>>PREVIEW
SIX FIGURES
STARRING JR Bourne, Caroline Cave and Deborah Grove
DIRECTED BY DAVID CHRISTENSEN
Opens Friday, November 11
Uptown Screen
"I think audiences are smarter than they’re generally given credit for," says David Christensen.
This sounds odd at first, coming from a documentary filmmaker whose work has principally aired on television. (Audiences, intelligent?) But Christensen’s documentaries are anything but your typical news-channel pabulum. Absent are the didactic narration and the expository interviews.
"I like documentaries that leave it to the audience to meet the film halfway and to find their way into the characters. In effect, it’s filmmaking for people with grown-up minds and moral discernments."
This is the same demographic that the Calgary-based director had in mind when making Six Figures, his first dramatic feature. The film, adapted from the novel by Fred Leebron, revolves around Warner (JR Bourne) and Claire Lynch (Caroline Cave), a young couple new to Calgary and struggling to find their feet. But it’s not so easy making enough in a boom town where even the charitable organizations are called M.O.R.E. As their professional frustrations mount and their financial problems multiply, the tension between Warner and Claire grows increasingly acute. Then, just as the tension reaches its pitch, Claire is brutally attacked. Warner, of course, is the prime suspect. The characters and the audience are left to ask, did he do it? Is he capable? How well do we know him?
"You have people who believed that he did it," says Christensen, "just based on what they know of him. I wanted to introduce that into how the audience watches the film as well. This man shows up on screen – who is he? How well do you know him at the beginning? And then how well do you know him at the end, when you have to make a decision? Did he do it or not?"
Christensen, to his credit, is assiduous in not providing any easy answers. "For me," he says, "some of the most successful films are the ones that don’t end with everything neatly tied in a bow. Because, if you’re open to it, the film then continues on in your own mind, and you start to carry those characters around with you."
This tactic of not giving anything away, of giving the audience no more, and sometimes even less, information than it needs, carries over into the very style of the film. Christensen uses long takes and wide shots and is very sparing with close-ups.
"You’re forced to think a little bit more when you’re watching the film because I’m not always telling where to look and I’m certainly not underlining what the characters feel. The audience has to think and figure out what the characters are feeling to a far greater degree than many other films. It’s interactive in the best sense of the word.
"That’s the power of good acting," he adds. "That’s the power of faces up on the screen. You can have ellipsis in a film, you cannot necessarily go in for the close-up or for the reaction, and still get exactly what’s going on."
This elliptical approach to storytelling – or storyshowing – and Christensen’s faith in the audience’s intelligence is refreshing, perhaps because it is so rare. And that’s a shame, since saying without saying is arguably what cinema does best.
"You don’t need to lead the audience by the hand. People get it." |
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