“Mickey 17” is the first Bong uses features made by Hollywood studios and his most expensive studio to date, with a budget of less than $120 million. But, in the final score, he is contradictory. “I prefer small works, and I don't like large works,” he said.
I hear chat endlessly when Warner Bros. But, Bon's sensitivity has proven to be a consistent trait, a way that goes against multiple logic. Most of his endings are frustrating, his English language traits (all of which are science fiction) will be especially odd, with higher volatility in performance and tone that have become his signature – a kind of “swap back energy” as Tilda Swinton showed it in both of his films and introduced me to both.
However, this energy is not the effect of giving up in the wild, but extreme control. He created highly detailed storyboards for all of his films that are blueprints of loopholes in the making. Photographer Darius Khondji, who teamed up with Bong for “Mickey 17” and “Okja” and filmed the film for David Fincher, Alejandro Iñarritu and Safdie Brothers, said Bong “has worked on any other wavelength in any other person.” He compared the storyboard to the score. “Everything is written, you can change the rhythm and the way you play notes, but if you try to pull out a note or a set of notes, he will say, ‘It doesn’t make sense.’”
Mark Ruffalo describes it as a valid constraint. “It's the most Auteur-centric filmmaking style I've ever worked on,” Ruffalo said. “Every shot, every angle, every gesture is told, and he shot the storyboard frame for the frame. But that's not to say he's in control. The exciting thing about being an actor is that in that frame, you have the freedom to reshape the performance.”
For some actors, this feeling of freedom can only be reached after a intense disorientation. Pattinson explains: “Often you shoot the whole scene, but his approach is: “He knows exactly which line he wants to shoot to which, so sometimes we can only shoot one line at a time. You show up on the first day and they say, “We're going to shoot the seventh line of this scene.” You go, 'What do you mean? I don't know what I'm going to say The first Wire. 'Normally, I have to do the whole scene to complete the line correctly.
“So, everyone has a week of nerve breakdown,” Pattinson continued. “But then you say, 'Oh, that's great.' If you're shooting the whole scene, there's more rhythm, crescents and fall, some levels. But you don't need the performance style you want for Bong, which allows you to release these very discordant turns: If you're just doing a line, you can perform maximum intensity from nowhere. It has this anime feeling – it can go from totally still to a second of anger.”
Pattinson told me that Bon “seems to be fun for everything.” They talked about the film in the months before the filming, but during the filming, Pattinson said the director gave him a license to explore: “To the point where I just wanted him to laugh and try things in a playful way. He would say, “Yes, do what you want to do.” '”
