Jacob Elordi and director Justin Kurzel spoke about making their new collection, “The Slender Street to the Deep North,” at a preview screening in Melbourne, Australia.
Tailored from Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize–successful novel, “The Slender Street to the Deep North” attracts on his father’s expertise as a prisoner of warfare in Burma throughout World Conflict II. Director Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant tailored the novel into an emotionally charged five-part collection for Amazon Prime Video in Australia. (Learn IndieWire’s evaluation right here as we await distribution in North America.)
Spanning three a long time, the story follows military surgeon Dorrigo Evans via a lovestruck youth, brutal captivity in a Japanese POW camp, and the lengthy shadow of reminiscence in outdated age. Evans is performed by Elordi within the Forties and by Ciarán Hinds within the Eighties, because the older man reckons with the defining experiences of his youth.
“Justin created a setup that made it really feel utterly actual,” the “Euphoria” and “Saltburn” star advised a pre-screening Q&A. “There’s a normal facade in filmmaking the place you shoot out of order; the top, the start, after which the center, say. We shot it not chronologically however when it comes to reminiscence — when it comes to the story. So I received to shoot for just a few weeks pre-war, within the Summer time of Love, because the younger Dorrigo, and I received to construct all of these reminiscences and experiences on the set, in order that after I went into the camps for the second portion, I had very actual reminiscences from filming to attract on.”
Following a Particular Gala premiere on the Berlinale in January, the place it emerged as one of many pageant’s highlights, “The Slender Street to the Deep North” has been step by step constructing word-of-mouth buzz for its highly effective storytelling, evocative physicality, and Kurzel’s deft steadiness of brutality, love, and fragile camaraderie.
The collection co-stars Simon Baker, Thomas Weatherall, Olivia DeJonge, Odessa Younger, and Kurzel’s spouse, Essie Davis, star of horror traditional “The Babadook” and Noah Hawley’s forthcoming FX collection “Alien: Earth.” Whereas the early episodes discover romance and promise, the collection shifts dramatically as soon as Dorrigo and his comrades are captured, the place they battle hunger, sickness, and despair whereas rising ever extra emaciated.
Kurzel praised the solid for his or her dedication to bodily remodeling for the roles, noting the method was carefully managed by a dietitian. “You’ll be able to’t simply starve your self,” he mentioned. “It needed to be accomplished safely.” The actors adopted a fastidiously designed plan that balanced vital weight reduction with sustaining their well being, a course of that concerned each strict vitamin and intense bodily coaching. For Elordi, this was some of the difficult and rewarding elements of the manufacturing.
“I used to be fortunate to be surrounded by an unimaginable solid of younger actors within the jungle, Aussie boys,” he mentioned. “The camaraderie simply got here instantly with the set that Justin supplied. It was like a stay theater expertise. There was no stopping for lighting setups or something like that. We had two weeks collectively earlier than we even filmed, to get to know one another and to coach collectively. In the midst of filming, we had a six-week break the place all of us reduce the load collectively. There’s one thing that occurs while you lose that weight and while you’re working in direction of a typical inventive purpose collectively. There’s a bond that occurs that you just don’t get in on a regular basis life.”
It’s in creating and emotionally stress-testing this masculine atmosphere that Grant and Kurzel actually excel, and the place most of the collection’ most shifting scenes could be discovered. With movies akin to “The Order,” “Macbeth,” “Nitram,” and “The True Historical past of the Kelly Gang,” Kurzel established himself as some of the incisive explorers of the disquieted male psyche. “The Slender Street to the Deep North” reveals him following this trait via the psychological and bodily apocalypse of warfare, to its transcendent conclusion in a narrative that differs from Flanagan’s novel.
“I feel it’s a unprecedented love story, this e-book, and it has an intimacy that’s extraordinarily particular,” Kurzel advised the gang. “I felt it may very well be tailored as a collection which actually me in regard to the construction and the DNA of it when it comes to these totally different timelines of a person’s life, permitting us to dig deeper into these totally different phases. Normally, with these form of warfare tales, the lens may be very large. That is about reminiscence and thoughts and physique and love.”
The collection’ launch finds Kurzel in a part of unparalleled productiveness. During the last 12 months he has not solely delivered “The Order” and the documentary “Ellis Park,” however he has additionally shot the ultimate two episodes of Jason Bateman’s forthcoming Netflix collection “Black Rabbit.” The eight-part New York-set thriller sees Kurzel re-team together with his producer from “The Order,” Zach Baylin, in addition to its star, Jude Legislation, and “The Slender Street to the Deep North’s” Odessa Younger.
Whereas Kurzel mentioned he’s not related to the Laura Dern and Benedict Cumberbatch sci-fi drama “Morning,” he’s about to start manufacturing on one other adaptation. Kurzel has changed “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson to helm Cory Finley’s adaptation of “Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke,” journalist Dean Kuipers’ account of a five-day standoff between marijuana advocates and the FBI. As a sign of the regard wherein he’s held by actors, Kurzel was introduced onto the mission by its star Sebastian Stan, a gesture that speaks to the collaborative spirit he fosters on set.
By drawing on pre-established relationships as he strikes between tasks, Kurzel creates a manufacturing atmosphere constructed on mutual respect and artistic freedom, permitting his actors the house to totally discover their characters. Flanagan famous this when he visited Kurzel’s set.
“That is very a lot a cast-driven present,” Flanagan mentioned. “They found elements of themselves on this and made one thing extraordinary. As a result of nobody is aware of what makes movie or good TV. However what makes a nasty movie or unhealthy TV is destroying the liberty of the director. The nice artistic act in filmmaking is the directorial act, and that’s not a ridiculous French idea that escaped the Left Financial institution. That’s the fact of creating cinema or making tv. When Justin kindly agreed to do that, what I mentioned to him was, ‘I don’t need constancy to the novel. I need you to seek out no matter strikes you in my e-book. Make your individual murals out of it and make it your individual method.’”
“The Slender Street to the Deep North” premiered on the 2025 Berlin Movie Competition. Amazon Prime Video will distribute the collection in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with Sony Footage at the moment searching for a U.S. distributor.