Jennifer Kent worked extensively as an actor in Australia before establishing her career as a writer-director. The Babadook premiered at Sundance in 2014, and received over 100 nominations and awards internationally. It is now being re-released for its 10th anniversary and is currently in theaters again. Jennifer’s second film The Nightingale won the Jury Prize and the Marcello Mastroianni award at Venice Film Festival in 2018, as well as winning five Australian Academy (AACTA) Awards. Recently, she wrote and directed “The Murmuring,” an episode of the acclaimed Netflix anthology Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. She has three feature films in development as well as two TV series.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the 10th anniversary re-release of her directorial debut, the epochal horror movie The Babadook, Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent shared some of the things that bring her the most joy in life. — N.D.
Robert Bresson
My first love is Robert Bresson, the French director. The reason I bring him up is because I’ve lived in Brisbane now for five years – it’s my home town – and I never realized until recently that there was a cinematheque that screened incredible films, mostly for free. It’s a state-of-the-art cinema in the Gallery of Modern Art here, so I just started going every week. They had a Robert Bresson retrospective a month or two ago, and I’d seen Au hasard Balthazar and a few of his other films on the small screen, but the opportunity to watch them all in one month was something I really needed at the time. A number of my film projects had fallen apart, and I thought, Why am I doing this? Why am I even bothering? Robert Bresson showed me why I should keep going.
Bresson developed and created a totally unique form of cinema that was completely particular to him, and he is the most pure filmmaker I’ve ever witnessed. He did not like the way acting was portrayed on camera – it just didn’t feel right to him – so he took actors (who he called models) and created a unique, transcendent, hypnotic way of delivering story. A lot of people say he was very focused on realism, but his work almost bypassed realism and went into a land of poetry that I find very moving. And incredibly inspiring. Another reason I connect with Bresson is that I came to filmmaking late, after being an actress and doing many other things, and Robert Bresson made films up until his eighties. So for him, it was a long game. He made some of his best films in his sixties, which gives me a lot of hope, so he’s my very deepest love of the moment.
Before I started watching Bresson’s work, I felt despair that no one wanted to see my films. I’ve passed up many opportunities to direct other people’s movies, but unfortunately I’m a peculiar creature who just needs to make films that come from somewhere deep inside me. Bresson had a peerless devotion to making something important, and his films have restored my desire to persist in making my own work. Bresson’s films are old now, but somehow they feel like they were made yesterday. I feel such enormous gratitude to him that he made these films. And it was not easy for him.
So, whether it’s crazy or not, I’m continuing as a filmmaker and I feel happy to be continuing. Right now we’re suffering from a gluttonous surfeit of “content” which is so cynical and you can see right through it. It’s like the McDonald’s of storytelling, but I think that people are fighting back. They’re returning to the cinema, because they want to see good things. I think we can shift through this dark time in movies and get to somewhere better. I encourage people to seek out old films, to go and watch them in the cinema, and see how it makes you feel.
Going to the Cinema
Well, that brings me to my second love, which is sitting in a cinema, watching films collectively with people. I feel it’s one of the greatest things we can do. We are hardwired for story. We’ve been doing it since we first existed as a species. There’s a huge need for myth, there’s a huge need for storytelling, and what better way to experience it fully and without distraction than sitting in a darkened cinema with people we don’t know, watching films.
I recently took my sister to see Ordet, by Carl Theodor Dreyer, which is a very special film. And a demanding film. It’s not a film you can just sit and passively watch. There was one point in it where I started to feel very emotional, to tear up, and then heard other people crying, and it was like a chain reaction all through the cinema. So here we were, a bunch of strangers, all sitting and watching this immensely moving and deeply philosophical film, experiencing those emotions together. It was a great affirmation of our humanity. Humans have become so disconnected and so lonely and so collectively depressed, and going to a cinema is a great antidepressant. It’s a great way to experience a kind of storytelling that I think has almost died. But we can resurrect it. And I feel such an immense love for it.
Going to the cinematheque every week has changed my life this year. This past weekend, I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey there. I’ve watched it on my TV before and it’s great, but it’s not a patch on seeing it in the cinema with a full house. It’s a film that’s 50-odd years old, but the screening was packed. When you go to a cinema and film lovers are all together, it’s great.
Bringing a Script to Life with Collaborators
My third thing, which I really miss because I’ve been writing a lot of scripts alone in my house, is bringing a script from the point of completion to where it’s a film screening in a cinema. I love the process of collaboration with other people so much. I love falling in love with a project together. I remember one particular moment on the set of The Babadook when I just stopped, in amongst the madness that a director goes through, and looked around. There was so much love and care for the film, it was incredibly moving to me.
I really don’t love the stress of filmmaking, but I do love the jokes and the dedication and the focus and the quiet when you’re settling down for a take. And I love actors. I love them as people and their devotion to storytelling and to getting their characters right, making them complex. When I’m on set, I’m in my happy place.
I’ve been writing stories since I learned how to read; I think my first full-length play was performed when I was seven or eight. From a young age, I knew I wanted to tell stories. I didn’t realize that girls could be film directors, but I knew in my heart I was a director. It was something innate that I was born with. I trained as an actor, which I think helped enormously with working with actors. A lot of directors can be a bit intimidated by actors, but I’m not frightened of them, because I am one. My whole life was working up to being a filmmaker. Creativity was my way of processing the world and making sense of it. And filmmaking is a vocation to me, rather than just a job. That’s why I unfortunately just can’t seem to take on jobs for hire as a director. I would be working a lot more, but it’s just not in me.
Featured image, showing Jennifer Kent with Noah Wiseman on the set of The Babadook, is by Matt Nettheim and courtesy IFC Films.
