I was able to ask a few questions to the director of The Witch, Robert Eggers, as well as the film’s lead actress, Anya Taylor-Joy, during a roundtable discussion at the Eliot Hotel last Thursday, and while the other two reporters alongside me had much more to say, I got the answers I was interested in, which you can find below.
Eric: Something I noticed about the film in the rest of the scenes that were outside the horror parts is that it seems kind of like a dramatic play. Knowing your background in Shakespeare, were you at all influenced by the play structure and theatre pieces?
Robert: You’re not the first person to ask that question, but very few have. It certainly was in my intention, so the films that I like, such as Bergman and Drier who are so close to my heart, are a big part of this film. Bergman comes from the theatre, so his films are very play-like, and most of Drier’s films, while he didn’t direct theatre, are adaptations of plays. So certainly there are these movements that feel like the best part of silent cinema since there’s non-diegetic sound and things are moving in a way that you could never do on a stage, and those parts are certainly what our DP Jarin [Blaschke] prefers, but there are these scenes that tend to play themselves out like a full on “scene”.
Robert: You’re not the first person to ask that question, but very few have. It certainly was in my intention, so the films that I like, such as Bergman and Drier who are so close to my heart, are a big part of this film. Bergman comes from the theatre, so his films are very play-like, and most of Drier’s films, while he didn’t direct theatre, are adaptations of plays. So certainly there are these movements that feel like the best part of silent cinema since there’s non-diegetic sound and things are moving in a way that you could never do on a stage, and those parts are certainly what our DP Jarin [Blaschke] prefers, but there are these scenes that tend to play themselves out like a full on “scene”.
Anya: Sorry to jump on in, but thank you for asking that because, not from the play point of view but from the non-horror aspect, Ralph [Ineson], Kate [Dickie] and I would consistently be like, “So I know we’re making a horror movie…” but since we’re not on set seeing these horrible things, I mean, I went on set a few times just because I was curious, but we just felt like we were making this horrifying story of this family’s breakdown, due to isolation, fear, paranoia, all these things, that’s where we were emotionally.
Eric: You obviously put a ton of research, time and effort into making the movie; when you were making it were you ever afraid it would be marginalized as just a horror film, just another entry into that genre?
Robert: I mean, I hope it’s marginalized as a horror film because I wanted people to see it. I had such a hard time getting anyone to make any feature I had written and so it seemed to me in the climate at the time, and I think it’s still true now, it was going to be much easier for me to get a film financed and seen if I could make a personal film that was within a genre.
Eric: You obviously put a ton of research, time and effort into making the movie; when you were making it were you ever afraid it would be marginalized as just a horror film, just another entry into that genre?
Robert: I mean, I hope it’s marginalized as a horror film because I wanted people to see it. I had such a hard time getting anyone to make any feature I had written and so it seemed to me in the climate at the time, and I think it’s still true now, it was going to be much easier for me to get a film financed and seen if I could make a personal film that was within a genre.
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