‘Strange’ Magic: An Interview with ‘Love Is Strange’ Director Ira Sachs

I confess to director Ira Sachs that after watching the trailer for his latest romance drama, Love Is Strange, I thought I might skip it because it looked so corny. Can you blame me? The trailer features a collection of quirky, endearing moments between the characters played by John Lithgow (as Ben Hull) and Alfred Molina (as George Garea), who appear doing paintings, having tiny arguments about missing eyeglasses, playing the piano, and sipping wines of various colors. These scenes are accompanied by quotes that call the film “beautiful”, “marvelous” and many other adjectives that borderline on too precious.

“You were expecting a hokey little drama about a cute old gay couple?” he asks. “Yes…?” “Then you must not have seen my other films.”

I’ve all of his films. I’m just surprised that the filmmaker behind The Delta (1996), Married Life (2007), and especially Keep the Lights On (2012) is now making what appears to be an overly sentimental flick. I explain that Keep the Lights On made me consider never dating again, which makes him laugh as he explains, “I think Keep the Lights On is actually a film of self-discovery. It talks about the possibility of learning how to date again”.

It takes me a second to realize that this makes sense, for all of Sachs’ works offer a glimmer of hopefulness within their bleakness. Sachs has become a specialist in studying the fragility of romantic relationships. In the seductive Married Life, he even suggests that some people will resort to murder to get rid of unwanted lovers. In this sense, Love is Strange fits perfectly within his darker films, as it tells the story of longtime partners Ben and George, who finally get married only to become victims of ludicrous socio-economic injustice. George loses his job as a music teacher in a Catholic school, for taking a position that goes against the rules established by the archdiocese and the couple is forced to move out of the apartment they can no longer afford.

Ben and George suddenly become unwanted guests in the homes of their relatives and friends. As they try to keep this from destroying their marriage, we see shades of what has always made Sachs’ work so fascinating: the sincere, always-present humanism, that sometimes tricks us into believing its cruelty.

In Keep the Lights On, you dissect a relationship that is doomed from the inside. In Love Is Strange, it’s external circumstances that keep Ben and George apart. Please tell us about the dichotomy between both films and if they might be companion pieces.

Hmmm. That’s interesting. Maybe one’s a tragedy, and one’s a comedy. I’m not a dramaturg, so I can’t necessarily say that I did this… but Love is Strange is in line with the remarriage comedies of the 1930’s. Films like It Happened One Night and Palm Beach Story and The Lady Eve, are all stories about a married couple who, for various reasons, split up and then have to get back together again. That’s a pretty classic form of comedy, what you realize in the middle of the film is that you have a window to view their love and understand how they are intimate with each other, and how they overcome an obstacle.

In Keep the Lights On, the obstacle is each man in himself, the obstacle is internal. The difference in Love Is Strange – and this also reflects the changes I’ve had in the last few years – is that Ben and George are both men who are comfortable with who they are. They are not in conflict in the same psychological way that the characters in Keep the Lights On are. In a way, they’ve matured.

I was in psychoanalysis for 17 years and I’ve only now realized that it kinda worked. I’m not experiencing the same kind of internal strife that I experienced for decades, and I think that makes me easier to be around. In Love Is Strange, it makes the film easier for audiences to connect with.

We also don’t see the romance between mature people onscreen at all anymore.

Not at all.

Was this love story difficult to write? I can think of maybe a handful of films about similar topics, like Away From Her and Amour, and they’re very sad.

Funny, I’m in the office of my publicist, who was also the publicist for Away From Her, so I’m looking at a giant poster of Julie Christie (laughs). I had a lot to draw upon, which is certain people that I know, and certain relationships I’ve observed. I’ve always worked from a very personal place, and Mauricio Zacharias, my co-writer, made the film in honor of our parents because at a certain point in your life you begin to realize that your parents are people. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to get there, and in Love Is Strange, Marisa Tomei [as Kate Hull] stands in for us.

This is a film about three generations, about the perspective each of us has on love given the chapter we’re in. [Kate Hull] very much represents the middle and those questions of expectations and doubts that people so often have in the middle of their lives. Then we have this young boy, Joey [Charlie Tahan], who is very much learning about love for the first time, he’s just beginning to grow up.

With very few elements, you let us know that Ben and George have had an entire life together. How are you able to show this kind of life lived onscreen?

It’s a combination of being specific in our writing and casting very well. I think a lot of writing is figuring out what real estate you have to work with. You try to define the set of characters in a very specific way but also recognize that you can’t say everything about everybody, so you’re talking about the aesthetic economy and really what you’re doing is utilizing your creative instincts to give the audience what they need.

The other thing is I’m working in New York, and Love Is Strange is very much a New York story. I benefit from having this set of actors here in the city who are so extraordinary. It helps when you create an ensemble that’s real, people like Cheyenne Jackson and Adriane Lenox or John Cullum, these very textured actors come in almost, again, like a 1930s film, they’re character actors that you find that can nail it.

Tell us more specifically about Alfred and John’s contributions to their characters.

I love those guys. We spent the year together after we shot the film, and I got to really know them in a different way. I feel inspired by John and Alfred, somewhat like Ben and George in Love Is Strange. They’re very passionate individuals who are living full creative lives to the greatest extent possible, and that’s something to learn from.

They’ve been friends for 20 years, and they both have lived most of their adult lives in Los Angeles and have been in long marriages. They’re thespians of a certain generation, so they shared London and New York and friends from way back. It was almost as if they were two kids who had been in summer camp together, and thirty years later they have a lot between them. So we had all that to access, and their love became very genuine.

That relationship shows beautifully in Love Is Strange. Let me gush for a moment because I love Marisa Tomei. Performance after performance she surprises me. Her character in Love Is Strange reminds me of those characters in classic Japanese films who invite us to pause and consider what we’ve seen so far, and where the story is going next. You did something similar with Paprika Steen’s character in Keep the Lights On.

Well, you’re saying the right words, only that Yasujirō Ozu specifically is the most important filmmaker to Mauricio and me as a collaborative writing team. We had a chance to see ten or twelve of his movies on the big screen just as we were starting to work together, and it was revelatory in terms of his ability to make the ordinary extraordinary. I think it was our goal as writers to be very detailed and honest about everyday lives but to do so with enough attention that they become something bigger and resonant for an audience.

Christos Voudouris’ cinematography in Love Is Strange subtly breathtaking. You find yourself wanting to stop and go back to see the camera moves all over again. It brings to mind Gordon Willis’ work in Annie Hall. What were some of the visual references you used with the director of photography?

I would say in terms of Woody Allen, the kind of delightful romanticness in Manhattan was something we discussed, but we were more focused on Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives. I always thought of Keep the Lights On as my Annie Hall, to be honest – a relationship from beginning to end told over a series of scenes that cover years at the time. But there’s something about that mid-period Woody Allen that sticks with me in terms of being about multi-generational stories being told in New York apartments. I wanted to do something like that.

Visually, Maurice Pialat was our most important reference. He’s like the John Cassavetes of France. He’s the godfather of all contemporary French cinema. My cinematographer and I spent a lot of time looking closely at the visual strategies that Pialat used in his work.

Love Is Strange includes plot twists related to housing, lack of retirement financial security, and the hypocrisy of Christian institutions, yet it doesn’t really comment on them. It instead focuses on the characters. How do you avoid making a political film with such controversial elements?

I think my job is to be accurate about the time that I live in but to tell stories about characters in ways that are timeless and that speak to basic human truths and relationships. I try to be both in my time and outside of it. I think of it as a little bit like an analyst who is empathetic to his characters but also keeps some distance. All those things make me focus on questions of intimacy, loss, and changes in one’s culture. That’s all very true, and I’m personally an example of that. I don’t think I could’ve made this film five years ago, not just because of the laws but because I wouldn’t have felt the same as I do now as a gay man about my life and my feelings about love. Those two things are very entwined, we can’t be separate from our time.

There is already an awards buzz for Love Is Strange.

I’m excited that people will get a chance to see the film, and I’m excited about the anticipation and, of course, the response, which can be both from audience members and critics. It’s a conversation I’m having that I’m sharing with a big group of people, and that’s very rewarding.

I’m focused on doing my job and getting Love Is Strange out there. I’m also focused on working on the next film. I’ve always thought the best way to release a film is to be deep into the next one at the same time. Fassbinder has a great quote, “I’ll fix it in the next one”. That forward thinking is magnificent and brave and bold and independent.