Interview With Director Kazik Radwanski (Matt And Mara)

Through an unconventional improvisation process, Canadian independent director Kazik Radwanski crafts richly-textured character studies that feel lived in. Matt and Mara, a romance of sorts and his fourth feature, premiered at this year’s Berlinale, and has now made its way to London, where it plays a week-long run at the ICA.

Mara (Deragh Campbell) is a creative writing lecturer in Toronto, who is startled to encounter former friend Matt (Matt Johnson, amplifying his off-screen self) waiting outside her class one day. Through walks, through talks, they catch up.

Matt is charismatic but impenetrable. We’re brought closer to Mara of the two as they navigate their lives and feelings, first in Toronto, then on a drive to a literary conference. Watching Radwanski’s film feels like holding a warm mug of tea in a slightly shaking hand or noticing an old acquaintance on public transport just as they disembark. It is to feel deeply but quietly and observe characters doing similar.

Much as with Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy with their Before trilogy, Matt and Mara has been crafted collaboratively out of individuals’ experiences of connection with each other and with those beyond the frame.

Improvisational moments reveal felt truths. This is a film that knows what it is to innately, instinctually love someone, and the significant gaps, gazes, remarks, and temporal formlessness that unspool from that feeling. Simultaneously everything and nothing, meaningful and meaningless, it’s precious.

Hi Kazik, lovely to speak with you. Are you still in London or have you travelled back now?

I’m still in London, yeah. I’m staying with family.

How’s the film been received in London in the last couple of days at the ICA?

I did a Q&A the first night there, which was great. And I came back the next two nights to intro. It was a great vibe in the cinema, a warm reception. It’s nice.

Did you sit and watch it with them?

I did on Friday, and I hadn’t seen it in a while. It was good to hear laughter. I wasn’t sure if all the jokes would connect.

There was a funny coincidence. The biggest laugh we get in Toronto is in the funeral scene where Mara’s like, “Where’s this photo taken? Is it in Asia?”. And then Matt goes, “No, that’s High Park”. High Park is a park in Toronto. But I think it sounds like ‘Hyde Park’. It still lands here.

I want to start by asking about looking. Film as a medium is intrinsically about looking, but it’s rare to see a filmmaker capture the act of looking at each other in the way that you do. The way that your two characters gaze at each other, you let the camera linger on that in close-up, hovering slightly. It’s as if we, as audience, can’t take our eyes off them, much like they can’t take their eyes off each other.

It feels a profoundly romantic approach to framing. What draws you to shooting emotional intimacy with such intimacy itself?

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that myself with this film. Because it’s slightly different, I think, but also very similar to my other films.

My other films were much more character-centric. Anne at 13,000 ft is really studying Anne’s face, almost a bit more objective, being fascinated by this character or this person, but with almost a documentary tension, studying small expressions. With this film, I feel it’s more about conversation. Or, I like how you put it, ‘gazing at each other’.

It’s the back and forth, and getting lost in the dynamic between them. But then also, at times, the distance between them and then the connection. I think that’s what I was fascinated with or was hoping to capture: small ripples of emotion and small beats between the two of them.

Which is sort of a new thing for me, the going back and forth between them, maybe holding on one of them watching the other speak, and vice versa. That was the spark, the thing that I wanted to find or capture in this film.

It was always the two of them. After working with both of them in a scene together, I just wanted to make an entire film of their dynamic.

These scenes between them are largely improvised, which explains a lot about that immediacy and intimacy. How do you set about developing that as a trio? Because it feels very breathing and alive, yet you’ve managed to make it feel cohesive and consistent across the runtime.

We seldom work as a trio, which is an interesting part of it. We’re improvising the scenes, but a key thing for me is to always develop or workshop the scene with them individually. We very rarely talk about the scene as a whole together with me saying ‘you’re going to say this, and you’re going to say that’. I would always go off to the side with Matt or with Deragh.

Because again, the collision is so important, the conflict, or the gap in understanding at times. Not knowing exactly how the other feels is crucial for me to build depth and find the moments, which are sometimes moments of miscommunication.

The dialogue is largely improvised, but there was a concept for each scene, a treatment, a structure, a plan. A lot of the events in the film were predetermined on paper, but very open to discovering dialogue.

While it is improvised, each take isn’t necessarily improvised. It’s not a fresh start, it’s almost like a filmed rehearsal. We build on the previous take and refine it that way. But refining individually. So we’re always trying to find that spark, and then develop it by workshopping, having discussions separately, and then putting them together.

This whole film is written with them in mind, and I had shot with them just before. So, obviously, I tailored this film to each of them, hoping to get these amazing Matt Johnson or Deragh Campbell beats that I love.

That was the broad approach, but then other scenes had more specific or unusual approaches.

For instance, scenes with students, her office hour scenes. We would have students come in and bring in work, and Deragh would give them feedback based off of their work. The scene on Yonge Street where they’re walking and doing a smile game, that’s very much a Matt Johnson scene, I gave the reins over to him on that. He’s so amazing at working with strangers and pulling people into a scene, and getting them to not look at the camera.

Some scenes are based on actual anecdotes. The cafe scene with the music playing is a moment that happened to Deragh. So there would be some very predetermined recreations of moments as well too.

It’s an idiosyncratic process. But the other key is that I’ve been shooting in this manner now for four features and my shorts too. While it might sound radical or unconventional, it’s strangely comforting.

We’re all friends working together. And it was reassuring that we could work in this manner and wouldn’t have to force a script or narrative, we could explore it together. It was a feeling of reassurance or confidence in that, not a bold creative leap. It was oh, we can actually work the way we really want to on this film and do it the right way.

Thinking on that one-to-one collaboration, there’s a wonderful moment in an early scene in the film where Mara muses on the idea of having the arrogance to assume that you know what someone else is thinking.

When you’re working with your actors individually on their characters, do you feel as writer-director that you can truly see inside the character’s head, or do you leave some of that knowing to your performers?

I love that line. I would say it’s a line that I relate to, and I feel like I might’ve even said. It’s funny that both Deragh and I arrived at that line.

But yeah, I feel that way, certainly about my other films. I would hate to think that somebody would think that I understand exactly what’s going on in Anne’s mind. I think I would always prefer a more objectifying look than a subjective one.

I empathise with the character’s experience, I empathise with all the characters in the film. But I think, for me, it’s confronting that distance, that mystery. It’s a feeling I like, being very close to something I don’t quite understand. Something still a bit mysterious or slightly out of my grasp.

I totally relate to that line, and to Matt and Mara too in many ways. How well do you actually know yourself? That’s why I’m exploring enigmas, or characters I relate to. I don’t totally understand why I behave this way sometimes. There would always be a hesitation or a resistance to thinking I could chart or totally understand [the character], I would always want to avoid that reading. And I think I often intentionally try to confuse the film, removing things to prevent an easy or predictable reading of characters.

Do you feel you learned more about yourself through making the film?

No, I would say I maybe got better at articulating how I feel. I think I’ve learned that it’s not therapy, I don’t really hope to grow. What it is is incredible fuel, making a film. It does help me articulate things.

And it helps there be conversations. I mean, I’ve done so many Q&As for this film now. I was trying to count how many I might’ve done this year, but I feel like it’s getting close to fifty.

But I don’t tire of this conversation, which is a good sign. I think I make films because it’s a way for me to articulate things that would be hard to express otherwise. I’ve found better ways to express and articulate certain dynamics that I find hard to understand or that fascinate me.

I want to ask you most of all about vulnerability in the film, in its performances and in the moments that you ask the audience to sit with for a while.

I feel the improvisational element of the film creates a kind of live wire almost. It forces the performer and the audience to sit with an identifiable emotional nuance and depth that they may not necessarily be comfortable with.

How do you craft that? Is it fostered and nurtured by the process, do you feel?

I don’t know exactly how we crafted it, but I think it is something very true to it.

I think it’s helped by Matt and Deragh agreeing to be in the film. They agreed to be in this film knowing that there were certain aspects or difficult truths that resonated in my life, maybe not being based specifically on my life, but resembling ends of relationships of people that we know or care about.

And I’m sure, for Matt or for Deragh, moments related to other things, like the funeral scene or the hospital visit. The film was loaded with those moments that felt quite real.

It’s a film made for very little money, and I think the production value, or the power of it, comes from that. In major ways of it maybe resembling our lives, but in small ways too.

We’ve all known each other for close to a decade now. When I proposed this film and they signed on it, I think it was sort of assumed that that was part of the charge of it, the intimacy and vulnerability, and combining Matt and Deragh. They’re both actors, but they’re also both filmmakers, artists, friends.

We’re shooting a film in a city that we live in. Deragh studied in a creative writing program about seven to ten years ago. And funnily enough, [she and] Emma, who plays her friend Emma in the film and is an author, they went to this creative writing school together. Matt and I didn’t go to creative writing school, but we both did an undergrad in film around the same time.

So there really is this shared thing, a bit of our DNA is in there. It’s loaded, I think, for all of us, in the sense that something is reflected back at us. Because of the nature of it, there would be that inherent tension, everything’s a bit more vulnerable because of that.

Why use Matt’s real name for his character and not Deragh’s for hers?

Well, that was his idea, but I was fully on board with it. But he’s done that in his other films.

What he claims, certainly in Q&A, is, he says, ‘I just show up to set and play myself’.

For me, I suppose it was extra appealing. I think with Matt there’s a pragmatic side to it, but I think there’s also a bit of a game that he likes to play, various Matt Johnsons in different films building on the mystery of him. But for me too, I like the slight meta level of it. There’s Matt Johnson, the filmmaker, and Matt Johnson, the writer. But it is something I did in my first two features, which were non-actor performances, we used their actual names. So I would say, almost always, if an actor wants to use their name, I’m all for it.

With Deragh, we chose Mara. Partially because it rhymes or almost rhymes. I think for Deragh it’s important that there is that distance, that she’s not simply playing herself. And the name of her costume designer is Mara. But she’s not based on her at all, we just like the sound of her name.

I like choosing names from people in my life, if not using [the actor’s] actual name. With Anne at 13,000 ft, that’s my sister’s middle name. I think it might also be Deragh’s middle name, or maybe her mother’s middle name. I like to choose things based on family or people in my life, just to give it that extra hint of sentiment or something to pull from.

Would you say in your filmmaking you’re a romantic or a realist?

I would say I take a lot from both.

Realism is certainly a challenge I like, aesthetically something I like. I like confronting Toronto. What’s the best way to show Toronto, or what is true about Toronto? What is a story worth telling in Toronto?

And then the challenge of finding romance in Toronto is something I find exciting, how to make Toronto cinematic. That was a key to this film, trying to find a romance or a relationship that was small or fleeting.

Or the ending of the film. I always loved the receipt, that invoice or slip of paper. That it’s something you can hold on to, press and put in a book, or it’s something you can throw out. There’s that tension that I always look for in all my films, where this could almost seem too slight or too small to be worth telling. But at the same time, it’s moments or phases of people’s lives that haunt them or define them. It’s their opera, but it’s so small. I think there’s something quite romantic about it.

Even the way people talk about Mara’s character. They’ll say, ‘well, she’s not really an artist, she wants to be an artist’. And I was like, maybe she’s too much of an artist to be an artist. Maybe she’s too sensitive, or maybe she’s too romantic.

Then there’s the romance of not fully letting the romance happen, of this ‘almost affair’. Them almost being in love, or almost connecting. That longing, this sort of torture is maybe a little romantic.

Speaking on slightness, what attracts you to 70 to 80 minute runtimes? That’s a commonality to your features.

I have an incredible editor, Ajla Odobasic. We’ve been working together for I think almost twenty years. She cut my short film that still screens, Assault,from 2007, and she’s cut everything I’ve done since then.

I certainly found maybe not my voice, but a lot of what is still in my films today through short films, areas of interest, fascinations, and a style.

I think a big part of my films is being close to people and looking for those flickers of energy. But the edit is also a big part of it, the compression of time and ellipses in removing things. It’s something that I find really important, and it’s certainly something Ajla and I talk about a lot in the edit suite.

This film had a three-hour runtime at one point. Cut down to one hour twenty minutes. So in the shooting of the project there’s certainly a lot of experimentation and improvisation, but also in the edit suite, I’m constantly probing it, provoking it, and experimenting by removing things.

This film in particular grew a lot by removing certain scenes or omitting things. One of the most major things we cut were scenes of Matt alone that maybe explained him a bit more. It started to seem crucial that we don’t totally explain Matt, or fully reveal his career or what other people think of his work.

It just seems so important to experience him through Mara’s eyes. The weight of his presence, his career would be felt more through her. It was more interesting. If we said too much in other ways, then it took away some of the interest and some of the power. He became a much more complex and powerful character by knowing less about him.

How long was the shoot?

Approximately a year. But we shot quite sporadically on and off.

I think we had sixty shoot days in total over the course of a year. So quite a long process. But it’s been a similar shoot on my previous three features. There’s always been practical reasons for it, people’s schedules. Initially it would be day jobs, but with this film Matt was shooting Blackberry. There were other complications, and we were coming out of the pandemic.

There might’ve been a way for it to be a more efficient, faster shoot. But, if I’m being totally honest, I do like time while I’m shooting.

Sometimes I’m asked how we maintain the emotional intensity or the characters when it’s spread out over that long period of time. It’s never been a challenge. It’s partially what I was saying earlier about the nature of the material we’ve chosen and how personal or fascinating or loaded it is for us. But it’s also that advantage of watching the footage and thinking about it and then going back to shoot more.

We reflect on the improvisation and then nurture it and grow it. I think sometimes people think of improvisation as something very fresh each time. But for us, it’s a very patient process, allowing for more to grow out of it, but not refreshing it or deleting things. It’s happening between takes, but also scene-to-scene as well.

It’s a process that sounds a lot closer to theatre than film in terms of those building blocks.

Yeah, absolutely. People often talk about my work in relation to Cassavetes. When I was a student, he was a huge inspiration. Reading interviews with him, how he would articulate his process, I found that so helpful. A number of his later films were initially plays, and I often think about how a lot of his sets feel like stages.

I’m in the UK right now. Another massive influence is Mike Leigh, and his background in theatre. Again, just so helpful to hear about his process and how he would slowly shape his characters in collaboration with actors, and the types of conversations he would have. These were things that I was absorbing as a young filmmaker at film school trying to think ‘how can I approach this character?’, or ‘how can I find a way to find this character with another person?

And I don’t have a background at all in theatre. Deragh does, she comes from a family of stage actors. Her father often plays Hamlet or Macbeth, and her mom is the head of this big theatre festival. I think there are even streets named after her grandmother in London. They have a very long history of stage actors. So maybe there’s something in her DNA, this way of thinking about characters or rehearsing, that somehow lends itself to our process.

Thinking on what you were saying about reflecting as you go, I’m curious, does what you capture affect you emotionally? And at what point do you feel like ‘yes, I’ve got something’? Is it when you rewatch what you’ve got? Is it when you’re shooting? Is it when you’re talking with the actors having done it? What point do you feel like you’ve hit something?

Yeah, it’s hard to always know or place it, but it’s certainly something I hope for.

I think it has to do with the duration of how we shoot. When I would make short films, we’d get to a point where we wouldn’t have to talk about the characters so much. We’d be sort of living with them and exploring them. It would seem like we have something, and now we can live with it for a bit and really explore a few scenes, and that’s what led us to wanting to make feature films, that we’ve done all this work and found this wonderful character or this wonderful world, and it’s a shame that we can’t do more with it.

There are other factors too. I quite enjoy the beginning of the process. I’ll often design scenes that are very documentary-like. An overt example would be when we started Anne at 13,000 ft. The first thing we shot was Deragh jumping out of a plane. We wanted something real or exciting to find that first epiphany.

With this film, it was walking. I think the first things that we shot were those scenes of walking up Yonge Street. We were looking for the atmosphere of the city, but also conversation. The core inspiration was the Rohmer film, Chloe in the Afternoon, and this feeling of afternoon. Conversation that’s almost confession, this idea of an emotional affair. That by meeting someone from your past and talking through things, you realise something about your current relationship, or your partner at home that you don’t hang out with.anymore.

In terms of trying to figure out the film, it was scenes like that, of trying to find the right type of conversation that could pull you in, that you could get a bit lost in. Matt and Deragh were getting a bit lost in the characters and in these conversations, and that felt great. That’s the improvised nature of it, that it’ll give us these surprises, these exciting things that’ll motivate us to want to look further.

What’s your ideal viewing context for the film? Is it in a cinema, or is it in the home? Do you want us to watch it as individuals, or in couples, or with our grey-area friends? With whom and where do you want the film to be seen most?

I think, in my head, a packed cinema is always the best occasion.

But I like how you hit the question. What are other dynamics: seeing it with family, seeing it with a couple, on a date, or seeing it alone? That’s a conversation that people are having more and more now. Even with a theatrical release, is it better to have a one-night packed screening with a Q&A, or is it better for it to play for a week or two, five or twenty people seeing it at a time?

Somehow with this film there’s a really lovely feeling, and maybe part of it is due to my last one released being a pandemic film, but there’s just such a nice feeling of this film living in cities, Toronto especially. It’s been playing in Toronto for three or four weeks now, and there are these opportunities for people to stumble into it on an afternoon. The 2pm screening on a Tuesday by yourself, that does also seem like an ideal way, or a nice chance encounter, to discover this film. That’s something I also value. And it’s super meaningful that it’s playing here in London for a week, possibly longer.

I think the obvious answer is a big premiere. And it’s funny, in terms of showing it to family, I still wait for my mum to see the film at TIFF, with a thousand people in a theatre. There’s something to that, that collective experience. You know that something’s understood in a film partially by the audience reaction. And even if you’re watching it alone, you’re watching it with other people. There’s always something wonderful about that, in terms of screening a film, and in terms of what it means to share a film with an audience. I do love this feeling of it existing and just hanging around in cinemas.

I love how exploratory your films are, whether that’s in process, or in terms of the end result. This film explores ideas for a while, and then you put them back on the shelf at the end of the film. What themes are you looking to leaf through in your next project?

It’s still very up in the air what the next project will be. There’s a few ideas, but I have to say I don’t know exactly.

There’s certain leads here with this film that I want to explore more. I’ve noticed that the central character in all my films is a bit of an artist character. Quite present here with her being a writer, but even in my first feature and second feature there’s something I always look to or find in characters of them being almost-artists, or having the spirit of an artist, but they can’t quite find their voice. There’s a part of me that’s tempted to go further and examine collaboration or friendship a bit more through creative work on a future film.

In preparation for this film, I watched a lot of Hong Sang-soo, and I love how he’s able to do that, reflect on the process and the headspace of characters who are creating work. It’s something I find exciting too.

There’s a loose, loose metaphor for a new film that involves tennis, but it’s almost the mindset of playing tennis and relating that strangely to acting and performance, improvisation but also intention, versus just being present in a moment. So there are ideas like that, but there isn’t a concrete or very direct path forward. I hope to keep exploring Toronto and small moments. I don’t have epic ambitions, I’m still very excited by smaller moments.

Well, I think your films are major in their minor.

I just mentioned Hong Sang-soo, but I certainly feel that way about him. To do something quite big, or resonate very loudly from small things is something I always aspire to and hope I can find in my own work.

And your film’s playing at the same time as lots of Hong Sang-soo at the ICA.

I noticed that! Yeah, it’s wonderful that they’re doing that. Amazing poster. It’s like 22 films or so. It’s very cool.

As a final question, what would you like your audiences to take away from this film into their own lives?

What I take from it, and maybe what the characters take from it, is a bit more awareness, being able to notice things more in our own lives. To notice things about ourselves and maybe not necessarily understand them, but be able to have conversations or articulate.

I never have the greatest time introducing the film, I never really know what to say before it, but I love being able to have a Q&A afterwards. It’s much easier to have a conversation after everyone’s seen the same thing and there’s a reference and talking point. So, in a very simple way, I hope that people get that, that they’re able to have an insightful conversation, or maybe see themselves or see a loved one in the film, and have a bit more insight or perspective on it. I think that’s what I’m doing when I make the film. So hopefully others can get that insight as well.

Matt and Mara screens at the ICA in London till the 31st October. With thanks to Kazik for his generosity with his time and his reflections on his work.