I recently had a chance to sit down with the director and star of the new movie Sound of My Voice (read my review), Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, while they were in DC doing press. We initially discussed the unseasonably pleasant weather in DC, where they went to school at Georgetown years earlier, and how it seemed to be as capricious as a zephyr.
BM: It’s global warming.
Exactly. Which is a great segue, talking about how badly things are going, because in the movie, there are a lot of big ideas, but really a small scale, a look at the small changes of people, and my question is: Do you think it’s necessary for a smaller movie like this to have a big idea behind it to be successful?
ZB: I don’t think we ever really thought of it in terms of success, we thought we were very interested in the mundane, meaning the mystical. And so part of the mundane is smallness and blandness and banality, you know the tract housing in the movie and then, part of having something that’s mystical is something that’s large, that big idea. In terms of the cult, they are always seen as so negative, I think groupthink is actually a positive thing at times. I actually think the really negative thing is over-individuality, people are obsessed with individuality.
So you think that this idea of “let’s all band together” in some way really can be a positive thing, even when you might worry potentially about the negative aspects?
ZB: No, I mean the negative aspects make it into a gray zone, right? Like, if you band together under the wrong thing, or under something that’s detrimental to your health, then groupthink is not good. But the idea of giving up your individuality to a greater concept, or a greater group, in theory, can be very appealing.
There’s this kind of intentional ambiguity that the movie has with the “Hmm, do we really know what’s happening here?”, and I don’t want to spoil anything one way or the other, but do you want audiences to try to figure it out or do you think it’s something that’s left as a mystery to accept?
ZB: I think weirdly enough, most people who see the movie feel strongly enough one way or the other, and any opinion you feel strongly about at the end of the movie is valid. And if you left feeling befuddled or confused, that kind of sucks, but life’s kind of like that. I feel befuddled and confused all the time, so no different than a regular day. But I think that if you want to take a leap of faith, if you want to choose to believe, then you’ve got to take that leap, a leap is part of it. You can’t just …
BM: No one’s gonna build you a bridge.
ZB: Yeah. Otherwise it’s not faith, it’s science. And maybe that’s the appeal of science fiction, or fantasy in film, because in film, it can be definitive.
BM: Fantasy can [also] be definitive.
ZB: Like someone can have wings, that can exist. But in real life …
BM: We think they can.
ZB: We think they can.
Brit, you were in another film, Another Earth, which was more more explicitly sci-fi. But even there, you really focused on these individuals. So what is it about these concepts? Because you were involved in writing and creating in both of these movies, what is it about that sort of thing that appeals to you?
BM: I think that the three of us all met [including the director of Another Earth, Mike Cahill] in college at Georgetown, and we were really young when we started making our first films, and really learning from each other how to make films and to write them. We were watching a lot of movies, and tearing them apart and putting them back together. I think the films we were attracted to were a kind of a marriage of two different types of filmmaking. On one side that was the big blockbuster spectacle film, and on the other side is the small art house thriller or drama. The question became, if both sorts of things are appealing to us, why can’t you put those things together? Why can’t you borrow the fast paced rigorous plot and sense of spectacle in a blockbuster film and marry it to more thoughtful and substantive character development and drama that you often see in an arthouse movie. So I think both of these movies are attempting to do that, and whether or not we managed to achieve something in that vein is really up to you!
You used chapter cards to delineate parts of the film. Do you think the movie is more affecting, or effective, I suppose I could use either word, to be experienced like that a chapter at a time, or all at once?
ZB: Well I think a theatrical setting is the best way to watch this movie, because it’s just cooler. I hadn’t seen it with an audience since Sundance, but I saw it last week at MoMA and it was four hundred people, and just the way people laughed was hilarious, and the gasps. Like when Maggie starts singing a certain song, one person will laugh, they get it. Then another person will get annoyed, like “Why are you laughing?” because they don’t get it, and then there’ll be a rolling set of laughter. It’s just cool to have that sort of interactivity.
It’s a great moment just to experience in a group and just be like, [me doing a ridiculous impression of an audience reacting to an unexpected humorous moment].
BM: (laughs)
You know what I mean, that sound…
BM: There’s a lot of that, yeah.
So I thought that was effectively done. As a final question, is there some takeaway people should have about the effect of cults that you want them to have from this movie?
ZB: We’re not so bold as to say what we want people to necessarily feel from our work. I mean, what did you feel?
What did I feel? That thinking in a group can be stimulating but dangerous, and it’s very hard sometimes to trust your instincts.
BM: Hmm.
Or even what you hear. Because there’s so many different interpretations, and so many different ways to perceive reality. Who’s to say who’s really right? But that’s just what I think.
BM: I think that’s so right.
ZB: No, I think that’s really astounding that who are we to think what’s really right or wrong. Film just exists as separate from most things.
BM: I like what you said there — it’s cool.
Thank you, and thank you both so much for your time.
Clacked by Jeremy Fogelman 
on Apr 28, 2012 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I think what you said is cool, too!
Great interview