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Rendition Press Conference
SPOILER ALERT – The following questions and answers not only won’t make much sense unless you’ve seen the film, but also contain spoilers.
Is this a hopeful film?
Jake Gyllenhaal: “Want me to take it?”
Gavin Hood: “I would love you to take it, but I like the question. Thank you very much.”
Jake Gyllenhaal: “Okay, the distinction in this movie I think everybody has talked about, in terms of the choice that he made in the end, I think, to put it frankly, I think that hope is dangerous. I think that practicality gets things done, which leads you to a good place. The character asks himself the question not if it's the right thing or the wrong thing, but does this work or does it not work? And it's very simple. I think if he weren't an analyst, I think the decision would be very different. But it comes to, ‘This doesn’t work. This particular situation, it doesn't work.’
It's nice to think that someone would be able to see through all of those complications and all that ego and make the decision about -- we always say, ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it,’ but we never say, ‘If it's broken, don't use it.’ Or, ‘If it doesn't work, don't use it.’ I think that's kind of the decision he makes. It was always very important, Gavin and I always talked about it, and I think Gavin's intention was that and they can talk about it, but that this wasn't a heroic move. This was a very practical move. If there can be more characters who make more practical decisions, I think that's, hopefully, the way modern cinema can work.”
Gavin Hood: “It's a very interesting response, and I think it's interesting the way Jake phrases it because I absolutely agree with him in terms of where his character is coming from. Jake was very clear that he never wanted a heroic moment where he goes, ‘I am going to do the right thing.’ From my perspective, speaking from where I think that there's an upwelling in a human being that they're not even aware of, I believe in some sort of sense of justice that exists within 99.9% of us. Maybe that's naïve, but I do.
People actually do have within them a deep sense of what is right and wrong. It gets confused and it gets full of debates and arguments, but what I like about what happens to Jake's character is he doesn’t really know why he's doing it but it's welling up from some place. On the one hand, it's because it's not working but if it's just not working, he doesn’t need to let this guy out and risk his career and walk away from the CIA. I know we debated this a lot. We just, from my perspective, I just wanted that one moment where you feel it's kind of crept up on him, and Jake gave it beautifully at the end. He's done something, and he doesn’t quite realize what he's done or does he? But he's done the right thing, not because he was being heroic but because it just snuck up on him that this is just not right. ‘It's not working. It makes me feel like I need to stop it.’ Am I putting words in your mouth?”
Jake Gyllenhaal: “I just want to say real quickly that I don't mean to say at the beginning that the reason why I think that hope is a dangerous thing is because I think it takes you out of the present. I think this character makes a decision very much in the present moment. I think that as a culture, I think that the hope in watching this character, that there can be people who can make these decisions, I think it takes you out of the present of what is actually going on. I think there is a lot more muck than we think that there is. I think hope is the wrong message right now. I think really working at it is the right message. I don't know how successfully that was portrayed. I don't know if we did. That's an audience's decision to make that decision, but I just wanted to say that.“
Gavin Hood: “And this is, you can see a process because I think it's essential that Jake and I absolutely 100% agree with this point, that there's a danger of being numbed and saying, ‘Okay, well, it'll all work out fine in the end.’ And indeed there was much debate about whether the character should even arrive at home.
As one of the lawyers who represented five, I believe, and he's sitting at the back there, ‘Hi Ben…’ He represents five victims of rendition. So that we just take this from the abstract to the reality, represents five people who have been rendered and who are attempting to obtain compensation from the United States, or at least an acknowledgement of what has happened. Some of them have been acknowledged. As you know, Maher Arar in Canada, Khaled El-Masri who was mistaken for Khaled al-Masri who was a terrorist, is a terrorist and spent, what was it, five months, Ben? Being tortured and disappeared. This is real, guys.
I think that do I have a certain hope. Ben commented that, ‘Was the ending too hopeful?’ I think Jake makes the same point. I would like to think that at the ending, the reason that these two characters don't rush together, and we talked about this, Omar and Reese and I, about what does it mean? These people have an enormous amount of healing to do, if they ever can heal. So some people have said, ‘Oh, it's so crazy. He stands there and she stands there and why don't they rush together?’ Hold on a minute. If you watch, and it will be on the DVD, the documentary of Khaled El-Masri, go watch it online. He doesn't know how to move. That's what struck me, and that's where Omar and I got this moment in the car when he just sits for a moment.
So I hope the movie's, on one level, hopeful that we will rise to some [above]. We put it out in the world to say, ‘Look at all these different people and look at their common humanity,’ and to that extent I believe in humanity. But at the same time, let's not kid ourselves, as Jake points out, that this isn't real and that there's a certain in the moment reality that we need to deal with that isn't just going to go away tomorrow morning because we made a movie.”
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