KEVIN MACDONALD, director of The Last King of Scotland and State of Play, talks about his latest film THE EAGLE, an action adventure set in Roman times.
Based on Rosemary Sutcliff‘s historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth, the film follows a centurion named Marcus and his slave Esca as they search for a missing army and its Eagle emblem in the Scottish Highlands.
**THE EAGLE is in cinemas from 25 March
Channing Tatum as Marcus Aquila in THE EAGLE
MMM: When you were planning the movie, did you have to warn the actors that they were going to have a tough time because there’s not much CGI in there, it’s the real thing?
Macdonald: We deliberately didn’t tell them how horrible it’d be otherwise they wouldn’t have come! Channing [Tatum] is from Florida and he lives in LA, so he wasn’t quite expecting the rigours of Scotland in the winter. Jamie [Bell] knew what to expect I think.
But a lot the shooting was in quite remote locations, particularly the parts with the Seal People [which were shot in] little villages in the northwest of Scotland. We had to walk quite a long way to get to the location.
And just putting up the sets, building all those huts and things, it was incredibly difficult with the construction and the art department, because it was so windy, and there was a terrible patch of weather just before we started shooting. And the guys were only wearing period costume most of the time… it wasn’t exactly Gore-Tex.
MMM: Were all the Gaelic language parts in the film scripted?
Macdonald: Yes, Jeremy [Brock, screenwriter] wrote the lines as you would normally, and then they were translated. The actors were learning lines as they would in any other script.
Channing’s character, Marcus, can’t understand, and he’s desperate to know what’s going on, and he doesn’t know what’s happening. So the foreign language was incredibly useful in that regard.
MMM: What knowledge did you have of Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels before you signed on for the movie?
Macdonald: I read the book when I was 11 or 12, and it made a big impact on me, and really stuck with me… something about the idea of Romans in Scotland. I grew up in Scotland, and I couldn’t imagine there being any Romans in Scotland. It really captured my imagination. Then I heard, 25 years later, that Duncan had the rights to the book and was also passionate about it.
Channing Tatum with on-screen uncle, Donald Sutherland
MMM: Have you thought or talked about the possibility of sequels?
Macdonald: We haven’t discussed that to be honest. The books that come after this one aren’t really sequels. They’re following the bloodline of Marcus, and following the ring. The next book in the series is not Marcus, it’s his descendant, and the next one is the descendant of that character.
MMM: Did you have any discussions about making the film accessible to a wide audience and yet keeping it authentic in terms of the violence of warfare?
Macdonald: To me it doesn’t seem very grisly but the problem is once you’re involved in the material you cease to see any shock value in it possibly. The film is 12A, which means children can see it if they’re accompanied by an adult, and I think that’s probably an appropriate position for it.
MMM: You had to make some cuts in America to take the film from an R to a PG13. Can you tell me about that?
Macdonald: They’re very literal in America, they don’t mind blood on the ground, but blood in the air you’re not allowed. The film is a very moral one, and in some ways quite old-fashioned in its values, so it’s not filled with gratuitous violence. I think it’s striving to be historical and put these men’s lives into some sort of context. In doing that you have to have a certain amount of horror to know the jeopardy they’re in.
By Jan Gilbert
