A Director Takes on a Dicey Theme: Spirituality
By John Anderson
In caricature the independent film director is an underfed auteur, churning out work rife with cynicism and disaffection. Which makes Mark Pellington something of a contradiction. “He looks like a linebacker,” the actor Luke Wilson said. “But he’s got the heart and soul of a painter.”
That heart was broken in 2004 when Pellington’s wife, Jennifer Barrett-Pellington, died abruptly of complications from a ruptured colon, leaving behind her husband and their 2-year-old daughter; it was, Pellington said, “the unthinkable.” That he should resurface on the big screen four years later with “Henry Poole Is Here,” a fable that wears its heart so brashly on its sleeve, is a tectonic style shift for Pellington, a commercial Hollywood director (“Arlington Road,”"The Mothman Prophecies”) who had built a career making sleekly imagist music videos for Pearl Jam, U2 and Alice in Chains.
But if “Poole,” which opens Aug. 15 in the United States is a gesture of change and renewal, it is also one of defiance: in an art- house market fraught with peril, the spiritual aspects of the story line might put off as many people as they attract.
“I think it’s a unique film in this marketplace,” said Tom Rosenberg, who has produced all four of Pellington’s features for Lakeshore Entertainment. “And yes, spirituality is essential to it, but we’re meeting that head-on. I think people who never go to the movies will be drawn to come out and see it.”
The title character of “Henry Poole,” which stars Wilson, Radha Mitchell and Adriana Barraza, buys a house in a middle-class California neighborhood where he clearly intends to be left alone and drink. But his sanctuary is invaded by ardent Christians after an image of Jesus appears on his house. Or does it? The faith-based subtext of “Henry Poole,” which was written by Albert Torres, is something Pellington knows has to be reckoned with; almost sheepishly he said that he and the film’s distributor, Overture, were preparing to show the film to the radio host Rush Limbaugh.
“There’s no agenda,” Pellington, 46, said over breakfast in Hollywood. Instead the decision to show Limbaugh the film was all about numbers. “The more humanity that connects to its earnestness the better,” Pellington said.
Even with its spiritual themes the film isn’t overtly religious. “That element is in there, but it’s not specific,” said Bob Berney, who distributed the American release of “The Passion of the Christ” (2004) and “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl” this summer. “You really have to court that audience, screen for them, as we did with ‘Kit,’ which is a G-rated family movie.” Something “Henry Poole” is decidedly not: its conflicts involve mortality and unresolved childhood trauma. Pellington and Torres first discussed making the movie more than four years ago. Pellington was then hired to make the Harrison Ford movie “Firewall.” He quit that job when his wife died.
“I came to that point of my life where I questioned whether I wanted to live or not, because the pain was so severe,” he said. “I came out on the other side and said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to take every day for what it’s worth and embrace it, because each one might be the last.’”
Pellington, though, is quick to acknowledge that he is not the first to suffer such a loss. “I’m not the only widower out there,” he said. “I think it’s how you deal with adversity that defines you. I think I’ve done a good job as a parent, and that’s the most important thing.”
His daughter, Bella, is now 6. “Sometime I look at her with such sadness: ‘Poor little girl,’ you know?” he said. “But those are the cards that she was dealt. It’s her journey. She’ll be O.K.”
Pellington’s own journey can be traced in the music videos he has created over the last 20 years. “The ones in my 20s reflected aggressive anger, speed and the cut-cut-cut that was commensurate with how I felt when I was 26,” he said.
The tone changed in the early 1990s when his father developed Alzheimer’s. “There’s a Leonard Cohen-Connells video from that time that was slow, slow, slow.” His tone changed yet again after his wife died: an emotional Keane video (“Everybody’s Changing”) from 2005 featured members of Pellington’s grief-support group.
Just as the work has changed, so, apparently, has the man.
“A few years ago we got into an argument outside a movie theater that was so heated the police had to intervene,” Rosenberg said. “You’ve met him? He was about 100 pounds heavier then. His father was a pro football player.” (He was Bill Pellington, a renowned lineman for the Baltimore Colts, who died in 1994.)
The cause of the fight? “We tested a movie, and I felt the version we showed was not the version we agreed upon,” Rosenberg said. “But we worked through it. We always do. Mark has been on the dark side and come out the other side, stronger, more grounded, a kinder man.”
Wilson offered similar praise: “He’s very open to collaboration, and that comes from a sense of being in control.”
How people see “Henry Poole” will depend on a number of factors, Pellington said. “At Sundance,” he said, “the majority of people who came up to me afterwards were women. Women connected in a different way. I think if you have a child, you react differently.”
“I’m not afraid of exposing myself,” he added. “It would take a universal crushing of this movie to really kind of make me recoil. It couldn’t hurt any more than I’ve already been hurt.”
Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.
(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.