Situation Normal: Canadian director Carl Bessai and actress Carrie-Anne Moss respond to the dark side
Appeared in Hour, 2008Time may indeed heal all wounds, but in Carl Bessai’s latest film, Normal, time can work very s-l-o-w-l-y. Two years have passed since the accidental death of a teenaged boy, and for those who knew him (and even some who didn’t) the repercussions are still tangibly felt. His mother and father, brother, best friend and the man who hit him with his car all continue to struggle to put the tragedy behind them.
Shot under the moody grey skies of Victoria, B.C., the movie explores themes of pain, anger, guilt, loneliness and family dysfunction – themes we’ve become accustomed to in Bessai’s work, like in his last, Unnatural and Accidental, which centres on a woman searching for her missing mother and several mysterious deaths of native women on skid row.
As I sit next to the smiling director on a hotel patio during the Toronto International Film Festival, I am puzzled by all this darkness; as I recall, the last time we saw each other – at an industry party in Vancouver – he was laughing and joking around. That night, nothing in his face suggested his dark side, and frankly, nothing does now.
“It sounds lame, but I respond well to sad things,” he tells me. “I do, and it’s funny because I’m a funny guy. I like to laugh, I fool around a lot, I’m kind of kid-like. But when it comes to my work I seem to be very drawn to tragedy.”
That being said, Bessai would love to make a funny film but doesn’t feel he has a knack for it. “It’s a great skill to say something serious and meaningful in
a comedic way – if you can you’re a genius,” he explains. “I’m not sure how to do that. I worry about doing something that trivializes things that are important to me. I don’t mean to sound heavy, but I always feel like I’m fighting for something in my work. To get me interested in doing a film – because it’s so hard – I have to feel a deep, emotional connection to the material.”
Actress Carrie-Ann Moss, who plays the boy’s grieving mother in Normal, is similarly motivated when picking roles. “I choose my movies from where I’m at in my heart and what speaks to me,” she says. “I really, really fell hard for the script.”
“Carl gave me a great gift. He reignited my passion for acting.”