Lynne Ram­say: ​‘Being a film­mak­er is like being a psychoanalyst’

Night­mares and dreams exist side-by-side in the films of Lynne Ram­say. A blood-flecked ham­mer, sun­light bounc­ing on water. For­ma­tive years as a painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er have informed the intense­ly visu­al imag­i­na­tion of this soft­ly-spo­ken giant of cin­e­ma whose four fea­ture films are each pow­er­ful works of art. You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here is Ramsay’s most overt for­ay into genre cin­e­ma. We spoke to the direc­tor about it.

LWLies: Is this a vig­i­lante film?

Ram­say: I didn’t think about those kind of movies so much as The Samu­rai or maybe noir? I don’t think it’s a vig­i­lante film. It was based on a novel­la by Jonathan Ames that’s a hard-boiled noir type thing. I sup­pose it does have that aspects, but I tried to make it my own. I grew up with noir movies, like Mil­dred Pierce and All About Eve and thought it would be real­ly inter­est­ing to start to delve a lit­tle bit more into genre. My last one We Need to Talk About Kevin is a lit­tle bit like a genre film, but not quite. It was a real­ly propul­sive nov­el, and Joe was a super inter­est­ing char­ac­ter because he’s not your typ­i­cal beau­ti­ful hero. He’s a pret­ty beat­en up guy. I stuck Joaquin Phoenix’s pic­ture up as soon as I start­ed writ­ing it.

What is it about Joaquin Phoenix?

He’s bril­liant. He’s just the best actor in the world. It’s because he’s real. He’s got some­thing about him. He’s not a pret­ty boy but he’s beau­ti­ful. It’s a mys­tery, I don’t know, but he’s real­ly special.

Is he easy to direct?

We loved each oth­er but he test­ed me and I test­ed him, in the best pos­si­ble way. The char­ac­ter in the nov­el wore gloves and he was like, ​‘I’m not going to wear that, that looks ridicu­lous,’ which is com­plete­ly right. To me, he’s like anoth­er film­mak­er. He’s always explor­ing, always ask­ing ques­tions, and that’s some­thing I found real­ly spe­cial. It was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence work­ing with him.

You have a strik­ing way of chan­nelling the unique suf­fer­ing of your char­ac­ters. They’re all lone­ly or haunt­ed by something.

I’m mak­ing a com­e­dy next.

Are you really?!

I’d like to. It could be fun. I think a com­e­dy is a real­ly hard thing to make. It’s one of the most chal­leng­ing things to make peo­ple laugh.

There are some fun­ny moments in this one.

I always look for a bit of humour, but then every­one goes, ​‘Oh, you’re just a dark moth­er­fuck­er.’ Maybe I’ve got a dark sense of humour, I don’t know. I think Joaquin shares that a lit­tle bit. He’d be great in a com­e­dy – he’s real­ly fun­ny, just naturally.

When did you first read the novella?

A cou­ple of years ago I was sent the nov­el by a com­pa­ny called Why Not who work with Jacques Audi­ard, and it was very tiny, only sev­en or eight pages. The writer, Jon­ny Ames, would say, ​‘I just want­ed to write a big­ger nov­el I just couldn’t be both­ered.’ Not couldn’t be both­ered, but he want­ed to do this novel­la, and I think he loved the char­ac­ter, but he didn’t know how to end it. I think he will do anoth­er nov­el of it. It was kind of one of those books where you go duh duh duh duh duh duh [mimes fly­ing through the pages].

Were the social issues in the film from the book?

All the ele­ments of a genre film are in the book, but it was more about mafia and I thought it would be inter­est­ing to do it about pol­i­tics because of the nature of the world now. But yeah, the book was about cor­rup­tion but for me it was real­ly about a man fail­ing. He’s scarred. He’s not James Bond. That’s the point, these peo­ple can’t real­ly be like that, so for me he’s a human being.

When you were writ­ing the script, did you work togeth­er with Jonathan Ames?

I spoke a lot with my crew, the DoP. I lived for a while in San­tori­ni in Greece, and so he came out a few times and I’d show him what I was work­ing on. He real­ly knew the mate­r­i­al so that was good because before we shot, he was real­ly aware of that I think and that real­ly helped.

Is it a coin­ci­dence that your last three films have been book adap­ta­tions, or do you pre­fer work­ing from some­thing else?

It’s kind of a coin­ci­dence actu­al­ly. I want to do some­thing orig­i­nal as well – my first one was orig­i­nal. All the book adap­ta­tions are quite dif­fer­ent from the books. I’ve got an orig­i­nal project on the go, and there’s a sci-fi that I’d like to do but that might take a while.

Was there a need to do any research into child pros­ti­tu­tion rings?

I read a lot. I don’t even watch films actu­al­ly, I watch doc­u­men­taries. I read a lot about polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and there’s been cas­es in Italy. More than that, it was the idea of the char­ac­ter that brought me into it. I was fas­ci­nat­ed by Joe. He wasn’t the nor­mal hero. The idea that he’s scarred, that he’s sui­ci­dal and he lives with his mum, that brought me into it.

A lot of Joe’s char­ac­ter is filled in by score. How did it work to col­lab­o­rate with Jon­ny Greenwood?

He doesn’t work in a con­ven­tion­al way. He doesn’t score to the pic­ture, like, ​‘Oh, this is exact­ly for the tim­ing,’ so it’s more about ideas and a kind of feel­ing and an instinct, and talk­ing to you about the char­ac­ter and what you’re try­ing to achieve. He gave me a lot of real­ly love­ly stuff. I’ve got prob­a­bly three or four albums of Jon­ny Green­wood on my lap­top – some­one will steal that! – that are just amazing.

Do you think about polit­i­cal land­scapes when you make movies? Because this is an Amer­i­can sto­ry, not in your home country?

I guess the world’s just a bit of a mess at the moment and, like I said, because I tend to watch a lot of doc­u­men­taries, it’s about the envi­ron­ment of cor­rup­tion and things like that. I find it more inter­est­ing to learn things from doc­u­men­taries about how the world is now. So I guess it bled into the work a bit.

Your style is very… it’s not like doc­u­men­tary, it’s very…

Stylised, tell me some­thing I don’t know!

What informs your visu­al imagination?

I was a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and when you work that way, you think in images. I work with a bril­liant DoP, he’s my ex-boyfriend, we were togeth­er for sev­er­al years and he under­stood where I was com­ing from. But I’ve always only shot it in film, and so I was real­ly freaked out by shoot­ing in dig­i­tal, but it worked. It was good for actors because you get long takes and you’re like, ​‘Wow’, but then you take longer in the edit because you’ve got a lot more mate­r­i­al – so I feel like it’s a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline. But yeah, I come from paint­ing stills.

Do you still paint?

I’d like to go to art school now, because I nev­er went. I got up to a good lev­el at 18 and then stopped. My niece is an artist at the New York school of Paint­ing, and she brought me to New York and I was wired by it.

What ideas do you think you could explore via art that you couldn’t in cinema?

You don’t need so many peo­ple to work on it. You can be on your own, it’s a very indi­vid­ual thing. Paint­ing is a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence from a film. I love look­ing at paint­ings and find­ing small­er things inside it. It’s just nice to think that you could just be on your own with a paint­brush, rather than the whole kit and kaboodle.

What was the first response of Joaquin Phoenix when you reached out to him?

‘I don’t under­stand you!’ No, I think he’d seen some of my oth­er films, so there was trust in me as a film­mak­er. He had this tiny win­dow to do it in, because he was doing anoth­er movie and then was doing a Gus Van Sant one, so I had no prep. It was very hot in New York in the sum­mer, it’s a hor­ri­ble time to go to New York, nev­er go to New York in the sum­mer, it’s boil­ing and we only had four or five weeks prep so it was like run, run, run… Maybe it was all a bit of a fever dream, and it all went into the film. I’ve been run­ning the whole year for this.

Did you dis­cuss Phoenix’s physique beforehand?

We didn’t want per­fec­tion. We want­ed imper­fec­tions. He bulked up a lot when he was doing it, but he still had his bel­ly. We want­ed it to be real, you know? That and then the scars. He’s a film­mak­er because he brought that char­ac­ter to life as much as I did.

Speak­ing of your style of direct­ing, Joaquin has said that you jumped in the pool with him at some point. Do you always immerse your­self like that when mak­ing films?

I think you just need to know what the actor is going through. We were in this rush­ing bath for that scene, the water was real­ly quite dis­gust­ing and it was super freez­ing. And he was like… I mean he doesn’t com­plain ever, so I just went, ​‘Okay, I have to get in,’ so I just stepped in with my san­dals on and I was like, ​‘Oh my god, this is super freez­ing I’ve got to get him out of here!’ So he was right. I got in there with him just for the shot, we lit­er­al­ly did one shot of this because it was like an ice pond.

You say you watch a lot of doc­u­men­taries… Would you like to make one? With Brex­it going on in Eng­land now, is that some­thing that you could think about?

Maybe. But Brex­it is weird because in Scot­land 90 per cent of the peo­ple don’t want to leave [the Euro­pean Union]. So maybe there will be inde­pen­dence, I don’t know. It’s an inter­est­ing time… after liv­ing abroad for a while and com­ing back, you real­ly feel that the land­scape has changed. We’ll see. I’m mov­ing to Glas­gow, that’s a new cul­tur­al city now. It’s cool there.

Is it easy to direct a vio­lent scene, espe­cial­ly to make it just vio­lent enough – not bru­tal, not grotesque?

Yeah, I had to think about that a lot. I didn’t want to show vio­lence like you nor­mal­ly see it. So I used a lot of post-vio­lence, like you don’t see what hap­pened but you see the after­math. Or very dis­tant, so we’ll real­ly step back. Weird­ly, peo­ple think it’s more vio­lent than it real­ly is. It’s pret­ty vio­lent, I know…

It seems more about what it means to come from violence.

Yeah, it’s about the death of vio­lence in a way. He’s got a vio­lent past and he sees bod­ies all marked and that catch­es up with him. And he’s also sui­ci­dal. But he ends up com­ing back alive. So I was hop­ing to put a bit of hope in. I know it’s a dark film, but I feel like Joe comes out the oth­er end.

Was it impor­tant to Joaquin to know which part of the film goes on in Joe’s head and which parts are real?

You’d have to ask him. He came like sev­en or eight weeks before we start­ed shoot­ing, so he’s that kind of guy. Even though I had a lot of prep – because I was doing loca­tions, cut­ting bits out of the script because we didn’t have enough mon­ey, and it was a 29 days shoot – I was real­ly grab­bing every minute we could to kind of think about what’s in Joe’s head.

How do you go about con­struct­ing the state of lone­li­ness cinematically?

I don’t know… It’s quite hard to answer. Going back to watch­ing doc­u­men­taries, maybe it’s about under­stand­ing human­i­ty. That’s what film­mak­ers love to do. You’re a bit like a psy­cho­an­a­lyst – ​‘What if this char­ac­ter is like that, or this char­ac­ter is like that?’

Does it help inspire you to be on location?

Yeah, because Joaquin looks so unrecog­nis­able, no one knew we were film­ing on that. So it was great, we could run down the street with a cam­era or just be covert. And I don’t think you can make films in New York any­more – it’s very hard because you need per­mits. Of course we were a union film and we still had rules, but we tried to make it feel fresh as well. And the loca­tions were real­ly cool. I mean it’s an amaz­ing city. It’s real­ly noisy! Real­ly ter­ri­fy­ing in a way, but I love it. I think loca­tions can be inspir­ing. I like shoot­ing sets too though, that’s when you’ve got control.

Were there any sets in this one?

No I’m talk­ing about Rat­catch­er, my first film, the canal was a build and so was the apart­ment – and that was because we couldn’t shoot ten­e­ments in Glas­gow, it’s so tiny you can’t get a cam­era. So I had a bril­liant pro­duc­tion design­er, and at the time I was like, ​‘Oh I don’t want to shoot in a set, there’s no way. I want it to be authen­tic,’ but she has a bril­liant eye and in the end I loved it, because you could move the walls, you’ve got con­trol, you know. And you’ve got con­trol over the sound and stuff so… I kind of enjoy both worlds.

When you’re build­ing up your mas­sive crew and all your col­lab­o­ra­tors, how do you know if you can trust them to deliv­er the film you want to deliver?

It’s just friend­ships a lot of the time. Derek Jar­man came to our film school and he was like, ​‘Ah, I just work with my pals – life is too short.’ And it was good, it was a nice inspir­ing thing to say. Tom [Tow­nend] I’ve nev­er worked with him as DoP but I’ve worked with him as a cam­era oper­a­tor years ago, but I know he’s a won­der­ful stills pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Alwin [H Küch­ler] my first DP was amaz­ing, Ger­man DoP, I worked with Natasha Braier, an Argen­tin­ian DP who’s amaz­ing and a lot of great pro­duc­tion design­ers: Jane Mor­ton, in par­tic­u­lar who did Rat­catch­er and a bril­liant sound design­er, Paul Davies. I’ve got a kind of team that I’ve built up over the years, but I’ve swapped DoPs a lot I guess.

Your films are too few and far between – is that because you’re picky?

Oh no, I had a baby. So I’ve got a two and a half year old daugh­ter, and then I wrote a script that didn’t hap­pen and was a real pain, it was a painful expe­ri­ence but it was just not going to work out. I wrote a script, prepped the film, had a baby, prepped this, and then shot it. So it’s been quite event­ful actu­al­ly, the last six years.

You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here is released 9 March. Read our review.