You may have heard good things about Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario. The Quebec director’s intense new thriller – starring Emily Blunt as an FBI agent yanked into a new front in America’s war on drugs, and Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin as the men running a dangerous new operation – has been picking up plaudits since it premiered at Cannes in the spring. After a solid reception at TIFF, Villeneuve and his cast have been on a European press tour. We caught up in Montreal as Villeneuve returned for the hometown premiere.
There’s a propulsion and a rhythm to Sicario unlike any of your previous films – well, Maelström moved quickly, but this one feels like a freight train. Did it feel like a change of pace for you?
It’s a movie that was shot under intense budget restrictions. Every single shot that we were doing, we knew that we needed that shot. We needed to be really precise. There were not a lot of things that ended up on the [cutting room] floor. All movies are different I’ve made movies in my life where I know that the movie was born in the editing room, but that was not the case with Sicario. That was a movie that was born on the set. The editing process was more about finding the equilibrium inside, to find the tension. To make sure that the pacing of the movie was strong.
So you always knew it was going to be this kind of picture.
It’s like that in the screenplay. Reading the screenplay was like a descent into hell – it’s a journey into darkness, you just have the feeling that it’s going down and down and down, following this woman who is slowly disintegrating in front of our eyes. It’s such a strong journey. So I tried to do my best to reproduce the feeling that I had as I was reading the screenplay.
You’ve lined up some pretty heavy hitters for this one – Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin. Was it difficult to put this cast together?
It wasn’t difficult to convince Emily Blunt. It’s a strong female part, and there’s not a lot of those parts around Hollywood. She just fell in love, and she was ready to fight in front of the camera. Benicio was not that difficult to convince either, because he was in love with the screenplay. He felt that it was a fresh take on the problem, and this [role] was something he’d never done before. After a long coffee together, we agreed to work together. And he’s one of my favourite actors – I’m still pinching myself, thinking that I made a movie with Benicio Del Toro. He’s a beast. [Cinematographer] Roger Deakins and I were in awe, every time he walked in front of the camera. The man has such a strong presence. Josh Brolin is the same. This is what I love about making movies in Hollywood. The chance to work with those people, those artists.
After Prisoners, was there a flood of offers? Are you the new exotic flavour there?
I’m very specific with the movies that I choose. I refuse a lot of projects. I only make a movie when I’ve deeply fallen in love with the story. With Sicario, I was dreaming of making a movie at the Mexican border because I felt it was a place that was very significant to the world today. It felt a bit like when I did Incendies – it’s a kind of geopolitical [flashpoint] for a specific place, and then that strong story – I just felt it was in continuity with what I had done before, in Prisoners and Incendies. I felt it would be part of the same family. It made sense. So once I fell in love with the story, the financing of the picture was very quick – but they agreed to finance the project with a certain limited budget.
Was that a concern for you?
That was part of the game. Other directors in Hollywood would have said no. It’s not a perfect world, but I’m more attracted to ideas than comfort… [and] I didn’t do the movie with $100 million, so I had the freedom to choose who I wanted to work with, and where and how I wanted to do it. With the actors and Deakins, we had total freedom. So it meant that I could do a movie that’s as close to me as Incendies.
Bruce McDonald told me a similar story about Hellions – he made it for half of what the producers’ ideal budget was, but that was the only way it could get made at all. I wonder if Canadian filmmakers are just more used to operating under those circumstances.
I must say, I was raised like that. I remember a sequence in Incendies that I was dreaming of doing under harsh, intense sunlight – you know, in a warm, warm summer – and on the day of the shooting it was cold, rainy and gray, and we had to shoot it. We improvise all the time. I come from documentaries, so I’m used to improvising with what nature gives me. I’m used to creating under restrictions. You can find some new ideas coming out of restrictions. But I don’t want to make a specialty of it. [laughs]
Is that a concern with your next picture? Because I can’t imagine a Blade Runner sequel lacking for money.
There’s always budget restrictions – even when you have all the money in the world. [laughs] It’s gonna be the same. I remember Deakins telling me about the budget restrictions that they had on Skyfall – they had $200 million, or something like that, but they still had restrictions! They had problems and they had to find creative solutions, because it’s always about finding a balance. How to fight reality in order to create fiction.
Don’t miss our review of Sicario here.
normwilner@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
