Slant Magazine

Slant: I spoke to Australian filmmaker Nash Edgerton earlier this year, and it is interesting when you compare the central themes of his film, The Square, with the themes and tones of Animal Kingdom. Specifically, both films expose the underbelly of the suburbs, the deviant behavior going on right under your nose. I'm wondering if you share a similar philosophy of filmmaking with Edgerton, with the kind of stories you want to tell?

DM: I think one thing that you can see—in not just Animal Kingdom, but in a number of films in this kind of new wave of Australian filmmakers—is an embrace of genre forms. And in the case of The Square and Animal Kingdom, what I set out to do, what I wanted to do, was make a crime film that worked the way crime films do, and yet felt rich and substantial and weighty.

Slant: That it could be part of this genre world…

Well, I wanted it to be rich. I didn't want it to be some little crime thriller or a little crime action movie. I wanted to make something that was big and rich and full of details, and surprising too, but it was still a crime film. I think The Square functions in some ways within the noir conventions; certainly what Joel Edgerton and Matt Dabner, who wrote the film together—and then Nash—wanted to do was make a genre film, a noir thriller, but sophisticated and adult. I think, on that level, there are a number of Australian filmmakers that want to contribute to genres, or generic forms they grew up loving themselves.

Slant: Were there any films that inspired you during the process of writing?

DM: As disingenuous as it sounds, I would say no, but yes in so far as to say, throughout the process, when writing, you would hit a stumbling block, and you just need to throw a rock in the pond and just watch a movie, any movie, a good one, one that I love. It could seemingly have nothing to do with Animal Kingdom, and yet there is something reinvigorating about watching a film that you love. Apocalypse Now is a film that I watch every year and I think will watch every year for the rest of my life. I just love everything about it. I love its messiness as much as anything else. I love its grand narrative, but I love its detail as well. I love everything I know about how the film was made, so I can just throw that movie on, and out of that, get enough fuel to keep working.

Slant: I really liked how the characters had nuances and layers, and had qualities that both were good and bad. How did you go about mapping the characters and their motivations?

DM: What I wanted to do, and in a way was reflective of the idea of the animal kingdom and the grand idea of the concept, was having a film made up of a whole spectrum of different characters, that each of those characters would have within themselves a whole spectrum…

Slant: That each character would fit within the hierarchy of the animal kingdom?

DM: Yeah, but not just a hierarchy. There is a whole ecosystem of people, and some of them have no idea where they fit in that world, possibly don't even know they're in it or any idea how close to danger they've drifted. But I wanted to have a sense of a whole spectrum of characters, different kinds of characters, cops and robbers, people with different socioeconomic backgrounds, but also that each one of those characters has within themselves a whole spectrum of moral permutations. None of the characters know if each character is both good and bad, and damaged and sympathetic, not sympathetic—all those different qualities.

Slant: How much of your family is in this film?

DM: I certainly didn't grow up in a criminal family. To write with richness and texture, I think you need to write about things you know, and you need to write about yourself, your observations of relationships that you're familiar with, even when you're transposing those observations into a world that is so far removed from your own. And in this case, a world of hardened and very dangerous criminals. Yes, the film is full of little moments that I've observed even from my own family, and Mom knows what they are.

Slant: What was the first day like when you brought all the actors together to read the material for the first time?

DM: I didn't do a table read of the script. I can't stand table reads; there is no better way to kill enthusiasm for me better than having actors sit around a table reading the script like a book. I've sat in on those for other films. I said, "If I ever get to make movies, there is no way I'm doing that." I'd rather just have everyone go to a bar and get drunk together, but those boys are big personalities. When you get them in a room together (and early on, they're feeling each other out), it could get feisty. There were moments on set I thought they were going to start punching each other, but it's great now. They're all really proud of the movie.

Slant: How does it feel to have your first feature film have such international reach?

DM: It's been dizzying, actually. It's almost a little bit overwhelming. When you know you have worked on a film for as long as I have, I would be disappointed if that simply ended with a two-week run back home, and I didn't get to go anywhere. I had hopes that would be better than good; I really hoped that would stand out from the crowd. I never anticipated that Sundance would be as amazing as it was, and in part, especially when you're cutting a film, you can lose sense of what it is. You do what you think you need to do, you cut it the way you want, but you have no clear sense of whether or not it's working. So for it to then land at Sundance—it was exhilarating from day one. It was a pretty amazing surprise.