The future is finally now for Denis Villeneuve
Right about now, Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve could use the future-predicting abilities of the heptapods, the squidlike space aliens in his acclaimed sci-fi movie Arrival.
As anyone would be in his position, he’s eager to know what will happen on Feb. 26, when the film is up for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
“Unfortunately, (the aliens) didn’t give me any tips about what will happen in the future, so I don’t know yet!” the affable Montrealer says from Los Angeles.
There, besides doing the Oscar rounds for Arrival, he’s deep in post-production on Blade Runner 2049, the blockbuster sci-fi sequel starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford that he’s preparing for an October release.
Villeneuve, Hollywood’s most in-demand Canadian director of recent times, has also signed on to direct a big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune, hoping to succeed where David Lynch’s 1984 film failed. But Arrival, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker as E.T.-probing Earthlings, is very much on his mind at the moment.
“The buzz for the movie is quite strong here,” says the usually self-effacing Villeneuve, 49, who hopes to win in at least the technical categories. (His only disappointment is the lack of a nomination for Adams, whom he calls “the soul of the movie.”)
“You have to approach this with a Zen spirit, just enjoying the moment.
“I know that the front-runner is La La Land, but just being in the talk, just knowing that people love the movie and are cheering for it, for me is already a big victory. Sometimes strange things happen!” Strange things indeed.
His path to making sci-fi blockbusters was anything but clear or straight, even though he was fascinated by science and by cinema, when growing up in TroisRivières. He is used to waiting for the future to catch up to his dreams.
He briefly studied science at the University of Quebec in Montreal before quitting school in his mid-20s to pursue filmmaking.
He was obsessed more by the twinkling stars (and planets) of outer space than the glittering ones of Hollywood.
His favourite film, still his No. 1 choice, was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“All through my youth and my teenage years I was big sci-fi fan, engulfed in it: by movies as well as a lot of graphic novels coming out of Europe. But as I was growing up and being more and more interested in different kinds and genres of filmmaking, I took, let’s say, a detour through drama.”
It was essentially a 20-year detour. When he emerged on the scene in the late 1990s, he was thought of as an avant-garde director of oddly Canadian chamber pieces, with surreal elements buttressing extreme human dramas that often featured female protagonists.
His first two features, August 32nd on Earth (1998) and Maelstrom (2000), both had women as lead characters who experience major life changes after serious car crashes. Maelstrom had the additional curiosity of being narrated by a talking fish, a difficult construct for a low-budget film.
Problems with that fish — not unlike Steven Spielberg’s hassles with a rubber shark for Jaws — made Villeneuve all the more determined to get the awe-inspiring aliens exactly right when he was making Arrival, which was filmed in Montreal.
“I remember having to make some concessions when I was doing Maelstrom because I wasn’t seeing the fish exactly as I wanted it.
“I love the fish, don’t get me wrong, but there were some aspects of it, the colour and the shape, that were slightly different from what I had in mind. I always had a kind of regret with that.
“It’s a thing about filmmaking — sometimes you have a dream. And the more I evolve as a filmmaker, the closer I get to the dreams I have, my vision. With Arrival, I didn’t want to make any concessions.”
But before he came to Arrival, Villeneuve had a lot more drama to work through, including the one called real life.
He took a nine-year break from filmmaking after Maelstrom to raise the three children he had with his first partner (he has since remarried).
He returned in 2009 with Polytechnique, a docu-drama that controversially recounted the 1989 Montreal Massacre of female students at École Polytechnique by a misogynistic madman. (My review of it noted that it “makes no judgments, offers no panaceas.”)
The epic drama Incendies followed the next year, a critically acclaimed mystery quest about a family secret that earned Villeneuve his first Oscar nomination (for Best Foreign Language Film) and attracted serious Hollywood attention, along with a long list of top actors who wanted to work with him and who sing his praises.
“He’s a monster, man, he’s so good . . . he’s amazing, as a human and as an artist,” Arrival’s Jeremy Renner says.
Films have come in rapid succession and with higher profiles since his child-rearing break, as Villeneuve shifted into psychodrama and thriller mode with his A-list casts of Prisoners and Enemy in 2013 and Sicario in 2015.
This period marked an epiphany for Villeneuve, as he confessed to me in an interview: He was finally making movies for the multiplex, not the art house.
“I realized after Maelstrom that I love cinema when there is generosity: when cinema is talking to others, not to myself. I realized that Maelstrom would be very interesting for my psychiatrist but not for audiences!”
It’s taken until his current films, Arrival, Blade Runner and Dune, for Villeneuve to fully explore the sci-fi muse of his youth. “I just needed to wait a bit . . . you need a certain amount of money to do certain kinds of movies. And I was looking for a good story for a long time. The first one I read was The Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang.”
That’s the award-winning novella that Eric Heisserer adapted into the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Arrival, no mean feat considering the source story (beefed up for the movie) is a highly cerebral one about the acquisition of language.
“The short story is really a gem, a little masterpiece, but it was a tough adaptation to make,” Villeneuve says.
“What appeals to me about it is the idea that language and culture can change our view of the world, and can change the world. And that is a strong idea, with a lot of hope in it.”
Arrival has proved very popular with critics as well as audiences, giving Villeneuve his first global blockbuster, soon to exceed $200 million (U.S.) in worldwide ticket sales — and Blade Runner 2049 will likely double or triple that take later this year. Don’t expect a sequel, however.
“No, no, no! I love the singularity of it. And it’s strange saying this, because I’m doing the sequel of Blade Runner, the movie that nobody thought would ever have a sequel.”
He won’t say much about Blade Runner 2049 right now: “It’s like asking a hockey player, as he is skating towards the goal, to describe how he will shoot and score! It’s a bit difficult.”
As for Dune, which he calls “like Star Wars for adults,” Villeneuve insists he’s not turning completely into a sci-fi filmmaker, although he’s happy to be doing three such films in a row.
“I’m just going with what I’m passionate about and what happens to be in my reality around me. It’s a coincidence that the Dune property (happened).
“It was due to a producer who loves my work and it just happened recently. If it had happened five years ago, I would not have been involved.
“There’s a lot of chance involved in that. Making a movie is always flirting with disaster. The chances of success are very narrow. I don’t take things for granted, and I’m always very cautious.”
Villeneuve’s care and patience are finally being rewarded. We’ll soon know whether his sci-fi dreams have turned to Oscar gold.
“He’s a monster, man, he’s so good . . . he’s amazing, as a human and as an artist.” ACTOR JEREMY RENNER