Making her feature film directorial debut, JOSIE ROURKE brings a wealth of theatre expertise to her vision for MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. Shooting on location (including glorious helicopter shots of the Scottish coast) and allowing several weeks for rehearsal, Rourke oversaw a large principal cast plus more than 200 extras in bringing this story to life, including two full royal courts, bloody battle sequence complete with horses and armament, and rabble-rousing religious fanaticism, while embracing historical accuracy for the bulk of the film. Using the manners and methods of Mary’s Scottish court which looked akin to something more Arthurian and of a circular nature, versus that of Elizabeth with a hard line, head of the table and everyone lined up like little soldiers, Rourke’s visual approach subtly reminds of the differences between the two women and their way of governing. Had it not been for the 2010 discovery of a letter written by Elizabeth I which historian John Guy brought to light in “Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart”, there might not have been a need to tell the story of these two regal forces of nature. But with a new perspective on their relationship, history was ripe for the retelling, something which Rourke embraced as a director, particularly with Beau Willimon’s intricately constructed script in hand. Calling on her theatre work, Rourke relied heavily on physical language through performance choreography as a means of visually telling this story, not to mention a truly collaborative relationship with her cinematographer, John Mathieson. Costume, hair and make-up, and production design are also all integral parts of Rourke’s tapestry for defining not only the times and their politics, but the nature of each woman.
As effervescent, excited and exuberant as a bottle of bubbly on New Year’s Eve, JOSIE ROURKE’s passion for this film, this story, and in bringing her vision of Beau Willimon’s script to life was almost uncontainable during our conversation; likewise for the 100-watt smile that never left her face. All films should be made and stories told with this kind of enthusiasm, particularly when the proof is in the cinematic pudding as it is with MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
Take a read of what Josie had to say. . .
Josie, this is a fascinating piece of history. Sumptuous in visual and historical texture, delivering a telling character study of these two women, elevated by strong performances by Robbie and Ronan. It is glorious and epic, and Ronan’s performance as Mary is superior to that of Katharine Hepburn in John Ford’s 1936 “Mary of Scotland.”
Wow! John Ford’s 1936 “Mary of Scotland.” Amazing, amazing! That’s an amazing thing to say! Would you like to sit here and do my press for me today? That will be great! That’s so beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, she’s amazing. I’m very new to Los Angeles because I’m from the world of theater, as you know, and I went to do the technical check on the movie for the AFI closing premiere, I guess a world premiere. I’d never been in the Chinese Theater before and I didn’t realize how big the screen was. I walked through the doors of the theater, the auditorium, and came around the side and saw Saoirse’s eyes in close-up. Astonishingly, I chanced upon the biggest close-up on her, an extreme close up on her in the movie and I started to cry. Not only because as a theater director it’s unbelievable to see something you’ve made on that scale, but also because really when the film is that big you can see in even greater detail and depth how extraordinary that performance is. It’s unbelievable.
That’s the scene you walked in on? I’m glad you mentioned her eyes because one of the pivotal scenes in that movie that speaks to who Mary is, is the battle. She’s in the horse, erect, perfect posture, looking down and they’re about to kill her brother. The editing there, Chris Dickens’ editing, going from these eyes to these eyes, to these eyes and going in with an ECU was just amazing. That shifts the entire film at that moment because that’s her breaking point, family.
Exactly. Oh, you’re so right, exactly. She forgives and she cares about family. Saoirse and I spoke about that a lot. The first thing you see her do when she greets James Moray, the Earl of Moray, who plays her brother, is he hands over, with the bit with the sword, he hands over Scotland to her that he’s been ruling in her absence. They do the incredibly formal handover and then she hugs him and says, “My brother.” Had Mary, on that day, allowed Bothwell to slaughter Moray, or even banish him, had she banished Darnley to France, not half a mile down the road, the story of Mary Queen of Scots, I think, would have been very different. Her compassion was part of her downfall.
It would have been very different. That’s exactly it. We really get to see that here. I’ve always been fascinated by Mary Queen of Scots, so when John Guy found that letter almost a decade ago, Elizabeth’s letter, for me that rewrote Mary’s history.
I entirely agree. I entirely agree. You know he’s so great, John, because he’s such a forensic historian. He cares so passionately about detail and one of the things I’m proudest of about this film is that he said to me, “I think I must be the only person who’s written a book, in history, to be entirely pleased with the movie that you made from it.” That’s, you know, that’s gigantic. That’s gigantic.
I think that’s a true statement, Josie. This film is very theatrical because of that period of time. And, of course, Scotland in and of itself, which there, again, you’ve got some beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stuff happening. John Mathieson, one of my favorite cinematographers.
That period of history is theater.
But where she’s riding on the horse and with the camera you go with the aerial and it’s getting wider and wider, and she’s never flinching on the horse, but you see all the rocks, the hardness of Scotland, and in that moment you see the whole metaphor of Mary and Scotland. Mary has the strength of these rocks.
Absolutely. What I love about the climax of the dialogue in that scene is that she streams up that mountain and absolutely the sort of incredible harsh beauty of the Highlands rises up in front of you and she feels on top of the world and confident that world is her world. There is a journey that she goes on, in the movie, to embrace Scotland and understand what it is. That’s where I’m showing the costumes as well that we should talk about. But what I love is that she streams up that mountain on that horse and then she proposes to him. It’s incredible strength in that. But there’s something really great about that and on my first movie, to do a helicopter shot, that was pretty cool.
Absolutely. This being your first film, you didn’t pick anything easy to tackle here, Josie.
No! Go big or go home!
That’s exactly what you did. I’m curious, calling on your theatrical background, how did you go about approaching the production of this? Specifically with regard to your cinematography, because that’s the first thing that’s going to make or break a film like this; with the epic scope and the intimacy and what you and John put together. Within Mary’s bedchamber, the softness of the light, handheld cameras, the 360 movement as opposed to aerials and then Steadicam cam and static shots outside. Then everything in England is pretty much a static shot.
And that’s very much an aesthetic choice. So, Scotland operates organically. It operates in curves and England operates in a linear fashion and even when you see their two privy councils at parliaments you see, actually this is historically the case as the case in the present, the Scottish parliament is curved, the English parliament is linear. Also that as a theater director we think a lot about the body and the body of the actor. So, Margot is actually incredibly two dimensional in her presentation and the camera feels that. She moves in one field, as it were. Saoirse is incredibly organic and asymmetrical and curved, she moves in these circles all the time. We did a lot of work with this wonderful choreographer, Wayne McGregor, not only on the movement of the two queens but also on how the women around Mary moved and flocked like birds. So, the organic world is very much present within all of that. The first thing to say about it, as a theater director is, it’s just like the most extraordinary bumper feeling of joy to be able to work on this scale.
I love the poetry of theater, but the poetry of theater is the poetry of metaphor and it’s the poetry of inference and it’s the poetry of language. So, I have spent the last 15 years of my life trying to get access to look out into the middle distance, which in my theater at home is only four rows back, and imagine a mountain. Now I can just put them on a mountain. How we shoot that mountain and treat that mountain and think about it is such a big part of cinema, but that move was incredible to me and I think in my work as a theater director, to talk about the scale of this film, I think what I’ve always wanted to challenge myself to do, is a little bit what I think people think that I can’t do. So, part of me goes, “What will people think that I can’t do? As if they set there and think that, and how do I set about doing that, really?” And just to talk briefly about John, who is wonderful. One of the things that really made me want to work with him on this movie was “Logan” which I thought had the most extraordinary cinematography. I’ll tell you what it had as well, which is what Alex’s [Alexandra Byrne] costumes have and what Jenny’s [Jenny Shircore] work has in hair and makeup is incredible unity of time. So, just a very powerful intelligence aesthetically where everybody’s moving in the same direction and everybody knows what they’re doing.
You look at even a little film like “Brighton Rock” and his tonal bandwidth, the visual tonal bandwidth, is always impeccable.
Yeah, and that takes great rigor. In a way, what fascinated me about him, because, of course we have the conversation about shooting on film, like what filmmaker doesn’t? For a really long time, everyone says, “Do that,” and then we’ll decide because of various constraints we wouldn’t or we couldn’t. John said to me, “Look it will be okay. It will be okay, I know what to do, I know what to do. I know how to make this work and I know what you want. So what really excited me about that though was that, as well as that great rigor, there’s also an extraordinary courage to it because what he’s continually doing, even in the Scottish Highlands, is filling the air with smoke to interfere with the center on that camera. So, to trick it into a kind of panic, that gives the kind of organic quality, which is really amazing. He’s constantly in and out of the DIT, just checking actually, if the level is enough, that you can see everything and to shift it. To work that way takes a kind of continual level of vigilance, but it also takes, on my part and his part, a preparedness to go, “This might not cut together with a total continuity of how much smoke there is in the air.” It might not have a complete slightly tight-arsed continuity to what’s going on, but what it will have is incredible tonal clarity, and that I found really exciting. I found that extended, as well, to the way John was working with me as a theater director and the way I was working with actors. What John is, I think because of his gigantic technique, knowledge and experience and because of the great team he works with who know him so well, is, he is able to improvise. So, if you have someone as astonishing as one of the actors in this film, do something that is incredible. And I, as a theater director, go, “Look we’ve rehearsed this and actually, to get to do that, I need them to come round this way, I’m going to throw that that way and just look at it, John, it’s just better than what we thought we might do.” He can work around that. He will turn around and work around that and make that work because he’s excited by performance and by expressing that.
Every performance here amazes. David Tennant as John Knox? This is the new champion of vile villains.
Yeah. Well, that is an amazing thing about … My brother’s a big cinema fan and yet he said to me the other day, “You know, you’ve worked with all the best Marvel villains?” I’ve worked with David, in theater, I’ve worked with Janet McTeer, I’ve worked with Tom Hiddleston. He’s so chilling in that “Jesse Jones”, Season One, I thought. I don’t know if you saw that? It was absolutely terrifying. Strange for essentially the nicest person in the world. So, David also, this is a fun fact, is the son of a Scottish minister. And if you are Scottish, you know exactly who John Knox is. He’s also the key figure in Scottish reformation. People have gone, “Oh my God, that gigantic beard, what’s that?” I’m like, “Google John Knox.” That’s exactly what the guy looked like.
When I saw the film, everything I learned about John Knox in history in sixth grade and then again in junior high school when they broke it into world history, I still remember that, and I’m watching this and it was all coming back to me.
Well, the other amazing thing about David, and he’s such a great Shakespearian actor as well, is that probably the majority of what he says in the film is not Beau Willimon’s writing, it’s the actual words of John Knox. He’s able to make that stuff, as he does when he plays Shakespeare roles, feel freshly minted and bring it into the present. I do think, actually, that’s one of the reasons why he’s so chilling. To me certainly, he’s speaking with the authority of that man who looked Mary Queen of Scots in the eye and challenged her like that. Mary said she feared John Knox more than she feared all of the armies of Europe.
Somebody who has the finger of God coming down and using it not for Godly purposes.
Totally. You know, he wrote a pamphlet because he obviously thought that queens, particularly Catholic queens, were a complete aberration. He wrote this pamphlet that was actually entitled, “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” Look it up, it’s unbelievable.
This is the other thing that’s so timely about this film is that we’re seeing this with the Trump administration and what’s going on with the #MeToo movement and breaking the glass ceilings. Timely. Topical. It’s like history always repeats itself. If you look back in time and what you were seeing in the 21st century is 16th century Scotland and England repeating themselves right now. Particularly on American soil.
I was talking to a panel of people at an event last night and I was saying that, bear in mind, modern day politics was invented during this era. So, Machiavelli has just written his book “The Prince.” So when we say “Machiavellian”, what we’re doing is quoting that writer who wrote this short book telling people how to control the people. That Machiavelli is the person who wrote, “It is better to be feared than loved.” That’s the period of history we’re living in. It was banned, that book. People used to pass around copies of it secretly because it was considered so dangerous.
I would be remiss not to ask you about Max Richter’s score. This is, it’s sweeping, it’s rich, it’s lush, but then there is the continual undercurrent of, not only Scottish lilt but the drums of war. But they’re in a cadence that nears the heartbeat.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. The very origins of theater back in ancient Greece, 2,000 years ago, were, as we know, all about the drum and the drum has a heartbeat. Also, the drum has tragedy. So, this is the tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots. One of the things I find so extraordinary in Saoirse’s performance is how boldly and bravely she’s struggling against, sort of, what we know to be the ultimate fate. There’s a reason the movie begins with her execution. That was a great collaboration with Max because John used to joke with me. I kept putting drums in scenes because I kind of knew that what we’d be able to do is move between the diegetic and the non-diegetic and that could be a conversation between those two musical elements that Max could work with and riff off. So, whenever we shot a scene with musicians, John was like, “We’re going to get Rod,” who’s “B” camera, “Rod needs to cover the drum, doesn’t he?” I was like, “Yeah, if Rod could just cover the drum for me, that would be great.”
Did anything give Rod a credit that goes, “Drum Camera.”?
Oh, I tell you! Those two ops, what great, great men they were and how generous they were with me and how much of their craft they shared. Pete Cavaciuti, who was “A” camera, is one of the greatest Steadicam ops and there’s that amazing Steadicam when Elizabeth has the pox when she comes down that corridor and that was such a cool moment for me as a theater director because I said, “Listen, John, I want to set this piece of action. And I know I’ve not done this before, but I think this is probably Steadicam and this is what I’m planning.” My brilliant first was going, “What are you doing? What’s going on?” I’m like, “Okay, set the fencers to do this and then the girls’ are going to come through and they’re going to do that.” I spoke to the two young women who were playing along with Gemma Chan, Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting. There’s a funny thing about period drama where people don’t expect to see women run, like, it’s just a thing. So, we did this rehearsal and those two young women blasted out those doors, screaming at those fencers to get out of that room! I choreographed them to all drop their stuff and panic and run and scatter and then in the middle of that you’ve got Jack Darnley still hanging on to his glass of wine. So, Jack Lowden is down there hanging on to his glass of wine and getting slammed out the door and that was just so great. That was so great for me to be able to go, “I’m setting a piece of action that I think is going to work really well with the Steadicam and what do you think of it?” And for them to go, “Yeah, that is great, we know how to do that. Let’s do it this way.” Just like collaboration was so fun.
It worked so well because as I’m watching that scene and they’re herding them, the men are all looking like sheep. Sheep need to be herded because they can’t take direction and here they’re in this contained hallway. I loved all the sequencing you had in that hallway. It really gives you this whole metaphoric undercurrent of ascent to the throne, a straight line. But that scene, when the girls come running out and they’re pushing all the men, the men are in total chaos. But it was like sheep. Everybody talks about people are sheep, they don’t pay attention, they just go where they’re pushed.
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, it’s a great, great space. Everything’s a corridor of power, exactly. And [the men] cannot see her. [The ladies in waiting], they’re defending her. Gemma Chan’s behind her back going, “They cannot see the queen like this. Get them out of there.” It’s a fun piece of action to do. It’s good to think about it in that way. What we’re very confident about in theater is getting people to make big gestures with their bodies and how that can be a big gesture for a camera, I found really exciting by this process. So, these women are going to pelt down here. It was a cool day, it was early on in the shoot. We’re probably in our second week and I think something really clicked that day, where people were like, “This is going to be fun because actually I’ve got something to bring from my experience that they can all enjoy.”
I’ve got one more big question for you, Josie. What did you learn about yourself in the process of making MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS that you will now take forward into future projects, be they on film, hopefully, or stage?
A couple of things. The first of which is, I was standing on the side of a mountain in the Scottish Highlands with 250 supporting artists playing Mary’s army. I had two revelations. One is, that is more people than you can fit into my theater in Covent Garden in London and the other was, I have never been paid to work outdoors. Ever. I’ve been in nice, cozy auditoriums all my life, and you know what? I absolutely loved it. I think I learned about myself is . . .you know, we did lots of scouting in the Highlands and it’s a beautiful and it can be a brutal place, and I thought to myself, “I’m just going to have to get really fit.” I took up boxing and started to train every day. Not because I’ll be punching anybody, you understand, but because I just feel like I need to make my body really strong in order that I can lead these people to these really out there locations and not fail them physically. The kind of physical act of being a filmmaker was something I found completely fascinating and loved … There’s so much intellectual effort in theater, but to put that together with just a bit of physical effort, I thought was a great revelation actually and I loved that. The other thing that I’ve learned is, God, just how wonderful cinema is as a medium! How infinite it is. How gigantic the possibilities are and how much scope it gives to storytelling. I’ve always been romantically bound up in it as an audience member, but the idea that I might be able to make that into more of a marriage as a filmmaker, that romance as a cinema-goer is an incredibly wonderful thing to me.
by debbie elias, interview 11/17/2018
