James Gray: “I designed Armageddon Time as a story of ghosts”

New York in the 80s, nuclear peril, his meeting with the Trump family … The American director details the genesis of his most personal film.

In 2022, Armageddon Time had made a lot of noise on the Croisette. First had then met its director James Gray. Who confirmed that he was inspired by his own childhood – but not only – to write This very successful filmto see or review, this evening on France 5 (then streaming on France.TV).

First: Armageddon Time Belongs to this vein of autobiographical films where a 50 -year -old filmmaker looks at his childhood. It’s almost a genre in itself …
James Gray: Let’s say “Semi-autobiographical” rather than “autobiographical”. Or “staff”, It’s even better. Besides, I find many of these really phony films! Totally devoid of soul. The risk, when you embark on this kind of project, is to be too forgiving with yourself. On the contrary, I tried to be as honest as possible, vis-à-vis me, my loved ones, my world.

When did these memories that form the frame of the film began to resurface? The presidency of Donald Trump necessarily has something to do with your desire to tell your years in a school led by his family …
Yes and no. A few years ago, my children told me that they wanted to see the house where I grew up. So we went to take a look. She was no longer entirely the same as the one I had known, but we could still see vestiges of the passage of our family. For example traces, on the walls, the paint bomb that I used for my reduced models … I started to rethink all these family meals, which were so important for us, with my parents, my grandparents, my great-uncle and my great-aunt. No one of them is now alive, they have all left, they are like ghosts. Then I went to Paris to stage Figaro weddingTrump had just been elected and it really scared me, not to mention the feeling of humiliation that I felt as a American with my European friends. In the evening, in my Parisian apartment, alone, far from my family, I thought about these ghosts, my old house … the story ofArmageddon Time started to take shape. The first time I talked about the project to Darius Khondji (The director of film photography – Editor’s note), I said to him: we’re going to tell a story of ghosts.

You speak in the film of a very specific moment of your childhood, a very intimate story, but you associate it with a major turning point in American history …
The film is called Armageddon Time Because the election of Reagan gave a feeling of the end of the world. We really thought he was going to launch the nuclear missiles. 1980 was a political, cultural turning point. Mohammed Ali, who was one of my heroes, lost a very humiliating fight against Larry Holmes. John Lennon, another hero, was murdered … Culture and politics were changing at full speed. In the blink of an eye, the United States has become a country very different from what it was the moment before.

Above all, you emphasize that there was a kind of “dissociation”, in the early 1980s, between the Jewish community and the African-American community, one joining the mainstream, the other remaining in the margin …
Yes, even if I never thought the film as relating to the racial question. The real subject is the class, this idea of ​​privilege. And the different degrees of privilege. Let’s say that there is white privilege, and white privilege under steroids! This one is represented in the film by Maryanne Trump (Donald’s sister, played by Jessica Chastain), who explains that she fought to get to where she is … beaten? What a joke! His family weighs $ 400 million! But beyond that, I cannot pretend to talk about the black American experience with any intelligence. I would be an asshole if I did that! I can only talk about my microcosm. With this idea, which never leaves me, that it is in the personal microcosm, in the intimate, that history and myth are born.

Armageddon Time mark your return to New York, after a film in the jungle (The Lost City of Z) and another in the cosmos (AD Astra). Turning away from your usual territory is to try to become another director, or to see if you were the same director in other latitudes?
I don’t think I have become another director, or even have tried to become it. But let’s say that I wanted to change the air because I would find it boring to make the same film again and always … Besides, I know that we are condemned to always make the same film! We always revisit the same themes, we always have the same taste. It doesn’t prevent me from wanting to surpass myself. To grow, to become a better artist. This is what I was trying to do by trying these experiences. I sometimes disappointed myself as a filmmaker. I try to be a better director, more personal, more direct, more honest, more generous with the actors. I don’t know if I got there, but that was what I was trying to do!

When did you disappoint yourself?
I only realize it. It has nothing to do with whether people liked my job or not. It is rather linked to the feeling of having succeeded or not to emotionally immerse spectators in my film. I get the highest possible idea of ​​drama, I want it to contain the extent of human experience, tenderness and love and rage and anger and danger and beauty … It is impossible to reach, but that does not prevent me from being disappointed when I fail. With Two loversI had tried to make the most honest film possible on desire, but I think it was not well understood at the time. The same for The Lost City of Zwhose irresolue end has confused many people. I love him, this end, but people did not react very favorably.

In Armageddon Timeyou apply that the world in which we live today was invented in the early 1980s. You would say that 1980 and 2022, is the same thing, the same world?
Reagan’s election has changed the situation. He clearly paved the way for someone like Trump. It sounded the death knell, at least in the United States, of a government dedicated to the idea of ​​equality. Reagan has really erected greed as a form of virtue and allowed the outburst of unbridled capitalism which has led to terrible inequalities, which tear the country today. Beyond that, I don’t think people have really changed, no. When we see a piece of Shakespeare, or read a Dostoevski novel, is it about things very far from us, which are incomprehensible to us? Not really. We see again and tell the same stories, again and again. Regarding the Western world anyway, we can say that the Greeks had understood everything from the start.

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