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Roland Joffe Back in Moscow
Renowned British director, scriptwriter and producer Roland Joffe (“Vatel”,” The Scarlet Letter”,”The Mission”) came to Moscow to work on his new feature film “Finding t.A.T.u.” adapted from A. Mitrofanov’s novel “t.A.T.u. COME BACK”. The shooting is set to begin in May, and the plot revolves around the adventures of two young girls in present-day Moscow, a unique city where anything can happen.
It’s the second time Roland works with RAMCO production company in Moscow: In 2005 he directed “Captivity” with Hollywood stars Elisha Cuthbert and Daniel Gillies in the lead roles. Even though “Captivity” opens June, 22 in the US, the movie’s already been hitting the headlines due to the controversial marketing practiced by the movie’s distributor After Dark.
- Roland, you worked on such legendary films as “Vatel”, “The Scarlet Letter”, “The Mission”, “The Killing Fields”, and in May you start shooting “Finding t.A.T.u”. What is it that makes the project attractive to you? Why did you decide to address the subject of modern youth culture?
- I think the fascinating thing about youth everywhere, and particularly in Russia, is that it is nature’s way of giving humanity another chance. The wonderful thing about youth is that it’s a regeneration. It’s true all over the world, and adults get upset about it because it makes them irrelevant. I guess we will all be irrelevant at some stage. Youth in Russia is particularly important, and if one looks at the country closely, it’s quite clear there are three generations who all live in slightly different worlds, maybe with varying degrees of sanity. There’s the older generation, who basically were part of what’s now a discredited system, the system that ran out of steam. And it’s a very difficult thing for them to make the “adjustments”, particularly if they think the system served them well... You have a middle generation, who came into position too prominent when there was an explosion of liberalization. Half of them didn’t understand its meaning too well, and didn’t very well understood capitalism. Capitalism is a very complex mechanism. It’s rather like Darwinism, so it’s easy to mistake what it is. You could easily decide Darwinism is about survival of the fittest, or even the survival of the strongest. Actually that’s not what it means. Darwinism is about the survival of the most co-operative, cause the species that win best are the ones that co-operate best, not species who play zero sum games.
The second generation have been playing zero sum games with capitalism, and that can’t actually go on, because it itself creates apractic society. So, they live in another kind of world. But the younger generation have an odd advantage now, because they see both worlds and realize that neither world is the answer. There’s another answer, and it’s in their hands, not in ours anymore. That’s why it’s so exciting. I think that for all young people the quest is to find out who they are. And who you are means coming to terms with your own integrity.
Since there’s many of the people who grew up under the old rules, they learnt to tell lies, basically, because inside themselves they were critical of the system, but couldn’t be critical openly. So they really learned not to tell the truth. The second generation, the one that arrived in the age of liberalization, decided that being brutal was the way, that you always had to take what you wanted. It’s is a certain lack of integrity there, because it’s not what makes people work. I think the younger generation can tell us of the fact that actually integrity may be discovered through honesty, a kind of honesty to yourself and honesty about who you are and what you need.And that’s very tied up with art, and with music, and with riding motorcycles, and any way the human beings choose to express themselves.
If they’re expressing themselves with honesty and integrity and the beauty that comes out of that, it’s automatically interesting. So I really enjoy telling a story that contains all those things in it. It’s about young people trying to find their fit in the world, and the fact that young people often may not know where their talents lie. They may think that their talents lie in direction A, while in fact they lie in direction B. So, I liked the power of the story, I liked the darkness and I even liked the humor of it. I’d like to do a movie that’s about those very human subjects. Particularly in Moscow. The last movie I made here, but it was set in America, so I thought it’d be a waste of time to be in Moscow all the way, because I couldn’t use anything I learned here. So it was attractive to me, when I had the space to do this, to come back and actually express something I felt about my time in Moscow and what I’ve learnt about it now. That’s fun.
- Is there any difference between the younger generation in Russia and in America?
Well, there is and there isn’t. Because all young people in the States are flocks. What all young people have in common is their need to belong to something, because they don’t quite know who they are yet. And as they belong to something they begin to learn what that something is.
I think that in a way some Russian youth has more innocent dreams, the whole Russian youth probably, though it’s difficult to generalize. And I think some American youth are probably less sure-footed, because they live in a slightly more protected environment. But on the other end they’re close together on the outer levels, so I think Russian and American youth have far more in common than Russian youth have with Russian adults or American youth with American adults. That’s just the way life works.
- What do you personally think of t.A.T.u.?
Well, I think t.A.T.u. is very interesting because the band is two young girls. I don’t have talent, which they undoubtedly do, in learning the commercial system, and I thought as I watched them being creative, also in learning the fact that you have to work at being a pop-star. If you can achieve a communication with the public, you have to know what that communication is based on, what does the public like in you. You can’t manipulate the public for very long, it gets aware very quickly. I think the nice thing about t.A.T.u. is that there’s a genuine struggle going on in them to honestly express what they feel as human beings. And that too is exciting.
- Do you like t.A.T.u.’s music?
Yes, my tastes in music are pretty eclectic actually, I mean I like all sorts of music. And I think some of t.A.T.u.’s songs are terrific.
www.ram-co.ru
30 April, 2007
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