Of monsters, relations emotions

JA Bayona, director of the recent flick ‘A Monster Calls’ is geared up to make fifth installment of ‘Jurassic Park’. He says that the next installment of the franchise will be scarier than previous films

Juan Antonio García Bayona popularly known as JA Bayona, shot to the fame in 2007 with the horror film ‘The Orphanage’.

His recent venture ‘A Monster Calls’, which has a star cast of Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Toby Kebbell and Lewis MacDougall who portrayed the role of Conor in the film, has garnered rave reviews.

Bayona is all set to direct the fifth installment of hit film series Jurassic Park. In an exclusive conversation, the Spanish director speaks about his new film, stint in the industry and the much-anticipated film ‘Jurassic Park’.

How was the experience while filming ‘A Monster Calls’?
‘A Monster Calls’ is a great fantasy that deals with emotion. It talks about childhood with so much respect and talks about the complexities of the childhood, of the psychologies of a kid through a very specific and a difficult point in his life.

It reminded me of movies that I loved when I was a kid. Like ‘E.T.’ and ‘The Never Ending Story’, the kind of films that they are so rare to see nowadays, and I wanted to be involved in the making of one of those films.

This is your third film in a row about the loss of relationship between mothers and sons. Why is that such rich territory for you?
You just follow the material that creates strong stories. This was an accidental trilogy, but I thought ‘A Monster Calls’ was an interesting way of closing it. The three films talk about these things from a different point of view, and that's interesting.

‘The Orphanage’ talked about growing up from the point of view of pathology. This woman can't cope with maturity, and has a “Peter Pan Complex”. ‘The Impossible’ is about growing up in a bigger sense, how it is to realise as a Westerner that you have privilege, compared to other people.

And this film is more about finding the truth and being able to express it. That connects to the monster's storytelling, and to what we do as storytellers. I researched the tradition of storytelling and found it fascinating, like finding the meaning of a dream.

How is it to direct a fantasy film?
I think the first time I sat down with Patrick Ness, my idea was about trying to find the light at the end of the story—to find some hope. I think Conor goes through such an emotional journey that I had to find a signal of hope at the end of the film.

So I started thinking about it and at that time I didn’t know how to do it. But then I came up with this idea that Conor was an artist. It was like a way of visualisation, a way of putting on the screen his own work, his inner work. Somehow, I had this image of the pencil moving, rolling on the floor, leading us to the monster. That was the main tool. His guns were his pencils.

Was there anything you found particularly difficult in telling the story?
I think it was just finding the way to tell the story because it’s not an easy story to tell. It’s based on a book, and when you read a book it’s such a different experience from watching a film, so we had to find the right architecture for the film to tell the story.

We’re dealing with so many different subject matters, like the delicate subject of cancer. It operates on a level of fantasy and reality, so finding the right tone for the film was challenging, and it took us time in the editing to find a way to tell the time so it would connect in the way it would for audiences.

Was it difficult not to include a few things in the movie from the book?
I read the book and it had so many things in common with my other films. At the same time, I was reading a lot about storytelling, people like Joseph Campbell, Bruno Bettelheim, about the psychologies of fairy tales. I was curious about how stories work... What is it that makes people attracted to a story? Sergio G Sanchez was obsessed with the book.

We had worked together on ‘The Orphanage’ and ‘The Impossible’ and he was telling me all about it. I didn’t read the book at that time because I was working on a TV series ‘Penny Dreadful’. I got the script and wanted to read the book first, so I did. The emotional reaction you have when you read the book is so rare to see.

It was dealing with themes that were already near the movies. It was so relevant to me. I think somehow, one of the things that I love about the book is how it’s a great fantasy that talks about how we need fantasy to understand reality. And by doing so, it’s very interesting the way Patrick Ness separates reality from the truth.

Do you think the film did justice to the book?
A: I was trying to find the ultimate meaning of every single moment in the story. It's a multi-layered story full of psychological complexities, philosophical implications. We could spend hours talking about it, trying to make it even better.

One idea we worked on, which isn't in the book, is the legacy of people in our lives, how a legacy makes someone alive even if they aren't here anymore. That was my way of finding the light at the end of the story, through the idea of legacy.

If you take a look at the film very closely, you will see how many frames, how many doors, how many windows separate the world of Conor from the world of the adults; or the world of the fantasy from the world of reality. In other words, like a way of trying to find or the intention of trying to find a way to express that idea in a visual way.

How was it working with the cast?
With actors, it's really about feeding them all the time. I don't get involved in their process. I try to do the opposite, feeding them, feeding them, feeding them and you can see very easily how they react to it.

It's also best to tell them what reaction they want from the other characters. I don't tell them "I want you to do this," it's better to say, "I want you to provoke this reaction in him." Acting is their thing andit's their work. So you just feed them information.

For Felicity and Sigourney, it was very important to do all the research, and meet real people who were going through the same situation as their characters. And on the set, I play a lot of music. Music is very helpful, not just for the actors, but the whole crew, and me.

It gives you the tone of the scene. Everyone is focused on the tone of the scene when we are shooting, and we are having an emotional reaction to the music immediately. The good thing about helping an actor create a performance is you really don't know how you're going to do it. It's a challenge every time you get to the set.

How did you find Lewis?
It was a long, long process of auditions, during which we saw hundreds of kids. Because Conor is such an important piece in the film, we needed to be sure that we got the right kid. We did four steps: The first one was a self-tape, the second one was a meeting with the acting coach, and the third was a meeting with me. The fourth was a camera test in Barcelona.

At that time we had four or five good kids—very good kids. It’s always difficult to make the decision at the end because you know there are some other kids that are as good as him that can do the film. But the truth is that Lewis was so different from the other ones, so unique. The way he approached the scenes was different.

All the kids were going more toward the emotional aspect, the emotional side that you would expect from a very dramatic scene. But he was more about rage. He was reluctant to show his tears. Even though you can see the tears, he was reluctant to show them. He has such strength in not showing that.

I thought that dealt a lot with the rage that Conor is showing throughout the story. From the very beginning, I thought that he was special, and he got the job at the end. With kids, if they are too young, it’s a question of patience to try to get the performance.

But Lewis being 12, he was quite articulate and a very good actor, actually. I think he’s going to do great things in the future. So I treat them exactly the same way as the other actors.

How did you think of Liam for the monster?
The monster is inspired by the Green Man, who is one of the most important characters in Celtic folklore. I started thinking about an Irish actor. From the moment we started looking for someone who has the wisdom and aura and could bring the soul to the monster, it was obvious that Liam Neeson was the number one option. We met, and he loved the script, he loved the book, and he really liked my previous films, so to my surprise, it was quite easy to get him to play the role.

Talk about casting Felicity Jones.
I needed a young British actress. At the moment ‘The Theory of Everything’ was still not released, and she was not that popular, but I remember her from a very beautiful film ‘Like Crazy’. She gave an amazing performance in that.

I wanted to keep a sense of beauty on her character because I knew how physically destroyed she was going to look at the end of the film. But for Conor, she’s still his mother. So before being a sick person, she’s a mother. I wanted to keep that sense of beauty for someone like her.

What did you want to achieve with the look of Conor's monster?
We tried maybe 200 different drawings of the monster, and there was a moment where I finally realised you cannot do anything that hasn't been done before. Everything you can create that looks like a tree will remind you of the “Ents” from ‘Lord Of The Rings’.

Everything that looks like a man will remind you of other creatures. The Green Man is such an important figure in mythology that you will find hundreds of designs for that. So after doing 200 plus designs, I realised that there was something powerful in Jim Kay's drawings because his design was so simple.

It's just this dark figure of a man. Ultimately, the monster is the man Conor is going to become. It's his own conscience telling him, "You need to break things, and then you will find your place in the world." So I thought, "The more simple we go, the more space we leave for imagination in the audience. So instead of giving it eight legs and three eyes, let's keep it simple."

Were you concerned that the film was too dark?
It’s dark, but it’s rewarding and inspiring and enlightening… The human energy we’re talking about—I mean, we’re talking about—a monster, and you’re afraid of the monster. But the monster in this film is the result of Conor’s nightmares, yet it’s also the solution. And that contradiction, there’s the humanity, there’s the reality of it.

That’s what the kid needs to learn, that things can be black and white at the same time. So your nightmare can be your solution. And that’s very difficult for a kid to process. For him, that can feel like a cheat.

Because kids nowadays, they go to movies and we tell them all the time that things are black or white. But they know that things are not black or white, and they don’t experience life in black and white, but they cannot articulate it. This is why the film plays with emotion—from the moment you tell the story from the point of view of a kid, a kid doesn’t have a story to refer to.

What can the audience expect from the ‘Jurassic World 2’ ?
Jurassic is going to be much scarier than the previous films. It’s massive. It’s even bigger than the first one. I consider Jurassic to be Steven Spielberg’s baby, and I’m there to take care of his baby as much as possible.

For me, it’s very exciting to be making this film because I grew up with his films and I’ve always been a huge fan. It’s as much ‘Jurassic Park 5’ as it is ‘Jurassic World 2’. Everything is a learning experience and all of the movies prepared me for Jurassic Park. You always want to do something next that is more challenging, and in this case, it’s my first Hollywood movie.