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Hunky heartthrob Daniel Craig pairs up with the
exquisitely beautiful Nicole Kidman for a very modern
and very chilling retelling of the sci-fi classic The
Body Snatchers.
Nothing
stirs on the chilly streets of downtown Baltimore as the
sun sinks below the cityscape. The daily occupants of
the soaring skyscrapers that mark each intersection have
all gone home. Only a few cars make their way down the
canyon-like streets. But a hub of activity has taken
over an alleyway, scarcely detectable from one of the
broad streets—giant trucks are parked and open to reveal
costumes, craft services, camera equipment. As if
they’ve just leapt into action, a movie crew has all its
cameras and sound equipment aimed at the exit ramp of
one of the city’s massive underground parking structures
dug deep beneath the 40-story
Mason
Legg Building.
Suddenly, the director shouts “Action!” and the word is
echoed by production assistants scattered around the
alleyway. After a moment of silence, the statuesque,
immediately recognizable actress dressed in jeans and a
light sweater comes tearing up the ramp, leading the way
for her child, who runs alongside trying to keep up. A
steadicam operator joins the fray, filming their freedom
sprint up close as they clear the alley. “And Cut!” the
director shouts.
Nicole
Kidman, the Oscar-winning star of films like The
Hours and The Others, bundles herself up in a
long down coat, as does her young costar, Jackson Bond.
The director lowers his hood as he approaches the pair.
This is Oliver Hirschbiegel, a European filmmaker whose
compelling drama Downfall won numerous awards and
gained him worldwide recognition, and the chance to
direct two of the biggest stars in the world for his
first American production, the other being Daniel Craig,
recently minted as box-office royalty after powering
Casino Royale, his first outing as superspy James
Bond, to becoming the highest-grossing 007 movie ever.
The film
is Warner Bros. Pictures’ The Invasion, a
contemporary action thriller that explores the
possibilities of a nearly imperceptible alien invasion
that slips to the Earth on the hull of the space
shuttle. When the shuttle cracks up in the atmosphere,
the alien hijacker—which takes the form of a
spore—becomes impossible to contain. And overnight—in
their sleep—people begin to change, their body and minds
given over to something markedly not human. Kidman plays
a psychiatrist whose experience with a patient becomes
her first warning sign that her world is changing. Soon,
more and more people are transformed into emotionless,
colorless “Snatchers” with one imperative: to infect
others and take control.
In the
film, the only way to remain undetected as an unchanged
human is to show no emotion. Kidman’s character, Carol
Bennell, goes from struggling to understand what’s going
on to the single imperative of rescuing her son from
Snatchers. Jackson Bond, making his feature film debut,
stars as Carol’s son, Oliver, who is somehow immune to
the infection and may hold the key to a cure—which is
why the Snatchers want him and why Carol must stay awake
long enough to protect him.
Since it
was published in 1955, Jack Finney’s classic novel
The Body Snatchers has become regarded as one of the
most resonant examples of the power of science fiction
to explore social and political paradigms of a given
era. In the 1950s the film starring Kevin McCarthy
provided subtextual commentary on the Communist scare
that swept the nation; while the 1978 film starring
Donald Sutherland, released in the wake of the Vietnam
War and the Watergate scandal, echoed the fears of a
population that has ceased to trust its leaders.
The
Invasion,
as adapted from the book by screenwriter David Kajganich,
and directed by Hirschbiegel, reflects the contemporary
cultural issues stemming from fear of pandemic to social
and political unrest. “It still has political overtones,
but I think it’s about how an insidious invasion like
this could happen, how without us realizing it or being
aware of it, it could just creep in and take over,”
comments producer Joel Silver. “That was the most
effective part of the material. David Kajganich wrote an
original screenplay that really is fresh and takes the
idea in a different light, and we did good service to
that. I mean, the movie is thrilling and exciting; it’s
edge-of-your-seat, creepy entertainment. And I think
those are the elements that it originally had and which
we mined to make it work for today.”
Craig,
who redefined James Bond for modern audiences after
acclaimed roles in films like Layer Cake and
Munich, was familiar with the past incarnations of the Body
Snatcher stories, also based on the classic book by Jack
Finney, and notes that arteries of social and political
issues run through the subtext of the action-thriller.
In The Invasion, the first people to be
transformed come from the seats of government in
Washington
and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. “It’s
exciting to find that we’re going through a time where
political cinema is entertaining,” comments Craig. “You
can entertain people and make them think, and it really
boils down to that.”
Later
that evening, after Hirschbiegel has completed the
sequence at the parking exit ramp, the company moves to
an intersection of streets in the heart of downtown
Baltimore. The temperature has plunged to below freezing
and the city feels so empty and abandoned that the idea
of alien invasion seems not so far outside the realm of
extreme possibility. The only living souls for miles
seem to be members of the film crew and scores of extras
in the costume of Snatchers—business attire in muted
browns, blacks and grays.
The
sequence at hand involves Carol Bennell and her only
trusted friend, Ben, played by Craig. During one of his
few breaks from orchestrating the nights roster of
shots, Hirschbiegel explains the sequence: “It’s a scene
when they have realized that Oliver’s probably going to
be on the train to Baltimore the next morning, so
they’re on their way there,” he says, his breath forming
little puffs of condensation in the cold. “They stole a
police car, but they were detected and are now being
followed. And the strange thing is that the cops don’t
do anything. They seem to push them in a certain
direction. They’ve pushed them toward the center where
they detain all the people that haven’t changed.”
“Ben
comes up with this plan to really take a fast turn into
an alley and get Carol out of the car, then be the hero
and distract the crowd so that she can get away,”
Hirschbiegel says.
The
downtown streets, which stand in for
Washington,
D.C., in this sequence, were a revelation for the European
director. “I like all the streets because they are big,
like a movie set,” he says. “There are so many different
corners and such a variety in architecture that I’m
pretty sure I’ll be back here.”
Daniel
Craig arrives on set dressed in a police uniform
complete with the low, angular policeman’s cap. This
sequence has Kidman and Craig approaching the alley in a
police car that, off-camera, is being pulled by a camera
car. After a handful of takes, some of them shot with a
handheld camera from inside the car, Kidman is wrapped
for the night but Craig stays on set to watch the
night’s action unfold.
Though
he’d never before worked with Kidman or Hirschbiegel,
Craig had an immediate affinity for the team behind
The Invasion. “We wanted to make this experience as
fun as possible,” says Craig, still wearing his
policeman’s uniform.
Of his
famous costar, he says, “She’s incredibly down-to-earth,
which sounds surprising. When you have such a big movie
star as Nicole, you expect certain things. But she’s
incredibly professional and makes my life very easy.
She makes me laugh and, hopefully, I make her laugh
occasionally.”
****
Opening
across the
Philippines
on August 29, The Invasion is distributed by
Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment
company. |
