[Thefollowingstorycontainsspoilers[ThefollowingstorycontainsspoilersfromIs it God?.]
A great playwright doesn’t always make a great director, but Alicia Harris proves that there is a way. Making her screenwriting and directing debut with Is it God?an adaptation of her Pulitzer Prize finalist play, Harris is behind one of the year’s most brutal and acclaimed films, with a 97 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
With inspirations ranging from ancient Greek tragedy to the Coen brothers’ tragedy. Brother, where are you?, Is it God? This film brings a classic revenge narrative structure to the bloody, brutally funny, and always sad story of twin sisters Racine (Cara Young) and Anaya (Mallory Johnson), who go in search of their father (Sterling K. Brown) at the request of their mother after learning that physical abuse is the reason behind their disfiguring childhood scars. Along the way, they meet a group of acquaintances, played by the likes of Mykelti Williamson, Janelle Monáe, and Erika Alexander.
Harris brings in a bold cinematic language of her own, one that may take a little longer for audiences to catch up to — in a wide release of about 1,500 theaters, it brought in just $2.2 million during its opening weekend — but it reached those who gave it a chance, earning strong audience scores across the board. In a spoilery conversation, Harris details the process of taking the film from stage to screen, her biggest learning curves behind the camera, and what it means to tell a redemptive story about Black women.
Did you have a special interest in filmmaking in this area?
When I got into making the film, I was definitely excited. It felt jazzy. But I didn’t have the ambition to become a film director like others do. I didn’t go to film school. I was a theatrical person. It was just there for me, if this opportunity came along, I would definitely take it and try, but I think I expected it would be further along in my journey.
What was it about the possibilities, in relation to this particular play, that piqued your interest?
When I write, I think in images, and I also studied visual art before I studied theatre. I had a ready mind [for] Which. I was really challenged with the tone of the film, some of which we tried in the visuals, but also in the performances. How do we achieve this legendary record? This was all about organization: How do we organize the spaces we’re in? How do we coordinate colors and outfits, and when are there synchronizations and performances? It was really just a journey of very specific thinking and communication. There’s also not a lot of time, so I’m pretty quick, well prepared and ready to go.
How did you find attracting the funding you needed, and the resources you needed to make the film at the scale it intended?
There were a few studios interested, and there was a bit of a bidding war, and we decided to go with Amazon-MGM-Orion. There was a long conversation about where to film it, how to film it, and how to cut the budget. I’ve made modifications to the script. To that end, we all had to tighten our belts and figure out how to make things work.
What is the hardest thing to give up?
Trim twin boy stories, especially since Justin [Ross] And Xavier [Mills] Very good. In the play, there are a lot of these boys, so it would be great to see what life was like for them in that family.
Cara Young and Mallory Johnson are so in sync here, as they should be, playing twins with an intimate understanding of each other. Was the casting process unique there?
Quite a trip. I knew I wanted two people. We did look at real sets of twins, but it was very important to me that the best actors would be the ones to play those roles – and who we could buy as twins. So I threw a lot. I looked at a lot of women. I would have Mallory and Kara in scenes with other actors, and they would devour that person. I needed them to be in scenes with each other. When I got them together and they matched, I knew it, plus they had tremendous chemistry the first time they were in a Zoom room together. They just showed such tenderness.
How were you able to discover the visual language between them? They communicate without words sometimes, which you translate, but even the framing and choreography are very precise.
In the play, there’s a lot of performance in print, and I wanted a way to bring that into the film, but it had to be organic. The idea that there is a language between these twins is very true to life. For the twins, there were stories of twins creating their own language that seemed completely natural and in a simple, easy way and a fun way to bring that performative print to the film. In framing, I wanted to combine them as much as possible—not to be obnoxious, but why not use that visual language to remind the audience who they are? It’s not individual, but I’ve thought a lot about it, Brother, where are you?Because it is also a road movie inspired by ancient Greek tragedy, and based on an ancient Greek poem. The Coen brothers crafted a specific world that wasn’t realistic, it was just a play. So looking at their use of music, their use of color grading, their use of movement style and etiquette and framing – then I wanted to think about that specifically with this world.
When they walk in to meet their mother and we see her for the first time, we have a lace curtain behind her. Clearly we are in the world of Southern Gothic. We are in a world that is three clicks to the left of reality. We have women, for example, present, which is true for someone who is bedridden. But they have these spikes that we hear Click ClackThey braided their hair as a reference to the sacrifice bearers from ancient Greek tragedy. There are three of them, and they move in unison. I was thinking of fun ways to think about what is real and what is not real. There are a lot of portrait frames with the characters, and we see the picture rotate.
I’m curious how you think about revenge in the context of a story like this. There is a long line of revenge plots in fiction, drama and of course cinema. with Is it God?It presents a deeply painful story through the kind of classic, entertaining perspective.
The wrong is so deep and the hurt is so deep for these women — and I also think the hurt is so deep for Black women that I’m kind of playing around with what’s true and true. There is something happening inside the frame, but also outside the frame that will resonate deeply with people. I know I haven’t seen a lot of black women featured in revenge novels, and I love revenge novels. It was very natural for me to place myself within this kind of narrative structure. I just really tap into my sense that there are a lot of things that I think we should be angry about as black women. It will have an impact both inside the story and outside of it, especially for some of us who understand it from the inside.
Do you have favorite revenge novels?
I love Kill Bill. One of the things I saw after I started working on the film was… our Father, Satanwhich is also about a black woman. there Five fingers for MarseilleIt is a western part of South Africa. Maybe this is a stretch, however. (He laughs.)
Sterling K. Brown is a fascinating and menacing villain here. I know you talked about working on getting rid of his charming persona in casting here. Can you talk specifically about how you approached the character, knowing that he was playing her?
I knew going in that I wanted to obscure his face, give him an epic size by not showing every part of him at first, allow us to hear a lot about him and save his voice until I was ready. The script suggests that when we see him, he’s like Obama – humble, we finally see him, there’s very deliberate sabotage. I knew how Sterling existed in consciousness; People think they have this idea of him, and we get to play with that idea, which is more fun for me. It is true in life that sometimes people who do this can… It’s terrible that they get away with it because they are charming and handsome. Sterling understood the mission. He’s very intelligent, and he’s a close reader. He knows who he is. He knows he’s going to get people to see him play this role, and he’s an exceptional actor. So he leaned all the way down and did the damn thing.
I remember going to his trailer and telling him I wanted him to laugh when he got killed, because I often think about opposites: How can we frighten the moment so that it’s not exactly what we expect? He of course played beautifully.
How did you block out the final sequence? As I mentioned, there’s this juncture where we see the father for who he really is, when Sterling slaps his daughter, but you feel incredible tension before that as well.
It was a dialogue between images and sound and thinking a lot about duration. From the moment my dad got out of the car until the end, it was very tense and we just turned the dial up. I was thinking a lot about timing and performance. It was very important to me that when he holds Anaya’s hand, that moment where he says, “Put the rock down, you’re not a killer, da, da, da, da,” I would put my hand up. This is them in the frame. In the theatre, people are very angry with her. At the shows I sat in, people started screaming. I hope this means that I did my job to allow the viewer to understand why he wants to believe this, and why he needs to believe that this man will save her. It’s a conversation between how long things happen. Duration is very important. We don’t want to extend our hands.
Was there a learning curve to direct the action sequences?
There was a learning curve to everything. (He laughs) But without question. The cinematographer and the fight choreographer and I are having a conversation about the best way to shoot it to capture it. There are things I didn’t know about. We want to make sure it looks viable. We have two young women eliminating a man. What did we tell the viewer before we got here about how violence exists in this world, and how magical this world is? What is possible?
In terms of the bigger learning curve, have you surprised yourself as a filmmaker here?
I’m still trying to figure out who I am. I think I surprise myself with how strong I am – how when I face the grindstone, I will show up for my work and for my collaborators. I hear from people about the style and they are surprised that it is my first film. I don’t have the level of context and frame of reference that you do, so I’m learning that, “Oh, well, that’s good and it’s good for someone who’s doing this for the first time.” Everything is a baptism by fire, David. Everything is learning for me.
I see a lot of debuts with a lot of style. What really struck me about this was the restraint, perhaps a strange word, despite the brutality of this film. But it felt too controlled for me as a viewer.
This is a word I use often. It’s crucial. It just becomes a mess and a wash of clutter. I learned that from theatre: I’m always taking these big swings and I’ve been hit hard by the scope of my ambitions, but I always say, “It can hold up.” All you have to do is know how to do it, which button to press, what kind of thing to put in the foreground and what to put in the background.
How was your experience scouting the locations? You actually have to show this world you’ve created on stage.
That was quite an adventure, because, you know, this was written to take place in the northeast, south, and west—the desert. This is not necessarily what Louisiana offers. But fortunately for us, we had great location scouts and we were expansive in our thinking about what kind of epic this journey could be and ways to use color and those locations to get the feel of it being barren. When one encounter occurred, it was really important to find that path in the middle of nowhere, or what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. I love the process of dreaming in space. In fact, sometimes I just have a space and I want to write something for that specific space.
