Interview: Unlocking A Cure For Wellness

What is your take on their being a underline love story, fairy tale in the film?

Gore Verbinski: Yeah sure, I always loved the end of the movie The Graduate, you don’t know where they’re going. Where are they going, what are they gonna do? This movie, there’s really two worlds. There’s the modern contemporary world, then there’s this world with Volmer in this place above the clouds, who’s been sort of diagnosing humanity over time. I do think it’s a contemporary Gothic fairy-tale in many ways. I think [Lockhart] sort of summoned to this place and it’s a little out of balance. So we slip into kind of this dream logic, not a waking state, but the closer he gets near it, his cellphone stops working, his watch stops, he’s not strictly in the logical world. You can be more haunting in that space.

Is it difficult to sell a film like this, since it can be many things?

Verbinski: It has a Fox logo on it but they’re the distributor only. It’s a New Regency picture so it was financed by them. It would have been impossible to make it directly with a major production company. Sometimes in your mind you’re like ‘we’re making this’ you ask for forgiveness not permission. People pick up on your passion. Particularly the owner of New Regency he’s got a love for passion.

What was it like casting Mia and Dane for these roles?

Verbinski: Dane’s character, Justin [Haythe] and I were writing him to intentionally be an asshole. He has to be vulnerable to the diagnosis of this place. He has to have a great distance to fall. I think the concept of the diagnosis is a for of absolution, like you’re not responsible for the things you’ve done in your life because you’re not well. That’s a narcotic for these people, you get into these lotus eaters, they’s a reason they want to stay there once they arrive and they don’t want to leave. That’s the beginning. Knowing that we had a character that was notably not likable it was important to have that inhabited by an actor who you continuously wanted to watch. And he had this singularity about him, I think there is something unusual about him. As he starts to have challenges we empathize for him throughout the process. What is wellness? It’s hard to say but [Lockhart] has it, has the sickness in spades. When he’s reading that letter from Pembroke I feel like it’s speaking to his core being. Even when you’re in denial you sense something and he probably would not articulate it. He probably knows he won’t make a clay pot, sell shoes or guitars, he makes money off other people who make money off other people who make things. So what is my net worth versus self-worth? He’s almost reversed engineered to be susceptible to this diagnosis.

Mia, very difficult role. It’s almost like Shelly Duvall in The Shinning, writing this character and thinking ‘hmm we have to cast this…’ Who’s gonna play the part? You can’t really fake mannerisms. She’s been kept in this place, it’s like if you have an in-depth conversation with someone who grew up in North Korea, they have a different world view. It’s not naive, this is a believe system. She’s watched all these old people come and be processed. She has a very interesting perspective. Just like when a child asks you why, by the third time you’re actually into something profound, inevitably you’re saying ’thats a really good question’ and can’t answer it because it has to do with why do we lie to people to make them feel better. There’s some beautiful truth to that. [Mia] came in and read and she was like- done! When you meet her, it’s who she is. She’s really in the moment. It’s a very specific tone, I can’t imagine somebody pretending to be what she is. She was born to play Hannah.

Did you shoot more than one ending?

Verbinski: No we didn’t, that was it.

How do you keep track of things when you shoot out of order?

Verbinski: That’s the hardest part. It’s very difficult these days to get the means to get to make a large movie if you don’t have a theme park ride, or a toy, or a comic or something. We had to stay relatively modest in our size so we could move quickly. So we shot at the castle exterior for eleven days and  then on the other side of Germany we found this old hospital that was abandoned and covered in graffiti and we painted it, put some new windows in. We needed a swimming pool and so we drove to another place and found a pool with sort of the same color, built a hallway to kind of tie things together and none of that shot in chronological order. We had a bit of the set that caught on fire in the end and then we had to come back to it a month later. The most out of order filming I think i’ve ever done. And to manage his performance. He’s at a boiling point, the lid is sort of rattling. It becomes a very specific conversation. You kinda have to back up to get in that space, run the scene before. Also to create an untrustworthy narrator, it’s very important to go too far once in a while. So the audience isn’t sure you’re gonna go there the next time. If we always just go to the boundary and never cross it you kind of feel like okay. In the brief dental scene, there’s a few places where you’re gonna go right past it. So then you’re watching a movie going ‘ I don’t trust that they’re not gonna go there again.’ That keeps you off-balance.

Being such an intense film, what can you say about the tone and the aesthetics.

Verbinski: You have two ways to tell the story, you have the hand on the back, leading somebody through the narrative. And then there’s the bread crumb approach when you’re letting them nibble their way through the maze. I think if you can bring that to bare, that little squeaky door on your forehead opens up and you have access to your hard drive and we can put things there that hopefully three or four days later some side effects to the cure. There’s something you’re gonna think about after you’ve watched the movie. You’re watching Dane DaHaan reluctantly become a patient at this institute, but really you’re the patient. You’re in the dark room, we’re using sounds and image and we are conducting an experiment on you.

A Cure For Wellness is a New Regency production and hits theaters February 17th.