Interview With "The Beast" Director/Writer Bertrand Bonello

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[00:01:00] You are listening to the Next Best Picture Podcast, and this is Dan Baer's interview with the director and writer for The Beast, Patron Benelow.

[00:01:30] Welcome everyone to the Next Best Picture Podcast where we are talking with Bertrand Benelow, the writer and director of the new film The Beast.

[00:01:45] Bertrand, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:01:48] I'm very excited to talk to you about this film which I was lucky enough to see at the New York Film Festival last year.

[00:01:56] Based on the Henry James Novella, The Beast in the Jungle.

[00:02:01] And I'm wondering when you first read the novella and what made you want to adapt it to film?

[00:02:09] Well, I've read quite a few times.

[00:02:11] Maybe I discovered it like I would say like 15 years ago and I read it like, I don't know, three or four times.

[00:02:17] It's like 40, 50 pages. It's quite short.

[00:02:20] But most of all, it's one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful things I've ever read.

[00:02:26] But I never thought of doing a film with that.

[00:02:29] Then when I was thinking about my next film, I wanted to...

[00:02:35] One of the desires, there were many desires, many things in the film,

[00:02:41] but one of them was to approach the idea of melodrama.

[00:02:46] And that brought me back really quickly to that novel because I couldn't imagine that I would find like a better argument and a better idea.

[00:02:58] So I took the argument of the book which exploded after that, but at the same time I was very, very faithful and very unfaithful.

[00:03:10] Yes, and you keep the same themes of the book in the same central question of the book,

[00:03:15] but one of them more daring, I think adaptations.

[00:03:19] You set it in three different years in 1910 and 2014.

[00:03:24] And then in 2044.

[00:03:26] And I'm curious because the first two, 1910 and 2014, these periods are separated by a little over a century.

[00:03:34] But 2014 and 2044 are only separated by about 30 years.

[00:03:40] What made you select 2044 for the year in the future?

[00:03:45] Because it's very close from us.

[00:03:49] So in like 2014 and 2044, I mean, it's something we remember and something we can almost see, you know.

[00:03:59] And I wanted those two periods to be close from us, even the science fiction part.

[00:04:05] I wanted to ring many bells with us, not to be something like, you know, we'll be dead, you know.

[00:04:14] And I think it gives a different feeling to know that this part of the film is like only in 20 years.

[00:04:23] It does. It makes it feel more present and real in a way that goes so far.

[00:04:29] It's more contemporary than I thought because when I was writing about AI and stuff like that four or five years ago,

[00:04:36] I could not imagine that it would be today such a huge discussion, you know, last year was like every paper.

[00:04:44] And there was a strike in Hollywood and stuff like that.

[00:04:47] So maybe I should have put like 2029, not 2044.

[00:04:54] Well, that is one of the more like, you know, sort of the strange visionary aspects of this, you know, when you were writing this artificial intelligence,

[00:05:01] it was obviously sort of brewing in the background of everything.

[00:05:05] But it wasn't, you know, until recently that it really reached that fever pitch of people sort of realizing that it was here and what it was being used for.

[00:05:16] How has it felt like watching the discussion play out so many years after you wrote this?

[00:05:23] Well, it was a weird feeling because I had been working with like a scientist about AI.

[00:05:30] And so I was aware of all these things, you know, I just couldn't imagine it be so quick.

[00:05:36] And so when the film was shown in Venice and Toronto and New York, I mean there were so many debates about that, you know.

[00:05:45] So yes, it's very contemporary in a way.

[00:05:51] And but I was thinking the other day that even this novella of James, the relationship between love and fear because it's really the subject, you know.

[00:06:02] I think this novel is even more contemporary now than it used to be when he wrote it, you know, at the end of the 19th.

[00:06:09] I had read that and heard you speak about that in another interview.

[00:06:13] And I was wondering if we could talk more about that because it does seem like that kind of alienation and this fear that is always just around the corner.

[00:06:25] That really does seem to be making a bit of a comeback these years, but it's always there.

[00:06:32] Yeah, I think it's there more than ever, you know.

[00:06:35] And one of the subjects of the film is of course that relationship between technology and humanity and how humanity can, you know, not be too much twisted in his feelings, you know, and they're very hurt.

[00:06:53] I think these days, you know.

[00:06:56] And I can feel people are more connected than ever, but I almost can feel they're more lonely than ever.

[00:07:05] Absolutely.

[00:07:06] And you said you started writing this you had said four years ago.

[00:07:10] So was that just before COVID era lockdowns or during time?

[00:07:16] Time passes.

[00:07:18] I started to write this in 2017.

[00:07:23] And when did you get to the point where you had your final script in place?

[00:07:31] It took me a long time because I think I did like 30 drafts of scripts, which it now happened.

[00:07:38] Because at one moment had another period that was 1936, then I had four periods.

[00:07:45] Then I wanted to do a mini series like four times an hour that come back to feature.

[00:07:49] So sometimes it takes it's a long way to find like the good form.

[00:07:52] And I stopped at one moment because I was lost.

[00:07:55] I made another film, which is Zombie Child.

[00:07:58] And then and then I found the film you saw and but it took me like a long time.

[00:08:04] Yeah.

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[00:09:17] When you came back to it after making Zombie Child, did that experience change how you saw this story at all?

[00:09:26] The Zombie Child experience?

[00:09:28] Yeah.

[00:09:29] No, I know that much.

[00:09:30] So Zombie Child is a film that takes place in Haiti.

[00:09:33] It's such a huge incredible trip that is very specific and very unique.

[00:09:41] But when I came back after like a year of thinking of something else, I reread everything.

[00:09:46] It was a mini-series at that moment.

[00:09:49] I had like 250 pages.

[00:09:51] So I reread everything and say, okay, there is a film inside that.

[00:09:55] I have to find the film.

[00:09:57] And that it's always the tricky part, right?

[00:10:00] Yeah.

[00:10:01] You know, this is your third film now with Lea Cidou.

[00:10:06] It was, I think, one of the great French actresses certainly working today.

[00:10:11] Did you always envision her in this role of Gabrielle?

[00:10:15] Very quickly.

[00:10:17] Very quickly because when I decided that there would be like three periods in the film, for me, she's the only one that can be in the three periods for a French actress.

[00:10:27] Because I believe in her in 1910.

[00:10:30] I believe in her in the future.

[00:10:33] She has something at the same time, very modern, but at the same time,

[00:10:38] Ageless, you know, she can cross ages.

[00:10:43] That's one of the reasons.

[00:10:45] And the other one is she has a lot of mystery, which is not the case of all the French actresses even it's not being good or bad.

[00:10:53] You know, it's just different.

[00:10:54] And you never know what's inside your mind, even if you had like a camera in front of a face for two hours and 25 minutes.

[00:11:03] It's fantastic for a movie maker.

[00:11:05] Absolutely.

[00:11:06] There's a fantastic set in the film in 1910, this doll factory.

[00:11:13] And whenever we're in these these scenes, you see in the background all these dolls with, you know, plastic cloth, whatever they're made of.

[00:11:24] Their faces are frozen in this sort of emotionless visage.

[00:11:29] And then in 2044 and the in the last most future sequence, Gabrielle is told that she she has to feel her feelings.

[00:11:38] I think the translation is more serenely in order to remove all her emotional affects.

[00:11:45] And I'm wondering, you know, like, do you worry that our increasing reliance on technology is turning us into dolls of a sort?

[00:11:55] In a way, yes.

[00:11:57] But it's very insidious.

[00:11:59] Yeah.

[00:12:00] One of my favorites in the film is when Lea Sidhu is doing the doll in 1910 in a salon today.

[00:12:07] You know, she is fantastic in that scene.

[00:12:11] And it what for example, like in the for a couple of seconds you look at her and say, oh, she's beautiful.

[00:12:18] But then after that, it becomes really freaky.

[00:12:21] You know, and the fact that you don't know what she's thinking of is very, very freaky.

[00:12:27] It is very much so.

[00:12:29] The other thing I wanted to talk about in 1910 this this recreation of the great flood of Paris.

[00:12:35] Incredible so much going on in that sequence.

[00:12:39] And you've said that none of that was done with CGI.

[00:12:44] It was all in camera.

[00:12:46] What there's no CGI in the sequence underwater underwater.

[00:12:51] Okay.

[00:12:52] When you have a shot of Paris with the water, this is CGI.

[00:12:55] Of course.

[00:12:56] But when they're in that when they're in the doll factory, that is all it's all practical that took place right?

[00:13:02] Yeah.

[00:13:03] How much planning did you have to do to ensure that everything worked the way you wanted?

[00:13:08] And then after that, how much went wrong?

[00:13:11] Well, of course, we have to prepare so much this kind of scenes, you know, and for the first time of my life, I did like a storyboard, which I never do.

[00:13:21] And we did it very short exactly like the storyboard.

[00:13:25] It was very precise.

[00:13:28] And basically, basically we followed the storyboard underwater is very difficult because it's tough for the actors.

[00:13:37] You know, it's very tiring because you don't go up after like a shot.

[00:13:43] You know, you stay underwater because it's less tiring.

[00:13:46] So it's difficult for me to talk to them, you know, me it's easy.

[00:13:50] I'm sitting with a kind of television and have a mic, you know, but for them it's really difficult here.

[00:13:56] I had a lot of admiration on James Cameron this day.

[00:14:01] I can imagine.

[00:14:04] And you know, and working with, you know, like all the elements underwater and the fire, you know, did everything because of the planning and luck, I guess, like go according to plan during those shoots or was there ever a moment when things looked like it was falling apart completely?

[00:14:20] Well, it's very exciting, you know, it's very scary because you it's expensive days, you know, and you know, you don't want to go up there.

[00:14:25] You know, and you know, you don't cannot miss.

[00:14:27] But it's very exciting.

[00:14:29] But it's just very visual, you know, underwater and fire fire is probably one of the most visual thing to shoot.

[00:14:37] I think absolutely moving on from 1910 to 2044.

[00:14:42] This was a sequence where you did use some CGI and visual effects work in order to you said that in order to create this look of 2044 you took away.

[00:14:54] Yes, from shots that were already in Paris.

[00:14:57] And I was wondering what was your guiding principle for the look of the future?

[00:15:03] Very, very, very minimal.

[00:15:05] Something very empty.

[00:15:07] The kind of emptiness that becomes freaky in a way, even if it says that there is no more catastrophe that everything is solved.

[00:15:16] The price to pay is this emptiness and this loneliness.

[00:15:20] So it's how we worked thinking about with how what kind of light would be in the apartments and what how the streets would be and stuff like that.

[00:15:33] And it took us a long time to find this kind of weird bath in which the dives, you know, to go back in the past.

[00:15:42] We tried like some machines and nothing worked.

[00:15:45] And I like the idea of this liquid, you know, it's more abstract.

[00:15:49] But in a way, for me, it tells more things.

[00:15:53] Yeah, I can see that.

[00:15:55] I know we're coming up on the end of our time together.

[00:15:59] But I wanted to ask because you included in the 2014 section George MacKayus character Louis,

[00:16:07] you basically recreate this in cell video that you said you used the dialogue almost completely unchanged because you couldn't have written it better than what you had seen.

[00:16:20] And I was, what was it about this video that made you want to use those words almost completely unedited?

[00:16:29] Well, I discovered these videos like most of a lot of people in 2014 when they appeared, you know.

[00:16:38] And of course, I didn't want to recreate the character.

[00:16:41] You know, I didn't want George MacKayus to go and kill girls and stuff.

[00:16:45] But the video itself, there is something so gentle, something so soft, you know, in the tone, the words are, you know, it's not like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, you know.

[00:16:58] It's even more freaky.

[00:17:00] So I remember 10 years ago watching them like three or four times and the calm of the guy is, I was really impressed by that.

[00:17:12] And did you show that video to George at all in the prep for the film?

[00:17:18] So he had that as reference.

[00:17:21] Exactly.

[00:17:22] Yeah.

[00:17:23] And when you were saying that to just shoot the film and direct it, did you want to keep it exactly the way that you had seen it?

[00:17:30] Or did you want to change the visuals of it at all?

[00:17:34] We are very close from his videos.

[00:17:37] Very close.

[00:17:38] We really reproduced it.

[00:17:40] It's really difficult to watch but in a good way if that makes sense.

[00:17:45] It feels real I think because you kept so much of the actual.

[00:17:50] Fantastic.

[00:17:51] I mean he's really fantastic.

[00:17:53] He had the camera himself and I was shooting himself in the city and it was very impressive in these videos.

[00:18:02] Yeah, it's great.

[00:18:03] And lastly, you know, before we have to stop, I wanted to ask because, you know, like we said, artificial intelligence has just exploded since the film premiered.

[00:18:15] And because you wrote so much about it before, what do you worry about with AI as regards art specifically film?

[00:18:26] And what do you think is like the ultimate message that you want to put out there to people working in AI and the people working in art about working together or not?

[00:18:39] I will repeat something I said but at the place of art, it's a tool, you know?

[00:18:47] You have to be the master of the tool.

[00:18:49] Another country and even in art I'm a little scared that becomes the contrary.

[00:18:56] I can see that happening and hopefully we don't let the technology become our masters.

[00:19:02] Bertrand, Bonella, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for the film.

[00:19:08] Thanks for the advice.

[00:19:38] Which you can also lend on over at Patreon for $1 minimum a month who gets an exclusive podcast content from us.

[00:19:45] Thank you all so much for listening as always and we will see you all next time.

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