At this year’s Berlinale I had the chance, as accredited press member, to see the most recent movie by Atom Egoyan, entitled Seven Veils (2023). By bringing together the worlds of cinema, theatre, opera and the ancient story of Salome, Mr. Egoyan lets us wonder in a universe both real and hallucinative, makes us think about the many reflections and interventions of art in our lives but also, about the ability to move on from a trauma, about our own personal, psychological battles. After the screening of the Seven Veils I felt that it was absolutely necessary to talk about this movie with anyone who has watched it, but being incredibly fortunate to be able to ask a few questions to the filmmaker himself was beyond my imagination. Thank you again, Mr. Egoyan, for answering our questions.
At this year’s Berlinale, right before the screening of the film, you have mentioned briefly that this movie has a special place in your heart. If you don’t mind, can you please elaborate on that?
SEVEN VEILS has a special place in my heart since it blends the two worlds of theatre and cinema that have consumed me since my early teens. Also, during my adolescence I was romantically involved with a young woman who had a very complex and mystifying relationship with her father. This woman’s father was a prominent artist in the city I was living in, and she was his primary model. Observing this relationship and trying to understand its dynamic was an obsession to me. Later, I came to understand that this was an incestuous relationship, but I didn’t understand that at the time. This has been at the core of two of my earlier films, EXOTICA (1994) and THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997).
In Seven Veils, you have worked with professional opera artists, can you talk about this experience and its reflections on the performances of other actors or how was it on a technical level?
It was always clear that in making SEVEN VEILS I would need to use the actual stage performances of the opera singers in the show. The actual stage production of SALOME was something I first presented in 1996, and it has been produced many times over the years. When The Canadian Opera Company told me that they wished to remount this show a few years ago, I immediately started writing the script for SEVEN VEILS to be filmed around this stage remount. I approached all the singers well before the rehearsals began to let them know that I wanted to film the work, but also had dramatic scenes outside of the opera itself. This is extremely challenging since they are not film actors, but I hoped to find a balance between the ‘naturalism’ of the film work and the heightened performances of what they were doing on stage.
In your movie we experience a double structure, the whole production of the opera is realized in real time with the movie itself. Can you talk about the reasons of this choice? While you were writing the script, this dual play was already on your mind or did it developed afterwards?
I always felt that the true narrative ‘spine’ of the work was the opera itself. Everything that the many other characters did in the film was a response to the invitation to dramatize their lives in relationship to rehearsing the script, staging the opera, and telling this extraordinary story that has given to us from the Bible. At certain points, the lines between the Biblical story, Oscar Wilde’s lush and extremely dense script and Richard Strauss’s revolutionary score are layered with the character’s lives in ways they try to take control over. Some parts are integrated successfully, and other parts are designed to frustrate and challenge. In terms of the temporal structure, the “double structure” you refer to is meant to underline this concept. There were parts that were enhanced afterwards – certainly with Jeanine’s voice-over “letter” to her former lover Charles – but it was always part of the concept. Some of the most intentionally frustrating moments might be where Jeanine tries to find words to her feelings in the narration, but fails to articulate her emotions and resorts back to Wilde’s text.
If I may, can you tell us about the creation process of the main character? Because Jeanine is a character with a traumatic past and a very intricate personality. Was it a challenge to create her and did you always have Amanda Seyfried in mind, casting wise?
Jeanine is fascinating to me because she seems completely lucid about her past traumas. She speaks about the incestuous relationship to her husband quite openly and we gather that she has also discussed it with her former lover/mentor Charles. What she didn’t expect was that by re-entering this world of myth and theatre and opera was that she would RE-traumatize herself in such unexpected ways. In the Bible telling of the story, Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist at the suggestion of her mother. In Oscar Wilde’s version, Salome makes it clear that this decision has nothing to do with her mother, and I found this a powerful place for Jeanine to start her new journey back to her mother. For all the staging decisions that Jeanine is making during the rehearsals, it’s quite possible that the most powerful staging choice she makes is how she directs the desecration of her father’s portrait over the zoom calls with her mother back home. This will have a very real effect on her life. It is through this direction that something in her life will shift. I always had Amanda Seyfried in mind as I was writing this. We had a great experience making CHLOE fifteen years ago and she was miraculously available during the time we needed to shoot this as the opera was being mounted last year.
I’m a little afraid to ask this because it’s not directly related to Seven Veils, you can of course totally ignore this one. But after I have left the movie theater, while I was thinking about Jeanine, in some ways the character reminded me of Lydia Tár, from Todd Field’s recent movie, am I wrong or would you agree on the fact that both characters can do anything in the way of self-realization and creativity?
Of course I had written this script before Tár came out but it was fascinating to observe the two characters. Lydia Tár is a woman in a position of great power, and Jeanine is in a very vulnerable place professionally. It is clear that the administration of the opera company just expect her to remount the show and not make any changes, but she takes a very different path as she tries to reclaim the production for herself. I think the main difference might be in relationship to how these two women see themselves in relationship to the stage. Lydia Tár is front and center. Jeanine decides NOT to take the bow on opening night. She’s exhausted by being observed from her father, to all the people working at the opera company, to even the way she has been observed in this film I have made. After all, I am just another male observer (from the Bible, to Oscar Wilde, to Richard Strauss, to Charles the original director, to Atom the filmmaker) and this is a way to finally own the work without the traditional structures of authorship and artistic acclaim. I find Jeanine’s final voice over quite telling in this way, as she orients her observation to a scene she’s not physically involved with (Clea’s casting of the new John the Baptist head) but which still exists in the sheer power of her pure imagination.
In Seven Veils, we have mentioned the presence of a dual structure, the movie itself and Salome, can we say there’s also another layer, consisting of the communication of Jeanine with her parents? Have you arranged these different structures on the writing process of the script? And also, were there other structures that you considered adding while shooting Seven Veils?
Yes, as I’ve just explained there are many levels that are working here, all to do with the various levels of revelation that the opera makes clear to the various characters at different points. Everyone seems to be devising their own personal stratagems for their own “weird love stories” as Clea says at the very beginning of the film. I could explain all of this in detail, but – as in all my films – I hope to leave it open to interpretation. I have very strong ideas that govern my cinematic and dramatic conceits, but I hope to give room for these ideas and feelings to develop in the viewers own imagination.
Can you talk about your relationship with classical music? And if I may, who are some of your favorite composers?
I have studied classical guitar and still play this instrument I love. My sister Eve is one of the most important interpreters of new classical music for the piano (check her website) and is working on a program of new Armenian music for a big concert here [Toronto] in May. My favourite composers are of course Bach, Wagner, Strauss, Alban Berg, Janacek…I could go on and on. I cherish my relationship with Mychael Danna, who has composed the music for all of my films.
Are there other projects in which you are involved right now?
I’m currently working on two new opera projects, Janacek’s JENUFA and Benjamin Britten’s DEATH IN VENICE.
Thank you very much for your time and patience.
Thank you for your interest. I hope this film gets seen in Turkey.
