when you just look back at what you think your life could have become or your hopes and aspi­ra­tions when you first met some­one in a rela­tion­ship and it can be real­ly crip­pling to see how it’s actu­al­ly turned out. It’s very easy with a rela­tion­ship as well to think, ​‘This has now come to define my life for the last 10,20,50 years. Have I made the right choice?’ I think if you start ques­tion­ing all those things: ​‘Did I make the right choice with this per­son? Should I move to this house? Should I have tak­en this job?” your life can sud­den­ly crum­ble at the seams. It’s a very unnerv­ing thing, which is why most peo­ple don’t even try to do it. Most peo­ple will go through life with their blink­ers on and not think too much about the deci­sions that they’ve made because it can be too much.

But the flip­side of that is that as you go through your life you’re accru­ing more and more of a past as well as things that you didn’t do. One read that I took on Geoff is that, in the time he’s look­ing back on he was a healthy and active young man and he’s nos­tal­gic for him­self as well as for the choice he didn’t get to make.

I nev­er real­ly felt that the Katia thing was ever about her, not for either of them. It’s about Geoff look­ing back at a peri­od of his life when he was filled with hope and filled with excite­ment about what his life could become. Now he’s got to a stage where he’s retired, he doesn’t real­ly do much with his life. His job nev­er became what that he thought it would and I think that shakes him to his core and I think it is hard. The truth is that as you get old­er you realise that you have to make com­pro­mis­es, that your wild dreams of youth are not truth­ful and also you get enjoy­ment from those oth­er things. You don’t have to con­stant­ly be think­ing, ​‘Oh my god, I can be this, I can be that.’ Some­time all you actu­al­ly want is to sit with some­one and watch TV and eat a take­away and that can be just as excit­ing as trav­el­ling the world.

Yearn­ing for dra­ma is such a trap but it’s so seductive.

It’s so seduc­tive. The biggest strug­gle in most of our brains is between free­dom and secu­ri­ty. Those two things are con­stant­ly in bat­tle with each oth­er. You crave this free­dom, what­ev­er shape that takes but at the same time, you also crave secu­ri­ty. I’m in San Fran­cis­co at the moment, I’m work­ing on some­thing else. I’m like, ​‘It’s amaz­ing. I’m in this new city.’ Then the oth­er side of me is like, ​‘I’ve been liv­ing in short-term lets for, like, the last two and a half years and, you know, I’d like a house,’ so you’re con­stant­ly in bat­tle with your­self about the things you want. I think that’s def­i­nite­ly what Geoff is expe­ri­enc­ing. It’s that free­dom ver­sus secu­ri­ty and what actu­al­ly is the impor­tant thing?