Brady Corbet, director of Vox Lux: "The film speaks of the desire to be emblematic" | Movie

HAt 27, he made his ambitious and ambitious first feature film. Compared to the young Orson Welles, American screenwriter and director Brady Corbet is accustomed to receiving the brutal words "precocious" and "pretentious." "These are things you do not care about," he says. 30 years, expecting positive answers because, as he says so well, his films are aimed at "the heights of the opera … When people totally hate a movie that I realized, I understand it all indeed, and if they like it, I understand it too. "

In London to promote his second feature film, Vox Lux, Corbet – pronounced "Cor-bay" – looks like your average indie buddy first: the baseball cap and the fuzzy beard, as well as its comfortable volume, suggest a casual drummer. However, we are definitely not dealing with another Sundance kid. Articulated and confident, Corbet is a hardcore and daring Europhile. His passions include writer WG Sebald, artist Anselm Kiefer and Finnish modernist composer Kaija Saariaho; his career as an actor includes work with leading authors such as Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier; and he thinks of himself as making "films where form is the content".

All this might not make him the most likely candidate for making a film about a gaga-esque pop star. But Vox Lux There is no melodrama behind the scenes: a torn star, a torn piece, piece by piece painful, she presents Natalie Portman in the role of Celeste, whose fame is forged in the crucible of a school shootout and who is later implicated in terrorist attack. This daring film, mixing exhilarating boastfulness and moments of desolate severity, has been hailed since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last fall ("a deeply satisfying and ambitious film shock", said the New York Times). But there is something deeply troubling in its juxtaposition of glitzy showbiz and the horror of mass slaughter. Indeed, the project almost stopped after the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in May 2017. "We had to convince many people to continue making the film," says Corbet.

He states that he does not create direct links between pop and terrorism. "The only thing mass shots and mass distribution of manufactured tubes have in common is the show. The film speaks of the desire to be iconic. [The desire] to remember at all costs is something that seems unique to this generation. What hurts him, he says, is that "we expect celebrities to be our representatives. It is quite right to criticize a politician who falsely introduced you. But it is strange that Taylor Swift takes a political stance and supports the nominees Democrats. Even if that's what I support, why should she have [to have] an opinion on this? "

Vox Lux hit some as easy, or cartoonish: the guardianAssistant Music Editor Laura Snapes tweeted: "It's like what my nana thinks, it's pop music." stars, Gaga and Judy Garland included.

"It's not just Madonna, nor Britney Spears, nor Lindsay Lohan, the character is such a dragon and embellished to such operas. I would never want anyone to think that I was making fun of them, because I am not. Being a pop star is "an inherently absurd job," says Corbet, but he is also fascinated by the burnout factor facing the performers. tour: "If you film a movie for 30 days, you usually go home to polish a bottle of wine. If I did it 200 days a year, I would probably have a heart attack or liver failure. It's easy to see how people start to break down. "

Born in Arizona, raised in Colorado, Corbet is the only son of a single mother who has worked in the mortgage lending industry. First summoned to a casting, at the age of seven, he got his first role at age 11 in the sitcom The king of queens. The work that followed ranged from narration of Japanese animated series to television programs, including 24. He even played rocker Alan Tracy in the live-action version of the puppet favorite Thunderbirds – curiously enough, at the age of 12, he was already passionate about Tarkovsky and Carl Theodor Dreyer's heavyweight cinema.

"I was happy to work," he says of the period. When I was 13 or 14 years old, I enjoyed being there. As you get older, it is not worth it to be there; you must be there for a reason. Every time I worked on something that was really stupid, it bothered me a lot.

A role that turned out to be harder than most people was that of an impenetrable killer in Haneke's movie. Funny Games – not the chilling original of 1997, but the somewhat ill-conceived American remake of the Austrian maestro. Corbet had already met the director and approached him as a fan when Haneke had presented a film in Los Angeles (Corbet was never afraid to approach people that he would like to know, or write them). "I thought it would be interesting to see Michael working in the American system – and that was it!" He laughs. "Later, he said," I will never make a film in America again. "And I understand why, I'm not going to make my next film in America either."

Since then, Corbet collaborated with several personalities of the European art house: Von Trier (en Melancholy), Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden), Ruben Östlund (Force majeure). It is aimed at filmmakers who "are able to do a very daring but kind work". Seeing these directors work, he learned that "everyone is having a bad day. This made me realize that you did not always need an answer. You may be looking for an answer … it's good. "

In 2015, Corbet made his debut as a director. The childhood of a chef, starring Robert Pattinson – a period article about a little Lord Fauntleroy who will become a fascist dictator. With his dark-toned tone and bravura finish, he did not convince everyone, but he aimed high and showed an indomitable nerve. He won the best film and the best director of a Venice jury and the jury president, the late Jonathan Demme, compared Orson Welles.

One of the film's successes is the imposing score for Scott Walker's orchestra, an experimental visionary, an allegedly solitary man that Corbet found surprisingly accessible. When the director wrote that they suggested collaborating, "I was thinking of sending a message in a bottle, but he responded quickly. He was very private, of course – but it was a guy from Ohio, I immediately felt comfortable with him. He was totally unpretentious; a really nice guy and really open. "

Walker came back for Vox Lux: his orchestrations are played incongruously against the pumping dance numbers written by the indefatigable hitmaker Sia. It may seem like Walker's extreme opposite, but she too has cultivated anonymity and distance from the public eye.

"I liked the idea of ​​having these songs written by a faceless writer," Corbet says. "The problem with Sia is that she is an adult and few pop stars are. Few people have the prospect of creating a 20-year-old catalog of Celeste's music – an anthem pop anthem of cheerleader, more GED-influenced stuff, drama stuff with dated synths … "

These songs feed the concert sequence that ends Vox Lux, with Portman energetically fronting a pudgy dance troupe. Corbet says, "She only played her role in 10 days, but she had to prepare for three months. She is passionate about the arts in general – Capital A – and she went there. The concert was shot in about eight hours – she did not have a safety net. "

Corbet now lives in New York with his partner, Norwegian director Mona Fastvold, and their four-year-old daughter. Even though he will not dismiss the role anymore, the realization has become a full-time and exhausting job: "The films are so difficult, they make you more hot, they make you fat, you have to fight for rotate them. But he will continue to fight to be at the height of these demanding, serious, sometimes discreet artists, who inspire this resolutely non-pop guy. "I've always loved the things I've found daring. I've always found, the bolder the better. "

Vox Lux is in general version now