|
Equilibrium Commentary
Kurt Wimmer
|
|
14. Incineration
Transcription
by Trinity
A funny thing about this particular scene, in the very
limited rehearsals we had, I was actually kind of worried that
Christian didn’t get this character at all.
And it was bolstered by the fact that Christian came to me
with regard to this scene and said, "You know, maybe Christian…maybe
he’s not here to take his children’s Prozium away so that they can take
the same journey that he is taking as you the writer intended. What is
he’s in there because he can no longer stand the rush of emotion that
he’s feeling and he’s stealing his children’s Prozium so he can go back
on it, but he’s thwarted by the awakening of his child?" And after that
conversation, I went to our Producer, our Producer Lucas Foster, and I
said, "We’ve got problems." But the fact of the matter is by the end of
the movie, Christian understood the character that I created much
better than I ever could, and to this day, I am not sure whether with
that conversation and a few others we had if he was simply testing me
or just fucking with me. We’ll never know. He has a very dark sense of
humor and at this point, in retrospect, I’d say, 50-50.
 This was a scene that was out for a lot of the cuts of the
film and Christian argued quite strongly to have it put back in and I’m
really glad I listened to him. If you’ll notice, Emily’s costume
becomes more color-saturated throughout each scene. We actually had
created different costumes for her so that the more he became aware of
color, the brighter she would seem. Interestingly, that was very taxing
on our costume budget, believe it or not, something as simple as that.
And that's the very vulnerable costume that we created for her, you
know, and you're sitting in a cold German set in this incredibly
vulnerable costume and surrounded by technicians.
Another interesting, semi-interesting thing to note about
this film is that as their relationship progresses, be it as it is in
this movie, the table grows smaller. The table that they are at in the
beginning, the first scene in this room, they could never have reached
across and touched like this. You’ll notice, as a matter of fact, when
she gives him the vial of  Prozium
and grabs his arm, that they have to both lean across the table to do
it, whereas here they are able to easily touch their fingers.
This is a mixture of production sound and post sync from
William Fichtner here; it’s amazing, you cannot tell where one begins
and the other stops and the other begins. The background on this guy…
This is my favorite piece of music from the very lovely
score that Klaus Badelt created for me. I originally had a very
prominent composer on this film and I was very unhappy with his work.
So, on the recommendation of Vicky Hyatt, one of my music editors, I
hired this young fellow who had never done his own film. He actually
worked for Hans Zimmer, and that turned out to be Klaus, and Klaus and
I hit it off and he went on to create what I think is a wonderful
score. And all the more wonderful given our resources and given the
fact that it is entirely synthetic. There are a number of people, I
think, who think this score is bombastic, but I think it works very
well for the film, and I will remain forever his fan.
That’s Alexis Summer, the original wife for Preston.
Interesting thing about this little shot here is that it is
surveillance footage theoretically and the challenge was to block it in
such a way that all the information could be revealed from one camera
angle. It always makes me laugh when I see video camera footage, hidden
video camera footage in movies and somehow it always ends up
wonderfully edited together and shot from a number of the most
opportune angles.
 This was one of the tunnels in the incomplete subway that
I used in Berlin. The lights in the background you see were created by
both Klaus and Wolf to create an even, unobtrusive lighting. They
actually worked pretty well. I was very concerned about where we would
hide those lights, but it turned out not to be necessary.
Emily is a fine actress. And the great thing about her is
that she committed to this role, I mean, she really committed to it and
after all, it is a fairly pulpy role in a genre film by Dimension.
But she came to play and she completely committed to the
reality of it. I first met her in London; she had just won a BAFTA
award, I recall, and I was impressed. Her acting obviously spoke for
itself, and I was impressed by her very mature sexuality which was
something I had never seen from her before and I really believed that
she would be great in this movie, and I lobbied very very hard with the
studio to get her in it. And to the credit of everybody involved,
eventually they relented and we put her in.
Okay, so I go into the eye again; it seemed like a good idea
at the time.
 This is the
exterior of Hitler’s Olympic Stadium, once again. We built the steps
that you will see momentarily. This was a really really big deal on our
budget and we had a zero tolerance window to shoot the scenes that take
place on these steps, and there was a soccer game coming up that was
going to be played in this stadium here, and the Germans take their
soccer very seriously and they weren’t about to push that for something
as inconsiderable as a movie.
A lot of people think that Albert Speer
built this stadium, but in fact that's not true. Actually, it was built
much earlier by an architect named, Otto March, and Speer only came in
at the last moment before the Olympic Games and put the, what I believe
is, limestone cladding. There, he smiles again, (talking about
Brandt) although I don’t think
he means it. The limestone cladding on the exterior of the building.
|
