Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo’s painful look at family tragedy garners Oscar talk
During the 77th Venice Film Festival, New Europe sat down with Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo, who presented his film Pieces of a Woman in competition.… Read More »
During the 77th Venice Film Festival, New Europe sat down with Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo, who presented his film Pieces of a Woman in competition. British movie star Vanessa Kirby, well known from the TV series The Crown, has been lauded for her stunning performance in the film. Kirby is being mentioned as an early contender to take home the 2021 Oscar for best actress.
Mundruczo is a rising filmmaking talent from Hungary, who is regarded as one of the up-and-coming non-American filmmakers who are making their mark in Hollywood and following up on the groundbreaking success of Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro G. Iňàrritu, Guillermo del Toro, Steve McQueen, Yorgos Lanthimos and Bong Joon-ho.
Pieces of a Woman tells the story of Martha and Sean Carson, a Boston couple on the verge of parenthood. For them, everything will change irrevocably during a home birth under the guidance of a flustered midwife who faces criminal charges for negligence. This begins a year-long odyssey for Martha, who must navigate her grief while working through fractious relationships with her husband and her domineering mother, along with the publicly vilified midwife whom she must face in court.
NEW EUROPE (NE): How did you include the presence of solid characters and the important theme of femininity in the film?
KORNEL MUNDRUCZO (KM): I mean Martha (Vanessa Kirby’s character) in my eyes, she’s a real hero. And also what followed is important, how she doesn’t use the same family patterns and how she’s just about to forge ahead with the tragedies, as they were pushed on her. She changed and she found her own way out. In a situation when you’ve lost someone, you’d feel infinite loneliness and isolation, and of course, if you come from a Holocaust-survivor family, the fact that you were able to come out very much alive and having survived the tragedy is the ultimate truce. Also, if you are not able to hide it (i.e. the tragic past) well enough while in public, there is this demand when it comes to the appearance that you have to be perfect. You have to be able not to make any mistake, etc. You will know, like, this is a failure when she is confronted with the loss of the baby and what happened with her. The bravest thing done by Martha is that she’s taunted to say “yes, it was my failure,” and almost be proud of that failure. She’s able to fail, as we all are, and that’s how she changed the family pattern and doesn’t get herself into revenge like what was being forced by the family. And on the theme of strong women, I think women are strong, it’s not a question for me. I really feel it is something like a “New Wave”, somehow, like in my favorite movies in the 1970s-80s with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, movies with Hanna Schygulla or Luis Buňuel, with Catherine Deneuve and all those great stories that had such outstanding female energy. These female characters are so independent, they are so strong. It is then important to underline that my other movies, including White God (2014), have a female hero.
NE: How did you make the decision to shoot the long, realistic and graphic childbirth process during the first 30 minutes of the film?
KM: It’s a very tricky scene in the sense that the main idea was that I wanted to be as close to Martha and to her feelings as I can and give the experience to the audience. I used big words as a medium that allows everybody to become a little bit tougher in front of the screen in order to understand that there are so many feelings that fill her. In the end, you know, we shot it (the birth scene) in the first day, which was crazy but that was the last take of the first day. We gave the stage or the dance-floor to them (the actors) to rehearse, and that’s how it happened. We prepared everything artificial (the film props), the actors, and the camera. It took 25 minutes, and in the end, you feel a high level of reality.
NE: How did you come to cast Shia Labeouf as the male lead?
KM: I really wanted a heavyweight actor for the role of the husband. My fear was if I didn’t choose someone very strong, then the whole story was going to be a little bit embarrassing because to have an actor that is able to portray this kind of rocky and difficult marriage and relationship is so crucial. With Shia, I think he has an amazing screen presence but he never really does this kind of tender character, like a normal person. He’s more like an extremist, somehow, on-screen, and he does it amazingly. What’s fascinating for me, and also when I gave the script to him, I thought, “Shia, this is not the lead that you’ve typically played. It is a tender character, very much a man who is absolutely in love with his wife. And this is what’s happening.” He was really serious about it and ready. To work with Shia was a very, very passionate and a very beautiful experience and that shows how much he dedicated himself to a character. So, at a certain point, I learned he knows more about the character even better than me. That was a very gratifying experience. He’s a real artist.
NE: How was the same process with Vanessa Kirby?
KM: With Vanessa, it was a little bit different. She was not my idea. The producers called me once and said, “Oh, we had a meeting with Vanessa Kirby,” and I would be like, “Ok, I love The Crown. I love Princess Margaret. But to see her as Martha? Well, ok, give the script to her, and let’s see.” And they gave the script to her and she flew to Budapest in 24 hours. She read it three times in 24 hours, we sat down, and I found that meeting absolutely fascinating. I found exactly the kind of great female icons like Deneuve or Schygulla in her – the same kind of 1960s nerves that those women had. This kind of European clairvoyance is something which was really perfect. She surprised us every day with how good she was, but at the same time, she’s a very fresh choice. You’ve never watched her in a role like this, so I was also very happy that, at least for me, she represents such an unknown element in the movie that it’s just like another version of how this movie came out.
NE: Why is the family the crucial subject in the film?
KM: For me, it was interesting that a family is a universe. If you do something very small and very intimate, then you have more space for nuances. And to do a pullover on Martha inside this bumpy family, which is, to be honest, quite a turbulent family – that was a very nice topic. But it’s a big tradition. It’s a family drama. If you’re thinking about Ingmar Bergman or any directors with big names, everybody follows this big tradition of drama, literature, and later movies. I love those family-rooted movies and I came back to my European roots, which is so important. To tell a story as true as a family and to project those perspectives is as fundamental as the genre itself.
*With contributions by Fajaryanto Suhardi