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Spencerdirector Pablo Larrain is joining us at Vulture Festival to literally put on a film school for us.
You never know where Pablo Larrain is going next.
This fall, Larrain will release the much-anticipatedSpencer, in which Kristen Stewart plays Princess Diana.
The film follows her over the course of the 1991 Christmas holiday when she decides to leave Charles.
Larrain sees biopics not as historical documents but as fables that can reveal profound insights about human nature.
Larrain, a master of cinematic reinvention, gave hisEmaactors only a broad outline to start with.
Youd re-created an entire White House tour shot for shot.Emalet you go in any direction you wanted.
You didnt even let the actors see full scripts.
The bigger the movie, the little that is left for [what happens on] set.
Thats what happened withEmaand another movie I did,The Club.
They were both made with the same styles.
Actors never knew the script; they never knew what we were going to shoot.
They spent more time dancing than talking or rehearsing at all.
But how things happened and how they evolved in the characters is all new.
We started shooting with an outline, and then during the process, we were writing.
But its a low-budget film and we didnt really have to explain the movie to anyone.
We didnt have to go out and attempt to make a point and present a script and a schedule.
No, we just found pieces over time and put them together.
You certainly wouldnt have been able to make a movie that way in the United States.
It has a very punk, artistic culture.
I think thenew movieGaspar Noe shot, he did it like this.
Maybe there are people who are trying to do this.
Part of the problem is that its so expensive to shoot in the U.S. That creates a different energy in the crew and in the cast.
They understand that its a little journey and it takes a couple of months to do it.
There must be a reason that you keep returning to him.
What kind of shorthand developed at this point?Hes a very good friend, first.
Were both parents, and I think theres something in the subject that we cared about.
Then theres something in the character himself, which is the absurd crisis of the artist.
I guess he connected with that, too.
But if you talk about great actors, most of them have that.
Im always mesmerized by that.
All the dramatic theory orbits around that somehow.
There are movies likeJackieorSpencerwhere you dont know what the character wants up until the point of the movie.
Some characters dont know what they want, but a situation makes them understand they are in a crisis.
And as the movie evolves, they need to really understand it.
So its a more existentialist punch in of cinema.
Its really about the structure, but theres always something that has to make the character explode.
As talented as they may be, audiences have preconceived notions of them.
She had some experience in television, but not a lot in movies.
But I guess the main thing is that Mariana, as the character, is completely unpredictable.
But Mariana wanted to do it.
I said, Mariana, that is not how you do movies.
Youre going to have a stand-in.
Its a war weapon.
She didnt know much about the character or the story because I hid the scripts from the actors.
Sometimes it was troubled.
Troubled?Yeah, because some actors would take it well and say,Okay, whatever.
Okay, but I need to understand, my friend.
You have no idea whats really going to happen to you in the following hours; anything can happen.
Thats what I was trying to reach.
I wanted actors who were standing there in a void of things that may happen or may not.
The choreography is full of sensual silhouettes, very street-dance-inflected.
Its quite strong in Latin America.
[Composer] Nicolas Jaar made me think that the only way to do this was through reggaeton.
They dont care about this idea of culture.
That was a very interesting friction.
And then I had to embrace reggaeton.
It was not easy!
It made me understand that we were making a movie about a generation that is different from us.
Our country is changing right now in an incredible and great way because of the new generation.
That was very beautiful for me.
Somehow that became very relevant to the heart of the narrative.
Something I admire about your work is the way that each project is stylized in a totally different way.
I think back to the film-noir stylings ofNeruda, the extreme close-ups inJackie.
Do you feel like you get to reinvent yourself with every movie?I try.
I wouldnt want to repeat myself.
I admire a lot of directors who have a very precise style over the years, like Pedro Almodovar.
You know what youre going to get when you see his movies.
But Im trying to behave in a way that I can feel surprised with the way that were shooting.
I want to create a mood.
ForEma, the mood and the tone of the film are part of the experience for the audience.
I hadnt seen something like that, at least on my sets.
Then you embrace it, and that becomes the style of the movie.
Its interesting when you give a shot to do that because also I never see a movie again.
Your own movies, you mean?Yeah, I just dont look back, because its very cruel.
By the timeJackiecame out, youd been making movies for a while.
I remember when I started working with an agent at CAA nearly 14 or 15 years ago.
And then over the years I have been invited to different kinds of things.
I worked for a while todevelopScarface, but it didnt work out.
There wasnt really a logic for why you would be inviting someone like me to do something like that.
I had never been in that space before, so I went for it.
I love to be hard to classify.
First, I dont have a plan of doing this or that pop in of movie.
Also, I dont think Ive ever done a biopic.
I thinkNerudaandJackieandSpencerare movies about people in certain circumstances where everything is about to explode.
Theyre not really biographical analyzations; its not the study of a life of someone.
I think some people could misunderstand it.
We dont do that!
Were just trying to work with whatever that person was and create a fable out of it.
Thats what Im looking for.
Well see if it works.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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