🎬 #121 Production Designed.
All films have a production designer and an entire art direction department. From one person to a whole team of people, depending on the budget. From an incredibly specific, stylised look to something that feels lived in, like everyday life, every set / setting you see has been thought up, created and designed by someone. All of this goes towards telling the story, but there are some films where the production design is so key and specific that it pulls even more weight that usual. This week I’ve chosen two great films that I feel fit that bill.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: TÁR
2022 Dir Todd Field
2 hrs 38 mins
I’ve been meaning to see this film since it came out and I recently say down to enjoy it. My overwhelming thought after it was, apart from that fact it was an excellent film, was just how incredible the design was. From the costume design, to every book on the shelf - it is so specific, so spot on. It’s amazing to behold. Another thing that struck me about it was just how much I wanted to be in all those different spaces. All beautiful, considered and exact. Perfectly suitable for the title character’s exacting nature.
The sense of quality and thought captured in the design of the film is superlative. The warm colour tones of the lighting that fades up in the Berlin apartment, the geometric warm, wood patterns of the performance hall, it all feels so tactile in a storytelling sense, perfect for the world of the film. You can really feel the care and consideration that even the smallest details have received. The asymmetric high waistband on a pair of her trousers, to the colour and model of her Porsche. It feels like every element of every space contributes to the story and is a builder of the world and character that inhabits it. There’s no way that this character could be found anywhere else.
Indeed, at key parts of the film, where she steps out of this perfectly curated world is when she feels the most fragile. From a stylish home to a rundown squatter house, the design of the spaces tell us a lot about where this is all going. Marco Bittner Rosser and his team along with Field have created a design that is sharp, specific, gorgeous. High-end but never over the top luxury. It’s bespoke, it’s subtle - it’s all great taste. Just talking about it makes me want to rewatch.
TL;DR: Todd Field’s perfectly designed film takes us into the highly curated and specific world of a world class conductor, where all this wonderful design leads to ruin.
*Available for a small rental fee on Apple, Amazon, Google and YouTube in the US, and to buy in the UK.
Fact: Todd Field, the writer and director, played the piano player, Nick Nightingale, in Eyes Wide Shut.
FILM TWO: PHANTOM THREAD
2017 Dir Paul Thomas Anderson
2hrs 10 mins
From one fastidious character to another. Day-Lewis’ Reynold’s Woodcock is at the centre of Paul Thomas Anderson’s tale of a man whose life is so specified and controlled - till he falls in love. These two films make great companion pieces - not just in terms of the controlling nature of their central characters but for their beautiful production design. You can feel the quality oozing out of the frame. The weight, the heft of the cloth, the machining of the scissors - the quality of the paint on the walls of his London home.
Mark Tildesley and his team have constructed a world so perfectly suited to the character and the story that no detail is too small. The car he drives, the table cloth in his favourite restaurant, the dining table - the flooring, all perfect. And all these pieces, tells us one thing, not a single errant thread gets by the keen eye of Woodcock. He’s curated his own monastic world of which he is the centre, and of which he’s eventually knocked out of.
TL;DR: Paul Thomas Anderson’s meticulously designed film is a pleasure to behold, for every single reason, especially for how it feels to gaze at.
*Available for a small rental fee on Apple, Amazon, Google and YouTube in the US and the UK.
Fact: Woodcock’s hiding of notes within the dresses he makes was inspired by a story about Alexander McQueen doing the same.