Director Garth Davis gives us the low-down on his underseen sci-fi drama, Foe – streaming now on Prime Video.
This article first appeared in Film Stories issue 46.
Garth Davis asserts that he made his third movie – following on from Lion (2016) and Mary Magdalene (2018) – primarily because, as he puts it: “I want to go and watch it at the cinema.”
We’ve been talking about the old cliché that ‘it’s hard to get intelligent sci-fi films through the filmmaking development process’ in the current era – and by the time we’ve finished dissecting this topic, it’s very much clear it’s a cliché for a reason. In the five years since Davis’s last film, notwithstanding a global pandemic, there have been projects that nearly came to fruition. It almost feels like a minor miracle that he managed to make, well, what he managed to make.
“A lot of the material films that are being made these days are literally like a fast food industry,” he sighs. Not a downbeat sigh, more a realistic one. “It’s kind of feeding… and look, that all has a place, but I guess I’m yearning for movies that make me think, that challenge me – and, I guess, contribute in both an entertaining way and engage me emotionally. Or maybe question something. Just open my mind or my soul in some shape or form.”
It’s a statement backed up by a project to which he’s dedicated the last couple of years of his life.
That project? Foe, a film set around 40 years in the future, where we meet an Earth that’s been in a much better state. Amidst the dust storms and the questionable technological advances in farming we’re introduced to, there’s a mysterious stranger knocking at the door of our two lead characters, Saoirse Ronan’s Hen and Paul Mescal’s Junior.
Hen and Junior are a married couple making their way in a world that’s… well, pretty much falling apart around them. Living in the middle of nowhere, their lives are disturbed when Terrance (Aaron Pierre, a very strong late replacement for LaKeith Stanfield) arrives, with a smile on his face. Oh, and an opportunity.
Let me in
The knock-at-the-door story can, of course, go many ways. Davis, a keen fan of classic thrillers, name-checks Alfred Hitchcock several times in our chat (he eagerly watches his films with his 11-year-old son), and the air of mystery in his thrillers is a keen influence on Foe.
But panic not, chums: the character of Terrance brings good news. One of the couple can go and live on a large space station, as experiments continue to prolong life off Earth. The other can live with a robot facsimile of the other, so they won’t get lonely.
A few key concepts, you might note, that individually could fuel a movie apiece: Foe blends them together with a few words to say about capitalism, the state of our world, and just where resources should be deployed.
It’s based on the novel of the same name by Iain Reid, with he and Davis co-credited as screenwriters. Davis admits too of the combination of bountiful narrative ingredients that there’s something quite old-school about what he’s up to.
“It kind of goes on a journey, and you just never have an idea where it’s going. And the mysteries the audience are trying to solve are not your ordinary mysteries.”
He’s not kidding, but no spoilers here.
Getting the Foe down
Mind you, I’m no closer to finding out just how Davis and his team managed to get this made. “I think there was genuine interest in the material,” he reasons. “Obviously my passion for it. And also the cast that I attracted.”
Hard to contradict that. Saoirse Ronan has long been one of the flat-out best actors of her generation. Paul Mescal meanwhile was cast before his star began to rise. Turns out Davis was casting before Mescal got Oscar-nominated for the wonderful Aftersun. I resist the urge to ask him to pick some lottery numbers for me.
“It was my casting agent,” Davis explains of getting the right person just before their star soared. Said agent did the introduction to Mescal, who happened to be in Sydney, and had read the script. More than that, he loved the script. “I flew up to meet him, and I cast him because of our connection.” Davis had seen him in the acclaimed TV drama Normal People, and the pair went for a walk for a few hours, talking about the movie. “I got a real sense that he was going to go places with this film.” A key part of the casting jigsaw had been solved.
What helped too, I’d imagine, when attracting actors was that Davis was wanting to play his scenes long. Keen to avoid repetition, he was insistent that every scene should reveal something new or different about the characters. And he held his nerve on this, right through to the editing room.
“Once you know the story, it’s impossible to unknow it,” he appreciates. “What’s very difficult about casting this film is that when people come to the movie, they’re not going to know anything about it. It has to work at that level.”
Collaboration, inevitably, was key.
Science
Looking back on the film on the eve of its release, there’s something of a mission accomplished here. Davis had made little secret of the fact that he’s been seeking a science-fiction project, pretty much since his feature debut Lion snared a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
There must have been easier choices than Foe out there, but inevitably it was some of the complexities that proved so juicy.
“The challenge that really excited me in this was multiple storylines,” he says. Certainly, when making the film, it provided a test to balance misdirection and authenticity, and Davis is open that he wondered “how much should the actor be revealing [in a scene]?”
Davis was constantly fine-tuning to build a sense of something feeling just a little off, and to play with how much we trust the characters.
“How do you do that and keep the audience engaged and moving forward? I found it a really exciting challenge, one that flowed through not just the performances, but the cinematography and how we constructed the shows. In all the devices, the dark directorial devices were at play,” he says, with the kind of grin that could get him onto the shortlist of a sinister antagonist in any blockbuster movie you choose to name.
He did have a firm rule, though:
“I didn’t want to cheat. There’s not a moment of manipulation. There’s not an actor behaving in a certain way just to serve the story. The actors are always performing the truth of the moment. It was hard, but it was super-exciting.”
Advance
At the best of times, science-fiction films demand exhausting levels of prep time. In the case of Foe, the labyrinthine plotting upped the ante there, too. A lot of front-loading the work then?
“100%. We were very, very conscious of what we had to do.”
Another word that Davis uses a fair amount during our conversation is ‘urgent’, or some variant of it. He felt there was an absolute urgency, given contemporary society, to tell the story now.
Not unrelated to that, capturing the look of a ravaged Earth a few decades ahead of us was a challenge to which the answers were, well, all around. “I feel even if you take Blade Runner, even though that’s set very, very far in the future, it’s still very human and relatable.”
Steven Spielberg is a hero for Davis, and we chat about how, when making Minority Report, Spielberg’s approach to a future-looking world was to start with existing buildings. The thinking there? That we’re living in buildings already that have stood for decades. Davis nods enthusiastically, questioning:
“I don’t understand why every sci-fi movie made these days has to be kind of these clinical sets and stripped back worlds. I just don’t relate. I was really determined to make this a relatable sci-fi story, something that felt scarily close to reality, not so far away.
“It’s imminent,” he insists. “Maybe our children are going to be living in this world that we’re creating right now. I like that: it makes us engage with it in a more urgent way.”
Designed very much to be watched more than once, Foe feels from top to bottom like the kind of film somebody had to fight to get made. Nothing uncommon there, but it still feels sadly rare to get sci‑fi of this ilk on the big screen.
Mind you, he’s not resistant to going the blockbuster route should that path (re)open for him.
“The Spielbergs, the Ridley Scotts, James Cameron with Terminator 2… there is a version of the world where we do those blockbuster movies. I’m interested in doing a blockbuster if it’s like that.”
He came close with a Tron film, and would like to try something similar down the line.
“I’m interested in doing a blockbuster movie. If the situation is right, I would absolutely embrace it. But I’m not a cog in the wheel, I’m not a worker for hire. I want to do something that explores something.”
He’s certainly done that with Foe, and we round up our conversation.
“At the end of the day, I’m trying to make things that… I just want to contribute.” To the conversation, to the audience. “We’re only alive for a short period, and hopefully the things that I make enrich that journey we’re on.”
He stops for a second.
“That is a hard road! But the older I get, the more determined I am to stick to that path.”
Foe is streaming now on Prime Video.
