Film School Rejects points us to an interview in USA Today with Peter Jackson that’s topped by this claustrophobic shot of Stanley Tucci as murderer George Harvey. USA Today wonders how the brutality of the movie will translate to the screen, and Jackson responds:
There’s a big difference between subject matter and tone. Sure, the murder of a young woman is bleak subject matter, but when that person is Susie Salmon, and where experiencing her discovery of what her new life is like on the “other side,” there’s plenty of humor. She’s often very irreverent, which makes her a delightful character. I never found the book to be bleak…
I found the book to be curiously optimistic. I felt inspired by Susie’s struggle to come to terms with her own death. In the face of overwhelming grief, she finds hope. She holds on to love, and by doing so she transcends the horror of her murder. There is a lightness and joy that you feel at the end of the book ‚Äî a sense that you’ve gone through an intense experience but you’ve come out the other side, freer. That is definitely the tone we were reaching for when we made the film.
More of the interview, and another photo after the cut.
USA Today asks Jackson, “How do you create a convincing heaven that isn’t hokey?”
It’s God-less in the sense that when Susie dies she finds herself caught in a place between Earth and Heaven ‚Äî she is in an “In-Between,” as Alice Sebold calls it. We wanted this world to be ruled by Susie’s unconscious desires. Susie’s “In-Between” begins as a powerful, beautiful and mysterious place ‚Äî it is familiar and strange, comforting and sad; a young 14-year-old girl’s idea of “heaven.” It is quite like the world of dream, using the magic of metaphor to convey Susie’s psychological and emotional life.
But as the film progresses, we see that this place Susie has created for herself has become a kind of prison. She can’t sustain the idea of a “perfect world” forever. She begins to understand that something else is binding her to this “In-Between” world. It is something she must face, before she can be truly free of the man who killed her. She comes to understand that in order to move on, she must reclaim her life from the man who took it.
We certainly have no intention of using this movie to paint a definitive picture of what Heaven is like, and who resides there. When Susie finally does move on from this “In-Between” existence, we’re happy for audiences to imagine this new world in whatever way makes them comfortable.
For a glimpse of how that might look onscreen, here’s a shot symbolizing this in-between existence. (You might guess that this photo comes from Empire online.)
