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THE NORMAN INVASION (p. 2 of 3)

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After seeing the script, Michael Caine agreed to play Brossard, and they had their movie star. At the 2002 Academy Awards, Caine was then nominated for best actor for his role in The Quiet American. Things were building toward Jewison’s latest run at Oscar.

Jewison is, oddly, given his Canadian citizenship, a leading candidate for the title of Great American Director. Few filmmakers have reflected that country’s times and oversize themes as consistently or so presciently. One of his first films was the Rock Hudson/Doris Day vehicle Send Me No Flowers (1964), which marked the twilight of American innocence onscreen. The annual restoration of Day’s virginity for another chaste romp with Rock was becoming dated in a country that was already quietly flirting with Vietnam. Two years later, Jewison did the political satire The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, which captured the mood of Cold War paranoia. He addressed racism the following year with In the Heat of the Night, a subject he returned to again with A Soldier’s Story and The Hurricane. While flower children were putting daisies into gun barrels, Jewison was shooting Jesus Christ Superstar in Israel. His postwar Vietnam film In Country was overshadowed by the operatic genius of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, but he confronted many of the nation’s troubling issues, both onscreen and off.

In 1970, though, Jewison left the U.S. for Europe. "Like many people, I became disillusioned with America, with the American dream," he says. "There was Vietnam, a civil rights revolution, Martin Luther King was assassinated. I marched in his funeral. JFK was assassinated, then Bobby was assassinated. [Jewison was to meet up with him later that evening.] I got pretty disillusioned and depressed. So I left for Europe." He also bought a farm in Ontario, where he frequently returned and now spends much of his time.

While he was gone, American studio films took on an increasingly cartoonish quality. "I think for me," Jewison says, "it all started with Star Wars [1977]. After Star Wars, I started to feel that American films were going more and more in a comic book direction." One reason was the increasingly corporate concentration of media and studio interests. "General Electric owns NBC," he says. "They’re one of the largest armament dealers in the world, and they now own Universal. There are very few independent studios. Creative thinking is affected by the marketing potential of the film."

An era appears to be ending – one that Jewison helped define –where big films carried big themes instead of mammoth budgets and wondrous special effects. While there are other films Jewison would like to make, including a remake of the Italian film Pane e tulipani, he has the slightly wistful air of someone who is near the end of his career. Across the lane from his office is a park that’s named after him. He was presented with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 1999 Oscars in recognition of his body of work as an producer; it’s an honour that is often received with equal parts gratitude and fear that your best work might be behind you.

He looks up at the shelf in his office that holds all his films bound in red leather cassette cases. "When I look back at my films – I’m old, so I look back – I look at that shelf up there, and I think, ‘They did get better.’ Not all of them are great movies, but most of them are pretty good stories. Maybe some of the stories I didn’t tell well enough or I lost my focus. Maybe my timing was wrong. Robert Kennedy once said to me, ‘Timing is everything, in politics, art and life.’" Jewison stares out the window toward his park. "A lot of it is luck," he says, shrugging.

Is the world anxiously waiting for a film about moral relativism, religious faith and retribution? Probably not, but filmgoers might go to see a sophisticated thriller about justice triumphing over power and corruption (more or less). "The one thing you mustn’t do is bore the audience," Jewison says. "If they think you’re trying to educate them, to use film as a medium for social propaganda, they’ll tune out. Or they won’t come."

The Statement has all the ingredients for an Oscar run: one of the last century’s gravest themes, the pace and blueprint of a thriller, moral complexity and a sterling cast. (Along with Caine, it stars Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Northam, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates and John Neville.) The challenge of adapting Moore’s shifting first-person narrations has been cleverly solved, with the interior monologues refashioned as dialogue. Caine delivers a restrained, complex performance. Jewison’s work is subtle and lean. Everything is in the service of the story; there are no histrionics from the actors or the camera.

Most directors, it has been observed, don’t really like directing. It is an impossible job that combines political strife (dealing with producers, writers and actors), creative problems and financial responsibilities. There is tremendous pressure: finite shooting days combined with the unknown variables of weather, mechanical failures, actors’ varied crises. On top of all that, directing, as Jewison points out, is a physical job: 14-hour days of moving around the set, assessing camera angles, marshalling the troops, placating, threatening. He trains in anticipation of a shoot the way a boxer prepares for a fight.

Thirty-five years ago, Jewison asked one of his mentors, William Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives, Ben-Hur), about knowing when to quit. "I’m looking at this old guy," Jewison recalls, although at the time, Wyler was younger than Jewison is now. "He’s puffing a cigar, looking out onto the ocean at Malibu, and I ask, ‘Willie, when’s it all over?’ And he says, ‘It’s all over when your legs give out, kid.’" [ ]

...AND JUSTICE FOR JEWISON: The Quest for His First Oscar >

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