Travicity
01-31-2011, 10:24 PM
The Eagle's Director on Roman Battles, Pict Rituals and Lying
Kevin Macdonald explains his fighting technique, Northern British culture and just how much of his movie is true.
The Glory That Was Rome
Jordan Hoffman: What qualities of the Roman epic did you want to bring into The Eagle?
Kevin Macdonald: I think what’s different about this film to other Roman or “sword-and-sandal” films is we tried to do a very naturalistic, realistic approach in the film, in the way we shot it. The kind of rule we had was we wouldn’t use lots of CG, we wouldn’t people it with lots of places and individuals that weren’t there and obviously we wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of people in the battle or sweeping eagle-eye views of things, and that kind of stuff, which is pretty much the approach that people seem to take for some reason to the genre now a days, as in, say, Prince of Persia for instance.
I come from documentaries and come from more realist tradition, I wanted to take that approach, but also I was excited because, what makes this different from other Roman films is that its about the edge of the Empire, its not about the heart of the Empire. I grew up in Scotland so I can relate to that. The unconquerable and semi-uninhabitable Scotland. I was interested primarily in the clash of cultures or the place where two different cultures meet, how one culture deals with another culture, and the lack of respect or respect they have for each other.
I think this is why Roman films are so popular. We admire the civilization, for want of a better word, we admire what Rome achieved, the amazing military and political machine that rolled itself out across this huge swath of Europe and Asia, and brought with it so many great things, so many benefits, the Roman roads and the writing, but also was a kind of monolithic steamroller over other cultures. Rome had a sense that Roman civilization was superior to anybody else, and that’s what Channing Tatum’s character in the film does.
Jordan Hoffman: And there’s enough history between then and now that we can distance ourselves and not be concerned with the politics?
Kevin Macdonald: Yeah, but I think the thing is that Roman films allow you to have big military set pieces, the excitement and action, but the appeal is that it’s to do with the fact that it’s a society that seemingly was very very sophisticated but was ruled by violence.
Fight!
Jordan Hoffman: Yeah, so let's talk about those battle scenes. Tell me about your process in attaining realism in these scenes?
Kevin Macdonald: In the same way that I didn’t want to have CG in the film I wanted to have a feeling of life or death, I suppose, the simple reality that if you get a knife in your head or an axe in your back you’re going to die either there or your going to get infected, it’s going to kill you, so life is short and nasty. I want people to focus on the main characters and the peril for them, and not to be distracted by huge pyrotechnics and fighting for fighting’s sake, I think we’ve all become kind of bored of that, you don’t feel anything’s at stake, you don’t feel like you’re interested to what’s happening to your hero.
In the very first battle when the roman soldiers go out on their rescue, we spoke to a lot of military historians, and looked at a lot of the books and the artifacts. We were very careful to give the soldiers the right weaponry, exactly the right shields, all their uniforms were made especially for the film, and modeled exactly on the evidence of what Roman soldiers would have worn during the second century. The actual techniques and tactics they used for getting out of the fort to go and rescue these Roman soldiers who had been taken prisoner is a very well-documented Roman technique, and it’s kind of like a second century tank; superiority of technology and strategy demonstrated right there, and I really enjoyed that kind of documentary side of that sequence. You're seeing how they did it, this is how they do it, this is the technique for fighting.
Grooving With A Pict
Jordan Hoffman: The movie really gets cookin' when the soldiers go over Hadrian's Wall and encounter the Pict culture. What was the research that went into those cultures?
Kevin Macdonald: I wanted the audience to be immersed in the culture of the Northern Britains, the Picts, the Celts, as much as possible. However, much less is known about what life was like for the Barbarians compared to the Romans. The Romans wrote a little bit about what they encountered in the North of England and Scotland. There’s a little bit of archeological evidence and there are anthropologists who have studied and tried to figure out how people lived. There’s a lot of evidence for these cultures that lived off the sea, and tribes like this one - they’re called the seal peoples tribe. They thought of the sea eagles and the seals as totems of the tribes, very much like a North American Indian tribe would have a totem.
So that’s where we took the ritual that you see, the initiation of new warriors. You have a totem and a witch doctor figure in the village. He's dressed up in the skin of a seal with seal-like make-up on.
There’s a lot of archeological evidence for that kind of aspect of the culture, but when it comes to the clothing, it gets much much harder. Other than a few scraps of cloth and the kind of thing you find in peat bogs, there’s really very little evidence there. The costume designer I worked with, Mike Lucanneau, was very careful for instance, we had the cloth for everybody in the north woven separately to the cloth of what the Romans wore. Woven in a deliberately rough way as opposed to Roman cloth that has a very similar and modern feel. There are a few Roman documents where they describe how some of the tribes used to shave their heads, and have long bits dangling down the backs of their heads, and how sometimes some of the tribes used to paint themselves blue. But we had to invent a lot more, in what seemed to be feasible. We know that they hunted and ate seals, because of the remains that have been found so we imagined that they probably also wore seals and used it for their shoes and their boots. We know that those far Northerners didn’t have horses, because horses can’t really survive up there, so we guess maybe they’re fantastic runners, maybe they can run forever. So it’s more on that, we’ve taken what little amounts of evidence there is and we extrapolate on that.
Ask Me No Questions, I'll Tell You No Lies
Jordan Hoffman: So what part of this story is true?
Kevin Macdonald: Well, of the actual story, nothing really is true.
Jordan Hoffman: What? Oh, no!
Kevin Macdonald: It’s a fictional story made to feel, hopefully, like it is reality. The fundamental starting point of the story, which is the disappearance of the Ninth Legion, that is considered to be true by some people. . . and not by others.
Yeah, I know, it’s very disappointing, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this (laughs). This is based on a book that was written in the 1950’s that I read as a kid, actually, when I was 11 or 12. When the book was written it was generally held that the Ninth Legion had disappeared in Scotland, subsequent to that as more archaeological evidence is found there’s now a kind of revisionist or re-revisionist take on it which is that maybe it did happen. There’s uncertainty about it, whether that occurred, what it seems is there was a big defeat, even if they didn’t disappear.
Jordan Hoffman: Isn’t this something that the Romans would try to brush under the rug, as your movie implies?
Kevin Macdonald: Yes absolutely, they would brush it under the covers, that’s what any culture would do, isn’t it? You’ve had this shameful loss, your going to try and forget it as soon as possible, your not going to memorialize it, that’s for sure. It remains a mystery. The interesting thing is that the book is based on two facts or possible facts. One is the disappearance of the Ninth, the other is that in the 1920’s a Roman Eagle was dug up in England and it had had its wings shorn off and decorated with Celtic symbols. So this Eagle that was found, the author saw this in the museum and said, “how did it get there?” and that’s what set their imagination ticking.
On Donald Cammell
Jordan Hoffman: In 1998 you made documentary about the cult filmmaker Donald Cammell. Really quick, do you prefer Demon Seed or White of the Eye?
Kevin Macdonald: Demon Seed because it’s crazier.
Jordan Hoffman: Crazier than a professional sound installer who has visions of the future?
Kevin Macdonald: Demon Seed is verifiably nuts, and that’s what I rather like about it. I think its much less Donald Cammell, where as I think White of the Eye is very much him, that’s who he is and he’s expressing himself, it’s a much more personal film I think, but Demon Seed is much more fun.
Jordan Hoffman: Y'know that novel he wrote with Marlon Brando finally got published, is that something you might want to adapt?
Kevin Macdonald: No, I don’t think so, I was more interested in the story of him than that, because his life is a fascinating very dark life.
UGO
Kevin Macdonald explains his fighting technique, Northern British culture and just how much of his movie is true.
The Glory That Was Rome
Jordan Hoffman: What qualities of the Roman epic did you want to bring into The Eagle?
Kevin Macdonald: I think what’s different about this film to other Roman or “sword-and-sandal” films is we tried to do a very naturalistic, realistic approach in the film, in the way we shot it. The kind of rule we had was we wouldn’t use lots of CG, we wouldn’t people it with lots of places and individuals that weren’t there and obviously we wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of people in the battle or sweeping eagle-eye views of things, and that kind of stuff, which is pretty much the approach that people seem to take for some reason to the genre now a days, as in, say, Prince of Persia for instance.
I come from documentaries and come from more realist tradition, I wanted to take that approach, but also I was excited because, what makes this different from other Roman films is that its about the edge of the Empire, its not about the heart of the Empire. I grew up in Scotland so I can relate to that. The unconquerable and semi-uninhabitable Scotland. I was interested primarily in the clash of cultures or the place where two different cultures meet, how one culture deals with another culture, and the lack of respect or respect they have for each other.
I think this is why Roman films are so popular. We admire the civilization, for want of a better word, we admire what Rome achieved, the amazing military and political machine that rolled itself out across this huge swath of Europe and Asia, and brought with it so many great things, so many benefits, the Roman roads and the writing, but also was a kind of monolithic steamroller over other cultures. Rome had a sense that Roman civilization was superior to anybody else, and that’s what Channing Tatum’s character in the film does.
Jordan Hoffman: And there’s enough history between then and now that we can distance ourselves and not be concerned with the politics?
Kevin Macdonald: Yeah, but I think the thing is that Roman films allow you to have big military set pieces, the excitement and action, but the appeal is that it’s to do with the fact that it’s a society that seemingly was very very sophisticated but was ruled by violence.
Fight!
Jordan Hoffman: Yeah, so let's talk about those battle scenes. Tell me about your process in attaining realism in these scenes?
Kevin Macdonald: In the same way that I didn’t want to have CG in the film I wanted to have a feeling of life or death, I suppose, the simple reality that if you get a knife in your head or an axe in your back you’re going to die either there or your going to get infected, it’s going to kill you, so life is short and nasty. I want people to focus on the main characters and the peril for them, and not to be distracted by huge pyrotechnics and fighting for fighting’s sake, I think we’ve all become kind of bored of that, you don’t feel anything’s at stake, you don’t feel like you’re interested to what’s happening to your hero.
In the very first battle when the roman soldiers go out on their rescue, we spoke to a lot of military historians, and looked at a lot of the books and the artifacts. We were very careful to give the soldiers the right weaponry, exactly the right shields, all their uniforms were made especially for the film, and modeled exactly on the evidence of what Roman soldiers would have worn during the second century. The actual techniques and tactics they used for getting out of the fort to go and rescue these Roman soldiers who had been taken prisoner is a very well-documented Roman technique, and it’s kind of like a second century tank; superiority of technology and strategy demonstrated right there, and I really enjoyed that kind of documentary side of that sequence. You're seeing how they did it, this is how they do it, this is the technique for fighting.
Grooving With A Pict
Jordan Hoffman: The movie really gets cookin' when the soldiers go over Hadrian's Wall and encounter the Pict culture. What was the research that went into those cultures?
Kevin Macdonald: I wanted the audience to be immersed in the culture of the Northern Britains, the Picts, the Celts, as much as possible. However, much less is known about what life was like for the Barbarians compared to the Romans. The Romans wrote a little bit about what they encountered in the North of England and Scotland. There’s a little bit of archeological evidence and there are anthropologists who have studied and tried to figure out how people lived. There’s a lot of evidence for these cultures that lived off the sea, and tribes like this one - they’re called the seal peoples tribe. They thought of the sea eagles and the seals as totems of the tribes, very much like a North American Indian tribe would have a totem.
So that’s where we took the ritual that you see, the initiation of new warriors. You have a totem and a witch doctor figure in the village. He's dressed up in the skin of a seal with seal-like make-up on.
There’s a lot of archeological evidence for that kind of aspect of the culture, but when it comes to the clothing, it gets much much harder. Other than a few scraps of cloth and the kind of thing you find in peat bogs, there’s really very little evidence there. The costume designer I worked with, Mike Lucanneau, was very careful for instance, we had the cloth for everybody in the north woven separately to the cloth of what the Romans wore. Woven in a deliberately rough way as opposed to Roman cloth that has a very similar and modern feel. There are a few Roman documents where they describe how some of the tribes used to shave their heads, and have long bits dangling down the backs of their heads, and how sometimes some of the tribes used to paint themselves blue. But we had to invent a lot more, in what seemed to be feasible. We know that they hunted and ate seals, because of the remains that have been found so we imagined that they probably also wore seals and used it for their shoes and their boots. We know that those far Northerners didn’t have horses, because horses can’t really survive up there, so we guess maybe they’re fantastic runners, maybe they can run forever. So it’s more on that, we’ve taken what little amounts of evidence there is and we extrapolate on that.
Ask Me No Questions, I'll Tell You No Lies
Jordan Hoffman: So what part of this story is true?
Kevin Macdonald: Well, of the actual story, nothing really is true.
Jordan Hoffman: What? Oh, no!
Kevin Macdonald: It’s a fictional story made to feel, hopefully, like it is reality. The fundamental starting point of the story, which is the disappearance of the Ninth Legion, that is considered to be true by some people. . . and not by others.
Yeah, I know, it’s very disappointing, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this (laughs). This is based on a book that was written in the 1950’s that I read as a kid, actually, when I was 11 or 12. When the book was written it was generally held that the Ninth Legion had disappeared in Scotland, subsequent to that as more archaeological evidence is found there’s now a kind of revisionist or re-revisionist take on it which is that maybe it did happen. There’s uncertainty about it, whether that occurred, what it seems is there was a big defeat, even if they didn’t disappear.
Jordan Hoffman: Isn’t this something that the Romans would try to brush under the rug, as your movie implies?
Kevin Macdonald: Yes absolutely, they would brush it under the covers, that’s what any culture would do, isn’t it? You’ve had this shameful loss, your going to try and forget it as soon as possible, your not going to memorialize it, that’s for sure. It remains a mystery. The interesting thing is that the book is based on two facts or possible facts. One is the disappearance of the Ninth, the other is that in the 1920’s a Roman Eagle was dug up in England and it had had its wings shorn off and decorated with Celtic symbols. So this Eagle that was found, the author saw this in the museum and said, “how did it get there?” and that’s what set their imagination ticking.
On Donald Cammell
Jordan Hoffman: In 1998 you made documentary about the cult filmmaker Donald Cammell. Really quick, do you prefer Demon Seed or White of the Eye?
Kevin Macdonald: Demon Seed because it’s crazier.
Jordan Hoffman: Crazier than a professional sound installer who has visions of the future?
Kevin Macdonald: Demon Seed is verifiably nuts, and that’s what I rather like about it. I think its much less Donald Cammell, where as I think White of the Eye is very much him, that’s who he is and he’s expressing himself, it’s a much more personal film I think, but Demon Seed is much more fun.
Jordan Hoffman: Y'know that novel he wrote with Marlon Brando finally got published, is that something you might want to adapt?
Kevin Macdonald: No, I don’t think so, I was more interested in the story of him than that, because his life is a fascinating very dark life.
UGO