The Winter Lake makes powerful use of its setting to tell a story about the darker side of family in a rural Irish town. The thriller, now available on VOD, follows a mother and son who move to an isolated village and start to discover their neighbors are not who they seem.
Writer David Turpin and Director Phil Sheerin spoke to Screen Rant about their collaboration process with the cast and the themes that resonated most in their work.
David, this film really feels like a coming-of-age story with some dark edges to it. Where did this idea come from?
David Turpin: My dark coming of age, I suppose. Initially, I was interested in doing something that was to do with the relationship between people and the landscape. The way that the landscape is indifferent to us, but at the same time, can impact upon us and alter the course of our lives in ways that we don't expect. The interesting way we think of the landscape as anonymous, and yet we're powerless against what it does.
I suppose that got me thinking about that powerlessness that you feel as a teenager and a young person. A lot of the freedoms that we take for granted as adults - or that we did take for granted before the current [days] - you just don't possess as a child. You can't go where you want when you want; you're trapped in a lot of ways by being a young person. That becomes a crucible for tension, and the potential for violence and all of these kinds of things come out of that constriction that you experience as a young person. So, I was interested in that as well.
David, I know that you saw Phil's short North. Can you talk to me about what elements in North let you know he'd be up for the challenge of The Winter Lake?
David Turpin: I thought that there was an interesting dynamic between mother and son at the backbone of the short, which was something that's part of our film as well. But also, the sense of place that's captured in the short, and place is so important to The Winter Lake.
And, I suppose, something that felt very real, but at the same time had another worldliness or strangeness about it. And it's very difficult thing, I think, to take the familiar and make us look at it again; to make it strange to us or uncanny. I think that was what I really enjoyed about the short.
Phil, what were some of the themes from David's script that you wanted to explore in The Winter Lake.
Phil Sheerin: There's a lot about just relationship dynamics inside families, and just that we all need somebody to love and we all want somebody to love us. But when it that the worst thing for you? Just exploring these really extreme family dynamics, which is the main thing in a lot of things that I do. Where's the limits to love inside a family? How far are you willing to go for the people you love? How much does that destroy who you are as a person? These kinds of things.
Then also, even in reading the script for The Winter Lake, there's an element of how you have to have your own way into it. There was a loneliness in each of the characters that I thought was really palpable, really poetic. That's what drew me in more than anything; I was really aware of the depth of each of the characters' lives.
So much of what Anton is doing for Tom is internalized, and he turns out an amazing, brilliant performance. Can you talk about helping craft the character of Tom, and what Anson brought to the role that may have not been on the page?
David Turpin: God, it's a difficult role in a lot of ways, because there's so little dialogue. You're in some ways giving him very little that way. The script, as I recall, was very descriptive - much more so than I guess would be typical in a script. Because there's so little dialogue, and so you're filling it in different ways.
But the most exciting thing always about a script is the gap between what you've written and the underperformance. It's the interpretive gap, and what they bring to it, and how they transform us.
I know it's called a script, but one doesn't want to be too prescriptive about it. It's interesting when people mutate us in a way, and you see it afresh when you see it performed. He did that, I thought. The spaces that are in that script where there would perhaps normally be dialogue, he did fascinating things with.
The whole cast in this film is really brilliant. Charlie Murphy knocks it out of the park; Emma Mackey, what a powerhouse. Can you talk to me about working with them and what may have surprised you with their performances?
Phil Sheerin: Charlie, Emma, in particular - actually, I could say this across the board. They all came in very much with their own interpretation of the characters, and then my job was just really to help them realize it. It was just answering the questions they might have, talking to them about the scene. Very simple stuff, which hopefully is what it always is.
But the thing that happened with all them was that they were so sure and so resolute in who their characters were when they got there first day, day one, there was just no guesswork with them. They were so confident with it.
I'd put that a lot down to the writing of the script. You knew at all times where you were in the script, you knew why they were doing what they were doing. So, they had a lot to hold on to; a lot to anchor their performance in. And then it was just, for the first couple of days, finding the tone, in terms of matching whatever they were doing with the pace and with the blocking. But it very quickly just turned into almost a technical exercise, because what they were doing was so right, I didn't want to get in their way. Very rarely, I'd just be like, "We'll go again," with a very slight alteration. But from day one, I was in we of how good they all were. It was difficult; dead of winter in Ireland, in a house with no electricity and no heating. It wasn't easy for them, but they were troopers and extremely talented.
David, there's something very mysterious, honest and vulnerable about Emma's performance. Was it what you imagined for Holly when you were writing her?
David Turpin: I mean, it's what I would have hoped for. She created her performance, so I can't take responsibility for her. But it's a difficult role, because so much of it is below the surface. She speaks more than Anson, so she's more outgoing in some ways, but she's also more withholding in other ways. It's a complex part, I think, in a lot of ways. Because though it's a very realist film, it's also drawing upon film noir. You're asking somebody to both occupy a very realistic world, and also reinvent that noir archetype - which is a difficult thing.
I thought she was just so fascinating to watch... I just find it really fascinating to watch her interaction with the other actors, but also interaction with the camera and the way she worked with it. I love to see actors who work with the medium of film, who work with the camera. Oftentimes, actors are maybe from a more theatrical background, so essentially, you're filming a performance. But sometimes the most provocative acting, the most interesting acting, is a dialogue between the performance but also a dialogue between performer and camera. I thought it was really fascinating to watch that, especially with Anson and Emma.
Michael's character Ward can easily be a monster in this film, but he brings this complexity and humanity to him. Can you talk to me about shaping his performance and informing his performance to get there where he needed to go? Because I thought that he what he did with that character was brilliant.
Phil Sheerin: A lot of it is David did a really a fantastic job. I don't think Michael would have been interested in it if it was just your cookie cutter bad guy. From the very beginning, his ambition was to exhibit a guy who's wrestling with his demons and trying to bury them. In his mind, he's doing one bad thing once. Why should that mean that this is who he is?
As much as whatever he's done is really extreme, and we would vilify him for it, you can kind of understand the logic that he's putting into his own thinking to get them through the day; that makes him believe that, "Deep down, I'm a nice guy." Obviously, Michael just needs to be brave enough to go with us and go with that story, and exhibit that arc of a character who lets that monster out again by the. Or who has no choice but to let it out; that's who he is.
You shot in Sligo, Ireland, which is almost like stepping back in time scenery-wise. Was this by design? Can you talk about how Sligo helped inform the story?
Phil Sheerin: It was very much by design. We wanted a place that felt forgotten. It wasn't necessarily that it was back in time, the kids have modern mobile phone and stuff, but it was a place that was sort of pushed aside. People are left to fester in their loneliness and isolation, and what that might do to the economy and what it does to the town.
It should inform everything; locations are characters. Very simply, obviously, it should inform framing and what you want to say, in terms of how rundown this town is. Even the post office doesn't have the signage up anymore; everything's in the stages of shutting down. But then, to understand the landscape and people's relationship to it, we searched high and low for the right house and the right landscape, like the house sitting in the landscape, so that we could really show that.
It's where Tom, the main character felt most at home. His journey was very much brought to bear and started all the way through the lake and through the landscape. It had to be right, basically.
Can you talk about some of the challenges you may have faced during production?
Phil Sheerin: It was impossible. There was a lot of a lot of stuff that we just couldn't do, just purely because if it's nighttime and it's cold, things are already running slow. But if it's night time, it's cold, and you're getting in and out of water? It was really tough. But, again, I could not believe how the actors did it with a smile.
All this stuff that happens in the water towards the end? That lake that we were in was completely frozen over two nights before, so it was literally zero degrees water. They're going in and out of it, and they're going in all night. And it was just like, "God, fair play." I suppose becomes the attrition upon you as well, though. Everyone kind of gets into the same group, and we're in it together. On that level, when you look back on it you enjoy it, but you didn't enjoy it when you're in it. It was good, though.
What are you hoping audiences experience with The Winter Lake?
David Turpin: I'm always quite open that I think your role as a filmmaker is to give an audience something about which they can feel something, but what they feel is up to them. I know there's a school of thought where a film is a machine for producing a certain emotional response, and I don't feel that way. I think it's a text to produce a response, but the responses is the audience's.
Insofar as it has a message, what I would maybe like people to take away from it is a reconsideration of some the things that we believe about family A lot of the time, we tend to think of the irreducible unit of society as the family, and the family is the bedrock upon which everything is built. Okay, if you have a functional family and a great family, hooray for you. Maybe that is the case. But many people don't, so the broken family, the individual - all of these things have equal merit. You can be alone and still matter. You don't have to be part of this nuclear family unit.
Phil Sheerin: For me, I don't think the film is offering any answers, and it's not trying to nor should it. But it's definitely trying to get you to maybe examine family boundaries, maybe examine things that happen all around us every day. You don't know what's happening in your neighbor's houses.
But more pointedly in Ireland, there's a lot of history along the lines of this film that needs to be talked about. You can't put things under the rug forever. You can't ignore things; they will come back in ways you don't want them to come back, and will make you act on that. It's just the element of repression, the element of being able to talk, the element of taking shame away from something that wouldn't be your fault. Being able to examine us as a society so that we can hopefully heal as a society; things like that are most important thing about it.
The Winter Lake is now available on VOD and will be available on DVD March 23, 2021.