Interview: Co-Writer and Director André Øvredal on the Visual Language of MORTAL and More

Arriving in select theaters and on digital and VOD platforms this Friday, November 6th is Mortal, the latest directorial effort from André Øvredal. The film is centered around Eric (Nat Wolff), an American traveler who finds himself mixed up in a series of unexplainable events and on the wrong side of the law in Norway. The police bring in a psychologist named Christine (Iben Akerlie) to meet with Eric, and he warns her that he has these supernatural abilities that puts anyone who gets too close in danger. Unwilling to let him end up a statistic, Christine and Eric head out in search for answers, but what they uncover during their journey is beyond anything they could have ever imagined.

Daily Dead recently spoke with Øvredal about the mythological inspirations behind the story of Mortal, his thoughts on collaborating with both Wolff and Akerlie, establishing the ambitious visual language of the film, and more.

Saban Films will be releasing Mortal this weekend digitally and in theaters, and then the film will make its Blu-ray debut a few days later on November 10th.

Great to speak with you today, Andre. I enjoyed how you incorporated these stories and characters that we've all lived with for hundreds of years now here for Mortal, and were able to bring it into these modern times. I think this story is really fascinating because with Eric, everything is very much a double-edged sword. There are these positives to who he is and his abilities, but you know there are also the negatives as well. Can you discuss your approach to Eric as a character, his mythology, and figuring how he fits into our modern world?

André Øvredal: Yeah, I mean, it's both. I do believe that we all have good and bad in us and we all have the ability to do good and do bad, and I think that is a fascinating way to portray our character like that. Also Thor, who he's a descendant of, was a God with a temperament, and he was also a protector of mankind and there was a lot of elements to that character as well. I found that I wanted to bring that out in addition to talking about humanity on a very, very basic level.

I think that was a big part of the approach that you can see with Eric accidentally killing someone, but he also knows he's going to. So there is a double edge thing to him right there from the beginning. But with the character of Christine, she is able to care for him, and Henry, the police officer, is able to understand what he's up against in a way, and understand him as a human being and the value of him, too. 

And speaking to that, I think that this story has a fascinating way of examining the foibles of humanity. In some ways, it reminded me of social media, where people have a tendency to just latch onto the worst possible aspects of things, as opposed to trying to find the best in people or situations. I appreciated that this movie confronts that in a way, in terms of how it feels like society is going into this downshift these days. 

André Øvredal: I think you're onto something there. That is actually the way social media works today and the first impression that you always get of something, the headline, if you will, is what you react to instead of actually digging deeper. People tend to do that instead of actually trying to understand the subtleties and the balance of the situation that you're actually dealing with. I think that's a very good point of view into this movie.

I want to talk about Nat in this movie, because he is the cornerstone to this story, where everything goes through him in some very unique ways. Can you talk about what it was you saw in him in particular for this role, in terms of being able to capture this guy who is so full of conflict, the weight that he carries with him because of his abilities, and the way he's able to manifest his abilities, too? It’s a performance that is very emotionally driven, but Nat definitely had a lot of physical demands to his character as well.

André Øvredal: I agree. I think what I'd seen of Nat before we made the movie was him in these lighter movies where he would be playing a very open character, very different than what I was looking for in this. Then we had a chat on Skype, and it was so great to see his darkness when we were talking. I could see that as a human being Nat was different than what I'd seen him previously portray on screen. And I wanted to bring that into the movie, what I saw in him as a human being, a person who is able to take the weight on his shoulders and carry it and actually let it show the pain and let it show up on screen with very simple means. 

Because it's not really a necessarily outwardly physical manifestation of that pain here. It's often internalized, and it's very rooted in him as a human being. The guilt of what he's become and the dangers he puts people in, and how is he going to relate to it? How is he going to become a part of society again? There are so many elements to his character there that I think it's really tricky to play because there are a lot of aspects to his character that people really talk about in real life.

I also enjoyed Iben in this, too. She ends up becoming this emotional anchor for Eric in this story, and I thought it was lovely that there’s this sense of grace that she treats Eric with, and the compassion she has for him that was really nice to see. In fact, for as cool the spectacle and the visual effects were in this movie, I really relished the quieter moments between their characters, especially when they’re at the cabin, because those moments gave them both some great character beats.

André Øvredal: That is my favorite part of the movie as well. I love the quiet beats. It's like the moment outside the Beetle when they're standing there in the rain and she's deciding to stick with him. I think those are my favorite moments in the movie, too. But I think Christine is the driving force of the story. She's the one that really drives the story, because without her, he would be lost, and he would end up completely in the wrong hands. She's the one who's taking a chance, risking her life just for a gut feeling that this is the right thing to do.

This is beyond just a normal situation. This is beyond a mathematical decision. It's something you either go with or you don't. I also loved that where they're both coming from is a place of guilt. They're both coming into the story with a similar outlook on life. And in this story, I wanted to explore something where it’s not always opposites that attract. Sometimes it's just the fact that you have a similar position in life or you have a similar view on things, and then you find each other. You bond over the similarities more than the differences, and I found that balance intriguing between them.

Before we go, I’d love to chat about the visual effects in Mortal. I know you’re not working with a huge Marvelesque-type budget, but I think what you guys were able to pull off here is great.

André Øvredal: Thank you. That's great to hear. I think the movie was always supposed to be about a person who has a supernatural and intimate connection with atmosphere and with nature, so that became the basis of everything that happens in the VFX and with how I wanted to handle the storytelling. It's about the intimacy of the moments, and it's not just about wind and or hair, but about the texture of humanity and nature all blended together. That became a huge aspect of how I wanted to portray the VFX. Sometimes it's very intimate, sometimes very small, but then to counterbalance that, I had to make it feel huge during other parts.

I always had this idea that the movie was going to be told in two different types of imagery settings. One is in very intimate shots, moments, and scenes, and then you have these huge expanded scenes, like the helicopter and the bridge. Those were done in wide shots from a distance because this was about the loneliness of nature and putting them in relation to the surroundings. That was the visual language that I was going for here.