Even the historical stuff, that’s where I knew I was like, “Oh, man, this is going to be a big swing.” The historical fiction, there’s historical accuracy here where I felt like I had to honor them because it’s essential to understand—and we’re kind of becoming a culture that doesn’t know its own history—but I find these microcosmic stories to be so evocative of the macro human tale.
I think that Holocaust story [scene] is just as revealing to me as some movies that are only about the Holocaust. I think the story of the Japanese, their embrace of defeat and the beginning of passive colonialism. All that stuff’s there and I had to figure out a way to not tell that story, but have that be a story that was going on in life at that time.
I was so inundated with this stuff that I never even had a moment to stop and think about doing it solo. It was surreal in that regard when I think back on it.
To that end, me, you, and Benny joked about this when we saw each other at the Governors Awards, but do you think people are reading too much into it and making too much of the idea of you guys making separate films?
Completely. I think people love drama and they like to project drama. It’s such a simple moment in our lives. I wanted to explore myself through this character and this story. He wanted to explore himself through Mark Kerr and Mark Kerr’s story. And that’s what we did. And I love Benny’s movie. I learned a lot about him through his expression in Mark. And that’s beautiful. That’s something that I didn’t have with Uncut Gems because we did it together. So actually, it was really touching. We’ve grown deeper in a way because of that.
To that point, about learning about your brother, one thing that you said to me once was that, as you sat with the film some more, sat with some edits and sat in on some screenings, you were learning about yourself and learning new things that the film was telling you. What were some of the lessons that you’ve been gleaning through this process?
I’d love to share those things. They’re incredibly personal. I’m actually still able to cry watching the movie, but I think that the one thing that has really, really shown itself to me is, what is happiness. I think the movie is very interested in the concept of happiness and how haunted a feeling it is. And we’re all haunted by these feelings, these moments of happiness. And you don’t necessarily know when they’re going to come, and then they stick around in your brain forever and you’re just kind of chasing them subconsciously or consciously. And that’s something that really shows itself to me every time I watch the film.
Even with all of this textual and subtextual meaning and effort, there’s been a kind of reductive critique that it’s ultimately still too similar to Gems and Good Time. What do you say to that?
I mean, look, some of my favorite artists, look at Vermeer, or Nas, even… it’s one body of work. And you would hope that there’d be similarities between them, because I’m trying to understand life and life is unfolding in front of me. So as much as life is changing, the movies are changing.
There’s a language there.
Exactly. I do think the one thing that separates this work from the previous was going into it was something that I was interested in exploring is the concept of change. It’s the first word you hear in the movie—Tears for Fears dropping that word. I removed all the other vocals from that track and it’s just “Change.” That’s how you introduce the story.
