Director John Madden Talks About “The Debt”

“I’m kind of re-discovering the film,” says John Madden about The Debt (opening in theaters August 31). Madden, the director of the espionage thriller, first saw the film last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. After the fest, with the recent studio shakeups, the film was tossed around like a hot potato and didn’t find a home until Focus Features picked it up. That would explain the distance Madden has had with the film until the recent press tour.

“All these interviews make me understand the film better,” says Madden about the tour. “I try not to repeat myself.”

Based on a 2007 Israeli movie, Ha-Hov, the story takes place in two points in history. In 1997, three Mossad agents: Rachel (Helen Mirren), Stefan (Tom Wilkinson), and David (Ciarán Hinds) are haunted by a mission in 1966 where they hunted down a Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen. The movie flips back and forth between the two years and we see their “younger selves” (played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington) carry out the mission with risks and moral consequences.

I had the opportunity to talk to John Madden about Hollywood remakes, the ins-and-outs of getting a movie made, and the road this film took to hit the big screen.

How do you balance working with the original Israeli source material and, at the same time, creating your vision?

It’s important to do that. I was very concerned to honor the source material by watching it even though I first became of the material in script form — there was already an adaptation. It’s difficult in some ways because you want to say, “I don’t want to do that because they did that” while you’re watching it. I didn’t feel that way. I wanted to end it the same way they ended it because it was brilliant, but in the end I didn’t. With material as rich as this, you start to fashion it around the themes and ideas you’re interested in. I think the film ended up having a different emphasis than the original — even though the narrative is the same. It never really worried me — but on the other hand, the original never had wide distribution — but it’s a very good film.

Did the actors who portrayed Rachel, Stefan and David in 1966 have the opportunity to meet with their 1997 counterparts?

Of the pairings, Jessica and Helen were the only ones I brought together because they’re the center. They are partitioned from each other because they are playing two halves of the same character. I didn’t want the film become mired in a mimetic thing where there was too much echoing of mannerisms because I thought that could become a distraction. Jessica, who went first, is far too intelligent to get caught up in that. But she definitely did channel Helen Mirren. She just watched and sensed who she was. Luckily there was great mutual admiration there.

Madden with Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington.

As a director, how do you know when to stop editing?

When you finally beat the studio into submission and say you’re not going to do anymore (laughs). That’s an interesting question — the given of filmmaking is that you’re not spending too much and not more than they expect — but you are spending someone else’s money. The representatives of that somebody else have a voice in the final form the film should take. So one goes through an adversarial sort of process where the studio puts in its point of view and you do your damnedest to hold on to your point of view. A film is only worth something in the sense that it has a single perspective if it’s going to have an identity. The danger is that you, for the purposes of being cooperative and collaborative, could be tempted away from something to keep everyone happy. That’s something you have to guard against. Experience has taught me to beware of making changes last minute right before you lock a picture. But the Terrence Malicks of this world make movies without financial pressure and he has quite obviously earned that right. To take an extreme example, he almost prefers not to finish a film so that he can go on to evolve it and I totally understand that urge and instinct. But usually I am happy when I get to the point when a film is finished. And I am certainly happy with this film. I wasn’t pushed in any direction that I didn’t want to go in.

What is your opinion about original stories vs. the reboots and revamps happening in Hollywood right now?

In another version of that, there’s a tendency of importing a program idea from television and remaking that. I understand the instinct to want to do that. I don’t know how I really feel about that. It sometimes can result in something really interesting and completely valid. I don’t know if I would really want to do that myself, although (The Debt) is a very separate circumstance. There’s something a little unfortunate that the economic pressures seem to want to make the studios go to something that already has an in-built audience — and that’s a huge part of the motivation. There’s so many things competing for the same oxygen and enough exposure to return a decent sum on the amount invested that it tends to make recycling a natural way to go. You can’t adapt books unless it already has a huge audience — it’s built in and half your work is done for you. That’s lamentable I think. One wants to see a world where new material is valuable and of itself — so I think that’s a shame. On another hand, I come from a theatrical background where reinterpretation is the lifeblood of that form. I equally see a value of that. I think it’s just a balance.

What do you think draws audiences to espionage thrillers — like The Debt?

I think people want to go to movies to have a good exciting time. The film is a really good thriller, however this particular thriller is unusual because it’s dealing with quite highly charged thematic material. At the same time, it’s a psychologically, emotionally and morally complex. To me, that’s the Holy Grail of filmmaking. To be able to do those two things at once without betraying the genre in order to pursue the dramatic or simplifying the drama to pursue the drama. It’s very rare you come across material that allows you to do that. I lament the passing of the thrillers where character and psychological nuance are right at the center of what’s going on. I think audiences have an appetite for that.

Was there one scene difficult to film?

You are dealing with a pressure cooker. You sense, somehow, that you are moving towards an explosion. The film is quite interesting in that way because that’s how it’s structure — you partly know what that explosion is. It’s very difficult material. There wasn’t one scene that was more important than the other because it’s about an accumulation of circumstance.

How do you know when a story is worth telling?

In the first instance, it’s whether it says something to me — particularly if it’s not immediately obvious what it is saying. The characters have to be true. They have to not be cooperating conveniently with the script because that’s where the plot wants it to go. I like films that take me to a world I don’t know. I find that stimulating — that’s the job of cinema and what it can do. It’s just essentially the same thing that would make me enjoy a film that I was watching.

The Debt opens in theaters August 31.