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Courtesy of Universal Studios |
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The Boxer
Daniel Day Lewis stars as an ex-convict who attempts to cut off his old ties with the Irish Republican Army. Cinematographer Chris Menges infused the film with cool blue tones to capture both the mood of the story and the true sense of light that exists in Northern Ireland.
In light of April's landmark peace pact between British and Irish factions in historically strife-torn Northern Ireland, writer-director Jim Sheridan's 1997 film The Boxer seems uncannily prescient. The story is played out against a modern-day backdrop of two opposing factions within the controversial Irish Republican Army: one urging continued armed struggle against pro-British and Protestant forces, the other seeking a peaceful resolution. When boxer Danny Boy Flynn (Daniel Day-Lewis) is released from jail following a 14-year stay in prison for an unspecified IRA-related crime, he brings meaning and purpose back to his life by climbing back into the ring and rediscovering his lost love, Maggie (Emily Watson). In turn, the West Belfast community Flynn returns to is inspired by a man who has turned his life around by choosing to fight only within the rules.
Sheridan called on the two-time Academy Award-winning British cinematographer Chris Menges, ASC, BSC (The Killing Fields, The Mission) to serve as director of photography on The Boxer. Ironically, Menges had just completed filming on director Neil Jordan's own IRA-themed film, the historical epic Michael Collins (see AC Oct. '96), which also earned him an Oscar nomination. The veteran cinematographer, who has directed four films (including A World Apart, Second Best and the upcoming release The Lost Son), once again found himself shooting on location in Dublin, Ireland, which doubled for British-controlled Belfast in The Boxer.
When asked to compare his approaches to the back-to-back IRA-themed films, Menges offers, "Michael Collins had an enormous history behind it. The clothes, the people, the time and the man's life immediately conjured up a graphic image of how the film should look. We were dealing with early 1900s carbon lights in the streets of Dublin, so there was a definite period image that I was inspired to capture. The Boxer was shot from the perspective of standing back and catching the story in a documentary style. The look of the film developed organically, but the two words Jim did stress before we started were 'freedom' and 'reality.'
"In documentaries, you tend to stand back with an 50mm or 80mm lens, so that you're less obtrusive while shooting and the microphone can float in close. There's a chance that you will be at least ignored, if not forgotten. Then you have a chance to catch 'the moment,' or something special, which is the biggest reward if you're perceptive with a handheld camera. On The Boxer, we shot a lot of scenes with two Moviecam Compact cameras with long lenses, running simultaneously to lend added fluency to the performances. It's a different kind of storytelling. I think if that style is used skillfully in a feature, it does liberate the actors. The Boxer is a totally performance-driven story, and a work of passion."
Menges bathed the Northern Ireland scenes in The Boxer in cool, blue tones, a bold approach inspired by the color philosophies of Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC (see further details in this issue's coverage of Bulworth, beginning on page 40). "I remember talking to Vittorio about light," Menges says. "He would talk about [the psychology of] the rich [colors], the warmth, the sun, the heat of Italy. When you're in Northern Ireland, there are days of great clarity, but also days of pollution, gloom and clouds. Northern Ireland has that 'blue' quality. We've been shooting in Arizona for The Lost Son, and the colors are so vibrant and different. When you're in Northern Ireland, very often there are rain clouds and a different kind of feel. As a cinematographer, you're always trying to capture the true sense of light that exists in certain places."
In rendering the real look of Northern Ireland for The Boxer, Menges used almost no filtration on his Zeiss lenses, and shot predominantly on Eastman Kodak's 500 ASA 5298 film (save for a few bright daylight scenes shot on 5248). "I would always try to make very simple decisions about the light and the camera," he comments. "This was a film about listening to the words. [For the Northern Ireland day exteriors], I would usually just use the available light with reflectors, unless it was just too gloomy or dull."
Menges extended his less-is-more, documentary-style approach even to somewhat dark interiors, such as the warm, inviting pub where many of the story's tight-knit West Belfast community residents go to unwind. "I used almost all practical lights in the pub, because the main goal was the freedom of the camera," Menges says. "[Production designer] Brian Morris gave us the atmosphere of a real pub designed in the 1950s, and we added the set onto the flats we were shooting in. The practicals were little lampshades on a wall and tungsten lights above the bar. If there was trouble on a particular shot, I would sneak lights into a corner, but they would be nothing fierce maybe 500-watt tungsten quartz bulbs going off reflectors or [through] tracing paper."
The narrative of The Boxer is framed around three key boxing matches, which are all given a distinct visual look by Menges. The filmmakers dedicated much thought to methods of freeing the camera within the claustrophobic confines of the boxing ring. "In preparing for the boxing scenes, we certainly watched many fine films, such as Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, which I studied hard and diligently," Menges says. "In the end, we suspended a woven rubber bungee cord about 26' above the boxing ring. Imagine a pendulum in the middle of the boxing ring: on the bottom of this woven rubber fabric, we placed a flat bar upon which we mounted the camera. Then we ran all of the camera's controls the iris, the focus, the video as well as a cable that adjusted the tilt of the small video monitor that was mounted beside the camera. All of these cables ran up to the ceiling and across to a balcony, where the focus puller had his control, an assistant adjusting the iris was on another and a person tilting the television monitor manned a third. Operator Mike Proudfoot or I would operate the bungee cord. It made for a very free camera that could float all the way around the ring without restrictions. It was a great sensation and it made Jim laugh."
Menges again favored the cool, bluish end of the color spectrum for the film's first boxing match, set inside an old, fluorescent-lit boxing gym that Flynn has renovated after being released from prison. Before the match, however, parents of children killed in "the troubles" are acknowledged from the ring, and Menges decided to create an appropriate contrast by accenting the parents with warmer, more amber tones. "We did a lot of research to try to get the look of Belfast as accurate as possible, so we visited several gyms and looked at lots of pictures," he says. "We lit the boxing ring with eight 6'-long, flicker-free fluorescent tubes suspended on wires from the ceiling. Those tubes were quite cold in color. For the audience members, we used 500-watt Pars in black steel industrial lampshades, which shone straight tungsten light on them probably at 2800° Kelvin."
The emotional stakes are raised higher for Flynn's second boxing match, which takes place in the center of a teeming, capacity West Belfast audience. "We shot in a huge Dublin church hall with a very high ceiling, where the light responded in a very different manner," Menges recalls. "Also, our use of the light was different. For instance, there was blue light coming in the windows, and it was almost dark high up in the auditorium. We used 6K HMIs outside the windows, and I used a system of tungsten bulbs eight feet above the ring. The light on the audience was reflected from the center of the ring. That gave the camera maximum freedom, since it meant that there were very few lighting fixtures around the room. We were free to film in a verité style. If you surround the action with lamps and light stands, you'll never be able to 'capture the moment.' The light from the center of the ring glowed upward into the people in the [staggered] seating tiers.
"The lights above the ring were controlled by dimmers, which I used throughout the shoot. The other tool I used throughout the boxing scenes was the diaphragm of the camera. I was operating the camera for the second boxing match, so I had one of my assistants pulling stop from about T8 in the middle of the ring to T3 on the edges of the ring. But for the other two matches, when I wasn't operating I would control the aperture all the time on a radio."
The penultimate match in The Boxer was filmed within a vast soundstage at Ardmore Studios near Dublin. The space was dressed to re-create the ballroom of London's historic Grosvenor House Hotel. The cold, stark look of the previous two matches is replaced by the warm, stuffy atmosphere of the London hotel, which is populated by well-fed, blasé patrons in full evening dress. Menges explains, "There were twelve 500-watt tungsten bulbs in steel stage-light boxes on each of the four corners of the ring, which ran the whole length of the sides of the room. The bulbs were slightly warm and produced a yellowy glow which was quite reminiscent of what you would see in the real hotel. They're very powerful lights, so they gave us an amazing T5.6 aperture at 500 ASA. The idea of the scene was to make the light hot. We shot with the suspended camera on the bungee cord from the ceiling, but we also worked handheld and with a Steadicam and a regular dolly. There were always three cameras running simultaneously for the boxing scenes, unless we were using the 'bungee camera.'
"To light the audience, we basically used the practicals on the tables around the room, as well as a few 10Ks and 5Ks. Plus, there were chandeliers, mirrors and lights suspended from the walls Brian Morris built a very fine duplicate of the original Grosvenor House Hotel, and the crew really helped me out. I have to say, I had great Irish crews on both The Boxer and Michael Collins."
Menges attributes the film's timeliness to director Sheridan's tenacity and his willingness to abruptly alter his script according to the then-shifting political situation in Northern Ireland. "Jim is an incredibly demanding director," he admits. "He gets images in his mind as fast as lightning, and you have to run to catch up. The script was still being written as we shot it, because the political situation in Northern Ireland was changing rapidly. We had to shoot new scenes as the politics changed, because Jim was trying to make a film that honestly had meaning in understanding [the current political situation] in Ireland. We're never going to solve the problem until we first at least understand it, which is why The Boxer was an important film to work on. Like Michael Collins, it was an Irish film that I, being from Britain, am really proud to have worked on."
[ continued on page 2 — Eduardo Serra ]