Silent Roar + Interview with Director Johnny Barrington.
by Oliver Spicer.
Opening the Edinburgh International Film Festival is
On the morning of its premiere I had the chance to speak with director John Barrington, which was especially useful in fully understanding his debut feature due to its personal inspirations and ties to his childhood home of the Hebrides.
Here is our conversation, with a few paragraphs of context and thoughts on the film interlaced within...
OLIVER
I was wondering how your description of the film has changed over time?
JOHNNY
Gosh, you mean since starting writing the script?
OLIVER
Sure.
JOHNNY
Hmm I think the film definitely retained the essence of the script, and the vibrancy and energy. I think the script went into themes of religion and things in a much more... cerebral manner. And it's really nice that we flushed that out and let the pictures and the symbols and take the hot seat.
OLIVER
And where did the themes of religion come from: the culture of the Hebrides or your personal belief?
JOHNNY
Both. I grew up in quite an unusual mix. My father was a minister for a short while, he also worked at sea a lot as well. But the household was never a strict Christian household, if anything it was quite the opposite. a lot of foul language. You know - I remember the enthusiasm my father had for Life Of Brian, showing me that as a kid. Also a lot of the conversations around the dinner table were to do with atheism and I prodded my dad on Theological themes from a young age and he's been frustratingly quiet.
OLIVER
And do you think that space to explore faith is present in the film?
JOHNNY
I don't know, I hope so yeah. The general idea was that Dondo is in a very vulnerable position because his dad has gone missing, is dead, and he doesn't accept that. And he's scrambling around for a father figure and this kind of cascade of surfing and Sas - I don't want to say a romantic element by a phileo bond... an awkward bond. Where she prods and provokes him and keeps him on his tones.
And then of course the magical - kind of the tricksy fawn character of the minister, played by Mark Lockyer. He was inspired by a writer called John Moriarty - who was quite influential when writing the script, who talks about religion and world religion in a very light-hearted but emotional way. I loved the character of the flawed authority figure Mark's character represents.
"God doesn’t need to come down upon a mountain,
for the mountain itself is the revelation.
We only have to look at it and we will know how we should live."
- John Moriarty.
Dondo (Louis McCartney), and Sas (Ella Lily Hyland) in Silent Roar - converted to monotone.
OLIVER
With the surfing, I loved the shots above the water, beneath the water; the camera went at it from every angle. How were those physically shot?
JOHNNY
Oh physically shot? They were kind of cobbled together from god knows how many different days, different beaches, different surfers even. One of our doubles had to wear a wig to match the actor. And he had to have it stitched into his own hair to stop it falling out every time he caught a wave. He slept in that wig for three or four nights. The damp, salty, wet wake.
OLIVER
Wow.
JOHNNY
I really have to get him a few pints for that. Except he's out surfing in the Maldives at the moment. Lucky bastard.
John Frank was the underwater surf cinematographer. John Takami Morita was the above-water cinematographer. They have a very good rapport with each other. I mean if you're cutting between above water and below water - it's amazing what you can get away with. And I didn't realise that until we started editing.
OLIVER
And another thing I really liked about the surfing scenes were the surroundings. There's the traditional idea of surfing where it's a sandy beach in California or Australia. But I mean the landscapes were even more amazing with the rock formations and everything. How did you decide what kind of landscapes to show of and what aspects you wanted to show?
JOHNNY
Lewis has some of the most beautiful rock formations I've ever seen. Possibly, the other place is the ross of Ross of Mull in the Isle of iona. But um, there's the sense of deep time that staring at rocks for a long time can give you...
It's nice that you noticed that, I'm really glad because initially we were going to shoot in a different part of Lewis which is far more bleak: featureless, bland, big skies, and not that many hills. That was the initial idea. And that would have suited the mouring, grieving son. The sadness and emptiness from the absence of a father. But actually plonking it in this more higgledy-piggledy environment in a different part of Lewis, down near Harris...
Yeah rocks have personalities. Very much so. If I was to say what personalities they were near Uig where we shot, despite nearly being the oldest rocks in the world there's a very spritely youthful energy coming off the lot. Obviously depending on the light. I grew up on Skie where the Quiraing are very dominant, and they have a malevolent air about them. Not very friendly, I think the rocks on Uig are more friendly.
A slab of Lewisian Complex - pictured by Daniel Burgess, in monochrome, under Creative Commons Licence.
The rock formations on Lewis, pictured in Silent Roar, are unique to the extent that they have their own name. “Lewisian Complex” is a metamorphic rock that was formed so long ago that it predates multi-cellular life. In the film, large slabs of this rock jut out of the sand - their stillness contrasting with the handheld camera work and film grain that generates movement inside every shot. In its entirety, the narrative seems to look at how emotions and relationships of your youth are often drawn from the culture of your birthplace - with the rocks bordering the frame presenting the ever-present environment of Lewis.
OLIVER
There's this kind of close-knit community presented in the film. Does that come from your own childhood growing up on Skye?
JOHNNY
Yeah, definitely. I don't want to say for one second that parts of Lewis are behind the times, but Skye having a bridge does just mean Skye has changed a lot since I was a child. Before the bridge, Skye had a more closed off and harder to reach feel. On Lewis I felt a weird kind of nostalgia. I'm not saying it's the same place for one second. It suited it because the script was set when I was at highschool in the mid nineties, pre mobile phones - even the Nokia brick. So it helps, but it would have been stifling to shoot the film in the home village - that would of been too intense.
I mean the main reason we shot on Lewis was because the surfing is way better. Also the psalm singing on Lewis is far far more prominent and still practiced. I mean there are pockets on Skye where people sing Psalms, but nothing quite like Lewis. The contrast of those two things was very important to me. If I listen to psalm singing quite loudly, it can put into quite a sombre state. But sometimes it can twinge the hairs of the back of your neck up.
Many of the church scenes in the film are opened by the congregation performing psalm singing, a form of worship where the book of psalms is sung in Scottish Gaelic. Featuring a call and response lead by the minister, It fills the room by creating a sound impossible to produce individually.
Crowds chant in The Hidden Fortress, Akira Kurosawa, 1958.
These sequences reminded me of moments from Akira Kurosawa’s
OLIVER
Is the goal of the film to put you under a trance and be reflective like those feelings? Or is that too abstract.
JOHNNY
Oh, if I could put people under a trance with my films using music - what more could I ask for? You know, the flow state. The flow state you get into when you're surfing. To put an audience into a state where they've forgotten everything else that's going on in their life and coming out of the film stunned I would sleep easy.
by Oliver Spicer, August 2023.
