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Kristen Stewart doesn’t love the logline to her new film, “The Chronology of Water,” primarily based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s acclaimed memoir: “After an abusive childhood, stressed Lidia escapes into aggressive swimming, sexual experimentation, poisonous relationships, and habit earlier than discovering her voice by writing.”
To Stewart, the abstract feels trite. It was by no means the plot particulars that drove the actress-turned-filmmaker to spend the higher a part of a decade adapting Yuknavitch’s prose into her function directorial debut. It was the e-book’s distinctive kind — capturing the reconstruction of a fractured life – that was cinematically inspiring.
“The e-book is only a large, big permission slip, the keys to the fortress to your individual volition,” stated Stewart whereas a visitor on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “And so the film wanted to be unwieldy, or else it will’ve been like [in a mockingly preachy voice], ‘You must belief your self.’ It could’ve been an embarrassing self-help film.’”
One of many issues Stewart cherished about the way in which Yuknavitch pieced collectively the reminiscences of her life was that there was no current tense, permitting for a daring use of modifying, because the juxtaposition of Lidia’s reminiscences flows like water. It’s not an method that interprets to a conventional script, particularly one which will get greenlit, even if you’re Kristen Stewart. To which Stewart supplied this piece of recommendation, “Don’t take notes.” If she had, she “would’ve by no means made this film.”
“I used to be dissuaded for a lot of, many a 12 months,” stated Stewart. “I used to be satisfied that the type of the novel was what was inspiring and never the detailed plot. It appears like a life flashing earlier than your eyes, and it’s actually troublesome to jot down that down, as a result of the emotional connective tissue, it has to really feel so ephemerally related that it have to be found.”
That discovery course of was one Stewart labored on for eight years, writing 500 drafts of the screenplay – a quantity she insists shouldn’t be hyperbole — to unlock how she would seize that emotional connective tissue.
“When you bear in mind [when] you’re seven, there are shockingly placing photos and emotions that may rush again into your physique as if they’re current as hell,” stated Stewart. “ And so, I’m my 7-year-old self proper now. I’m each individual I’ve ever been, in the event you let your self drift into the waters of your physicalized reminiscence, and that’s arduous to do typically – we stay in a world that’s so exterior, the place we’re concern about how we current ourselves.”
The movie is an train in tapping into the emotional reminiscence we retailer in our our bodies, and sound grew to become Stewart’s most beneficial device for unlocking it. Stewart referred to the sound design, led by supervising sound editor Brent Kiser, as being akin to a “skipping report,” because the movie’s sonic panorama fluctuates to comply with Lidia’s backwards-and-forwards journey between self-soothing, self-assurance, self-hatred, and self-laceration.
“Your physique emotionally connects,” stated Stewart. “And so it simply feels just like the film is your reminiscence because it begins to progress, and the sound turns into extra sophisticated.”
It’s an unconventional use of sound. Whereas there’s some conventional voice-over within the movie, the recordings and vocal performances (some extra vocalization than voice-over) of Poots range extensively, typically inside the identical scene, and in a means, Stewart stated most sound professionals walked away from, as she struggled to seek out the fitting post-production collaborators.
“It’s the everlasting echo of the voices that oppress… till she finds a bit of bit of sunshine on the finish when she learns the way to love herself,” stated Stewart. “ I needed anybody watching this film to have the ability to have the entire trip with their eyes closed. It’s like a haunted home, the entire film’s like an intrusive thought.”
Speaking about sound shouldn’t be some nerdy technical factor for Stewart, however moderately how she excavated the movie’s concepts and feelings. She will get so excited speaking about sound, she will get enthusiastic about making extra movies.
“I believe feminine voiceover is [something] we’re simply actually missing, an externalized feminine perspective. I can’t wait to make one other film. I can’t wait to do the feminine ‘Taxi Driver’ the place we simply get like an actual stable slew of inside perspective that by no means stops.”
To listen to Kristen Stewart’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform.
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