8:41AM, Jun 15, 2009
Pascal Laugier's Martyrs, one of 2009's finest and most controversial movies, is now on Sky Box Office World. A terrifying, disturbing, and quite extraordinary horror film, it is guaranteed to slice audiences right down the middle.
A fairytale of the grimmest variety, Martyrs sees two girls invading a house to right a terrible past wrong. But, this is merely the springboard for a shattering tale of madness, violence, and an unsettling depiction of the extremes people will go to for enlightenment.
Boasting two powerhouse performances from lead actresses Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jampanoi, director Laugier's movie is an uncompromising, unforgettable vision of terror.
To watch the movie, click here and then on Sky Box Office World in the left hand bar.
Read on for an interview with Martyrs creator Pascal Laugier.
CLICK HERE FOR OUR FULL MARTYRS REVIEW
Martyrs is a fierce horror movie. Did you set out to get strong reactions?
Pascal Laugier: I toured a lot with this film to festivals all around the world, and the reaction was more or less the same. Some horror fans hated it because it didn't deliver what they usually expect from a horror film. Some people who like more general cinema loved it, and were very moved by it, but the opposite was true too.
Every kind of reaction is legitimate, because I'm very aware I sent the audience a lot of dark energy. I mean, it's a nasty film. It's a very sad film. I force the audience to find their own position towards the film, and I know that a lot of people need time to really decide what they think of it.
Which is really cool for me, because the worst thing for a director to do is inspire indifference from the audience!
Was there anything you scripted for the movie that you thought was too excessive?
PL: It's a matter of intuition. You're never sure you're right, so it's a matter of personal conviction. For me, going too far means being dishonest – being unfaithful to your own thoughts, your own morals, your own philosophy.
Right now I am very, very comfortable with every frame of this film, because I worked a lot on the script and I thought a lot about the material I was working with. I knew it was very dangerous, and I certainly didn't want the film to say things that I disagree with it.
Some people from the French press accused me being a woman-hater, of being a fascist, but this is bullshit to me because this is clearly a film that defends women. We are very close with the main characters, and by no means do I justify what (other characters in the film) do to them.
But I wanted to be honest about pain. I know that in a Hollywood film, pain is a fade to black. But I didn't want to do that. I had to share with the audience the experience of the martyrisation. For me, it's a sad film. It's a dark melodrama.
Do you think the world is as spiritually bankrupt as the characters in the movie?
PL: When I wrote the script, I was just having a sad feeling about our times, that our time is really, really brutal, and that I had to do a film about it. Maybe a provocative film, an extreme film, a radical film...
Trying to do a soft film, like a romantic comedy, today would disgust me! More than ever, we need straight, honest horror films that will tell us something about the brutality of our times. I did some research into martyrdom in libraries in Paris, and on the internet, and I talked with doctors about agony.
A lot of things in the film are true – they're absolutely real. The phenomenon of agony is still a big mystery for modern medicine, and when I learned that the real meaning of the word martyr is “witness” – the one who sees what the others can't see, because of the pain he endures – I knew I had a great subject for a horror film, a pretty original one at that.
It connected with my own feelings of sadness and my own feelings of pain. How come the brutality of our times is fed by its own never-ending cycle, the violence of the world? I was very sensitive to these ideas, feeling kind of depressed in my own life.
So it was very easy to connect with the very symbol of the martyr, and the idea that maybe the only thing we have to take from the pain is transcendence. What other choices do we have?
Mylene Jampanoi and Morjana Alaoui give amazing performances. Were there any disagreements over the depiction of their characters?
PL: You should probably ask them! But they told me they liked the script, they felt connected to the characters I was asking them to play. I guess they never had the feeling that the film was dishonest or purely exploitative.
Finding the cast was the tricky part. I offered the main roles to a lot of French actresses – famous ones, unknown ones – and a lot of them, not to say most of them, refused to even meet me after reading the script. Often I felt like I was offering them a paedophile porn film, something like that.
But it gave me even more strength, more energy, to make the film, against all odds. And finally I met Mylene, who did great video tests, and at the very last moment, while I was trying to replace an actress who left the project, I met Morjana.
Rob Daniel
