Interview with BRING THEM DOWN director Christoper Andrews

Rural Ireland. Shepherding has run in Michael’s (Christopher Abbott) family for a long, long time. It’s been passed down from generation to generation, but he will be the last in line when his father Ray (Colm Meaney) passes on. Michael keeps to himself, the result of a dark secret he holds close to his chest. He’s generally friendly with his neighbours Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) and her son Jack (Barry Keoghan). However, Caroline’s husband Gary (Paul Ready) is less friendly about sharing the hill with Michael, leading to a feud over rams that will end up with the two of them ramming each other head on… With all the trappings of an Irish western,  ‘Bring Them Down’  starring Christopher Abbott, Colm Meaney and Barry Keoghan, is about fathers, sons and the tragedy that comes from blind faith. Graham Day sat down with director Christopher Andrews to find out more…

 


Bring Them Down, I believe, was originally going to be The Shepherd and it was going to be based in the UK. What was it like transferring it to Ireland and was there anything lost and was there anything gained?
There was a lot gained, but nothing lost, really. It came from the idea of family, from my idea of family. Both of my families, one’s from Belfast, one’s from Kerry. It’s like the way that was brought up was very much in that tradition, anyway.

Then when we came over to Ireland, Jacob (Swan Hyam), one of the producers, and I, just before the world went into lockdown, and we travelled the West Coast, and we told everybody the story, and, and talked to them about the process of shepherding, because those were the two main things that I was anxious about.

And the way of shepherding is the same. The Vikings brought it. It was in the north of England and, you know, this, this idea of people living on this land for a very long time, living sort of cheek by jowl. It is the same as it is in Cumbria, you know, and these tiny little things that fester and blow up is, you know, was relatable. Everybody found their way into it and had a familiar story.
There was nothing lost in that sense, but there was so much more gained, I think, in terms of the language, mostly, and the culture. The humour comes through more. And I think that this idea of language and culture and something that has been eroded away and protection and digging into a space just becomes more pronounced than it does when it was in in the UK.

Would you say that’s where Colm Meaney’s character Ray pulls his motivation and anger from?
Maybe not his anger. I think that we do not think about it in those terms. Maybe, you know, some people do, but I do not think that Ray does. I think it is a much more holistic kind of frustration of the world. I do not feel it’s that politicized in his mind. It is just one of many things that piss him off, which is a little bit like my granddad’s were, it wasn’t like just one thing. it is like, rolling sticky tape over a carpet. He has got loads of, like, different bits of things that irritate you along the way.

What was it like building the relationships between the characters that are so key to the narrative?

A lot of it was done on the page, it is in the script. The size of budget we had does not mean that you have a lot of time, you know. The wonderful thing about all of those you know about Colm (Meaney)and. Barry (Keoghan), Christopher (Abbott), Paul (Ready) and Nora-Jane (Noone) and Aaron (Heffernan) and Conor (Macneill) even, who’s in the just in the market scene, is that they’re just really connected.

I had the opportunity to talk to them a lot beforehand, remotely, and then I would write them documents, yeah, that they read, and they fed in on so that they understood who the characters were, and they also understood the tone of what we were going for. This kind of idea of the type of film that we were trying to make was very internalized. I am very interested in transcendental cinema, so very Bressonian, in a way, where Bresson would, would do take after take, to try and sort of eradicate any of the artificial acting.

I did not have that luxury, so it was like trying to strive for something like that, but through the guise of a Western. Something where you can have this kind of stoic, laconic characters that push it all deep down inside. Then you use that to find those ethereal moments.

There are scenes that are quite impressive with the budget you had. What was that like, shooting such visceral scenes that involved such intense choreography and stunt work?

It was tough. The shotgun scene was a day’s work, like getting out the car and coming to, you know, and we had, we could not film the end of it how we wanted to, because we had a COVID incident, and someone pulled out at the last minute. It was quite stressful, but we had rehearsed it day one, like when I got here, like Chris (Abbott) got here, we just went straight to it and we blocked it, but we didn’t shoot it for a couple of weeks.

Then there was the car chase. It was very stressful because we did the car chase and the aftermath, all in one day. We only had one go at it so that was quite stressful. We did all the chase work, and then we set up for the crash, while everybody had a little bite to eat. And then we came up and the crash, and we had like a section of the car that we were going to lift in, because we did not know how the car was going to land, so we could flip it on. It was stressful. Fortunately, the car hit, it flipped and then flipped again and hit the tree and this was not supposed to happen.

They thought that it would just land from the road because of the drag of the trailer, but it did not. The car hit too hard, it hit the ramp so hard that the ramp came out of the floor, and it had, like, two-foot nails, twelve of those, holding it into the ground. We had to paint that out in the edit. You can see a bit where the tree is, where we painted.

The whole thing is about just holding your nerve and hoping that you can get a little bit of luck. You want there to be a bit of chaos and a little bit out of your control, because usually you will get something exciting. It’s like playing poker a little.

How has it been getting to see it on the big screen and bringing it to festivals?
It is the best feeling. I was really nervous at TIFF, particularly, you know, it was a big deal. We were in a big category, with big filmmakers, and this is my first feature, and Barry hadn’t seen it, Colm hadn’t seen it. I was sat in front of them, which is the opposite way I’d have liked, but I could hear them respond to it in the room. I did an introduction with everybody on stage, and I was so nervous. I was more than nervous. I was terrified and I had an out of body experience. By the end of it, though, and with the response from the audience and the response of the guys, who loved it so much, it has felt very special.

I didn’t watch it again with an audience for a couple of months, just because I wanted to hold onto that precious feeling. Everywhere we’ve been, people have responded to it in an incredible way. It’s a very intense film, an intense experience, and I guess whether you like it or not is whether you enjoy those experiences. What’s been really lovely is the response of audiences during the Q and A’s. They talk about what it means, and so the thematics and this idea of war and our place and our responsibility as individuals. How we treat one another is really the discussion and that, for me, is it feels like a tribe. This has just been a thrill for me.

Interview by Graham Day

BRING THEM DOWN is at cinemas from Feb 7th