Q&A: Angelina Jolie on writing, directing debut
Carlo Allegri, File/Associated Press
Actress Angelina Jolie poses for a portrait to promote her
directorial debut of the film "In the Land of Blood and Honey" in New
York.
Angelina Jolie fits many descriptions.
Movie star? Check. Tabloid magnet? Uh, yeah -- probably the queen of the supermarket rags. Partner to Brad Pitt, mother of numerous children, subject of countless tales of offbeat behavior -- she is all that and more.
You can add writer and director to the list as well. Jolie filled both of those roles -- but did not act -- in "The Land of Blood and Honey," a romance set against the backdrop of the atrocities of the Bosnian War. Jolie used local actors for the film, which follows a Serbian soldier and the Bosnian woman with whom he is starting a romance when the fighting starts. It's complex, heavy and harrowing. The film opens Friday, Jan. 13.
Jolie talked recently about the experience.
Question: I enjoyed the movie. But is "enjoy" the word? Do you know what I mean?
Answer: I know exactly what you mean. People say they enjoyed it, and I have the same sort of quiet thought in my head, which is, "That's a very strange word to use."
Q: Well, even though the topic is serious, on some level it has to be entertaining. Do you buy that?
A: I do welcome that wholeheartedly -- we did exactly that. We didn't make a documentary. We wanted to make a film that would be accessible to people who enjoy film. And through that raise discussion on these issues we care about. So I'll take "enjoy."
Q: How hard was it to strike that balance, between serious and entertaining?
A: I think one, it's a film that, as much as it's war, it's human beings at war. It's couples and mothers and children and fathers and sons and friends. The human side of it, it's natural to have all of these things. And the cast themselves are from the area, and they lived through the war, and they are naturally funny people, they're artistic people, they're fascinating and are interesting and attractive people. So all of that comes through as it would, because people from the former Yugoslavia have all of these wonderful things to bring to film.
Q: At what point did you decide to write and direct?
A: I didn't plan on doing either. I kind of wrote it not thinking anybody was going to read it. And then we read it, and we decided we would only do it if we sent it to a cast that from all sides would agree. And I didn't think that would happen. It seemed the impossible. And then when they did, I didn't think I'd be a great director or even a good director. I just knew I really cared, and my intentions were in the right place. And I knew that was the most important thing. I wanted to stick by it because I wanted to see it done with the right intentions, so I couldn't pass it off. I just couldn't. And I ended up by default being the director and suddenly realizing I'd never done that before. I had many moments of my head in my hands saying, "What am I doing, what am I doing?" But I followed the lead of this great cast and crew, who are all great storytellers, and they just helped guide me.
Q: Were the action scenes fun to shoot or a logistical nightmare?
A: It's a bit of both. But I'm used to that a little bit, from some of the action films I've done. But this was different, because I also had men who were, like when all the boys were shooting, a few of those actors fought in the war. And they fought against some of the other actors -- not necessarily them directly, because the Serb actors were not people who fought in the war, not the Bosnian Serbs. ... The Bosnian Muslims did. It's all very confusing. It was their people. They fought against each other's side. And then in the film they're both on the same side of the wall. It's very surreal for them, but many of them knew how to hold a gun and had actually been in real armed combat in this exact war.
Q: Did that add pressure to get things right?
A: Of course. I always tried to keep a balance. It wasn't one person's story and it wasn't one side's point of view, and at the end of the day you have to listen to everybody and hear everybody but then tell a story, and you have to make some decisions that can't be that vague. You can't please everybody and you have to make decisions that you know, especially in this conflict particular, there're still people today who deny it happened and are very aggressive and hateful when the subject matter's even brought up.
Q: I interviewed Brad Pitt, and he said he would never even consider directing. Do you think your experience made him feel that way?
A: I had a great experience. I think he'd tell you -- I've never been happier on a set. Happy's a funny word, too. But I really, really loved working with the crew, I loved not being the one in front of the camera. I would have thought that he would have thought the opposite. ...
It is a lot of work. And I think he'd seen me feel the pressure, which I didn't even realize until it comes down on you. You go out and you do something and you feel like you're doing a piece of art and you're doing it with people, you make friends, you find extraordinary artists, you come together and experiment and you try and you learn, you do all these things. And then suddenly it's a poster.
And then these other elements matter, and you suddenly feel responsible for the hundreds of people that were on the crew and cast that you've now asked to join your project. And it's a responsibility I've never had. And it's a much greater responsibility than being in a film, in some ways, because you're the one who said, "Trust me, give me your performance, give me your heart, give me your emotions." It's a lot to ask of people.
Q: Is it a relief to talk about the film you made and not all the tabloid stuff?
A: Oh, you have no idea (laughing). It is, it's wonderful. It's just so nice, because you want to be able to contribute other things in the world. That can't be your contribution. It doesn't feel good.
Q: Do you pick apart the film when you see it?
A: I do pick it apart a little, but I hear that's normal -- that you think, "Oh, I wish I had that shot," or, "I shouldn't have cut there." But I don't know, because the themes are so heavy you go beyond those little details and hope that people don't misinterpret it. You stick with the bigger themes in your mind, so the little details don't bug me as much.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: twitter.com/goodyk.
Movie star? Check. Tabloid magnet? Uh, yeah -- probably the queen of the supermarket rags. Partner to Brad Pitt, mother of numerous children, subject of countless tales of offbeat behavior -- she is all that and more.
You can add writer and director to the list as well. Jolie filled both of those roles -- but did not act -- in "The Land of Blood and Honey," a romance set against the backdrop of the atrocities of the Bosnian War. Jolie used local actors for the film, which follows a Serbian soldier and the Bosnian woman with whom he is starting a romance when the fighting starts. It's complex, heavy and harrowing. The film opens Friday, Jan. 13.
Jolie talked recently about the experience.
Question: I enjoyed the movie. But is "enjoy" the word? Do you know what I mean?
Answer: I know exactly what you mean. People say they enjoyed it, and I have the same sort of quiet thought in my head, which is, "That's a very strange word to use."
Q: Well, even though the topic is serious, on some level it has to be entertaining. Do you buy that?
A: I do welcome that wholeheartedly -- we did exactly that. We didn't make a documentary. We wanted to make a film that would be accessible to people who enjoy film. And through that raise discussion on these issues we care about. So I'll take "enjoy."
Q: How hard was it to strike that balance, between serious and entertaining?
A: I think one, it's a film that, as much as it's war, it's human beings at war. It's couples and mothers and children and fathers and sons and friends. The human side of it, it's natural to have all of these things. And the cast themselves are from the area, and they lived through the war, and they are naturally funny people, they're artistic people, they're fascinating and are interesting and attractive people. So all of that comes through as it would, because people from the former Yugoslavia have all of these wonderful things to bring to film.
Q: At what point did you decide to write and direct?
A: I didn't plan on doing either. I kind of wrote it not thinking anybody was going to read it. And then we read it, and we decided we would only do it if we sent it to a cast that from all sides would agree. And I didn't think that would happen. It seemed the impossible. And then when they did, I didn't think I'd be a great director or even a good director. I just knew I really cared, and my intentions were in the right place. And I knew that was the most important thing. I wanted to stick by it because I wanted to see it done with the right intentions, so I couldn't pass it off. I just couldn't. And I ended up by default being the director and suddenly realizing I'd never done that before. I had many moments of my head in my hands saying, "What am I doing, what am I doing?" But I followed the lead of this great cast and crew, who are all great storytellers, and they just helped guide me.
Q: Were the action scenes fun to shoot or a logistical nightmare?
A: It's a bit of both. But I'm used to that a little bit, from some of the action films I've done. But this was different, because I also had men who were, like when all the boys were shooting, a few of those actors fought in the war. And they fought against some of the other actors -- not necessarily them directly, because the Serb actors were not people who fought in the war, not the Bosnian Serbs. ... The Bosnian Muslims did. It's all very confusing. It was their people. They fought against each other's side. And then in the film they're both on the same side of the wall. It's very surreal for them, but many of them knew how to hold a gun and had actually been in real armed combat in this exact war.
Q: Did that add pressure to get things right?
A: Of course. I always tried to keep a balance. It wasn't one person's story and it wasn't one side's point of view, and at the end of the day you have to listen to everybody and hear everybody but then tell a story, and you have to make some decisions that can't be that vague. You can't please everybody and you have to make decisions that you know, especially in this conflict particular, there're still people today who deny it happened and are very aggressive and hateful when the subject matter's even brought up.
Q: I interviewed Brad Pitt, and he said he would never even consider directing. Do you think your experience made him feel that way?
A: I had a great experience. I think he'd tell you -- I've never been happier on a set. Happy's a funny word, too. But I really, really loved working with the crew, I loved not being the one in front of the camera. I would have thought that he would have thought the opposite. ...
It is a lot of work. And I think he'd seen me feel the pressure, which I didn't even realize until it comes down on you. You go out and you do something and you feel like you're doing a piece of art and you're doing it with people, you make friends, you find extraordinary artists, you come together and experiment and you try and you learn, you do all these things. And then suddenly it's a poster.
And then these other elements matter, and you suddenly feel responsible for the hundreds of people that were on the crew and cast that you've now asked to join your project. And it's a responsibility I've never had. And it's a much greater responsibility than being in a film, in some ways, because you're the one who said, "Trust me, give me your performance, give me your heart, give me your emotions." It's a lot to ask of people.
Q: Is it a relief to talk about the film you made and not all the tabloid stuff?
A: Oh, you have no idea (laughing). It is, it's wonderful. It's just so nice, because you want to be able to contribute other things in the world. That can't be your contribution. It doesn't feel good.
Q: Do you pick apart the film when you see it?
A: I do pick it apart a little, but I hear that's normal -- that you think, "Oh, I wish I had that shot," or, "I shouldn't have cut there." But I don't know, because the themes are so heavy you go beyond those little details and hope that people don't misinterpret it. You stick with the bigger themes in your mind, so the little details don't bug me as much.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: twitter.com/goodyk.
Angelina Jolie journeys to the ’Land of Blood and Honey’
We know Angelina Jolie is a political advocate for war torn regions of the world. She is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, visits post-war zones and has adopted children from around the world. Now she’s combining her humanitarian work with her craft, braving new territory in the process.
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" is Jolie’s screenwriting and narrative feature directorial debut (after a documentary in 2007.) She wrote the story set in Bosnia during the Bosnian War, and filmed it in Bosnian and Serbian. The actors performed in their native tongues, though they were also able to speak English.
While the final film is in Bosnian with English subtitles, using English became instrumental for the cast and crew to bond during the filmmaking process.
"We did the entire film also in English," Jolie explained. "There were only a few of them who learned it phonetically but most everybody speaks beautiful English. So that wasn’t a problem. What we would do was do the first take in English, because they (the cast) wanted to do it that way. This helped the (English-speaking) crew because for the cameraman, the DP, the script supervisor -- everybody understood exactly what was happening in the scene. Then when it changed languages, somehow in our minds we still understood what was happening completely because we had just been in the same moment."
Angelina Jolie on the set of "In the Land of Blood and Honey"
Difficult to understand
The story follows Serbian soldier Danijel (Goran Kostic) and Bosnian prisoner Ajla (Zana Marjanovic). At the film’s onset, Danijel, a Bosnian Serb, and Ajla, a Muslim, have a date. He’s a cop, she’s an artist; and they appear to enjoy each other’s company in a nightclub, that is, until a bomb goes off, setting off the great divide along ethnic and religious lines that lasted throughout the 1990s. In quick succession, Ajla is picked up with other Muslim women and sent to an internment camp that turns out to be run by Danijel. Their personal dynamic becomes emblematic for the entire struggle."It’s hard for people to even explain what the Balkans are, let alone understand this war," Jolie said.
To get her film made, Jolie took an unusual route. "First, we sent the script without my name on it to people on all different sides of the conflict. We decided that if people from all different sides of the conflict could agree on the same story and could participate, including Bosnian-Serb, Arabs, Croatians, Bosnian-Muslims, and even people from Serbia, that they could together agree on this, then we have something. There would be purpose for doing it. But if they could not, then we would burn it. So they came together and they taught me a lot."
A scene from "In the Land of Blood and Honey"
Nervous on the set
The Bosnians and Serbs shared real life stories with Jolie that further developed her understanding of the situation. "Many lived through (the war.) A lot of them were children in the war. They all lost somebody -- one of them lost 28 family members. When we got together, they started to tell me more and more stories and we started to expand and expand on the script. I met a woman, who’s not in the film, but a woman who told me about being held captive and being used as a human shield and watching older women being forced to dance naked in front of soldiers. So all these things then changed and adjusted as we went. So the scale of it I never anticipated."Capturing such horrors on film was a daunting prospect. Jolie was asking many to re-enact atrocities that were committed in real life.
"I was a little nervous because on the first day we had one of the hardest scenes, which was one where the women were taken off the bus and raped. The women in that were Bosnian-Muslim women. The actors in the scene were mixed Bosnian-Muslim, Bosnian-Serb and Serbian men. So having to recreate this was going to be the hardest thing."
Actors Ermin Sijamija and Jelena Jovanova got through the scene. Their reaction after Jolie called "cut" showed her that recreating these stories could have a healing effect.
"What happened was as soon as I called ’cu’t for the first time, Ermin who was playing the aggressor, picked Jelena up and gave her the biggest hug and apologized and hugged her," Jolie recalled. "She hugged him back and all the men who had ripped the earrings and the jackets off the women, put them back on them and apologized and took care of them and brought them tea and made sure they were okay. By lunchtime, there was so much kindness because they were confronting this story of ugliness of this past that they do not want to repeat. I just saw 16 of them in New York a few days ago and just to see them together is extraordinary to me. It means so much."
Angelina Jolie on the set of "In the Land of Blood and Honey"
Difficult to film
There are many scenes in the movie that will be tough for viewers to watch, and, Jolie notes, were equally difficult to film."There were many days that were hard. I hated the day when I had to ask the old women to strip naked. I hated it. I had two cameras and we only shot it once. We had robes for them, we had drinks for them; we had anything they wanted. I wanted them to go home and relax. We were in Hungary so they were Hungarian women."
In the scene the women are laughed at, something that Jolie went out of the way to tell the actors that it was nothing personal. "I must have went up to them five times to say,
’Do they completely understand that the people inside have been directed, they have been told, it’s their job to laugh at them?.’ ... I was sorry I needed to ask them to do this (strip naked), but wanted them to know how much this was going to mean for people. That they’re representing the victims of war who went through this, and this message will affect people and they will be doing a great service to other women. I’m went on and on, and these women were just looking at me saying ’okay, okay.’ When they were asked earlier on if they would be comfortable, they said ’yes;’ but I was just a wreck."
The actors were even willing to shoot a second take, but Jolie could not bear it. "When I went up to the women afterwards, I said, ’Thank you so much, please translate and tell them thank you, it was so brave of them and wonderful and I appreciate it. And they can go home now.’ And they all talked and I asked, ’What did they say?’ They wanted to know if they did something wrong. I said, ’No, my God, I just don’t want to put them through that again.’ Because they did it perfect and they can go home. They said they were happy to stay and they were fine, but just for everybody, the DP, all of us, the whole crew, we hated it. We felt like we were torturers."
A scene from "In the Land of Blood and Honey"
Repeating the past
Making the film informed more of Jolie’s humanitarian work, as it illustrated how far we still have to go in improving human rights internationally."What was very frustrating is the more we make new laws, the more we make statements, the more we decide something’s genocide, we still can be in a situation from the ’90s. For years and years, 40 minutes away from Italy, there were rape camps and slaughter and death and we did doing nothing."
Bosnia-Herzegovina is just one place where recent wars have left scars. Jolie continues her work in Africa as well. "I spent time in Sierra Leone and I witnessed such a brutal conflict, where I saw little kids who had both their arms and legs cut off with a hatchet and stuck to a tree, I could not for the life of me understand how this was happening and people literally cut hands off their brother or sister... Men are forced to rape their mothers in front of people."
Jolie is realistic about the political prospects for international aid. Her film is an artistic statement, and she will continue to work in both arenas to raise awareness and institute change.
"It’s a big question for us of what instruments of law we’ve got in place to deal with these, how we better understand each other, what we do to address these situations. Again, the film is not a solution. It’s not a political statement but it raises those questions and those feelings."
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" is now playing in New York and Los Angeles. It will expand wider this month.
