The Green Knight - David Lowery: "I see cinema as a form of metaphysical art"

Meeting with the director, while The Green Knight arrives on Prime Video.

Who is David LowerY?A vegan, an atheist, an ex-lobby, a hipster, a Casey Affleck friend, a quadra, a Disney director, an arty and indie filmmaker.Difficult to put your finger on the enigmatic guy, which satisfies the most informed moviegoers (the lovers of Texas, A Ghost Story) and the general public (The Old Man and the Gun, Peter and Elliott Le Dragon and soon to bePeter Pan and Wendy).After three years of silence, he returned with The Green Knight - broadcast in France on Prime Video -, inspired by an Arthurian poem from the 14th century.The story of Sire Gauvain (Dev Patel), knight of the round table, confronted with the challenge launched by the mysterious green knight.Life, death, temporality and storytelling: first went to ask David Lowery what waved his cinema.

How is a film at home?By an image?A theme? David Lowery: Most often is the combination of an image and a question.But this is not a rule: for The Green Knight, I just visualized a wide plan of a knight on a horse.Everything came from there, the aesthetics of the film then developed naturally during the writing process.And sometimes it's a pure idea of scenario.Here is: I'm currently working on the script for a science fiction film, and what makes me move forward is the central idea.Something really twisted, complex, weird ... that I don't know at all how to synthesize in a film!I am looking for while writing, I don't have a clear story in mind every moment.In any case, I never know what the structure will look like in three acts.It’s always something much more abstract than that.

All your films have in common to think about storytelling, to wonder about what a story is and how we tell it. Is that something very aware of? Interesting. It is true, and it is no coincidence that many of my films contain long scenes in which a character tells another a story to another. But not in this one, since the main character has experienced nothing, he has no history to tell. It’s a way to go against what I usually do. And at the same time, it's a film about someone looking for a quest, so it's necessarily talking about storytelling. Let's say that I am very aware of my goals when I write, but when I reread my scripts, I sometimes wonder if I really knew what I was doing. I really believe in the unconscious in the cinema, the intentions that manifest themselves in a subliminal way when you write or film something. So I let it be born everything that can be. On The Green Knight, I realized that there was much more in the script than I imagined. But in my opinion, it comes much more from the depth of the poem which I inspire than me!

The Old Man and the Gun and A Ghost Story were carried by very strong theoretical speeches on their own subjects. The Green Knight emancipates from this metaréflection. Why? Because there was no question of subverting the Arthurian genre or looking at it with a critical eye. There is something ironic in A Ghost Story which is completely absent from The Green Knight. In Ghost Story is an exception in my filmography. Maybe with The Old Man and The Gun, I fed a discussion on the very genre of the film, and what Robert Redford embodies. But in The Green Knight, I am limited by the borders of this world, even if I try to unravel a few holes in the structure. There is a scene in which I wanted to bring the characters to life in a contemporary house and make them wear clothes of today. The bias seemed acceptable to me as part of the film. But I resisted, because it was an anachronism for the pleasure of anachronism, and that it would have undermined the universe on which we worked so hard. I would have opened the door to a theoretical discourse whose film did not need.

Looking at your filmography, shared between Disney films and works intended for a niche of moviegoers, you might think that you follow the strategy of "One for them, one for me" to the letter. But I have the impression that it is something else that drives you ... I see very well why it can give this impression, because it is obviously a reality for certain directors. Except that the two studio films that I made with Disney are just as personal, if not more, as the others. Peter and Wendy [his next Disney feature film] was the most important film I could shoot at that time in my life. Really. Afterwards, I know where I put my feet and what are the constraints: I make a film for children and so that families can share a moment together. And for that, I am given a very substantial budget and a hundred days of shooting to execute my vision. So what ? I absolutely don't be ashamed of it and I don't feel like I am selling myself. This is even necessary for me as a film buff who loved lots of big entertainment films. And if I do my job well, I even think that the experience makes me a better director. Because I would have learned new techniques and other ways to express myself.

Your creation process is therefore the same for an independent film and a studio film? With the exception of the tools and the budget at my disposal, it is rigorously the same!I can't trace border between the two.They are made of the same wood and I have the impression of following the same path each time.And I love the idea that stories that matter to me can be told under the banner of a studio like Disney.

Do the image that the criticisms and the press refer to you, that of a gifted clearing, influences your way of turning, your radicality? No, and I am unable to tell you if it is a good thing. I do not read criticism or articles on me. If I see my name on the internet, I immediately close the browser. I consider that my two best films are in Ghost Story and my short film Pioneer. This is the ultimate in what I try to do as a director. But I don't really want to think about it ... For example, I had already turned the Old Man and the Gun when A Ghost Story came out. And I'm not sure I could have made this film after A Ghost Story, because of all these positive reactions. The pressure would have been too strong. All that reminded me of not consciousing things too much, otherwise I would be unable to follow my whims as they deserve. I prefer to be sincere with myself: if I have an idea, I will follow it and see what is born rather than stick to what people expect from me. Thinking too much about how the public will respond to my work would ultimately try to try to please someone who does not exist.

When is your particular management of the temporality and the length of the plans is invited in your staging? This is something that is both very written and very improvised. Let me explain: I can have precisely detailed a scene in the script, and decide at the time of the shooting to double its duration. And generally, what makes me change my mind is a combination of the place - which inspires me more than I thought - and the actor's performance or the actress I film. What must be understood is that what drives me as a director is to touch the existential crisis of a character, or at least challenge spectators on what they expect from experience cinematographic. I see cinema as a form of metaphysical art whose limits I want to test, discover what can be put into pictures and that I could not express with words. Time management in cinema is fascinating, because it can give birth to a very strong emotion as well as putting spectators in an uncomfortable position. I have the impression that all our existential disorders reside in our relationship to time. And I like to use this matter so that cinematographic language responds to my own obsessions.

You were talking about cinema as a metaphysical art.Do you not approach all your films from this question: what does it mean to be alive as a human being? It is a completely valid interpretation butI don't know if I would say so.I actually evoke the question of existence: "What do you want to accomplish before your last breath?What do you want to leave behind?Finally, I turn it in an extremely pessimistic way.(Laughs.) I like your formulation.I try to tend towards that.To live the present moment.It's hard, because I spend too much time thinking about death.You look at things from an angle that I can't see ... I want you!

The Green Knight, available on Prime Video.