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| Broken Bird Photo: Frightfest |
Joanne Mitchell's directorial feature début Broken Bird revolves around the timid and socially awkward mortician, Sybil Chamberlain (Rebecca Calder). Dominic Brunt adapts Mitchell's 2018 short film Sybil, from an original story by Tracey Sheals, to explore the tragic story of a woman whose search for love has gone unanswered.
A tragic accident when she was ten-years-old, took everything from Sybil. Lonely and feeling empty inside, she recites poetry to a small unappreciative audience, practices taxidermy, and desires the perfect family. Otherwise, she relies on the dead for company. As reality and reason begin to slip away, will she be able to contain those dark desires beckoning to be released? Will she forever be in the happiness trap, or will she find love?
Broken Bird leads the way in opening the 25th Anniversary of FrightFest. It's a striking accomplishment for a director to open a festival with their feature début, but Mitchell has become a FrightFest alum, writing, producing and acting in memorable films that have played the event dubbed "The Woodstock of Gore" by Guillermo del Toro, that include her short film Sybil, Inbred (2011), Before Dawn (2013), Bait (2014), and Attack Of The Adult Babies (2017).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Mitchell discussed those unexpected or unconscious influences, blurring the line between fantasy and reality and how there are not enough dark and complicated female characters in horror cinema.
Paul Risker: Looking back, what are the roots of your cinematic journey?
Joanne Mitchell: The thing that always springs to mind for me is that, as a child, I didn't have access to what kids have access to today, so, to go to the cinema or watch a film on the big box you had in your living room was a big deal. VHS was only just coming in. Every Christmas was exciting because two films were shown every year: The Wizard Of Oz and Gone With The Wind. I looked forward to watching those two films every Christmas as a little girl.
Gone With The Wind is an epic - it's huge. How a child of my age could have the concentration to watch that, because I know if I gave it to my kids, in five minutes they'd say, "Ah no, we'll go and watch YouTube." I would watch it and if we could record it, I'd watch it again. It was the same with The Wizard Of Oz - it was such a treat to watch them both.
They're both big Hollywood movies but two very different movies on scale. One's fantasy and the other is based on reality. I loved Gone With The Wind because of Scarlett O'Hara - I thought she was wonderful. Then there was the story and the whole American thing. I didn't really understand it, but the epic quality of it was fascinating. And Wizard Of Oz just because it had every single element of filmmaking. I didn't realise it at the time, and it's only recently that I've been openly talking about it being my favourite movie. I always thought it was a bit uncool to say it was a favourite that has stayed with me since I was a child because it's not [Alfred] Hitchcock or [Stanley] Kubrick, both of whom I love.
So, The Wizard Of Oz started me off on my cinema journey because it had all the elements of hope and spirituality, drama, horror, and comedy, and it went from black and white to technicolour. It was magical, and it has always stayed with me in my subconscious.
PR Do you see any parallels between the way Broken Bird and The Wizard of Oz's juxtapose reality and fantasy?
JM: I'd watched Broken Bird hundreds of times, and I really didn't see it until I watched it this one time. So, I must have been subconsciously thinking about this when we were writing and making it. There is an actual moment, and it's one I really wanted, but I haven't put it down as a Wizard Of Oz moment, where Emma comes to Sybil's house. The tension is building and it's very dark. Is Sybil going to kill her? She opens the door and its technicolour, and I thought that's like Dorothy, after she has gone over the rainbow, and she opens the door onto the technicolour Oz.
It's not the same because we haven't got the same characters, but it was this childish element that I always wanted Sybil to have because she lives in the past. Even though she's desperately trying to build something, a life and a future, well, it's not really her life, but it's what she thinks as her life, and I realised it's like Wizard Of Oz. It sounds a bit wanky, but I can honestly say [laughs] that I hadn't had that realisation, and no one pointed it out to me until I saw it and I pointed it out to a few people.
In our life, we have those cellular imprints of things that have made an impression on us, and we don't always know that we're even making those decisions until later. That's the beauty of art and creativity, because we're all on a journey, and so is Sybil. We make choices, and they're not necessarily the right ones, particularly in Sybil's case, but they're true to us at the time. And that's another thing - I wanted everything Sybil does to be based on her reality. It might not be anybody else's reality, but everything is true to her.
Some people could perceive her as a monster and some of her actions are monstrous, but there's a reason for everything she does. It's all based on a truth from her past, specifically her trauma. So, yes, The Wizard Of Oz's light and dark that Broken Bird plays with is in the tone of the colour, the set design, but mainly it's in Sybil's head. And the music as well, which I was keen on developing, so in moments we could be inside Sybil's head, where everything's skewed, strange, and dark. Then, in other moments, she's in her fantasy, where things are wonderful and perfect. It was about exploring those different dimensions.
PR: Sybil's internal world is a significant part of her character, and in as much as she has control over it, like the act of dreaming, there's an inherent vulnerability. In certain scenes, Sybil's imagination appears to break free of her, and, without her knowing, pose a threat. At the same time, it's toying with the dynamics of fantasy and reality.
JM: There is a very fine line between what is real and what's not, and I don't think she's conscious of that. I think she lives in her head, and she doesn't really relate to the outside world. So, a lot is going on in her imagination, but to her, it's perfectly real and normal. I suppose that's where the horror element comes from, because it's not normal behaviour and we human beings like to be perceived as normal.
We all have those dark corners of ourselves, but not to the extent of Sybil, that we don't let the outside world see, and I was interested in developing and playing with that. Rebecca was the perfect person/actor to embody and to engage with that because it's a lot to ask of anybody. One might question how they're going to come across on-screen being like this, but Rebecca totally embraced the role.
It's not the first time this has been done because there are some great dark and complicated female characters in horror - not enough I would say, but they are there. It's intriguing, and I wanted people to see that she's not a one-dimensional character. I want people to feel that they like her, but they shouldn't, and to ask, "Why do I like her?"
Sybil has done horrific things, but because she has suffered and there's a likability to her, she's a human being. We're all messy, dark and complicated. I wanted her to have all those elements and to have a magical and quirky kind of side to her as well, which I think enhances the film. For me, it has that entertainment value because it's quite funny in places too.
Broken Bird is many things: it's dark, and it's sad; there's love and honesty, but this character shouldn't really be likeable for what she does.
PR: To pick up on your point about strong, dark and complicated female characters, are there any examples you're thinking of?
JM: There's Bette Davis in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, Linda Blair in The Exorcist. I also loved American Mary’s Katherine Isabelle, by the Soska Sisters, and Mia Goth in Pearl. Also, there's Kathy Bates in Misery - obviously, she was amazing. I loved Carrie and Saint Maud, and I drew inspiration from Rose Glass. There's a lot going on with Carrie because she's a victim as well, and there's Jennifer Kent's The Babadook.
I go for the characters like The Babadook - the fact that the mother (Essie Davis) was really troubled because of what she was going through with her son. I try to, and I end up relating to these characters that are struggling and are not inherently bad but can be perceived as crazy or horrendous. Although, I suppose Kathy Bates was pretty horrendous.
PR: As human beings, we can struggle to show ourselves compassion, and so, I wonder whether characters like Sybil are a cathartic way of being sympathetic towards ourselves?
JM […] I've always been interested in people who are slightly broken, that have stuff going on and that's most people. There are those that have suffered and struggled in their lives. Some people can hide that better than others and get on with it and others can't. I'm always drawn to those people that can't. Whether that's because of my background or what I've been through, who knows. I have an empathy for them, and they interest me. I want to understand what makes them tick and why they are the way they are?
PR: Was this curiosity and empathy the motivation for expanding the short film into a feature?
JM: In a short film you've got 10-15 minutes - it's 7 pages long. You've got to have a beginning, middle and end, and have an interesting character in there. It's difficult, and it was made with very little, and it was great to do, but I always felt there was more to Sybil, and I wanted to explore her journey.
If you want to explore a character, then you've obviously got to explore the satellite characters and develop the story and ask, why is she like this? What does she want? And that's what intrigued me, because people are fascinating, and they're not just one thing. They're not even three-dimensional, and it fascinates me how we can change on sixpence - how we can feel happy one minute and suddenly, sometimes for no reason, our lives can turn upside down. The way Sybil's mind works, she just switches - she doesn't think about it. That's what people do and there's a reason why that happens. It's in Sybil's makeup from how she was brought up and the trauma she suffered.
If, aged six, you were sitting in a car for three days with your dead parents, that's going to have an affect on you. And that's the key to Sybil - how her life changed, and the lights went out. She then turned them back on in her own way with her imagination and fantasies, her poetry, writing and taxidermy, and then her quest was to build the perfect family. She thinks, 'That's it. That's what I want; that's what I'm going to get.' It's almost like she doesn't understand the consequences.
Rebecca and I talked a lot about the character because for her to not be a cardboard cut out and just do these things, we had to find her truth and her reality. Rebecca would constantly be asking questions and chat throughout, which helped and still there's so much more to talk about.
PR: There's the briefest of glimpses into Sybil's traumatic past - a disruptive moment. Naturally, we're fascinated by who she was, but it's not about that, it's about who she could have been. What fascinates us about Sybil is a hypothetical curiosity.
JM: I had actually not thought about that. Had that accident not happened, where would Sybil be now? That's a good question, and it's something to think about. Her life would obviously be very different, and Rebecca and I talked extensively about what happened between that fateful day and when we first meet her in the film. There's a period of time we don't see, apart from a little girl running down the corridor. She could either be in some sort of institute or she could have just seen her parents' bodies. It was useful to think about that time period in our discussions so we could make Sybil real and believable.
PR: Is the reason why there are too few of these types of female characters that cinema has been dominated by the male point of view, not always but often objectifying and forcing women into specific roles? Has this impacted the language of horror cinema, developing it in such a way that ignores the examples you've singled out that show the value of diverse narrative visions?
JM: I'm not frightened of creating crazy, dark, bad, interesting, and complicated characters. The horror industry has been a predominantly male one, and that's definitely changing because there are lots of great female writers and directors pushing themselves to the fore: Rose Glass, Prano Bailey-Bond and Jennifer Kent. It's still only a small percentage, but it's shifting, and the more it shifts, the more the pendulum will swing in a balanced way, but it takes time.
This is a question for all of us: where does that start? Is it with the executives or is it with the studios? Do they want to see this kind of film? Broken Bird is an independent movie, a horror drama, and it's not like a slasher. And I don't think it is, but it could be perceived as a difficult film to market or sell. But is that the male gaze? I don't know.
I do think it's shifting, but where does it start? Does it start with education? You could say we need more women on the crew, in the camera and the electrical departments. I'm normally working with a crew that's full of men and there are maybe two or three women, if that, on the floor. They'll either be in the costume and make up department or the production office or producing.
Across the board, it's a male industry, and I'm grateful that we made this movie. I had some great support from both men and women. It's just getting films out there and that's one thing FrightFest has done brilliantly this year by having an opening and closing film [The Substance, Coralie Fargeat] by female directors. It's those sorts of things that we need to keep pushing for, but the directors themselves, I don't know how they do that. I don't know how that can change, apart from keep making the material. It's the people at the top, the executives and the studios that make those decisions.
Broken Bird opened the 25th Anniversary Edition of FrightFest, on Thursday 22 August 2024, and will be followed by a UK theatrical release Friday 30 August.
