"Time Out of
Mind" is the third feature written and directed by the New York independent
filmmaker Oren Moverman. The movie is a chilling and exacting portrait of
social negation. The story follows the downward trajectory of George (Richard
Gere), a homeless man who navigates the hard streets of New York moment to
moment, doing whatever is necessary to get by in finding a place to sleep,
locating food or shelter.
Shooting in
long takes from largely fixed perspectives, Moverman creates an eerie backdrop
punctuating the man's abject invisibility. "We don't exist," he says in his
most despaired moments. "We're cartoon characters."
The
documentary verisimilitude extends to the movie's making. Moverman and his
superb technical team, the excellent cinematographer Bobby Bukowski and
production designer Kelly McGehee, make expressive uses of New York locations
such as Grand Central Station and Bellevue Hospital. Especially in the ghostly
and abstracted opening third, the dialogue is almost entirely stitched together
from overheard conversations.
As he
painfully illustrates the plight of George, a man increasingly trapped by a
rigid bureaucracy and political institutions, Moverman subtly expands the
material. He gathers extremely sharp and impressive performances from Jena
Malone as a vulnerable young woman with a private connection to George and the
perennially underused Ben Vereen as a jazz musician likewise trapped by choices
and a nasty fate.
Moverman
previously directed "The Messenger," a bruising chamber piece about military
personnel who must inform family members of soldiers killed in battle, and
"Rampart," featuring a bravura turn from Woody Harrelson as a rogue Los Angeles
police officer.
He first
gained recognition for his excellent adaptation of the Denis Johnson collection
for Alison Maclean's "Jesus' Son." He also worked with Todd Haynes on his
brilliant study of the art and manner of Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There" (featuring
Gere) and Ira Sachs' murderous study of infidelity, "Married Life."
This has been
a busy year. Moverman also wrote the widely admired script of Bill Pohlad's
"Love & Mercy," about the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. In an interview,
Moverman talked about his new film, photography, art, working with Richard Gere
and the proper ways of exploring the socially afflicted.
As the writer and director, were you
interested in making a film on the socially marginalized, or did this film
begin as an idea, an image, that you had?
The process itself started with
Richard Gere. He actually had a script that he bought by a writer named Jeffrey
Caine. It was a script that was telling a story about a homeless man. He was
obsessed with the character for a very long time. I ran into him a couple of
years ago and he started telling me about it. Richard started going into
homeless shelters and engaging people on both sides of the issue—administrators
and guards on one side and clients at the other end. He started getting into
that world, and [my involvement] of wanting something Richard already started
to connect this to a story.
How did you and the cinematographer,
Bobby Bukowski, construct the film visually?
What we did was go with a very
observational style. It's really not a movie that tells a story in the
conventional sense, although there is a story. It's not really telling you good
guys and bad guys or a film with high dramatic moments. Every step this man
takes is a dramatic step in the world. The visual approach was based on the
photography of Saul Leiter. He would take these very objective, observational
shots of New York City but do them in a way that still felt emotionally
[engaged]. So he'd shoot through windows, he'd shoot through traffic. He would
shoot reflections and the subject was shot at the same time, under a canopy,
and he'd let the canopy take up three-fourths of the [image] and the action of
the real lives would be just one-fourth. There'd be a layering of images and
the idea in a big city, you'd sort of have to make an effort to look at things
or have a perspective on it.
We're making
a movie about a guy most of us ignore. Generally objective visual style that
lets you through the images and through reflections but know that there's a
story going on. Once you notice this hopefully you start getting drawn into it.
The style is very fixed. We shot a lot with zoom lenses. The camera almost
never moves and so you get this idea of a man who's living at his own pace,
with the entire city around him.
Because of the visual style and the
non-traditional mode of dramatic address, did that alter the dynamic between
you and Richard? Was it different than how you worked, for instance, with Woody
Harrelson in your first two films?
It was actually the same. You're
right about one thing. It is the same from my perspective. My job is to create
safe environments for actors to try things. That's how I look at it. The
environment was not controlled. We basically threw Richard into these situations
where he was [performing] in real life, with us very far away, shooting him,
finding him at Grand Central Station, or the streets of New York, hiding the
camera so we don't have much of a subtext of a movie set, but something closer
to real life.
The
difference was I couldn't control it, so I had to be much more protective of
him and much more attuned. A lot of times, I'd be very far away from him but
then I'd do a lot of running. I always tried to get as close as possible to the
actors. It's a very different way to shoot a movie because you're not really
sure of what is going to happen because of things that are outside of your
control. Usually I try to direct in a way where we don't know what's going to
happen but still, it's controlled and it is within an environment where you
feel like more or less like you know what is going to happen.
The movie has a documentary realism
about it that some critics have compared to the work of Frederick Wiseman. That
seems especially true in the material set at Bellevue.
The whole approach of the movie was
there but for the grace of God goes I. With Wiseman it was about process, but
some of it inside an institution, a large, complicated institution. As far as I
know, we were the first film to ever be allowed to shoot inside there, the real
Bellevue that was a psychiatric hospital that became an intake center for
homeless men in New York City. We were allowed to shoot there for one night. We
had to move very fast. What we really wanted to capture is the process. The
whole movie is really a process. You meet Richard's character George the day he
becomes homeless, on the day he no longer is allowed to come back to the spot
where he was squatting. He has exhausted all coaches and all friends and all
the places where he could go. Really for the first time he is on his own and
without a home.
He goes
through the process of what would normally happen, which is going back to the
place where he tried to stay and that becomes an impossibility. It's winter in
New York. He is just trying to go to a warm place. He goes to a [hospital]
emergency room, and you sit there. Nobody can really throw you out, except they
can if it's over a certain temperature.
We don't
show every single moment. It was important to get into this really immersive
experience. The movie works in an experiential way. You're really walking in
his shoes at times, but you're never really him, you're just watching him and
you start to feel hopefully that once you let go of the illusion that it's
Richard Gere, that it's actually anyone and we are all susceptible, mental
illness, social abuse, all of these problems are really around the corner for
any human being. Hopefully you can develop a relationship and have some
compassion that you can apply to this man from various perspectives. By the end
of it, you feel some kind of hope and community and family. We look out for each
other, which in the end is the only way that we're ever going to solve this
problem of homelessness.
How cognizant were you of not
sentimentalizing poverty or his extreme social marginalization?
Very much so. I don't blame people
who try to tell stories that tug at the heartstrings. We all need and want to
feel. I think it's emotional without being sentimental. You have to give
yourself to the movie and let yourself walk the movie as it were, at its
rhythm. It's about a man who's not living in the rhythm of running from one
meeting to another or having things to do. It's about living minute to minute.
The movie had to take on that pacing without really pushing it, the patience
that has to be applied like people like that. It's the one thing you see when
you go to homeless shelters or supported living facilities, patience is an
incredible tool and it's something that is very hard to have. The movie has its
own patient rhythm. It would mark a misdirection to infuse that with a
narrative that would squeeze emotional manipulation. We wanted to show it, the
observational style worked for us.
The last seven or eight years you
have worked with a number of leading independent filmmakers, like Todd Haynes and
Ira Sachs, writing scripts. I was curious how that experience has shaped your
own sensibility now that you are directing your own films.
It taught me more, having the
director's perspective. It's still the same. I feel like when you're writing
and then directing, you're working in the service of the movie and trying to
create something that's true for that movie. For me, even though you can look
at some of these films and see a connection between them, for me they're not
connected. Each one is its own universe. I've always worked with the directors
as a writer, and I've always considered myself a director, not in a hierarchal
sense, but in the way I'm always trying to get into the head of the director
I'm working with and map their vision so that I can do my job as a writer or
co-writer. One feeds off the other. I started producing recently, and that's
another kind of skill set and a different kind of experience that helps me to
understand the process and the whole picture of what making a movie is. You just try
to keep learning no matter what position you have.
This is your third film as a
director. Do you see the three as a trilogy, bound by certain themes or ideas
of what you want to say about the country, the culture or social behavior?
I kind of do. All three of them are
driven by male characters who are dealing with emotional turmoil with a male
institution: "Messenger" was the military; "Rampart" was the police department and
police corruption; this one is about male homeless shelters. The main character got older in each of the films. I do see them in a very
loose way as a trilogy, and quite shocked and happy that I got into that
position to say that.
