St Edward's Rhubarb Issue 5

ST EDWARD’S r h u b a r b

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Filming inWadi Rum, were you conscious of the long shadow of David Lean hanging over you? I love David Lean, and Lawrence of Arabia . I understand that for many people in the West, that film is often their only reference to that point of history, and that most people only go to Wadi Rum because they’ve seen the film. It isn’t a coincidence that the films are set in the same period of time. In the Middle East, that’s the most important part of our history – all the conflicts and everything you see today comes from the redrawing of those maps and the Revolt. How did you find life in the desert? One of the big things I noticed was that when you’re standing in the desert you have a vast expanse around you, but at the same time you are aware of the more minute details of sound, people’s footsteps, or the brush of a twig. It’s the juxtaposition between something that’s vast visually and something very, very intimate sonically. That contrast informed the film, the micro vs the macro. That’s the same for the setting of an intimate counter-drama against the wider picture of the Arab Revolt. These elements came through in the process of making the film. It’s very organic. After about four months of living there, I became arrogant and thought that I could do what the Bedouin do. So I went out with the Land Rover one day and got terribly lost. But they know how to track and just before sunset they found me. It makes you realise

component of my development. If I’d made a film when I was 23, it would have been terrible. That early failure has helped me hone my craft. Theeb was my sixth script. It’s not a stable life in terms of work or income. You have to be able to deal with pressure. Speaking of pressure, it comes across as an important theme in the film… from the environment, from a name, from a moral dilemma…Is it a theme that interests you personally? Naturally a lot of autobiographical stuff goes into a film. There’s an incident with water in the film which actually happened to me when I was five. Themes of loss etcetera. We’re going through a very difficult and pressured time at the moment in the Middle East and obviously that affects the choice of 1916, a time of regional existential crisis. That kind of thing is always going on in the subconscious. It’s amazing what the subconscious does actually. I noticed the other day that I’d literally ripped off three shots from Peter Weir’s Master and Commander . I had no idea I’d done it until I saw the film again. I wonder what else I’ve stolen… Just one of your huge set of influences and experiences.Are they a blessing or a curse when trying to create an original feature film? The key is working with talented people. If you rely on your own cinematic experiences, you’re just going to regurgitate them. The key thing on Theeb was working with the Bedouin, because they’re untainted by cinema and have never been to a film before. The first film they saw was the film we made. Spending a year living with them, their storytelling, their poetry, their music, their way of movement informed the film and anything original comes from listening to them and using their experiences. For me, it was finding a subject matter I was interested in, going out to expose myself to those elements, and then bringing them into the film. It’s a collaborative process with the artists. When I started I tried to write a Bedouin Western by myself, but it was a rip-off of a Leone film – the names were changed but everything else was the same. It’s about life experience too – when I was twenty I hadn’t lived and didn’t have anything to say. The things I want people to notice are my movie geek references. There’s a certain sequence that’s an homage to Straw Dogs that never gets noticed…

F E A T U R E S

Winner of Best Director at the Venice Film Festival 2015

how fragile you are in the fact that you really don’t know what you’re doing. The desert is not a game. I learnt respect for their talents that day. What’s next? I hope to meet and work with George Fenton (OSE) someday, he’s an amazing composer. I’m currently working on another Jordanian film set in the period of history after Theeb . That’s like my answer to Zulu or Seven Samurai . There’s also an English book adaptation set in England and the Arctic which we have the rights to. I miss London so it would be interesting to do an English- language project. Sooner or later one project will appear as the frontrunner and take over. In the meantime, you have to pursue the projects you love, find stories you love to tell, and then work hard on them.