I really enjoyed the film, I want to talk talking about directing Jenny Agutter.
I mean, not just directing a bit that I sing in a Railway Children film.
What was that like and what sort of stage did she sigh on?
Was she always on board of of before you what what was it sort of after you.
I think I think she was tentatively on board before me
and but it wasn't a done deal
and there were also scheduling issues.
And so he probably wouldn't hear about scheduling issues.
But, you know, she was on Call the Midwife and during the pandemic and
we were bubbling our crew and our cast and they were bubbling theirs.
And if you take somebody out of a bubble, then you can't put them back in.
And, you know, so there's all of that to work out.
And so it was a bit tricky and a bit squeaky bum
as to whether she would be able to join us
right up to the wire, I believe.
But then she did come on board and then we kind of got into it
quite, you know, earnestly around
her role and what would have been happening
to her character in the intervening 40 years since the original was set
and we worked out quite a lot of stuff that made its way
into the script as well as much and as a director.
So working on that, you wouldn't get a sense
what it would have been like to have been a child in these times of.
So you're trying to direct the
child actors and sort of give them a kind of
some sort of direction, obviously, about how to feel.
But one of your cast members, Tom Courtney,
I mean, I just interviewed him and he was a child during this time.
Was he helpful, did he speak much about his own experiences
being a seven or eight year old during the Second World War?
Or did you sort of try and tackle this through the kind of source material
Well, I'm sure, you know, Tom might have had those conversations with the kids,
but as it was structured with the shoot, we had, you know, four weeks
with the
kids really, before any of the adults came on board any of the adult cast.
And I think that was really good just in terms of
forming that relationship with the kids, getting their confidence up.
But in terms of the kind of understanding of of that experience,
I mean, certainly certainly for me as a father of young children
reading the script as I did originally, and there was one line and,
you know, Danny's a great writer, but
where it said something like, make no mistake,
this is not a sugar coated scene.
It's pretty traumatic for these children
getting on these trains, you know, and saying goodbye to their parents.
And it did invite me to think what that would have been like,
saying goodbye to my own children at that time
and what it would have been like for them going to to a new environment.
And at the time, at a time when we were separated from our families
during the pandemic, unable
to see relatives, and it just gave it a different kind of relevance.
And then now looking at it and seeing the parallels between
what's
happening in Ukraine and those early evacuations of children
who were effectively refugees being sent to the countryside,
it's it's hard to watch without making those parallels now.
And how was it sort of directing so many children on this?
Because, I mean, did they have a kind of they don't treat this like a job for them?
This isn't like what
I imagine this is quite an enjoyable sort of experience for them for the most part.
Is that is that is that quite infectious kind of energy to be on a set?
They're not sort of sort of, you know, so
the industry hasn't already just grinded them down, if I may say. So.
They they kind of everything must be quite new and exciting.
Is that is that quite does that spread around the whole kind of casting?
Oh, definitely.
I mean, the kids just had such great energy.
And if you've been in a room with them, you have probably felt some of that.
And the wonderful thing is that they come from
they come from different backgrounds, different levels of experience.
Some had done some quite major stuff, maybe, maybe quite small roles
in major stuff.
But, you know, big, big films and big series and some had done
pretty much next to nothing or nothing at all.
But that didn't really make any difference in the way that they work together
in terms of the fun that they had and the performances that they delivered.
So no, it was it was great having that.
I think it was absolutely infectious.
And just I thought that Brennan and yeah.
Oh, they were incredible.
I just try to much of what I would be like that age and I just
I think it takes a certain skilled isn't it, to have that ability
just to even remembering lines and that
sounds like a really silly thing to say, but I was I was sort of
just overwhelmed by the kids in this, although they were fantastic.
Yeah. No, that's really good to hear.
And of course, it's the railway children.
And so they are it's it's
yes, it's built around Jenny and her story.
But they are the new generation.
I thought that was a real spielbergian quality
to this, especially in that final act when the kids kind of when they
when they take matters into their own hands was was I think
was that conscious influence on you the kind of films that will
but the kind of films like sort of E.T.
or is he just so ingrained into the kind of fabric of storytelling
that if you make a movie like this, it almost just comes from realizing
that that kind of influence oh, well, it's interesting. I'm not sure.
I mean, you know, certainly, you know, I'm influenced by the
the great family films of of my own childhood.
And I think lots of those they do have in common
a theme of children taking things into their own hands
and children actually taking risks at times putting themselves in danger
sometimes for the right reasons, often
for the right reasons and reasons that the adults around them either
don't understand or just aren't on board for because of whatever reason.
And and, you know, whether it's Spielberg or, you know,
whether it's whether it's stand by me, you know, that's
there's lots of films that that kind of have that that theme of of children
kind of going on an adventure, going on a journey
and with Stand By Me actually along a railway track.
And that's a real kind of rites of passage metaphor as well. So
so yeah, I think those sort of journeys
are often really quite important physical journeys in a film like this.
And I was talking to
I outside,
we were talking about how it just strikes a real perfect balance this in tonally
not talking down to children sort of and it manages to be a film
that can appeal to children without in any way being patronizing in its tone.
Was that quite tricky thing to get right?
And do you think it's
just learning the right voice in some ways that the movie would have to speak to
an audience?
Yeah, I mean, I hope I would never make a film
and we wouldn't make a film that that does patronize children.
I mean, I suppose it's rule.
Like if you want to make a film that's for children and families
don't make a film that patronize the children
because children know when they're being patronized.
But also children
are often dealing with or exposed to things around them
that are quite difficult and and have a greater understanding
than we might think in those situations, but also have a clearer
and clean perspective where they can see
something might be accepted societally, but to children they can see that
this is wrong and they're almost ahead of their time in that way.
And I think that's the case with one of the storylines in the film.
What talking to story lines, I mean, so when I was a kid,
all the movies that this would be based around
the kind of wartime would be about the US against the enemy.
That was the kind of idea but this was actually about
that can be enemies from between allies.
You know it was quite an interesting kind of film for you to explore
and to sort of to give to a generation of kids
who might not seem that explored often
because I think there is yeah, there is usually just
fighting it's Naziism, but this is actually about the conflict
you can face of among yourselves if it makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, I think
that's why it also for for the children, it doesn't make sense to them.
You know what they're what they're being told, what they're being seen, the racism
that they
that they're being told about, that they hear
about through a story and going through that experience himself.
That's not something that would have been unknown to him at all.
But for the children, seeing that they they can see that it doesn't make sense.
They can't understand it as well.
But I think it's also important to bring that story of the of black
GI in the UK who lived under
Jim Crow style laws within the American army
to a wider audience as well, because people don't necessarily know
that story or see it as part of the history of the war.
And my final question is because when I was a kid,
I watched the Railway Children.
My mum said it's I mean, it was that film.
I know it's a bit of a cliche thing to say, but it made me cry so much.
It was back on stage
because as you struggle to go back and watch again,
because it just made me cry so much as a kid, what was your equivalent?
What could have been railway children?
But did you have a film that always just made you cry so much that
you always it was almost overwhelming in its sadness.
Oh, that's tricky.
I mean, I'm just trying to think.
I mean, off the top of my head, I don't know about one that,
you know, made me kind of blub on.
It never dies. It's quite a noise.
That's
I mean, obviously it
I think that it's it's interesting that the experience the first memory
of crying in a cinema and actually most of mine are
or the ones that I can remember are sort of ones that are quite unifying
in that most of us, when we went see it as children, cried.
I think I have a very early memory of crying in Bambi as well,
which is another one that, you know, gets everyone as well.
But I think that's that's the point of cinema, isn't it?
It kind of unifies us in our emotions, in the way
that we kind of learn about our emotions as children and learn about loss and grief
and those sorts of things as well.
And, you know, we don't shy away from those themes in the railway.
Children return either.
Thank you so much for your time. Say, we've been a pleasure speaking.
Pleasure. Yeah, thank you.