Director Lenny Abrahamson
talks about making Garage
Style of film
«The style of film that Mark and I do together... I think you could call it maybe ‘minimal slapstick’ or ‘slapstick tragedy’. It’s this kind of weird combination of two genres that you don’t feel should go together that interests me as a filmmaker. In this way, Garage is part of the same family as Adam & Paul.
It’s a physical film. It’s about this character who has a very strong visual kind of signature. He walks in a very particular way. He speaks in a very particular way. So, it has echoes of the same kind of Vaudeville as our first film. I think it’s this curious style that allows Garage to be tender without being sentimental. For me it’s a testament to somebody on the periphery of things whose life would normally go unremarked. But what marks Garage out for me is the change in tone as the film goes on. It starts with more of an emphasis on the slapstick absurdity of Josie as a character - it starts out showing him how he is seen by others - but it gradually changes perspective, it becomes more internal, ending up, I hope, undermining that first easy view of him.
Josie
«Josie is really a contemporary village idiot character but the Irish village doesn’t really have any place for him anymore. The film is really about those transformations in rural Ireland which make Josie, and people like Josie, rootless or homeless.
What is interesting about Josie - like the real people that you meet - is it takes you a while to work him out and I think that is the journey of the film; to get to understand him.
Josie is an incredibly lonely character. But he is also basically happy. So, he is a complex, unusual, funny, sad, moving, intriguing kind of character.»
Visual Style
«I like to work in a really spare visual style. So there is a kind of bareness and simplicity in the way that we shoot. If you can keep the style still enough, then the smallest ripples become visible.
That is not to say that every sequence or scene is shot in the same way. I like the idea of incorporating different styles within the same film. Not in a very self modernistic way so that the audience will notice it, but just in a way that allows the audience to feel each scene appropriately.
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I’ve worked with Peter Robertson, the Director of Photography many times before on commercials. I just think he is an excellent cameraman. I love the fact that Peter lightssimply. So as a result, not only do you get very beautiful images but ones where the scaffolding is hidden. You don’t see the tricks. It just seems right and at the same time is beautifully judged.»
The Location
Garage was shot around Birr, Co Offaly, Portumna and Woodford, Co Galway and Co Tipperary, as well as some interior scenes in Dublin over 6 weeks in late summer 2006
«We were looking for several things : a garage as the key location,
then a town as outskirts, a railway line, a lake : particular things that are part of the vocabulary of a small town - specific locations where teenagers gather.
The garage was what led us to the part of the country we chose - the west midlands. I liked the area because it was unremarkable. Many filmmakers attempt to make Ireland look like Ireland by emphasising aspects of it. What I try to do is reflect what’s there in striking, but truthful ways.»
The Edit
«I think you make a film three times : first when it’s written. Second when it’s shot. Third when it’s edited.
You have to be prepared to dump a pre-determined vision and construct the film that is really there in the rushes. I made radical cuts to Garage in the edit. Our first cut was 2 and a half hours long. The film ended up at 85 minutes long. With all those cuts, the real Josie at the centre of the film came out. By making it sparer, it became deeper.»
The Music
«It’s about as little music as you get in a film these days. Most films might have 30 music cues. Garage has one.
Stephen Rennicks, my long-term collaborator and great friend, composed an orchestral and quite epic, beautiful, dense sound, heard first at the top of the film. Then you cut to this little fat bloke who appears to be having a very prosaic conversation with his boss. For that to work, Stephen had to hint at the gravitas without turning it into farce at the top. By doing this, he helped to create anticipation of a film of greater depth than at first might seem to be the case, which I hope is justified by the film when the music is repeated at the end.»
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