One of the pleasant surprises from WonderCon 2011 was the Hanna presentation by Focus Features. If you’ve seen the trailer on BuzzFocus, then you have a sense of what Hanna is about. A young girl who has been isolated from the day she was born from the outside world. Living in the woods of Finland in a cabin, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, Lovely Bones) is raised by her father (Eric Bana, Munich), and ex-CIA man who trains her to be an assassin. Her father sets her free on a mission and is hunted down by a and relentless and heartless intelligence operative run by Cate Blanchett’s (Lord of the Rings) character, Marissa. Focus brought director Joe Wright and actor Saoirse Ronan where they held a panel and met with the press. If you haven’t yet check out our exclusive interviews with both Joe and Saoirse click on their names in this sentence.
From Pride and Prejudice, Atonement to The Soloist and now to the new action/thriller Hanna, director Joe Wright said he treats every film different from one another, that each one has its own process but he does take the reactions of each film home and learn from it and apply it to the next. “I’ve never shot action sequences before,” Wright said. “The closest thing I’ve done to action is dance from Pride and Prejudice so I thought just treat it like dance and it’ll be fine… You never know what you’ve learned until you apply it.”
Wright was asked if he had spoken to other directors who were experienced with action to get some feedback or advice. “No, but I fucking should’ve. I should have showed them the schedule and they might’ve said, ‘Don’t be daft, you can’t shoot an action film in 62 days.’ I did call Paul Greengrass (Bourne Identity) a few times but only got his answering machine. Bastard!” Wright was joking of course about Greengrass, but he was sincere in his reflection but given the results it’s not always so bad when you just wing it.
Only a few scenes were story-boarded, due to so much of principal photography was done in single take, or steady cam shots which are very difficult to storyboard.. “I probably should’ve story-boarded more because the sequences I liked best, are story-boarded like the escape from camp G for instance.
In the panel and with press about making an action film. He wanted to play outside the expectations of the genre. “I’m not a great fan of the genre, or working within the confines of a genre. I try to defy genre really.” In the panel however, he explained further that with Hanna they wanted to bring up social issues and that it was important not to sex up Hanna as it was important that this film would not to fall in the same traps repeated over and over in Hollywood films or popular culture.
“I remember when the Spice Girls came out in the 90s and called it ‘Girl Power,’ I think that’s bullshit! I probably shouldn’t say this but there’s recent films about girls “kicking arse,” in fact there’s one out at the moment, and there’s girls in bikinis and crop tops, and they got pig tails, dressed like school girls and they’re being sexualized and this is supposed to be “girl power” and that’s bullshit! Female empowerment isn’t about sex, that’s the point of empowerment. It’s about brains. So I was keen to look at those issues, Hanna exists outside of all that until she meets this family where the mother is a lost feminist and her daughter is a 16-year old celebrity-worshiping teenager that is totally wrapped up in the consumer culture and bought into the bullshit we get fed to by ‘the man’. The idea was to confront these two worlds and have either side try to relate to the other.”
Hanna has a very distinct European visual style, as if it was shot like a French New Wave film of the 1960s or 1970s. It’s a wonderful contrast to the soundtrack supplied by the Chemical Brothers which has a progressive, almost futuristic sound. Wright used to create visuals for raves under a company he co-founded with friend called Vegetable Vision in the 1990s. He would establish relationships with electronic performers such as Darren Emerson, Underworld and the Chemical Brothers. He’s been friends with them ever since and promises the experience of their score in a state-of-the-art movie theater will transcend any home theater or d-box setup.
The Chemicals finished the score before shooting began so whenever possible, speakers were set up on the shoot so that the action or movement by the actors could match the rhythm of the score. The result is a delightful mix of sound and vision marrying the best of both worlds. BuzzFocus asked Wright about whether he was conscious about those two very different styles blending.
“It’s funny the way people still talk about the Chemical Brothers as being new and I went to their first gig in London back 1992– nearly fucking 20 years ago, but you’re absolutely right. There is something incredibly modern about them. The world really hasn’t caught up to them. That’s one of the things I love about what they do but I don’t really think about style when I’m making a movie, it kind of happens organically. It comes out of the story I’m telling and I’m trying to respond to the story and the emotional lives of the characters. My biggest problem is always shooting scenes where a character comes out of a car and walks up to the front door and goes inside, because there’s no emotion in a scene like that and therefore I don’t have a style. I try to put myself in the main characters’ point of view and figure out how they see the world.
Wright worked with Ronan previously on Atonement as the 13-year old Briony Tallis. He knew early on that she was an immense talent, but never imagined her in a high energy action film as an assassin on a future film. “I had a feeling she’d be a part of my life; she was so extraordinary at that age and we, James (McAvoy) and all of us on that film were aware we were working with a special talent and one that we were going to see more of. Snapping necks – no.”
Despite having never done an action film before, Wright enjoyed the experience and would like to do it again, but probably not in his next film. “I like mixing it up a bit, working outside of my comfort zones and stretching myself creatively.”
One of the projects currently on Wright’s desk is an adaption of Little Mermaid with British film production company Working Title. Wright’s parents founded the Little Angel Theatre which put on puppet shows in Islington. It’s a personal project for Wright because his father would put on a puppet show of The Little Mermaid—and that was his favorite. “Yeah, I’d really love to do that, I used to sit and watch (my father’s production of Little Mermaid) thousands and thousands of times. Unfortunately, since we’ve put it into development there’s been this weird, fucking onslaught of fairy tale adaptations that wasn’t even happening when we were doing Hanna. I wish I had done it a few years ago, actually. I am fairly sure I will do it one day because I need to do it, it’s in my head and I feel like I know the film. I might wait a few years and wait until everyone’s… done (with fairy tales).
For more with Joe Wright, make sure you catch our exclusive video interview with him. Hanna is out in theaters this weekend, make some time for it, you won’t be disappointed.
