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What happens when the camera becomes more than an observer? When it assumes a personality, develops an arc, and begins communicating information that the characters themselves cannot see or understand? For writer\/director Dara Van Dusen, those questions became fundamental to bringing Stewart O’Nan’s novel A PRAYER FOR THE DYING to the screen.<\/p>\n
Set in 1870 Wisconsin in the aftermath of the Civil War, A PRAYER FOR THE DYING follows Jacob Hansen (Johnny Flynn), a veteran, sheriff, and pastor whose seemingly peaceful existence with his wife Marta (Kristine Thorp) and their infant child begins unraveling as disease spreads through an isolated community and a wildfire threatens from the distance. With John C. Reilly as Doc, the film explores faith, morality, mortality, the conflict between science and religious conviction, and the increasingly tenuous distinction between perception and reality.<\/p>\n
But Van Dusen’s feature directorial debut is as much an exploration of cinematic language as it is a story of a community confronting catastrophe. Working with cinematographer Kate McCullough, a longtime friend and collaborator, Van Dusen has created a meticulously conceived visual universe in which framing, color, movement, editing, production design, and sound become essential elements of the storytelling.<\/p>\n
During our conversation, Van Dusen enthusiastically explored the origins of the adaptation, her determination to make the camera an active character, the visual rules she and McCullough established, the importance of communicating through images rather than exposition, and the collaborative process that brought the film’s visceral soundscape to life.<\/p>\n
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A Novel, a Bookstore, and a Story That Wouldn’t Let Go<\/strong><\/p>\n Van Dusen’s relationship with A PRAYER FOR THE DYING began long before the cameras rolled. In fact, the project had its origins in an English-language bookstore in Poland, where she was studying filmmaking.<\/p>\n “I’m born and raised New Yorker, but I studied at the Polish National Film School,” recalled Van Dusen. “And my dad came to visit me. We went to the English language bookstore, and he said, ‘Oh, you should read this,’ and threw A PRAYER FOR THE DYING into my little basket.”\u00a0\u00a0The experience of reading O’Nan’s novel proved unforgettable.<\/p>\n “I remember exactly where I was when I first read it. I read it in one sitting, and it took a chokehold on me. I mean, I felt like I was kind of dragged by the neck into this world I wasn’t sure I really wanted to be in, thrown around a little bit, and then just thrown right back out.”<\/p>\n Although relatively brief, the novel delivered an emotional and psychological experience that Van Dusen immediately recognized as something she wanted to recreate cinematically.\u00a0\u00a0“It’s a short novel, so it’s a quick but full experience. And all I could do after I first read it was just remember staring at the wall and thinking, ‘What in the hell just happened?'”<\/p>\n That reaction became a creative objective.<\/p>\n “The idea of creating a film that could also leave an audience member with that feeling was so beyond interesting to me.”\u00a0\u00a0But adapting the novel was not simply a matter of translating its narrative into screenplay form. Van Dusen was particularly attracted to the opportunity to explore forces that exist beyond human control and comprehension.<\/p>\n “I felt this type of story\u2014a story that deals with forces that are not human and we can’t control, like faith or nature or spirituality\u2014really allowed for the development of camera as a character, as another character in the room, a non-human character.”<\/p>\n For a filmmaker already deeply interested in visual storytelling, the possibilities were irresistible.\u00a0\u00a0“I wanted to use then the camera not only as a character but to create a visual language and a kind of surreal but relatable world that could leave the viewer with the feeling of what just happened, an experience rather than just viewing something.”<\/p>\n It was an ambitious undertaking, one that would develop over many years and require an unusually close creative relationship between director and cinematographer.<\/p>\n Kate McCullough and the Camera as a Non-Human Character<\/strong><\/p>\n Central to Van Dusen’s vision was cinematographer Kate McCullough, whose relationship with the director extends well beyond their professional collaboration.<\/p>\n “Kate and I went to film school together. She’s Irish, but I’ve known her for 20 years. She’s the godmother of my daughter. We’re unbelievably close.”\u00a0\u00a0That personal history provided a foundation of trust and creative freedom as the two developed the film’s distinctive visual identity.<\/p>\n “That relationship and the closeness there allowed us to have the freedom to really develop that language from an early stage and onward.”\u00a0\u00a0And early is an understatement.<\/p>\n “This film has been in, you know, some kind of a version of production for over a decade, and Kate and I have been working on and off on it. So the visual language, the visual effects, and the pacing and the use of camera and color\u2014something that’s been really meticulously planned from the start.”<\/p>\n Their central concept was that the camera should not merely record the events unfolding before it. Instead, it would embody an unseen presence, something that could be interpreted as nature, faith, God, or another force operating beyond the characters’ understanding.<\/p>\n “We knew, as we talked about before, that we wanted to have this really aggressive visual language, and we wanted to have the camera that was an active part of the storytelling to represent faith or nature or God or whatever it is you think it is, and that character was going to have to have a full arc.”\u00a0\u00a0That arc was particularly important.<\/p>\n Van Dusen didn’t want the film to begin with the camera already operating at its most extreme. Like a human character, this non-human presence needed to be introduced gradually, allowing the audience to become accustomed to its existence before its behavior intensified.<\/p>\n “We couldn’t just start the film by being like, ‘Here it is. It’s bright red. The camera’s whipping around. We don’t know what’s happening.’ We had to really slowly let it introduce itself as a character would, so that you could kind of get used to it.”<\/p>\n The objective was to move from a relatively controlled, realistic visual environment into something increasingly surreal without abruptly breaking the audience’s connection to the world of the film.<\/p>\n Van Dusen and McCullough also wanted the camera to possess an awareness that the characters themselves might lack.\u00a0\u00a0“That fire in the distance, maybe the character doesn’t see it, but the camera sees it, and the camera reacts to it. So that we, the viewer, are getting different information than the characters, or we’re starting to distrust the characters.”<\/p>\n That difference in awareness creates a particular kind of tension.\u00a0\u00a0“Because we wonder, do they see it? Why aren’t they reacting? Why are they stalling?”<\/p>\n The technique also allows the film to question the reliability of its characters and the information they provide. As the threat of wildfire and disease intensifies, the camera becomes an increasingly insistent participant in the drama.<\/p>\n And while the visual world grows progressively more stylized, Van Dusen was determined that the performances and physical environment remain grounded.\u00a0\u00a0“We really wanted to play with creating a kind of surreal universe with really realistic performance to see what would result from those two kind of opposing things put together.”<\/p>\n It is precisely that juxtaposition\u2014realistic human behavior against an increasingly heightened cinematic landscape\u2014that defines much of the film’s visual identity.<\/p>\n Framing, Isolation, Color, and the Discipline of Restraint<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most striking aspects of A PRAYER FOR THE DYING is its use of framing to communicate isolation.<\/p>\n Jacob’s home sits apart from the town. The surrounding landscape seems to emphasize the distance between inhabitants, while individual compositions frequently place characters within carefully controlled visual boundaries.\u00a0\u00a0Van Dusen explained that this was no accident.<\/p>\n “A huge part of the story is how isolated these people are. We very intentionally have it so that not any single location can see any other location.”\u00a0\u00a0That separation extends to the framing itself.<\/p>\n “Every frame, you know, centers somebody in a very composed, centered way, where they’re kind of trapped within it.”<\/p>\n The filmmakers also chose a 1.48 aspect ratio, emphasizing the relationship between the characters and their surroundings.<\/p>\n “It’s environment taking up a huge benefit and character. And it’s only those two things competing in the screen, in the frame.”\u00a0\u00a0The resulting compositions often possess an almost photographic stillness, with the landscape becoming as expressive as the people inhabiting it.\u00a0\u00a0But that stillness is not intended to last.<\/p>\n “We wanted to use this kind of isolationist, still, very still photography-esque visual language that would gradually morph into something that became very colorful, very red, very dramatic, and very muscular and full of movement.”<\/p>\n The progression is extraordinary to watch. Initially restrained compositions gradually give way to more aggressive camera movements, unconventional angles, extreme close-ups, and vivid shifts in color.\u00a0\u00a0Reds become increasingly pronounced. Black smoke assumes an almost demonic quality. Fire and darkness encroach upon the frame as the physical and psychological threats facing Jacob converge.<\/p>\n Yet Van Dusen acknowledged that creating such an expressive visual vocabulary also presented a temptation: once the filmmakers discovered how effective a particular technique could be, they had to resist using it everywhere.<\/p>\n “It’s hard because when you’re playing with camera tools and color, it’s quite tempting to use it all the time because turning things red makes it look immediately interesting.”\u00a0\u00a0And the effect of red on the surrounding darkness was especially seductive.\u00a0\u00a0“The blacks suddenly take on a different power, and you go, ‘Let’s turn the whole film red,’ which obviously don’t do that.”<\/p>\n The same discipline applied to zooms.<\/p>\n “A zoom is a lovely, amazing tool. It will make every scene more dramatic.”\u00a0\u00a0Rather than indulge that temptation, Van Dusen and McCullough established rules governing where zooms could be employed.\u00a0\u00a0“Kate and I marked every scene where we were allowed to play because we knew once we were on set, every time we’re going to be like, ‘Should we just put this in?'”<\/p>\n Their advance planning created a visual progression in which restraint was as important as experimentation.\u00a0\u00a0The camera’s eventual transformation into a restless, aggressive presence therefore feels connected to the film’s mounting sense of catastrophe.<\/p>\n And in a story where perception itself becomes increasingly unreliable, the visual language encourages viewers to question not only what they are seeing but also whose version of reality they are being asked to accept.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Faith, Science, Morality, and the Gray Areas of Human Behavior<\/strong><\/p>\n For Van Dusen, the themes that first attracted her to O’Nan’s novel remain as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth-century world of the story.<\/p>\n A PRAYER FOR THE DYING unfolds in a community where religious conviction, civic responsibility, medical judgment, and personal self-interest collide against the threats of disease and wildfire.\u00a0\u00a0Jacob occupies a particularly complicated position as both sheriff and pastor, while Doc’s decisions concerning the spreading illness introduce troubling questions about authority, trust, and responsibility.<\/p>\n Van Dusen sees the historical setting as an opportunity to examine conflicts that continue to shape contemporary society.<\/p>\n “I think we all know history repeats itself. And it’s such a strange thing because we all know that, and yet we don’t know that, or we have a hard time grasping that everything that’s happening now has happened before.”<\/p>\n For her, history provides an opportunity to examine how societies respond to catastrophe, including the consequences of decisions made under pressure.\u00a0\u00a0“There’s much to be learned from looking back and seeing how it was dealt with or how it failed. Or how people succeeded.”<\/p>\n Particularly compelling is the ongoing conflict between science and faith.<\/p>\n “All throughout history, it is constantly the debate between science and faith, and this is something that we still are grappling with and trying to understand.”\u00a0\u00a0Van Dusen was drawn to the novel’s willingness to explore questions that resist simple answers.<\/p>\n “I think these are the questions that this story brings up about ego and morality and faith, the battle between logic and faith-based reasoning.”<\/p>\n Rather than dictate a particular interpretation, she wanted to create a cinematic experience that allowed viewers to confront those questions for themselves.\u00a0\u00a0“I don’t think there are answers to any of the questions that those issues pose, but I think it’s incredibly important to think about those things.”<\/p>\n And that philosophy extends directly to her approach to visual storytelling.<\/p>\n “We wanted to tell a story in a way that felt open enough that if you did connect, it allowed you to think and think for yourself.”\u00a0\u00a0For Van Dusen, the complexity of human behavior demands a willingness to explore ambiguity.<\/p>\n “In 2026, everything is so black and so white, but I think truth lies somewhere in the gray zone, and this is a movie that wants to kind of dive and swim in the gray, with its actors, with its storyline.”<\/p>\n It is a philosophy that informs both the characters’ moral dilemmas and the film’s refusal to provide a single, easily defined perspective.\u00a0\u00a0“For me personally, I think the gray zone is a good place to think and explore.”<\/p>\n Production Design: Telling the Story Without Saying a Word<\/strong><\/p>\n While the cinematography provides A PRAYER FOR THE DYING with its increasingly expressive visual language, production design, costuming, and makeup contribute equally important layers of storytelling.<\/p>\n Working with production designer Hubert Pouille and costume designer Jan Kosterman, Van Dusen wanted the physical environment to communicate character histories, economic circumstances, and social divisions without relying on exposition.\u00a0\u00a0One particularly revealing example is Doc’s home.<\/p>\n The wallpaper, furnishings, artwork, and overall appearance suggest a level of comfort and economic standing that distinguishes him from other inhabitants of the community.\u00a0\u00a0His clothing reinforces that distinction. His shirts remain conspicuously white, his pocket handkerchief pristine, his appearance carefully maintained even as the world around him grows increasingly filthy.<\/p>\n By contrast, the clothing of other characters becomes progressively dirtier and more worn, reflecting both their circumstances and the deterioration of the community itself.<\/p>\n Van Dusen was delighted by the attention paid to these details.<\/p>\n “All of that was so planned and so thought out and so cared about, with the hope that then this kind of larger backstory could be understood without anyone having to talk about it.”<\/p>\n The approach reflects a fundamental belief in the expressive power of the image.\u00a0\u00a0“I think often when we talk about film, if there’s something that’s kind of trying something visually, it’s very easy to kind of write it off and say it’s style over substance. But film is a visual medium.”<\/p>\n For Van Dusen, visual storytelling is not simply an aesthetic exercise. It is a means of communicating emotion, history, and character through the image itself.<\/p>\n “There is something very noble and very difficult in trying to figure out how to use image to communicate emotion and story.”\u00a0\u00a0And those images can allow viewers to form their own relationships with what they see.\u00a0\u00a0“I do believe that an image can hold so much emotion and power, and I think it can become much more personal because you’re not forcing anything else.”<\/p>\n The same attention to detail extends to the film’s unexpected circus sequence, where elaborate costumes, makeup, and a remarkable handmade elephant create another distinctive visual dimension.<\/p>\n Van Dusen was quick to credit her collaborators.<\/p>\n “I had the best team. I mean, listen, this is a debut film, and so you get, to a certain extent, a lot of it’s just luck who you end up with.”<\/p>\n The elephant itself was the work of a Slovakian craftsman discovered through the production designer.\u00a0\u00a0“The elephant is unbelievably amazing. It was handmade by a Slovakian craftsman that our production designer found.”<\/p>\n Costumes were similarly treated to suggest lives extending far beyond the moments captured on screen.\u00a0\u00a0“All the clothes were just dirtied and dirtied and more dirtied, and it gave so much life.”<\/p>\n Because Van Dusen wanted to maintain the film’s relatively concise running time and deliberate pacing, these visual details became particularly important.\u00a0\u00a0“We wanted to have brief moments full of life at the start of the film, and I think that that needs to come through clothing and makeup and production design.”<\/p>\n For the director, even a patched dress or worn garment could suggest an entire personal history.\u00a0\u00a0“There’s the story behind all of it.”<\/p>\n Finding the Heartbeat: Music, Silence, and Sound<\/strong><\/p>\n If the cinematography establishes the visual identity of A PRAYER FOR THE DYING, the score and sound design provide its pulse.<\/p>\n Working with composer Beata Hlavenkov\u00e1 and sound designer Gustaf Berger, Van Dusen developed an aural landscape in which music, silence, isolated percussion, and carefully controlled sound effects reinforce the film’s increasingly visceral atmosphere.\u00a0\u00a0Particularly striking are the recurring percussive beats that suggest both a human heartbeat and the distant drums of war.<\/p>\n The dual association is especially appropriate for Jacob, whose physical struggle for survival is inseparable from the psychological wounds he carries from the Civil War.\u00a0\u00a0Van Dusen explained that the soundscape needed to operate within the same carefully constructed universe as the cinematography, performances, production design, and color grading.<\/p>\n “When you make a film like this, where it’s not reality, where you’re creating a universe, every single element we talked about\u2014the visuals, we talked about the acting, we talked about the costume design, also the sound, also the color grade, also the music\u2014everything needs to fit perfectly into this puzzle we’ve made and connect together.”<\/p>\n The danger, she explained, was that any element operating independently of the others could disrupt the audience’s immersion.<\/p>\n “Because if there’s a crack, then the universe falls apart. The viewer can’t be submerged and immersed in it anymore, and then you have a problem.”<\/p>\n Achieving that cohesion required a collaborative process throughout post-production.<\/p>\n Sound design was developed in Sweden while Hlavenkov\u00e1 worked on the score in the Czech Republic. Rather than treat the two disciplines as separate components to be assembled at the end, the collaborators exchanged material throughout the process.\u00a0\u00a0“We were trading things back and forth so that it felt cohesive, not only to the entire world itself but with each other because obviously sound and music are linked.”<\/p>\n The approach becomes particularly apparent as the film moves toward its extraordinary conclusion, where vivid reds, disturbing imagery, and rhythmic sounds suggest something simultaneously infernal and organic.\u00a0\u00a0Van Dusen pointed to the almost anatomical quality of certain images.<\/p>\n “There’s moments and there’s images that I think look like organs, like human organs, like a heart pulsing, and we wanted the score and the sound design to reflect that from an early stage.”<\/p>\n As with the visual progression, the sound motifs needed to be introduced gradually.\u00a0\u00a0“We used that early on with the sound design and the score, also because at the end of the day, it is a character portrait in the interior demise of Jacob Hanson.”<\/p>\n The heartbeat therefore becomes more than a musical device. It is an expression of the character’s physical and psychological condition.\u00a0\u00a0“The idea of a heartbeat or pulse felt really appropriate to the story and to the way in which we wanted to build tension and have it be a kind of visceral experience for the viewer.”<\/p>\n Kristine Thorp and the Women Missing From the Frame<\/strong><\/p>\n Although much of A PRAYER FOR THE DYING centers on Jacob and the men who wield authority within the community, Van Dusen was equally conscious of the women whose lives are affected by their decisions.<\/p>\n Kristine Thorp’s Marta carries particular significance within the narrative, embodying the emotional and social vulnerability of women in a nineteenth-century society that frequently dismissed their concerns.\u00a0\u00a0“She represents all of the women,” Van Dusen explained.<\/p>\n The director noted the contrast between the film’s historical setting and the composition of its filmmaking team.\u00a0\u00a0“The entire crew, everybody behind the camera, was a woman on this film.”<\/p>\n Within the story, however, Marta must represent voices that are largely absent.\u00a0\u00a0“She’s such an unbelievable person, but also actress that I felt she could carry and represent all of the women who are missing from the frame quite intentionally.”\u00a0\u00a0Van Dusen wanted Thorp’s performance to communicate the isolation and limited agency experienced by women of the period.<\/p>\n “It was 1870, and there were gender roles.”\u00a0\u00a0That historical reality becomes particularly important when Marta’s emotions and concerns are dismissed as hysteria.\u00a0\u00a0“Any emotion is labeled as hysteria and not taken seriously.”<\/p>\n For Van Dusen, the consequences of that dismissal are integral to the story, adding another dimension to its examination of authority, perception, and the danger of refusing to listen.<\/p>\n Creating an Experience Rather Than Simply Telling a Story<\/strong><\/p>\n For a filmmaker making her feature directorial debut, A PRAYER FOR THE DYING represents an unusually ambitious convergence of artistic disciplines.<\/p>\n There is the adaptation of a novel that left its future director staring at a wall, wondering what she had just experienced. There is a visual language developed over years of collaboration with a cinematographer who has been part of her life for two decades. There is the deliberate evolution of the camera into an increasingly forceful non-human presence. And there is the painstaking integration of production design, costuming, performance, color, editing, music, and sound into a world whose reality becomes progressively more uncertain.<\/p>\n Throughout our conversation, Van Dusen returned to the importance of allowing audiences to experience the film rather than simply observe it.\u00a0\u00a0Her approach demands that images carry meaning, that the camera communicate information beyond the characters’ awareness, and that the film’s unsettling questions remain open to interpretation.\u00a0\u00a0It also reflects her belief that cinematic storytelling can communicate ideas and emotions without explaining them.<\/p>\n “I think there is something very noble and very difficult in trying to figure out how to use image to communicate emotion and story.”\u00a0\u00a0And perhaps that is the most revealing insight into Van Dusen’s approach to A PRAYER FOR THE DYING.<\/p>\n What began with a novel that seized her imagination became a years-long effort to create a cinematic experience capable of producing a similarly powerful response.<\/p>\n The objective was never simply to recount Jacob Hansen’s ordeal. It was to construct a world in which the audience could feel the presence of forces beyond human control, question what they were seeing, and emerge with images and emotions that refused to disappear.<\/p>\n An experience rather than simply a viewing.<\/p>\n And, as Van Dusen remembered thinking after first reading Stewart O’Nan’s novel, perhaps one final question lingering in the darkness:\u00a0\u00a0“What in the hell just happened?”<\/p>\n by debbie elias, exclusive interview 10\/06\/2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A PRAYER FOR THE DYING is currently available On Demand (Spectrum) and in select theatres.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/prayer8.png\")
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