Available on Netflix, “The Guilty” by Antoine Fuqua, remake of the Danish film by Gustav Möller, had a shooting like no other. Remote instructions, health restrictions, connected actors … The thriller was a challenge to film .
Eleven days. This is the duration of the shooting of The Guilty, Antoine Fuqua’s fourteenth feature film. It must be said that the thriller does not have the same ambition as the director’s other projects. Here, no stunts, explosions and other special effects, but rather a unique setting with a single character on the screen, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. If the shooting of the film was not excessive, it did not take place without constraints.
Identified as a contact case just before the first clap, the filmmaker Antoine Fuqua could not put a foot on the set. He was forced to remain isolated in a truck, parked a few meters from the scene. To steer remotely, the vehicle was equipped with monitors, computers and miniature cameras. The director, on the other hand, could communicate with his first assistant and the main actor thanks to walkie-talkies.
To meet, Jake Gyllenhaal had to get out of the set and find a ploy to exchange with the director without approaching him. Interviewed by the media The Verge, the actor, amused, says: “When we changed the lights and it took over 20 minutes, I would go outside and climb a ladder against the wall. Antoine opened the door of his van and, as in Romeo and Juliet, we spoke to each other from afar, me at the height of the wall on a ladder and him in the street. ”
Netflix
Antoine Fuqua on the set of the film.
The film’s other performers, from Ethan Hawke to Peter Sarsgaard, were working live from home. All were connected to FaceTime or Zoom to play their dialogues with Jake Gyllenhaal. The latter explains that he felt “technology slave” on set. “We were constantly learning as the shoot went on, he recalls. I believe we had a breakdown on the eleventh day, but we were already done.”
Even if the film was in the box in less than two weeks, the actor lived badly his experience in the skin of his character, immobile. “I had difficulty not moving anymore, he says. It’s complex to create intensity, to generate energy, after 10 hours sitting in a chair listening.” After The Guilty, Jake Gyllenhaal will star on Michael Bay’s new project, Ambulance. Another film, another atmosphere.
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