Director Paul Anderson talks about his film Pompeii and says that the romantic scenes were the toughest to shoot
Pompeii took some time to get made. How did the project come aboutIJ
I’ve been obsessed with Romans since I was a child. I grew up in the North of England in New Castle, where Hadrian’s Wall starts on the East coast of England. When I was a kid, every field trip was to some Roman fort or to Hadrian’s Wall because it was cheap and free. Romans were a big part of my life when I was a kid so I was always fascinated by them. Pompeii was a part of what we were taught in school and the idea of this city that’s really been preserved in time was fascinating. It’s really one of the most unique archeological sites in the world. You can see life as it was frozen in time. These people were flash fried at the point of death. So you see these frozen figures. And also all the artifacts are there, like loaves of bread and things like that, that were perfectly preserved when the ash fell and buried Pompeii. I think Pompeii is an evocative subject matter. That’s something I’ve been obsessed with for a long time. I’ve been trying to make Pompeii since 2008. So it’s definitely a five to six-year labour of love.
This genre of period drama and love saga is far different from your earlier films. How did you get yourself to do PompeiiIJ
It’s been really fun. It’s been refreshing in a way, but there are similarities from the kind of movies I make and the technical complexities of them. It obviously lends itself to making a movie like this, creating Pompeii and the whole city and the disastrous elements of it. But it’s been fun just directing the drama aspect of it and the love story as well, which has been really great. There is more kissing than any movie I’ve ever made, probably more kissing in this than my all films put together. And it’s really good kissing as well, it’s very emotional. Kit (Harrington) and Emily (Browning) are just fantastic. And also Jared (Harris) and Carrie-Anne (Moss) as the parents, it’s a really strong relationship they have. But the Kit-Emily thing is the most exciting, it’s hot. She is obviously a very beautiful woman, but the more dirt and blood you put on her, undoubtedly the sexier she becomes. She’s gorgeous at the start of the movie but she’s unbelievably stunning by the end when she’s just covered in ash and blood and beaten up by Kiefer (Sutherland).
What was it about Kit Harrington and Emily Browning that made you think they could pull off this kind of a filmIJ
I was obsessed with Kit since Game of Thrones. He came across as such a star in Game of Thrones. I thought, ‘That is a movie star waiting to happen.’ I’ve been a fan of Emily, too, for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of her Australian work. Being British you see a lot of Australian movies and TV shows. She reminded me, in a little way, of Milla (Jovovich), someone who’s been working since she’s a child, who, although she’s very young, has an incredible body of work behind and is an incredibly accomplished actress for the age that she is.
The film we hear has a lot of real life sets and no green screens. Why that insistence to build real life setsIJ
It’s a historical movie but it’s not in the mould of films like 300 or Immortals. I wanted a believable, historical world. I think for disaster and drama to work, you really need to feel like you’re in that world. I wanted to build as much of Pompeii as possible. We recreated an entire street, we had a whole villa built which we’ve now destroyed so there’s none of that left. But we built an awful lot to really reinforce the reality of the history. It made it easier for the actors. The central garden was there, the rooms off it, the bedrooms, the exedra, which is the balcony — we built it all. We built as much of the arena as possible and you can see we’ve got like 350 to 400 extras working today, so there’s a huge chunk of scope and scale you’ll get in camera. As a filmmaker, it helps me decide when to go wide, when to go for the digital shots.
When you get the script, you have one or two scenes that you’re both thrilled to make and also nervous. What was that scene or two scenes that hit those markIJ
It was definitely the scenes with Kit and Emily, the love story aspect of the movie because it’s not something that I’m particularly well-known for. It was something I was very excited to do but also I was a little tense about it. They’re definitely the high point of the movie and we filmed them pretty early. I’m pleased with them. Their relationship develops so fast, they have this compressed relationship because it’s in this disastrous setting. They basically have a day to fall in love and live a whole life together before what happens at the end of the film. They really pull it off. I’m very proud of that stuff, it’s very emotional. Then, there was this scene we called love in the Ruins where all hell is breaking loose and they think it’s the end of the world and they share this kiss, and it’s wonderfully passionate. It’s great, it’s like one of those things that you want should go on and on. I was worried about it but then it turned out great, probably because I was worried about it. I put a lot more effort into that, I think, than kind of thinking about the volcano and the visual effects. Because I think that’s something that I know, that’s in my wheelhouse and I can do that. I think for this movie, a lot more of my planning went into the romance and the kind of character aspects of the screenplay and the performance.