Brady Corbet: ‘I wanted to make a poetic film… | Little White Lies

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Brady Cor­bet: I want­ed to make a poet­ic film about politics’

16 Aug 2016

Words by Ed Gibbs

Red cowboy hat with white pattern, man with beard wearing grey jacket, illustration with rope border.
Red cowboy hat with white pattern, man with beard wearing grey jacket, illustration with rope border.
The actor dis­cuss­es step­ping behind the lens for his star­tling direc­to­r­i­al debut The Child­hood of a Leader.

Brady Cor­bet is famil­iar to the eye, yet far from being a house­hold name – and meet­ing him in the flesh you get the sense he prefers it that way. The brood­ing indie main­stay made his screen debut on TV’s The King of Queens aged 11, before land­ing his first film roles in Cather­ine Hardwicke’s Thir­teen, Michael Haneke’s 2007 Fun­ny Games and Lars von Trier’s Melan­cho­lia. He was even briefly dis­tract­ed by Hol­ly­wood in 2004 with a for­get­table Thun­der­birds reboot. But it has always seemed like he need­ed more.

Now, Cor­bet has chan­nelled his rest­less ener­gy into some­thing dark and fore­bod­ing entire­ly of his own mak­ing. His direc­to­r­i­al debut, The Child­hood of a Leader, is an off­beat post-World War One romp which points to the rise of fas­cism in Europe in the ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry. After years of on-off devel­op­ment – Corbet’s part­ner, the Nor­we­gian film­mak­er Mona Fastvold, con­vinced him to revive it in 2014 – the film final­ly emerged at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val where is won the Best Debut and Best Direc­tor awards. I’ve always been inter­est­ed in this peri­od of world his­to­ry, for what­ev­er rea­son – the peri­od between the two [world] wars,” Cor­bet explains. That moment in time defined for­eign pol­i­cy as we know it today – in Amer­i­ca and through­out much of the rest of the world. I want­ed to try and make a poet­ic film about pol­i­tics and inter­per­son­al dynam­ics – but not a polit­i­cal film, if that makes sense. Some­thing as punk rock as possible.”

To achieve that, Cor­bet approached his friend Robert Pat­tin­son to co-star oppo­site Bérénice Bejo and Game of Thrones reg­u­lar Liam Cun­ning­ham, which helped raise the nec­es­sary finance. But before shoot­ing even began, the 28-year-old pulled off an even greater coup, enlist­ing the ser­vices of cult musi­cian Scott Walk­er for a deliri­ous­ly deranged, hyp­not­ic score. Like all great film music, it quick­ly becomes its own char­ac­ter in the film, its pound­ing inten­si­ty spec­tac­u­lar assault­ing the sens­es with inces­sant regularity.

He’s my hero,” Cor­bet says of the famous­ly pri­vate Walk­er, who typ­i­cal­ly shuns such offers. There’s nobody that would have been the right com­bi­na­tion of clas­si­cal and total­ly punk oth­er than Scott. That was a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of what we set out to do. When he said yes, we were kind of shocked. It seemed too good to be true. And when I had moments of doubt, he spoke to me in a very com­fort­ing way. He was like, You’ve got to shoot for the moon’.”

The Child­hood of a Leader cen­tres on an Amer­i­can diplo­mat (Cun­ning­ham), who’s in Paris to help nego­ti­ate the map of post-war Europe. His wife (Bejo) and their young son, Prescott (new­com­er Tom Sweet) have joined him out­side the French cap­i­tal, holed up in a dark, gloomy house. When the patri­arch does see his fam­i­ly (most­ly at week­ends), he is shocked by his son’s errat­ic behav­iour, and irate at his wife’s reluc­tance to bear him anoth­er child. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters fur­ther is the boy’s teacher (Sta­cy Mar­tin) and a vis­it­ing jour­nal­ist, Charles (the afore­men­tioned Pat­tin­son). Before long, the pre­co­cious Prescott is caus­ing hav­oc with the locals – and at home. It’s this that draws on dis­turb­ing real-life events. A dic­ta­tor will ulti­mate­ly emerge from all this – but not who you might think.

Mus­soli­ni used to throw rocks at parish­ioners when they were com­ing out of mass when he was a kid,” Cor­bet explains. He also maimed one of his teach­ers and a fel­low stu­dent. For me, he became the face of the worst kind of machis­mo and misog­y­ny. He ruined every woman’s life he touched.”

The film, shot on 35mm, is rife with cul­tur­al ref­er­ences. Giv­en recent events in the US and Europe, it feels even more intense and time­ly, not least because of the boy’s jaw-drop­ping bel­liger­ence. Bejo believes her sti­fled, unhap­py char­ac­ter in the film is, in a cer­tain way, giv­ing that pow­er to the lit­tle boy. In a sort of way, she’s enjoy­ing his inso­lence.” The results of this are wild­ly unpredictable.

Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, like his most intense on-screen char­ac­ters Cor­bet can’t sit still for long. After years of co-writ­ing and edit­ing (most notably with Bor­der­line, the New York-based team respon­si­ble for 2011’s Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene), the Ari­zona native is already plot­ting his next direc­to­r­i­al out­ing, Vox Lux, about the rise of a female pop star from 1999 to the present day. He’s also made nois­es about quit­ting act­ing for good, espe­cial­ly is his film­mak­ing career takes off. Still, it’s hard to imag­ine Cor­bet not turn­ing up on screen in some deeply unset­tling film at some point in the near future. What­ev­er he winds up doing, he’s like­ly to be stir­ring it up for some time to come.

The Child­hood of a Leader is in cin­e­mas 19 August.

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