Interview. Andrea Arnold.

Andrea Arnold: That comes up a lot.

JM: I'm sure that it does. They are both associated with the impact of video imagery - of watching and being watched, by surveillance or otherwise - in everyday life. They had no influence?

AA: I'd only seen Hidden a couple of months ago and I'd only seen one Michael Haneke film before that, The Piano Teacher, which never crossed my mind when I was writing Red Road. I'm sure that you're influenced by all kinds of things...

Updated through 4/12.

JM: This is a gateway question, I wager. What were you thinking about as you were writing the script?

AA: People have asked me about a few films, like Rear Window and The Conversation, which I only saw when we were editing because my editor mentioned it...

JM: Because of the sound design, primarily?

AA: Yes. He said, "I think we should have a look at The Conversation because there are a lot of similarities..."

JM: I think that was good advice.

AA: People also always mention Blow Up, which I've never seen. I have to see it because I've had at least ten people mention it to me...

JM: I suspect that you would like it.

AA: I think I might, too.

And here's the full conversation.

Update, 4/10: Alison Willmore talks with Arnold for IFC News.

Updates, 4/11: "No one does poetic British with more remorseless hyper-realism than the Scots, and Arnold, who amassed a raft of reputable awards for her 2003 short film Wasp, directs with a precociously sure touch and a raw taste for graphic sexuality rare in a woman helmer," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice.

"Red Road isn't as assured as the Dardenne Brothers' The Son, but Arnold increases its stalker suspense while keeping an eye on moral consequences, intra-character tension, and the social determinism of its surroundings," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE. "[T]his is Arnold's film, and it bears the mark of a director possessing her own vision."

"[A]s Arnold begins to trickle in explanations, the effortlessly maintained intrigue degrades into a belabored endeavor skewed by gotcha urges," writes Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine.

Updates, 4/12: "Whatever labels it merits, Red Road surely demands that viewers pay attention," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "'Someone said to me that in a thriller the audience knows what the main character knows,' Arnold explains. 'In Red Road, that's not the case.'... The skill of Arnold's direction hardly comes from beginner’s show business luck.... 'I've been emerging for 18 years.'"

Red Road is "a kick-ass, creepy, sexy mystery-thriller from Scotland that gets under your skin and wiggles around like a parasite," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "It's one of the movie-buff events of the year, or it ought to be. But it's in danger of becoming another festival hit, another well-respected movie that geeks like me (and possibly you, since you're reading this) talk about in terms of veneration but that hardly anybody actually sees. This must not be allowed to happen!"

Marcy Dermansky finds Red Road to be "an odd, unsatisfying meditation on grief. By not explaining the motivation behind Jackie's often off-putting actions, Arnold holds her cards too close. This contrivance, unfortunately, keeps the audience at an unbridgeable distance."

"Arnold has a good eye, and Red Road has finely observed performances and an intriguing set-up," writes Robert Cashill. "But I'm something of an Arriaga agnostic [the screenwriter is thanked in the end credits], finding his contrived screenplays rather cheap, and think Arnold, who won the live action short Oscar in 2005 for Wasp, might want to follow her own path next time."

Posted by dwhudson at April 6, 2007 12:38 PM