Kevin Macdonald directed a claustrophobic submarine thriller in Black Sea, starring Jude Law as an unemployed submarine captain put in charge of a ragtag team of British and Russian sailors that go searching for a Nazi submarine filled with gold bars that went down in the Russian waters during World War II. He spoke to ComingSoon.net about what went into making his latest narrative feature. Here are some highlights:
On inspiration for Black Sea
“Well, no, I came up with the idea myself, because I was just inspired by the Kursk disaster that happened in 2000. A Russian sub went down in the Barents Sea and some people survived for several days on the bottom of the ocean, but the rescuers couldn’t get to them and the oxygen ran out. It was just one of those terrible stories. But I thought that was an interesting premise for a movie. People stuck on the bottom of the ocean, and I began to think, “What are they doing there? Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a sub film that wasn’t military or Cold War, that was present day?” So when I was thinking about what they were doing, the must be on some kind of heist. Are they trying to steal something or get some treasure? It kind of built up in my head like that and I started thinking of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and about greed and what greed does to people. Then I basically gave that to Dennis Kelly, the writer, who I met and talked about it and he was like, “This is something that interests me, but I like the idea of what I can say about these kind of characters, these characters that have been thrown on the scrap heap of life, basically. Skilled working class men who feel like their expertise, their skills, are no longer valued by society. So I guess that he put in this aspect that I really liked, which was the 1% vs. the 99% with the 99% fighting back, this kind of element which makes it feel quite current I think. That kind of resentment and anger that people can have against the system and against the people they feel are controlling the world in an unjust way.
That’s something that obviously happens in America, it happens in Britain, it happens in Russia, and actually, that was then what interested me about these Russian characters. Superficially, of course, there’s a tension between them, the Russians and the Brits, because these guys were old enough to be in the Cold War spying on each other, mistrusting each other. So there’s that mistrust there, but also they share in common that they’re all from the same social class, they’ve all been shat on by the system basically.”
On research
“I had once been on a submarine before when I was a kid, because I grew up in Scotland very near to the Naval base, which was the British Naval base, Faslane, and once had gone on a school trip there. The research, we did go to see a lot of subs that were in museums. There’s a submarine museum and there’s submarines all over the place that you can go and see. There was the wreck of a U-boat in Liverpool. There’s an actual U-boat, one of the two that’s still survived—there’s one in Chicago, weirdly, and there’s one somewhere in Northern Germany. But the key thing was finding this real Russian sub, which bizarrely, as Dennis started to write it, he started doing Russian submarines and he phoned me up and said, “You’d never guess. There’s a Russian sub of the correct vintage outside London, sitting in a river.” It’s like a Black Widow submarine, I think 1964-65 vintage, so we got in touch with the owner, who had bought it in the early ‘90s, thinking he’d turn it into a tourist attraction but it didn’t work. He was occasionally renting it out for a photo shoot or a party, but it was kind of like this rusting hulk sitting in the middle of the river, because no one would give him docking, because they were so worried that if they left it there it would sink because it’s so rusty. We went on board and it’s like an amazing museum piece. It’s a beautiful bit of Soviet design in great condition inside, terrible condition outside, and as soon as I saw it, I thought, “We have to film on here. There’s no way we can build something as incredible as this on a set.” So we did. I originally thought we would do the whole thing on there, but as soon as we started looking into the logistics of it, it was a nightmare.”
On the underwater sequences
“Yeah, they were really challenging. That was the most technically challenging stuff and directing people when they’re underwater is almost impossible. You’ve got this hydroponic microphone and you’re talking to them and it’s echoing around the pool and they can’t hear you when they’re breathing. All the lights keep fusing. It’s a nightmare as any director who has worked underwater will tell you. We had a particular nightmare because after the first week, we managed to turn all the water green and we had to empty all the water out, 1.2 million liters, and make a huge insurance claim and it was a disaster. We wanted the bottom of the tank to be soggy so when the guys stepped on it, they would sink in a little bit, so we put memory foam down on the bottom. It turned out that had bromine in it and bromine reacts with chlorine and replaces the chlorine and it turned the water green. And there was nothing we could do about it, so that was a bit of a disaster. But that was one of the main reasons to do the movie, from a cinematic point of view. I always knew that was going to be the heart of the film, it’s going to be the really big tense action sequence. And also a relief to get out of the submarine, and yet you think it’s going to be a relief and then it’s almost as claustrophobic in the darkness, in the murkiness. We combined elements of CG with bits of set, because you can only put small slivers of set into the tank and they would extend it off to the sides with CG and get rid of the sides of the tank if you saw them and that kind of thing. It was the kind of thing where if I ever had to do it again, I’d be really good at it.”
Black Sea opens in New York and L.A. on Friday, January 23.
[Photo Credit: Source]
Black Sea Director Kevin Macdonald Chats About Submarines
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