IR Interview: Iain Glen & Sasha Luss For "The Last Front" [Enigma[
Actors Iain Glen & Sasha Luss talk to The Inside Reel about approach, intensity and perspective in regards to their World War I-set film: "The Last Front" from Enigma Releasing.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00♪♪
00:10♪♪
00:18Help!
00:19♪♪
00:23Lock your door, barricade yourself in. Have you got a gun?
00:25Father, listen to me for once!
00:29No!
00:37Ian, first, could you talk about Leonard and his perspective?
00:40You know, the aspect of, you know, being in war but not wanting to be in war,
00:46being pulled by his wife's hand at one point versus not.
00:51Can you talk about that in terms of motivation?
00:54And then I'll go to Sasha for Louise.
00:56Sure, sure. So I play Leonard and he's a farmer living a very, very simple life
01:01in rural Belgium during the very, very early days, pre-days of the First World War.
01:07He has a young son and daughter, kind of in their teens, late teens.
01:14And yeah, his life is torn apart by a war that is totally unexpected,
01:20that none of them understand.
01:22It's the very, very early days, as I say, of the First World War.
01:25So no one knows quite what is going on.
01:28So he really does represent in many ways and every man, like you or I,
01:33how we might be in a very rural setting when suddenly war invades,
01:38where you have no idea that it's about to hit you.
01:40And there are profound repercussions for him and his family.
01:44And the film captures, I think, very beautifully the rhythm of that life
01:49and the simplicity of that life and the honesty of that life
01:52and represents the kind of meaningless of war,
02:02how it takes no prisoners. It doesn't care.
02:05It doesn't care what it's destroying.
02:08And the film, I think, captures that very, very nicely.
02:18Who have I been praying to all this time?
02:20Search every building. I don't care who you have to kill to find him.
02:23You just find him.
02:31You were my shelter, my quiet place in the chaos.
02:45From your point of view, Sasha, because it's also,
02:47she's as much of a warrior as he is in many respects.
02:51Yeah, well, it doesn't start like that.
02:57I'm a daughter of one of the wealthiest men in our town.
03:01I feel like I'm a little princess and I am in love with Leonard's son,
03:07who is the son of a farmer.
03:09And I just choose this life.
03:13And while my parents are telling me that that's a really bad idea,
03:17and I don't care because love is love.
03:20But then the war happens and all my dreams and the way I thought
03:26my life was going to be is completely crashed by these horrible events.
03:31And I think, yeah, we play people that are unwillingly become part
03:37of this horrible event, you know, and you have no choice
03:42but to just go through it.
03:44I feel like Louise throughout the movie kind of is questioning,
03:47but why does this happen? Why?
03:50And the answer is, well, it just happened.
03:54And you have no choice but to go through it.
04:04We need to stop for a while.
04:07Johanna's wounds opened up.
04:09I think it's the movement of the cart.
04:15We're close to the French border.
04:18What do you think? A couple of hours?
04:22Bite that?
04:24Then we plow on.
04:28Why are we waiting?
04:31Let's them get closer to the border.
04:33Yeah, but every it's interesting.
04:35Every choice begets another with these characters.
04:38I mean, could you talk about that?
04:40And the because like the emotionality can be informed
04:43by the physicality for both characters, you know,
04:46that basically your body just reacts to these situations.
04:50You know, I would think as an actor being in sort
04:53of these environments, it really impacts you.
04:57And you both have done films and series that have done this.
05:00Could you talk about how it's different in something
05:03that's based within, say, real life more?
05:07Yeah.
05:08I mean, you know, we're simple creatures, really actors.
05:11And if you can place us in the environment,
05:17which this film certainly did, we shot all around Belgium
05:21and often in buildings that hadn't changed
05:24since the period to which they belonged.
05:28The whole cityscape, the farmstead that I live in,
05:33obviously the forest, a large section of the kind
05:36of part of the escape takes place.
05:38And so, you know, you put on your costumes
05:41and the costumes were absolutely wonderful.
05:44You know, it's kind of like your shoulders relax
05:50when you put on something that feels so right
05:52for the character and for the period.
05:57And you kind of don't want to change out of it.
05:59And so you kind of, I certainly during the course
06:02of the whole filming stayed, you know, I went off
06:05at the end of the day, but I didn't like to go back
06:08to a trailer.
06:09I can't even remember if there was one, to be honest,
06:11but you basically live, you know, I wanted to stay
06:14in my house that I lived in while I was there and stuff.
06:16And, you know, and all that is extraordinarily helpful.
06:20And again, it kind of highlights just when everything
06:23is then torn apart.
06:24So you sort of try and become that as much as you can,
06:26as you say, emotionally and physically,
06:29and then you let the film happen to you.
06:31And that's the only kind of, in a way you try and be
06:34as reactive as possible to the events as they unfold.
06:38Unprepared, kind of unprepared stuff.
06:41And a lot of the stuff that was hardest to do
06:44was the most unscripted stuff where it was just reaction
06:47to what was unfolding.
06:49But yeah, so I kind of went through my own little trajectory
06:53of being very, very at peace in this place.
06:56And it wasn't entirely chronologically,
06:58but mostly chronological that we shot the film
07:01to having everything sort of torn apart and having to spend,
07:05you know, night shoots just, you know,
07:08tearing yourself apart or, you know,
07:10so there was a full gamut there.
07:12And yeah, so I felt very fully exercised
07:17as an actor doing the role.
07:19Get off me! I can't breathe!
07:21Who are you? Why are you spying on us?
07:23Answer the question, boy!
07:24I was just hungry. I was looking for food.
07:26The rifle.
07:27I'm on the road to the Germans.
07:31I killed my parents. I killed my parents.
07:39Come on.
07:45We're heading for the French border.
07:47You can come with us.
07:51Are you with the resistance?
07:52No, I'm just a farmer.
07:55Where did you get this?
07:58This is Adrian's.
08:01It's my son's.
08:03You know, I feel like just the knowledge
08:07of what these people went through, you know,
08:10because it's a real event that did happen
08:13and we have all the, you know, history that we can learn.
08:17And you know what kind of weight you have
08:22on your shoulders, you know,
08:23when you're portraying these people,
08:25even though this particular story, you know,
08:27was created, but it's the story that could happen,
08:30you know, like, and most definitely in one way or another,
08:33one shape or form did happen.
08:35So just understanding this and as Ian said,
08:38you know, you do kind of have a title
08:40machine when you're working in a period film,
08:42because I remember we were filming this church sequence
08:46and you step out of the church and you see horse carriage,
08:50you see this vintage car, you know,
08:52like people walking in their 1914 outfits.
08:55Someone is reading an old newspaper and you really feel
08:59like you're part of that world.
09:01And then when you see this little village getting destroyed,
09:05you know, by the German troops,
09:07I remember I had tears in my eyes because I could imagine
09:11that this actually happened.
09:12I could feel it.
09:13And that helped a lot.
09:14And of course you were very supportive,
09:17but it was very really, as Ian said,
09:20people point and script and you hold on tight to it and you kind
09:24of, but it's just the event itself helps you feel like,
09:30you know, this,
09:32It's a kind of strange paradox, sorry,
09:34just of when you do kind of quite fast filming like this,
09:38this is not big budget filming.
09:40This is not huge.
09:41You know, you don't have huge unit bases.
09:43You don't have huge production value that you're,
09:46I mean, I think it's got great production value,
09:48but it's not, it's not manufactured by lots and lots of people
09:53in the moment.
09:54It's not, you know,
09:55it's not, you know,
09:58It's in the trenches.
10:02It sounds like it's in the trenches.
10:04Yeah.
10:05And it's fast speed.
10:06It's speed filming, you know, a lot of handheld,
10:08a lot of in the moment, can't have too many takes.
10:10And so that allows you as an actor kind of to live it a little bit
10:14more readily than the big budget films,
10:17which it's always just slow, slow, slow.
10:19So it's about waiting.
10:20There wasn't much waiting in this one at all.
10:23The line where they fell,
10:30we'll go back and bury them.
10:32When all this is over,
10:37we have to get the people to safety.
10:39They won't bother us.
10:40We're civilians.
10:41We can fight them.
10:42No, no,
10:44we can't risk any more lives.
10:45Leonard,
10:46shouldn't we hide in the field?
10:48Isn't that the safest place?
10:49They're not going to do anything.
10:51They want water and food.
10:52And that's it.
10:53We should defend our homes.
10:54If we're going to die,
10:55we might as well die with honor.
10:57Nobody's going to die.
10:58People have already died.
11:00They're heavily armed.
11:02They don't care.
11:03Believe me,
11:04Nicholas,
11:05more people are going to die.
11:06Well,
11:07you can hide all you want,
11:08but I'm going to fight.
11:09With what?
11:10Your butcher's knives.
11:11If you owe guns,
11:12follow me.
11:13No,
11:14it seems like you tend to have connection.
11:16And that's my last question.
11:17Connection in these moments,
11:18because it is these intimate stories
11:20that maybe this is,
11:21you know,
11:22many of these stories have been lost,
11:23you know,
11:24and it's only by remembering it,
11:25do we sort of pass it on to the next generation?
11:28I think it's true.
11:29And also just zoning,
11:30you can zone in all sorts of different aspects of war,
11:33about,
11:34you know,
11:35how to avoid it and how politicians made it happen.
11:36And what was it that,
11:37what territory was trying to be gained?
11:39And what fateful decision was made that caused the,
11:41you know,
11:42D-Day to go right,
11:43as opposed to what you can focus on that.
11:45But you can also focus on three or four characters,
11:48a little group of characters,
11:50and they know nothing about war.
11:53They know nothing about it.
11:55They,
11:56they,
11:57they don't know why it's happening and nor should they.
11:59And so you can actually get inside it and just,
12:02just shoot a film from,
12:04from the inside of how,
12:06how people who are living a very simple life,
12:09try and cope with this thing happening to them.
12:12And that seems to me as valid.
12:14If not,
12:15you know,
12:16yeah,
12:17a very valid way of trying to tell a story about the first
12:20world war or about any war.
12:44Yeah.