ScreenWize

If you run your eyes down the list of films that Anand Tucker has directed, you’d be forgiven for thinking he made a very deliberate effort to become a specialist in adaptations of personal memoirs. After years of making television documentaries about people in the sports and arts worlds, Tucker made his first feature about Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the French author of The Little Prince. After that, there was Hilary and Jackie, about the musical du Pre sisters, Shopgirl based on a Steve martin novel, and now And When Did You Last See Your Father, based on the best selling memoir by Blake Morrison. But the career direction was far from planned. “It was pure bloody accident,” says Tucker energetically. “I keep trying to make films with guns and cars and explosions and girls but it never seems to happen.” If you’ve seen any of his films, you’ll know that Tucker’s work is calm and heart-felt, that there’s a romantic sensibility to the sliding camerawork, and that the stories push slowly and carefully into the core of human relationships. The Tucker perspective is all about a distinctive and very English view of the real things that happen in life. “True life is so amazing, and so much weirder than fiction,” continues Tucker. “And what’s really interesting with true life is that, if you find the right story, you can find so much of yourself in it. We’re all on this amazing journey, trying to make sense of what the hell is going on, and you never really come up with any answers. But somehow, living through other people’s experience of the big things – of love, life, death and birth - you get help with your own journey through life. Those kinds of stories are always rewarding and that’s why I do them.”

Tucker’s latest film And When Did You Last See Your Father is all about love, life death and birth. The love is that between a son – the poet Blake Morrison played as an adult by Colin Firth and as a teenager by Mathew Beard - and his father Arthur, played by Jim Broadbent. Arthur is dying and Blake returns home to see out the last days of his father’s life. Rambling through the old family home in the beautiful English countryside Blake’s memories of childhood flood back –camping trips and embarrassing dinner parties with his father, teenage love, and more than a hint of family scandal – a sly sub-plot that gives the second half of the film its subtle energy.

It’s a very English film - in a sentimental way – and much of it set in the 1960’s, adding to the sense of nostalgia. It may seem odd then that this is rendered so beautifully on the screen by Tucker who was born in Bangkok to Indian and German parents. But he explains how he came - in many ways - to be more English than the English. “I grew up in Thailand and Hong Kong and went to English schools. In some ways I feel very Thai, and when you’ve grown up in the Far East it gets in your blood. But as I got older I realised that, having gone to English schools, my cultural heart was always in England. I remember all my friends would go home for the summer and come back with cool new haircuts and the latest album by The Damned. It was all happening ‘over there’, so I had to get over there.”

Tucker arrived in England when he was 18 and after a stint at film school joined Oxford Film and Television Production, where he learned the dual skills of directing and producing. But his expatriate sensibility never left him. “Now - as someone who works in England - I realise that I have a different eye for the place because I carry that romantic idea of England that was formed in my mind in my formative teen years. It never leaves you, and it has informed my film making ever since.” This helps explain Tucker’s more traditional approach to camera work. He prefers the style of “cinematic heroes” like Martin Scorsese and Peter Weir to the currently fashionable look of gritty handheld realism.

When it comes to bringing real life stories to screen, Tucker has no qualms about shaping the truth to the medium. “You have to immerse yourself in the book you’re dealing with first, and find the one thing about it that’s truthful for yourself,” he says, explaining his approach to adaptation as a director. “Then you have to throw away the source material and make your own version of the story. There’s no such thing as the truth. You have to make your own version of it.”

It’s an approach that places the art of film storytelling above the concerns of the author or others close to the real individuals involved. “You hope at the end that it’s not a complete fabrication,” says Tucker. “You hope that when Blake Morrison sees the final movie, he doesn’t run out of the cinema screaming, grab the nearest shotgun and blow your brains out.” Tucker laughs at his own exaggeration, but he experienced the bitter breath of criticism at the release of Hilary and Jackie, which was rejected by many of Jacqueline du Pre’s family and friends as a “gross misinterpretation” of the truth. Tucker isn’t apologetic “Everyone has their own version of famous people. In the end I try and make the best movie I can, and forget there’s a book or a real person involved – a film is not real life. For me, once I really know the material, I fly on instinct and hope that it doesn’t let me down.”

Another distinguishing characteristic of Tucker’s films are the top shelf actors that he manages to cast in leading roles – Bruno Ganz and Miranda Richardson in Saint-Ex, Emily Watson and Racheal Griffiths in Hilary and Jackie, and now Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent in And When Did You Last See Your Father. Tucker modestly dismisses that he has anything to do with this. “You need wonderful actors to carry these kinds of stories off. You haven’t got rip-roaring plots with bank heists and car chases to carry you through, so you’re looking at actors and their performance to make the movie work. But the secret to getting good actors is having a good script. I’ve been very lucky that the three writers I have made films with are absolute geniuses. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how charming I am or how much of a salesman I am, if the script is no good, no one is going to come and do it.”

Tucker didn’t have to wait long at all to cast And When Did You Last See Your Father. Within three months of getting the script he was out shooting. “It was a miracle” he says. “As soon as I got the script I sent it to Colin and Jim and they both said yes immediately. It really is a testament to the strength of the writing.” The overseas born English director remains modest to the end: the many Academy and BAFTA Award nominations that have come with him at the helm probably have something to do with it.

Filed Under: Interviews by Simon