High-def ‘a great art form’
Kristen Stewart continues to think outside of the Twilight box.
In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, she plays Kathryn, the antiwar sister of 19-year-old American soldier Billy, played by British actor Joe Alwyn in his movie debut.
“You have somebody who is essentially a pacifist,” says Stewart of her character, while promoting the film with the cast and the movie’s director, Ang Lee. “It’s perfectly appropriate timing.”
Based on Ben Fountain’s satirical 2012 novel, the movie follows the soldiers of Bravo company during an American Thanksgiving Day celebration at a professional football game. It is Billy who is being honoured at halftime for his act of bravery during an Iraqi firefight.
Amid the fireworks, cheerleaders and gridiron hoopla, we discover that the Bravo warriors suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder; flashbacks explain why.
The cast also includes Garrett Hedlund as a no-nonsense sergeant. Vin Diesel is the philosophical company leader. Funnyman Chris Tucker delivers a subdued portrayal of the public relations hustler trying to sell Billy’s story to Hollywood, and Steve Martin portrays the manipulative football team owner, alluding to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
Lee’s method of shooting the story — with 3-D cameras, in 4K resolution and in a new digital 120 frames per second (five times the usual rate) — adds to its impact. It’s a high-definition enhancement that makes for vivid images recalling Lee’s Oscar-honoured Life of Pi.
“It’s a great art form,” says the Taiwan-born director of the digital presentation. “And it seems to be a logical step for me.”
However, it meant that Stewart, Alwyn and the rest of the cast had to emote in front of mammoth 3-D cameras, sometimes inches from their faces. Distracting or not, they all had to focus on performance without much movement.
Ironically, rookie Alwyn might have been the least bothered. “I had no other reference,” he says.
Indeed, casting Alwyn may have been a bigger risk than presenting Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk in Lee’s groundbreaking cinematic way.
More familiar names auditioned for the lead, and were considered, but the director wanted to follow through on his hunch — just as he had when he decided to shoot the picture in an innovative format.
“We wanted to go for a new face, and there’s nothing unusual about a British actor playing an American,” Lee says. “So I go for the best actor, and his reading just hit me right away — and even the way he looks is all-American.”
Lee says his challenges were evident from the beginning, as he explored the gap between reality and fantasy in a fictional narrative reflecting an authentic time period.
“But the most important thing I wanted to do was read faces,” says the director. “And this (story) was the perfect excuse to do it.
“As a dramatist, I want to stay neutral and let the situations play out. So I was trying to do justice to the novel while extending the vocabulary.”
Smiling, he adds: “I developed a new technology, but I can hardly use my iPad.”