I was ten years old when Danny DeVito’s euphoric screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel Matilda arrived in theaters. I had read the book so many times that the cover had fallen off, and in the character of Miss Honey, I found an embodiment of all the teachers who had been an invaluable, nurturing force in my life. This is the role Embeth Davidtz brought to life with such radiance in DeVito’s “Matilda” that everyone my age wanted her as their teacher. A few years later, while watching Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, “Schindler’s List,” for my history class, I was profoundly moved by Davidtz’s portrayal of real-life Holocaust survivor Helen Hirsch, who is accompanied by the actress when visiting Schindler’s grave in the film’s extraordinary final sequence.
Davidtz’s work continued to enrich my life well into adulthood, as she gave indelible performances in such gems as Phil Morrison’s “Junebug” as well as acclaimed shows including “Mad Men,” “The Morning Show” and (my favorite) Rodrigo García’s spellbinding “In Treatment.” Now Davidtz has directed her first feature, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” and it instantly ranks among the most captivating films I have seen so far this year. Based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same name, the movie stars astonishing young newcomer Lexi Venter as Bobo, an eight-year-old whose family farm is faced with an uncertain future once its territory of Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe, following the 1980 war for independence. Caught in the middle of these dramatic shifts is Sarah (Zikhona Bali), the family’s African servant, who forges a more maternal bond with Bobo than the girl’s own troubled mother, Nicola (played by Davidtz).
During the film’s virtual press day last month, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Davidtz for Cinema Femme about the unique challenges presented by this project and the miraculous ways in which she overcame them.
In Roger Ebert’s review of “Schindler’s List,” he quoted the French novelist Flaubert, who said, “An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.“ I feel the same could be said of your directorial debut.
Oh my god, that makes me want to cry! Because yes, in so many ways, I had to make myself invisible. The only thing I could do was make that child the center of everything so that the film told the story. That’s amazing, thank you.
Was directing always a role you had wanted to take on?
No, it wasn’t in my head. Up until about six months before I made the film, I wasn’t intending to direct it. But I ultimately couldn’t find a director who understood well enough the script I had written, and I thought, ‘Oh shit, I’m going to have to do this myself.’ I found that I had learned in the school of life from watching all of the great directors and cinematographers I had worked with, as well as seeing what an editor ended up with versus what we had shot.
More than anything I learned from reading scripts—the good, the bad and the ugly—and trying valiantly to make the bad ones work, while sailing through the good ones and thinking, ‘The difference between what works and what doesn’t is that screenplay.’ All of the lessons had been given to me, and so on the day I had to show up and do it, I had the skills that were needed. But it was an accident.
You famously worked so beautifully with Mara Wilson in “Matilda.” How did your past experiences of acting opposite children inform how you approached directing the amazing Lexi Venter?
Mara was exceptional and very different from all the other children I’ve ever seen acting. She was wise beyond her years, and even though she had been on films, it didn’t feel like she was acting. I had a feeling that for the role of Bobo, I would need a kid who had never acted before, and once I started auditioning children who were actors, my belief was affirmed. I was like, ‘No actors. I’m just going to find a kid who has never done it before.’ I wanted an open, wild, little spirit who had no self-consciousness and wouldn’t even be aware that the camera was there. So we put out an ad on Facebook, and some neighbor said, “I know a kid like that.” That’s how we found Lexi.
I kept her very much in the dark, in play mode, and kept things very light for her. I’ve gathered enough from directors over the years to know for myself, from my own experience, what worked, what felt good and what didn’t. For a seven-year-old like Lexi, I wanted to keep it magical. If I was shooting a heavy scene, I wouldn’t tell her what was coming. I’d have both cameras on her—a very tight close-up and a medium shot—and I would just let all hell break loose and capture her face in the midst of it. I’d capture her in moments where she didn’t know she was being filmed, and later, I would stitch it together with the voice over, because a certain kind of self-consciousness just naturally creeps in if a kid learns a line or a scene over and over. So I kept it very natural, very free, and then just kind of stitched it with a needle and thread at the end.
Just as “Junebug” did, your film succeeds in humanizing all the sides of the cultural divide between its characters rather than devolve into caricature. How important is this for you as a filmmaker?
It’s very important because I have grown so tired of one-dimensional characters, and I have to say, I got that level of complexity so much from the book. In her memoir, Alexandra wrote with love about her horrible racist mother as well as her horrible racist younger self. I think that was the starting point for me. When I was creating the screenplay and puling the pieces of the book that I wanted, I thought, ‘Every single person here, even the worst of them, has to have a dignity and a story.’ As awful as that dreadful man is who accosts that child in the bathroom, you see something in his eyes at the very end. When he looks up, he’s bewildered. It’s like he doesn’t know what he’s done and he can’t make sense of it. We’re not trying to make him a likable character at all, but there’s just such a complexity to who we are as human beings. I’m bored with characters who are written to be just one thing. They don’t drawn me in.
I certainly sensed traces of guilt in the man’s face when the child is staring at him during a later scene.
Yes, exactly.
Whereas your characters in the films I grew up watching often exuded warmth and immediately earned our empathy, the mother you play here is more complicated but no less compelling, as was your role on “In Treatment.” How did you go about inhabiting this character?
In the book, she had many nervous breakdowns. There were many years of mental illness and the ebb and flow of that, as well as alcoholism within the family. What I didn’t want to do was either make her a sympathetic figure or demonize her. Even certain politicians who are out there right now must have one thread of humanity running through them, so what is it? What is the thing that anchors her? I felt like she loves her children but doesn’t.
I was also flying by the seat of my pants in terms of what I was filming on myself, because I am an actor who relies on directors. I really need directors to tell me what to do, and I didn’t have a third eye on this. I didn’t have time to watch playback. I had to go, “Do we feel like we got there? Was it in focus? Good, let’s move on.” I could pick what remnants would be put together in the editing room, and the editing helped a lot to modulate what I needed it to be. If I felt there were parts that were just too strident, I would cut them out. In the end, I wanted to show a woman who was not a good person and did not treat people around her well, but I wanted to have some sort of understanding of why she behaved that way.
How difficult was it to fluctuate between your director hat and your actor hat on set?
I think it might’ve been easier if the other actor in the room wasn’t a child. I could direct myself again if I was in a very small part and acting opposite adults. There was another little girl in the film in addition to Lexi, and I just tried to keep them insulated. I put Lexi in a bubble. She had so much to do that she would become tired. She’d wake up and eat Cocoa Puffs at five in the morning and have a sugar crash by the time she walked onset. So I was trying to manage all the stuff that I would with my own children when they were little. I also just tried to stay connected to her and keep her engaged.
It’s funny, I haven’t told anybody this story, but about three weeks into the shoot—which lasted a total of five and a half weeks—Lexi got bored with direction. It annoyed her. She didn’t want to be told, “Darling, can you look more over in that direction and just look a little worried?” When she’d see me coming, she’d look away, and I’d be like, “Lexi, look at me, darling. I want to tell you something.” So I had to be on point, and was moving around like a jumping bean to trick her into hearing me and get her to do what I needed her to do. I developed a sleeping problem—thank god it’s been resolved since then—mostly because I would lie awake at three in the morning and go, “What do I have in my bag of tricks to get her to pay attention? These are the things that I need to get out of her today.”
And it’s seamless.
That’s because of the editing, which is wonderful, but it’s also because of her. Lexi is an open, unspoiled little creature, so I had the gift of that to play with too. It works both ways. As a director, you’re like, “This child—her face, her openness and her sense of humor—is so special. All I need to do is add a little light or a little shade.” In that shot of her toes clutching the rock, what you’re seeing is a nervous, unconscious gesture made by Lexi. When she’s choking on the ice, spitting it back up and getting the giggles, those are the sort of natural things that happened on camera that I realized I could use.
How did you and your cinematographer Willie Nel conceive of the brilliant visual motif that occurs when Lexi plays the “turn around if you love me” game in her head? We are literally looking through her eyes, and it builds to a climactic moment that brought me to tears.
It’s something that I came up with towards the end of the writing process. That final image you’re referring to wasn’t in the book, and I knew that in order to make the transition from the woman who was standing there to the vision that it becomes, I needed a sun flare. This is where Willie helped me so much because I said, “How do we get the sunset at exactly that moment in time? I need a flash of the sun for the cut because otherwise, I can’t marry them.” He knew exactly what to do. It was that particular time of the year where you can measure the spot that you’re going to be in, and you will know exactly where the sun is going to hit. We raced from what we had finished shooting, we put that character in place, and we got it.
The rest of it was done by our editor, Nicholas Costaras. I described to him and Willie how I wanted this visual to appear onscreen, where Bobo squints her eyes and as the audience peers through them, they can see her eyelashes closing. Nicholas was able to add in the special effect of the eyelashes after the fact, and with very nimble fingers. The day after I got that shot of the sun flaring, which was essential for everything, a rainstorm came. It was my second to last day of shooting, and the rain lasted for two weeks. I would never have gotten the shot if the rain arrived sooner, but I had the grace of the weather hanging in for us. It was all a miracle—the weather and Lexi. I was very, very lucky.
“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, July 11th, before expanding on Friday, July 18th.
