Writer/Director/Actor Embeth Davidtz talks to The Inside Reel about music, inspiration and placing the puzzle together in regards to her new film from Sony Pictures Classics: "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight."
00:00These people know what we're doing, so you just better bloody watch yourself.
00:17I'll never leave here. You'll never leave me.
00:21This is how the story ends.
00:23All our lives, we are kissed with separation and loneliness.
00:30And longing.
00:34Can you talk about music? Because the music was so important to that.
00:39Yes. I had a fantastic composer, this chap called Chris Letcher, who got that sound of the imbira, the African sound, but the haunting, the twisted sound.
00:48You know, that sore, that sort of mournful sore stem that we used in it.
00:54And then we used music of the time, the Rodriguez song, which was so of the time, both Zimbabwe and South Africa.
00:59Everybody listened to it. Patricia the Stripper was an iconic song that all children of that time, you know, within a 10 year radius, mimicked strip teasing to.
01:10So inappropriate. No parents ever stopped it. It was just sort of like the anthem for children of that age.
01:14And so music was, you know, South Africans, it's going to be interesting when they see the film, we're going to South Africa next week.
01:21I'm so curious to see how people remember that time, both the look of it, the experience of it, and then that sound.
01:29But then I just think Chris Letcher's haunting music is the thing that sort of created its own world for the film.
01:36They come to take their land back.
01:39What are you going to do, Mum?
01:40If I find somebody's cut my fences, I'll shoot them.
01:45Oh.
01:46Mum says she'll die for this land.
01:49She says if she doesn't have a gun, she'll fight for the farm with her bare hands.
01:55I believe her.
01:56But, and also, two more questions if I have time.
02:12Sure, of course.
02:14The thing is also, it's interesting you being now an adult when you were a kid, but having to play the adult in that time, that sort of dichotomy.
02:23Can you talk about that?
02:24Because that's sort of an interesting sort of irony, because you have to play a character with that kind of, you know.
02:32Yes.
02:33I don't want to give too much away, but you know what I'm saying.
02:35Yes, I pulled all of the child information that I needed from Alexandra Fuller.
02:42It was so rich.
02:43There was so much.
02:43Then I stitched in some of my own recollections.
02:46I think it's why I just resonated with her story so much.
02:49I was like, I was a kid just like that.
02:51That kind of wild and wily and looking at things, noticing things.
02:55But then there's an adult that I had all of the history of.
02:59So her mother had many sort of nervous breakdowns, for want of a better word.
03:04She had, there was mental illness in the family, alcoholism in the family.
03:07I certainly observed enough people like that when I was a kid.
03:11There's a danger.
03:12There's a slow ticking time bomb feeling to people who behave like that.
03:18So that's somewhat infused into the danger of the world for the child because she's, mom's good right now.
03:25Oh, crap.
03:25Here we start to go downhill.
03:27It's not going to go well.
03:28At the same time as the world around them feels like it's closing in and feels dangerous.
03:32So, you know, that I had a ton of resource from the book, the way she describes her mother.
03:36And, um, I guess I remember seeing that around me too.
03:45Some of them are quite fat.
03:47Yeah, on my grazing.
03:50Mom, am I African?
03:56No, Bubba.
03:58Are you?
03:59No.
04:01Is it because we don't have brown skin, black skin?
04:03It's complicated.
04:09Is it because we weren't born here?
04:11No.
04:13My last question, and this, this is another aspect is environment, obviously shooting on that in that one location.
04:19But the way everybody moves is the way the Afrikaans move, the way the white people move.
04:25It's all in a really weird sort of dreadful dance that's leading towards that civil war aspect.
04:33Can you talk about looking at movement, but using that space, even though it's a wide open space, it feels very claustrophobic.
04:39Can you talk about that?
04:40Yeah.
04:41Yeah.
04:41So that house is meant to feel like, I always said, I want the walls to feel like they're closing in all the time.
04:46You know, the shadows that just shut everything in.
04:49Outside there's expanse, but even that, the shadows grow longer.
04:53I started to say, let's shoot later in the afternoon so that the shadows feel longer.
04:57It's so great that you spotted that.
04:58And then, you know, the music sort of adds to it.
05:02And then also, as the whites feel like their world is shutting down, which it is, and they're losing their grasp on their power position, you know, they become messier.
05:16They become, you know, the mother stumbling.
05:19There's always someone off balance.
05:20Their feet are off balance.
05:22They're dancing drunk.
05:23Whereas the African is very rooted to the earth, and they glide, and they move it.
05:28And that wasn't even instruction that I had to give.
05:31If that was something naturally there in those beautiful actors, right, Zikona Bali and Fumani, they just, she's just glorious.
05:39And so she moves the way I needed her to move.
05:41And when you tell, you know, wonderful white South African actors who've witnessed what they've witnessed, this is what we're playing in the scene as a drunk, off-kilter conga line, they knew exactly how to do it.
05:52So I love that you picked that up because I wanted those two rhythms going against each other.
05:57Give, give, give, give it to me.
06:04What is this?
06:05This is not what a little girl should be doing.
06:09Even a little boy.
06:11There's something wrong with you.
06:13Can you put your hand all the way to touch your other ear?
06:17Mm, see?
06:19You know what that means?
06:20That means you are too young to go to boarding school, and you are too young to be smoking.
06:24That's what we say.
06:28There's nothing wrong with me.
06:29I'm perfect.
06:30Perfect.
06:32Huh.
06:32Tell me a story.
06:42Not today, Baba.
06:44Not today.
06:45I do have one follow-up.
06:46In your mind's eye, because when you're writing something, and when it comes to fruition and you're shooting it, and then when it's seen by an audience, there are three distinctly different things.
06:54Can you talk about your mind's eye creatively and how that progression felt to you?
07:01Well, I loved the writing, because I was getting from the book, and then I was sparking with my own ideas and building this thing out, and I was like, this is fantastic.
07:08I know exactly how it's going to look.
07:10On the day, for the most part, it never looked the way I anticipated it was going to look, right?
07:15It just doesn't.
07:16And so then there are the 100 accidents that happen a day, but those are also gifts.
07:20And then I would pivot, put the child under the table, don't have her running because she's all over the place.
07:25Put her under the table with the dog, and then I've got a scene, and I can capture everything I need.
07:29And the edit, the edit was the revelation, because then I can do everything.
07:35Oh, my God, I loved it so much.
07:37I loved it.
07:38Then I can use the music.
07:38Oh, let's put some music.
07:39Let's put some clapping here.
07:41Let's cut to a dog.
07:42Let's cut to a sad, mournful dog on the couch.
07:45Now let's bring this.
07:46Now let's move that.
07:47Oh, I just loved that part of it.
07:49So to me, that was the place where everything really did come together, and my favorite part of it.
07:55I believe her.
08:00Are you racist?
08:02What?
08:03Certainly not.
08:04What sort of people are we saying?
08:05Africans have eyes to see what the whites cannot see.
