The Burning Season is the new film written by and starring Jonas Chernick, whom we’ve spoken to in years past about his previous films at Glasgow Film Festival, James Vs His Future Self, Ashgrove, and The End of Sex. We also spoke to director Sean Garrity, and co-stars Sara Canning and Christian Meer, about shooting a film with a reverse chronology narrative, everyone pitching on a small production, and the difficulties of getting a film made.
Can you tell us a bit about The Burning Season?
Jonas: The Burning Season is a romantic drama about an illicit love affair and it takes place over the course of seven chapters. So it’s a love affair that happens only in the Summertime and we get to see it unravel over the course of seven different years. But the hook is that we tell the story backwards. So it begins with the end of the love affair. And then it rolls back and as we go back one year, each chapter starts to recontextualise and add insight into what you’ve seen previously. You start to realise that there’s a secret at the heart of it all. And we’re building to find out what that secret is and ultimately provide revelations and insights about the psychology of this relationship and why it’s so destructive.
Did the idea to a story featuring reverse chronology there before the story itself?
Jonas: It was. I was writing with my co-writer Diana Frances, and we had this other idea we were trying and it wasn’t working. And then she came in one day with a new idea and all she said was, ‘What about a love affair told backwards?’ And that was sort of the ignition point. And from there we took a lot of ideas from our previous idea and interwove them, and then it really developed considerably. When Sean came on board to direct it he had some strong ideas about what we were building to and what this secret reveal would be and how that would reverse engineer the rest of the story.
Was there any different to directing a film that’s playing with time? Presumably you don’t shoot chronology most of the time anyway normally?
Sean: No, I do actually! Yeah, and because largely in other films I actually work with a lot of improvisation with my actors; very, very focused on that approach. And so I tend to try and shoot chronologically whenever I can. And so for this film, I asked the first assistant director to start at chapter one and move through to chapter seven, in as much as it was possible, to try and keep that sort of organic, because I’m so driven by this idea of when my actors want to improvise, and then when they want to go off script, I’m like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, let’s do it a take four and a take five and explore what else is here!’ But it allows us, if we come up with something in chapter two, then we can sort of see the echoes of it in chapters three and four if we’re shooting chronologically, right?
Does it limit the amount of improvisation you can do because presumably in a film like this, so much of it’s in the script and the edit, so it needs to be really tight?
Sean: What happens is obviously very rigidly scripted, even my other improvised work is very rigidly scripted. The way in which it happens and the way in which it unfolds and the things that these guys say, that stuff we’re looser with, and we’ll hit what’s in the script, for sure on take one and two. But then as we do it I allow the actors to collaborate and bring what they can and it changes as it goes. It keeps it feeling spontaneous and fresh.
Sara,how did you get involved in the film and what drew you to the character?
Sara: I loved the script. And the script actually just shifted slightly from me being brought on board to what we shot, mostly in the ending or the prologue, but I loved it immediately. And I did a chemistry read with with Jonas and Sean over Zoom, as so many chemistry reads are now but it just felt like an amazing fun work session. It didn’t really feel like an audition. It just it felt like, ‘Let’s play with this and let’s play with that’. And we had a great time. And yeah, I was like, ‘Give this to me!’ [laughs] I mean, I try to never present as like, ‘Give this to me!’
Jonas: No, you definitely presented that way! [laughs] Yeah, I don’t even know if Sara knows this, But Sarah was the first. She was the first one I believe. Maybe I’m wrong. She was in the first round, and right away we were like, ‘Well, do you keep seeing other actors?’
Sean: Because I’m the director, these guys stand back and let me make the decision about who it is. So you guys didn’t tell me that. I watched all the auditions and interacted with all the actors. And then afterwards, for me it was a no brainer. It’s obviously Sara. And when I told these guys I’m gonna cast Sara in this role, I think was Diana the co-writer who was like, ‘I saw that audition. Why are you continuing to see anybody else?’
Jonas: We just ended up comparing everybody who comes after to her.
Sean: Something that I shared with Sarah on set that you may have thought was just a compliment, but it was actually entirely true, was that after seeing everybody and going, ‘It has to be Sara’, I started to have anxiety and be until the deal was signed. It was like, ‘Wait, what if it’s not Sara?’
Jonas: What if she got some high-paying Hollywood gig?
Sean: Or just a paying Hollywood gig.
Christian, how did you get involved in playing a younger version of Jonas’ character? Did you spend a lot of time together to make it convincing that the Jonas was a continuation or an older version of your character?
Christian: Well, for the audition process, it was just it was like, a normal audition process. But after booking the part, no, I don’t we really spent much time working on trying to make sure that we had the same characteristics, but yeah, I think it just worked out really well.
Jonas: We actually did in-person sessions for the young versions, which is a thing of the past. Like, this isn’t part of the industry anymore. Ever since COVID. It’s all Zoom and taped. We actually got Christian in the room with different versions of young Elena, at Sean’s insistence. And the casting directors and the producers were like, ‘We don’t do live audition sessions anymore. And I was like, ‘Well, why not?’
Sean: I think because we were improvising. We got to that final, sort of traumatic, scene. Yeah, we had you come in, if I recall correctly, and improvise it with a number of young actors to see the different directions that it could possibly go. Knowing that I was going to be doing a fair bit of improv on the day, you want to make sure you cast an actor who can who can carry that.
How was that wedding scene in terms of acting, shooting, and directing, because there’s so many moving parts going on?
Sean: And to add a big moving part! Originally, I envisioned that we found a spot in the forest with these giant conifers, and they were gonna be like these green altars, and then we had rain forecast. It was a two day scene, and we thought there was no way we can stand out there for two days in the rain. So at kind of the last minute, our art department had to pivot and find that tent and put together a very different version of what that [wedding] was going to be visually and they were incredible.
Jonas: Our two person art department!
Sean: Yeah, you pay somebody to do that for an actual wedding, you pay them bazillions and it takes them a week!
Jonas: That was really a bonding experience because we were shooting up in this very remote location in northern Canada and all of a sudden we have to pivot and create this wedding space out of nothing and we don’t have any time. Everyone on the crew was like, ‘Alright, let’s do it!’
Sara: Yeah, we were wrapping gifts!
Jonas: You had our production assistant hanging fairy lights.
Sean: It was great. And the production designer was like the mom. We all went to her like, ‘What else do you need?’
Jonas: It was so fun to shoot it because we had been so secluded and suddenly we had all these local residents from small towns around to come and be wedding guests and none of them had ever been in films before, and they were all very excited. And then to get to play that scene, it’s kind of a dream for me because I gave myself the most uncomfortable wedding speech in the history of mankind. And what you see in the movie is Sean paring it down to what what it ended up being, but I did much bigger takes and ones where I’m far more uncomfortable. I think I wrote like a three page monologue for myself.
Sean: What was interesting was the version of the script that I inherited when I first came on the project had a much more subtle kind of dissolution of the wedding. And there was one line that either Jonas or Diana had written where it was like a subtle thing and they recognise that there was something going on. People were sort of angry with one another. I think someone punched somebody but that was all that happened. And then there was a moment where in the script, it said, the main character looks across the desolation of the wedding, and I was like, ‘What? Then let’s fucking destroy this wedding!’. If we’re gonna do that, let’s like ramp that up. Let’s get a big table that we can destroy and how much stuff can we wreck?
Jonas: It was great. And that starts the movie off on this other foot where it’s this big opening scene, all of this crazy stuff happening. And hopefully our audience is leaning forward going, ‘What is going on? Who are these people? What are their relationships? What is happening here? So thank you, Sean, for that adjustment.
And later on, you discover the source of that speech, which is a really uncomfortable moment.
Sara: I think that’s one of the real joys of the film for me, in terms of payoffs. There needs to be patience I think on the actors’ parts and also on the audience’s part, and the way that the dust settles or that the pieces fall into place, I think it’s really satisfying. That’s what I love about the script and the way that it’s all pieced together chapter by chapter, I think that’s so fun.
Does it make it a difficult film to talk about when you’re doing press? Because what would normally be a spoiler isn’t in this case, and so you presumably have to be careful?
Sara: We’re careful about the prologue I think.
Jonas: We know that we talked about how it’s very clear that the movie is leading up to a reveal where everything will be recontextualized. But the nature of what exactly that is, and how it happens obviously, we don’t talk about it, and hopefully you’re on board with keeping the secret!
What was the decision behind setting the film in such a remote remote location? It’s a beautiful setting, but is it consciously evoking slasher films? Nothing good ever happens, in these places.
Not consciously, but a lot of especially journalists and critics have pointed out that it does conjure that sort of history. But for me, Diane and I knew hat we wanted to set it in a remote sort of [location]. In nature. Because it was organic and it was important, especially when Sean came on board, that we find in place where you feel like secrets could live there. And they’ve been carrying these secrets with them for so long. I think that that the setting, the setting supported that idea, but I also was excited to sort of shoot a movie that felt like it was at Summer camp.
Sean: I think I mean, you correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it’s kind of a Canadian thing, like spending Summer in a cottage somewhere out in the bush.
Sara: It is very Canadian. Every province has some version of it. In Newfoundland, we call them cabins we don’t call them cottages. But you know, like every province has some version of getting away, going to a lake, going to the coast, going wherever.
How difficult is actually getting a film made these days? And how is Canada in terms of being a nurturing place for Canadian filmmakers as opposed to a tax haven for American productions?
Jonas: I hate producing especially good produce, and I don’t like the challenge of putting the movie together. Well, that’s not true. I like puzzles. Okay, so there’s something about it that I like. There’s a couple of different models to make films in Canada. I’m imagining it’s the same here. You’re either tapping,government funding, public funding, pre sales broadcasts, all that boring stuff, or you’re finding investors who want to invest in movie. This movie, the funding came together pretty easily, actually. I think it was the script, people really responded to the script and the backwards storytelling. It was probably the only movie I’ve produced where everybody said yes, that I asked right away. So it came together pretty quickly. But you know, now I’m trying to set up the next one and it’s always difficult and you know, Shaun is one of Canada’s most esteemed directors, he’s made 10 films, they’ve all been successful on various levels and won awards and it’s still really really hard to get movies made.
Going back to the structure what are your favourite films that have a sort of play with time and memory?
Jonas: Memento is one of my favourite movies of all time. And and I Tom Stoppard radio play called Artist Descending a Staircase. And the way it was structured was it started with the scene, and it went to the next chronologically. The scene ended halfway through. You went to the next scene, halfway through the next and halfway through the next and halfway through and then it went backwards, and you’d finish the scenes end with the first end of the first scene. And it just got me thinking at the age of 21, about how you can more effectively tell a story by playing with the narrative and the temporal arrangement of scenes, and it was always back there, but it wasn’t until Diana pitched, ‘What about a love story told backwards?’ that the spark was ignited and I thought, ‘Oh, this is this is fascinating!’ And for me, this movie is about secrets and it’s about what happens to us when we keep these secrets and how it can how it can like a virus and destroy everyone around you. And I thought what more interesting way to investigate the nature of this secret than to know that there’s a secret. Not know what it is, but to start with the ramifications of that secret. So by starting at the end, you’re seeing the destruction. You’re seeing the outcome of that secret and building towards it, so there’s a secret within this secret. I just got really excited about it.
Sean: Yeah, and for me, it was more Irreversible. And the Korean film Peppermint Candy. Which start from a place of like, here’s a person who’s in crisis. And a lot of us in crisis are like, ‘Oh, my God, how did I get here?’ I think that both those films very effectively asked their audience in the first scene, like, ‘How did they get her?’ In a way the audience’s desire to know helps you drive the structure of the film, right?
And something else that came to mind as a theme was addiction. Was that something that was there at the beginning, or was that something that worked its way in?
Jonas: It kind of worked its way in. I never intended to write a movie about addiction. I actually can’t remember when it came into play, but it was when Sean came on board, and Sean came on board quite late.
Sean: For me, it was super key. Yeah, it was a big piece of it. Because when I read the original script that Jonas had actually given me a couple years ahead of time, because being buddies we just exchange scripts when we’re just working on them. So I wasn’t attached to the project. And Jonas gave me this and my big question was, ‘Why can’t these people just be together?’ I don’t understand why they don’t tell their partners to get lost and forge a relationship. And so I was like, there’s got to be something else to this relationship that makes it unhealthy and makes it wrong. So we decided to work very hard to try and put a whole bunch of addiction related stuff into the film to classify it as more of an addiction than a beautiful love relationship. [in a shot that it was very key]
Sean: It was very key that you when you meet the characters, you see in their behaviour and in their lifestyles and the lives that they’ve lived since they were teenagers, how it’s affected them and how it’s ripped them apart. And so with with both characters, it’s a form of addiction, you know. With my character it’s actual drugs and alcohol and with her character, it’s smoking cigarettes and an addiction to a certain kind of person and lifestyle.
I kept thinking of the line from Brokeback Mountain all the way through; ‘I wish I could quit you!’
There’s a performance that Sara kind of half improvises, halfway into the film where you guys are in the boathouse, and the camera’s going around and they’re kissing but just before they’re discovered, and she kind of pulls herself to him and kisses him, and then she pushes him away, and says, ‘No, I can’t!’ and then she pulls herself back to him. And I thought that moment of performance just really crystallises what for me, was the essence of the addictive nature of that relationship.
What do you all have next in the pipeline?
Jonas: I’ve got a couple of movies coming out this year, that I thankfully did not produce. I just acted in them and one of them Sara is also in, so those will be hitting the festival circuit later in 2024. And I’m writing a couple of things, and trying to get something off the ground.
Sara: This weekend I’ve a film out called Kill Victoria, which I also got to do in Ontario with a great group of friends, including my friend Robin Dunne, who I’ve done four films with. And a film that’s very dear to me that I did in Newfoundland where I grew up called Sweetland with Mark Lewis Jones, who is fantastic. He’s so good in that film. I’m really excited for that to come out.
The Burning Season screened as part of Glasgow Film Festival 2024