Making a film is difficult work in the best circumstances. It is a collaborative process that requires a prudent cordial coordination between an incredibly diverse range of craftsmen: directors, actors, writers, camera operators, designers, cascade strokes, electricians, carpenters, animal tapeurs and sometimes Muppets. The degree of difficulty is born when you dare to shoot in elements less than more loving like water, the jungle or the desert.
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“Jaws”, “Apocalypse now” and “Lawrence of Arabia” are three of the greatest films ever made, but they were brutally difficult to bring together. Mother Nature’s fury launched these three well late. The sets were destroyed, the equipment was damaged beyond the repair and a mechanical shark refused to function properly. Was it worth it? For the spectator, absolutely. You watch these films and, between the breathtaking sequences, you have it that they could really not be done in this way to risk these days. But a vision of George Hickenlooper, Fax Bahr and “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” by Eleanor Coppola should let you thank the manufacturer of your choice that you were submitted to Francis Ford Coppola.
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And then there is “Roar” by Noel Marshall.
The passion project of Marshall and his female cinema Tippi Hedren, “Roar” is, on the surface, a family film on a naturalist (Marshall) which manages a natural reserve in Tanzania populated by great cats. When he brings his family (the real Marshall-Henren clan, including a young Melanie Griffith) to join him while he continues his study, All Hell stands out. They arrive while he faces a threat to the reserve, which leads to a heartbreaking meeting with these giant creatures (which will play with you until you are dead like a house of house is a mouse). Everything is terribly real, and the danger is relentless until the credits roll 90 minutes later, how much you wonder how no one was killed by pulling this wild thing.
Surprisingly, nobody perished during the shooting of “Roar”, but Jan de Bont – the legendary filmmaker and director of photography which advanced “Die Hard” and “The Hunt for Red October” and produced “Speed” and “Twister” – Flirted with the big outing when he became full of the shell by a playful lion.
