After shooting The Way Back, Sturgess transitioned into a completely different type of film, tackling the lead role in the sci-fi/fantasy romance Upside Down. Directed by Juan Diego Solanas and co-starring Kirsten Dunst, Upside Down has an intriguing premise and is definitely not your average love story. Here's the synopsis as revealed in the 2009 European Film Market brochure (courtesy of SlashFilm): "Adam is a seemingly ordinary guy in a very extraordinary universe. He lives humbly trying to make ends meet, but his romantic spirit holds on to the memory of a girl he met once upon a time from another world, an inverted affluent world with its own gravity, directly above but beyond reach… a girl named Eve. Their childhood flirtation becomes an impossible love. But when he catches a glimpse of grown-up Eve on television, nothing will get in the way of getting her back… Not even the law or science!"
After chatting about The Way Back at the film's LA press day, Sturgess talked about how he goes about choosing film projects and about working on Upside Down.
Jim Sturgess Interview
After starring in 21, it would have probably been easy for you to segue into a large film franchise or other major studio projects. But that's not the direction you took with your career.Jim Sturgess: "I think for me after 21 I sort of realized that I did want to do something else, as much as I loved doing it - there was nothing negative about that experience at all - I sort of knew that just to go on and do more stuff like that wasn't going to...I was never going to be satisfied, I think. So sort of subconsciously then I found a film called Fifty Dead Men Walking which I did after that, which is an entirely different sort of thing. And then I made a few kind of independent films back in England, which is pretty much more in the vein of films that I watch, you know? So I sort of felt good about that, but then realized that to the rest of the world it feels like you've disappeared. But I didn't feel like that at all. I thought I was working really hard, probably doing some of the best films that I'd done. But then something like [The Way Back] comes along where you feel like you [made] the right decision because Peter [Weir] saw Fifty Dead Men Walking and he responded to that. It's a building block in the direction of course I'd like to go. But I just like films. I love films, and not necessarily all big Hollywood films. I like loads of kinds of films. I'd like to be involved in lots of kinds of films because I like films, you know?"
So you decided to do two romantic films after The Way Back?
Jim Sturgess: "Yeah, kind of, yeah. But after The Way Back I just thought, 'Well, what do I do now?' Everything seemed a bit flat. How do I top that experience? So I did spend a bit of time figuring out what next to do that felt like I could feel really excited about it. And it came in the form of this bizarre sort of fantasy story about gravity. And, you know, it was something that was just completely opposite to The Way Back but equally as creative and hopefully as beautiful."
"What I was pleased was that it plays like one of these sort of fantasy films, but it's totally original, totally uniquely, and totally written by someone [with] a creative backbone with a story to tell that touches on fairly sort of serious issues... So then I thought hopefully it will give some of those other films a run for their money and be totally original too. I hope. I really hope people respond to it because I feel people just crave something new, you know, just not regurgitated films that just get told over and over and over and over again. You get a sense of that when you see queues of people queuing up to see Inception or something like that. It gives you faith that people do want creativity - and they do. So many artists have worked in our time and our place making up stories about the time we live in now, that it's not fair that they don't get a platform to do their work."
"So, yeah, I live in London and I don't think I've ever seen a queue go outside my cinema for years, since I was about 12 years old. So to go and see Inception, it was like it reminded me of when I was a kid going to the cinema and people seemed genuinely excited about it. So I hope people respond to Upside Down in that way."
How far along is the film?
Jim Sturgess: "They're working on the visual effects of it at the moment. I think they're hoping to get it for the summer. I have no idea. I really don't know. Fingers crossed for it."
How much are you encouraged that it does have that uniqueness to it?
Jim Sturgess: "It's hard to know. They drew me all these amazing artwork ideas of how they want it to look, and I trusted the people around it that they were creative people that really wanted to find it. It's just got a good sort of feel. It's got a European feel to it because it's all French filmmakers and money, so there's that side to it. It's almost like Amelie meets Blade Runner. [Laughing] Don't say that!"
"There's a guy called Alex McDowell who did Watchmen, he did production design for Watchmen and for Minority Report and Fight Club, and so he was involved in building these [sets]. And in my mind I thought, 'Oh, it's going to be a real green screen affair.' I thought, 'That's cool. I've never done a green screen film before.' But they didn't do that. They built these f--king sets that were just incredible! So it was just like doing a Peter Weir film but just in a... The detail that they had of creating a different world, a new world, was pretty incredible. So I hope it does well. I really do."
