Paul Cox:

The Man of Flowers

I was shooting the final scenes on Nimnayaka Hudakalawa (Alone in A Valley ) today to wrap up the movie. After shooting with Saumya Liyanage and Vimukthi, we were all so tired and Vimukthi Jayasundara (Director: Forsaken Land), offered me a ride to my home since the other transportations will be delayed. On my way back I was thinking I had better start writing the next article because it is due very soon. After writing about David Lynch and the combination work of David Bowie with Lynch, I really wanted to talk about Pop Art Avant-garde filmmakers and Andy.

Once I sat down to write and going through my memories, Paul Cox came to my mind. Because Anoja Weerasinghe met me a few days ago, and was telling me she was going to see him in Australia. She said that, if I wanted to send him a Sarong, she would be glad to take it for him. Paul always loved the Buddhi Batiks sarong my mother sent him. He would write to her and say, “I would wear them till they are torn”. Well, with the finishing works of the movie Alone in A Valley, I missed sending Paul a sarong. I felt very sad that I could not send it. So I figured I would write about him and his work.

I first met Paul Cox in Anoja (Weerasinghe’s) aunty’s home one evening.

Somewhere in the very early 90s and it was a very brief meeting. Then in 1994 Ashley Rathnavibhushana told me that, my film (Sihina Deshayen) was selected to the Indian International Film Festival and they have invited me there. I was so thrilled and it was my first international film festival. On my way there in Air India 747, I met another Indian expat filmmaker from London and we became very friendly. She is Gurinder Chadha. She was also coming with her film “Baji on the beach”. (Gurinder later made Bend it Like Beckham, and Bride and Prejudice). We were all picked up in Delhi airport and taken to a nice hotel where I met Ashley. My mother and sister had come from Sri Lanka to see me as well.

Well the politics of a film festival and the snobbishness in the Bollywood industry started to hit me. It was all new to me, because no one in the Bollywood industry or any person from north Indian film industry recognized me or accepted me. Then Ashley was so kind and helpful, he introduced to me Sunny Joseph (Cinematographer of the film “Piravi”). He was so nice and introduced me to the great Adoor Gopala Krishnan, the legendary filmmaker from Kerala. The irony of the situation was that, no one from the northern film industry recognized them either. So we southerners were all kind of out casted. My coming from New York City and have been meeting and making friends like Steve Bucemi (Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), Philip Glass (Opera composer Einstein on the Beach and film music composer for Kundun), and the late Allen Ginsburg ( Father of the beat generation of America), I was highly put off and disappointed and also felt discriminated.

Then came Paul Cox like a breath of fresh air. Ashley again re-introduced me to Paul Cox, he warmly welcomed me to his company. Not only that we would sit together for breakfast every morning and it was with John Erving (Widows Peak, City of Industry and The Moon and The Stars), Derrick Malcolm the film critique from London and all the other celebrities from the West who were there. Paul was there to screen his film Exile. He is an amazing human being. Slowly I was getting to know him. The icing on the cake was, every one from the northern Indian (Bollywood) film industry started to recognize me. Suddenly I became the Sri Lankan filmmaker from New York City. It was a too funny.

All the beautiful girls started to appreciate me as well. The contrast was so much I felt like a character who was in a black and white movie, walked into a colour movie.

Getting back to Paul, he was born in Holland and settled in Melbourne, Paul Cox is an auteur of international acclaim. He is one of the most important filmmakers from Australia. I remember a major retrospective held at the Lincoln Centre in New York City in 1992 when I was living there. He migrated to Australia in the mid-’60s, had his training in photography, and taught photography for many years at Prahran Technical College. In the mid ‘70s he began making low-budget features. I think this aspect is so true, because when you talk to him, I always feel the philosophy in life.

Throughout his film career, he has received many international awards. These include Best Film at the 1982 Australian Film Industry Awards for ‘Lonely Hearts’; Best Film & Best Director at the 1985 Houston Film Festival; Best Director at the 1984 Rio de Janeiro Film Festival; and Best Director, Actor and Screenplay at the 1984 Australian Film Industry Awards for ‘My First Wife’.

‘Man of Flowers’ premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984, and went on to win Best Film at the 1984 Valladolid Film Festival as well as Best Foreign Film at the 1991 Warsaw Film Festival. Now this is a very important film I felt, because this was the first film I saw of his. It was sometime in 1994, spring in New York City in my apartment. Talking about my apartment in NYC is like talking about Henry Miller’s “Tropic Of Cancer”.

Our apartment was called “Cathedral of Erotic Miseries” . It was just a name given by my roommates and by me at that time. When I told Lisa Andrew, my Australian roommate that I met Paul Cox at the film festival. She was so thrilled and told me how wonderful and how much she loves “Man of Flowers”.

I quickly went around the corner to “Kim’s Video” on avenue A between 6th and 7th streets, owned by some Koreans and was the biggest cult video rental place in down town Manhattan at that time. I took the video home and watched it with a lot of enthusiasm. Wow...there goes another treat, in the movie there is a cameo played by Warner Herzog, the legendary German filmmaker, about whom I was writing my graduation thesis on. Me being just a student, I was so thrilled to see that Paul has worked with Herzog and now I know someone that knows Herzog. The film was very touching and I enjoyed it very much.

‘Cactus’ premiered in Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986 and ‘Vincent’, his docudrama on the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh (narrated by John Hurt), won the Jury Prize at the 1988 Istanbul International Film days. Paul gave my mother a tape of the documentary he made on Van Gogh. Wow...what a fantastic documentary on Van Gogh. Amazing. He completely changed my way of looking at documentaries. I loved the way he captured the beauty in it, without a person being there, just visuals, very powerful visuals with one of my favourite actors, John Hurt’s voice in the background. I watched it at my parent’s home and it was so powerful. I could not imagine how one can just make someone so emotional even without showing the painter himself. He could do that, he really made one move with that documentary.

‘A Woman’s Tale’ won the Grand Prix at the 1992 International Flanders Film Festival in Ghent as well as being selected for the 1992 Tokyo International Film Festival and ‘Exile *screened in competition at the 1994 Berlin International Film Festival.

His highly acclaimed feature ‘Innocence’ (2000) won massive audience and critical acclaim, including the Grand Prix of the Americas (Best Film) and the People’s Choice Award at the 2000 Montreal World Film Festival; the FIPRESCI Critics Award at the Taormina International Film Festival; Best Film at both the Vlissengen and Saint-Tropez Film Festivals; third prize in the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Awards and 5 Australian IF awards including Best Film, Independent Filmmaker of the Year for Paul Cox, and Best Actress for Julia Blake. The film was also awarded the Marquee Audience Favourite Award at the CineVegas International Film Festival 2000. Following screenings of his new feature film ‘Innocence’ (2000) at Cannes in May, critic Roger Ebert praised it as his favourite film.

His films are about ordinary, forgotten people dealing with everyday life and their own human weakness. His themes are about love, hope, faith, loneliness, isolation, home.

He carefully chooses those that work with him, and seeks an atmosphere of mutual loyalty and respect. (I work in a very similar way, if not the same way.) He usually works closely with a small cast and crew, many of these returning for numerous films. (I also love working with small crews and sometimes I find in Sri Lanka, many professional crews don’t like to work in small crews. That’s something I will never understand). He chooses actors on the basis of their earlier work. “I would never screen test anyone. I find that humiliating and denigrating to an actor to give a part to an actor without screen-testing, you’ve already earned 10 points because you’ve got their trust, you’ve got their confidence.” (Paul Cox: MIFF 2000). I totally agree with him, I mostly chose actors in a similar way. A very good example is that when I chose Saumya Liyanage for “Nimnayaka Hudakalawa”, I saw him in “Wala Patala” the movie and I liked the way he played his character and I cast him.

He also does not always follow the screenplay closely. He also allows himself freedom for spontaneity and improvisation. “I have no system at all. I work totally on instinct, at random. I don’t know anything. I empty myself of all knowledge so I know nothing when I start. We never rehearse, we talk about it and read through the scripts maybe.” (Paul Cox: MIFF 2000) Similarly, his production crews are often the same from film to film. “I think it is important that you have total trust.” This method I find it is very good.

Because most of the time in “Mille Soya” and in “Nimnayaka Hudakalawa”, I improvised a lot with the actors. I also feel it really ads to the film.

I remember once he had invited me for a meal at his Melbourne home and he was wearing a Batik Sarong that my mother had given him. There were a few actors too, and one actor was from “Full Monty” that Uberto Passolini (Director of Machang) has produced. When we were seated at the table, I saw an interesting photograph of “Sergei Parajanov” hanging there in the vicinity of dining area. I pointed at the picture and said, “He is an amazing filmmaker like ‘Andrei Tarkovsky”. Paul replied to me while filling his pipe with tobacco, ‘Sergei Parajanov’ is one of my favourite filmmakers and ‘Tarkovsky’ was my friend”.

I had my mouth opened for a moment, because they both are regarded as two of the 20th century’s greatest masters of cinema. I am very grateful to Anoja Weerasinghe, who worked with him in his film “The Island” for introducing me to such an amazing filmmaker, and a nice friend. I am also grateful to Ashley Rathnavibushana for giving me the strength in my first film festival when everyone was neglecting us.