BREAKOUT KINGS
PAPILLON I Denmark’s Michael Noer takes on a great escape – and a classic movie…
Remaking a classic movie is never easy, particularly when it’s Papillon. The 1973 original, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman as two inmates facing impossible odds, remains one of the all-time great prison break movies. So it’s no surprise that Danish director Michael Noer was both enticed and terrified. “It was trying to go back into the Bible of prison movies,” he says, “to see if you could revitalise some of the original DNA of what is behind every prison movie.”
Returning to the books by Henri ‘Papillon’ Charrière, a real-life convicted murderer sent to a penal colony in French Guiana, Noer cast Sons Of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam as the author and Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) as his companion Louis Dega. “When everyone tried to pitch me what the film was about, they always talked about those two guys. And that was what we really tried to focus on. That was also what Charlie and Rami were attracted to – the possibility of doing this buddy movie.”
Shot in Serbia, Montenegro and Malta, where sets were built to recreate the horrifying prison camp Charrière and Dega are sent to, Noer admits he couldn’t help but briefly revisit the original movie, by Franklin J. Schaffner. “Imagine if you have your girlfriend’s diary lying around. The best thing for
your relationship is you don’t think too much about her past, but on the other hand, it could also enhance the experience. So you take a little peak once and then never do it again.”
Marking his first Hollywood movie, Noer considers himself fortunate to get Hunnam, who had seen his 2013 movie Northwest. The actor even took his prep to extremes, spending a week in isolation in the prison set. “A week doesn’t sound much, [but] even after 10 minutes you feel very alone. He never left the cell. He ate in there and I won’t get into details if he shit in the bucket…
But even that I don’t really know… he must’ve peed at some point.” Too much information…