"A family photo? What a dysfunctional family!" Tilda Swinton good-humoredly exclaims as she poses alongside director BONG Joon-ho and co-stars SONG Kang-ho and Chris Evans to the sound of the camera shutter clicking away for a film magazine cover shoot. The nuance one can sense in her use of ‘family’ doesn’t suggest a notion of exclusive loyalty. To Tilda Swinton, all forms of art including cinema are labors based on love, and film is a collectively creative process that goes beyond kinship, nationality and profession to construct a common vision. It is the second day of her visit to Korea, and despite the fact that she must be tired from her red carpet screening event and that it is well past 1 a.m. in the morning, she is headed to the famous Gangnam district to join the Snowpiercer team’s private party.

 

The first time I met Tilda in person was at the 2002 Venice Film Festival where the short documentary Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory by Luca Guadagnino, who went on to direct the feature film starring Tilda I Am Love (2009), was screened. ‘The love factory,’ what a superbly fitting title for this actress as I get to know her. Tilda Swinton is a truly rare international star who has a filmography mostly filled with arthouse works. This ‘Greta Garbo of the avant-garde’ who for the past ten years has involved herself in three low-budget art house films from the funding stage, pushing and pulling the directors along the way, seems quite satisfied with the experience she had on the production of Snowpiercer which was quite different from the Hollywood studio or European art house film production systems.

 

 

It completely met my expectations, which were extremely high. The unexpected thing for me was the profound, modern way director BONG looked at leadership. Curtis' character in Chris' hands was already an interesting portrait but I wasn’t quite prepared for this exploration of leadership.  

 

 

His work is always radical, anarchic almost, and perspective feels familiar to my own. This was kind of the common ground for us when we first met two years ago in Cannes.

 

I remember reading that the great Chris Marker said that he made films in order to travel: I feel much the same way. The journey into another person's shoes is what every cinema ticket promises us. The great power of film festivals is that they can stretch our travel way beyond the confines of what we might otherwise be able to access, if only dependent on films distributed commercially. For us filmmakers, however, they can offer even more: new conversations, new support systems and the opportunity to find company and FUN!

 

 

This whole question of what makes a leader, a public face, is fascinating. Everyday on the front of newspapers, there is another human being dressed and masked in a way in order to be a leader. It is something we live with. Mason is a pretty monstrous construct so we felt we were dealing with extremes, but the truth was that we didn't have to go that far. Look at Hitler with his dyed black hair and Gaddafi with handmade medals stuck on his jacket.

The Yorkshire accent is a personal thing. There was someone in my early life who had a Yorkshire accent who was an early example of authority. As for the appearance, I always wanted to play a character with a piggy nose because as soon as you make this little gesture (pushing up her nose with a finger), it becomes immediately certain that the character comes from the eyes and the teeth.

 

Who's to say Mason is a woman? (insinuating smile) They refer to Mason constantly as a man, Sir. Mason's hair is a fake wig. We used to have these fantasies of her cabin on the train. What's behind the door? What does she do when she takes off her wig? She might knit like Miss Marple with Justin Bieber or Cliff Richard on the wall.

 

 

Mason is infatuated with Wilford and would like to be in a closer position. This whole question of an imaginary prequel is fascinating. How did people get on to the train? What did they have to do to get on to the train and what was life like before? Because people like Mason are old enough to have had a pretty full life. My sense of Mason is that her life before was not so special. Maybe a librarian, a secretary. Maybe she was quite subservient and then gets her chance for the first time to be in authority but it is not a natural fit. It's assumed.

I need to think it through but it feels as if the people in the film are roughly divided according to what the Germans call Glaubenssatz (system of belief). There are those who say "I want to kill" and those who say "I want to die" and others saying "I want to live." Interestingly enough, Mason is one who wants to live. To take an extreme point of view "I want to live" is not necessarily the most realistic thing to say because we are all going to die. Min-su (SONG Kang-ho), who wants to die, is the most realistic. Curtis is in this complex predicament where his mission is to kill but there is a part of him so full of shame that he wants to die as well.

 

 

Mason being a clown was very important because it's noticeable how often we take these quite bombastic leaders, particularly the really crazy and cruel ones, and want them to become human so much that sometimes we turn them into clowns. If you look at what Chaplin did with Hitler or the way people were endlessly amused by George Bush's ridiculous sayings, maybe it is our way of finding some sympathy. Director BONG would always say "Ah, Mason is so cute." (laughs) 

 

I take your point about the task of being in every frame of a film. But in a way the task of playing Mason was closer to playing Julia in Julia in the sense that both of the characters are liars, performers. I think that blankness you felt in I Am Love and We Need to Talk About Kevin comes from a kind of sincerity both characters have while Mason is a carrier for a program, which is a Wilford myth. Mason is a religious nut, a religious leader and they are always the most dangerous, as we know.

 

 

Director BONG and I were thinking recently that We Need to Talk About Kevin and Mother could be exhibited in a sort of complementary/yin-yang double-bill. BONG finds and presents to us something rare in KIM Hye-ja's performance, a mother whose mercurial quality reflects her son.

As in Kevin, the mother and son are two sides of the same identity; they swivel around each other like wings around a sycamore seed. The most painful part of the predicaments of both of these women is that they see their sons' destinies as their own, they need to fulfill the narrative laid down by the gaps their sons leave: detachment is not an option. The heartbreak comes for both of them when they find within themselves a capacity for darkness mirrored by their children. Terrible, terrible love.

 

Nothing specific but I hope as ever there will be cause to celebrate his work and remember him and to reignite people's vigilance. It is depressing that nearly 20 years after his death, what's going on in Russia is going on. It's like a bad dream. I never expected 20 years ago that I would have to go to Moscow and that it would be a dangerous thing to hold a rainbow flag in front of a police car. But it was and it is and people are being persecuted now more than 20 years after we fought against Clause 28. Our resistance to Clause 28 along with that of many thousands of people did have a great impact and this particular legislation was not passed. It's very important for young people in Russia to know that there was a precedent when action prevailed. 

 

The projects I developed with Luca Guadagnino, Erick Zonca and Lynne Ramsay occupied over 12 years of my life. When I met BONG, I was celebrating a harvest and looking forward to a rest from this particular pattern in the grain of my life: highly original, independent, underfunded films that required all the heart's blood we could all muster to get them made and distributed around the world. This pattern is my habit from the start of my filmmaking life with Derek Jarman in the 80's. I craved a sea change.

With BONG, I discovered a new filmmaking partnership in which I felt refreshed. The atmosphere of working with him - while it is uncannily harmonious and familiar - feels new and inspiring. I look forward to continuing to follow my nose into further work with him, and to continue development of my own work as an exhibiting artist, a curator and a writer. Meanwhile, my heart is full again and open for surprises.

 

By KIM Haery