There’s a scene in Captain Phillips where Tom Hanks in the title role is examined by a Navy medic after what’s been a long, grueling ordeal at sea. Phillips is finally safe which means whatever has been bottled up inside can now come out. We for the first time see him disoriented and traumatized. Hanks’ powerful, emotional and emotionally draining performance feels raw, real and unscripted with the camera serving as an observer, capturing the impact of what Phillips has endured.
These riveting moments perhaps best reflect the blending of documentary sensibilities and narrative which makes Captain Phillips–the story of the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates–so compelling. It exhibits the skillful, thoughtful docudrama touch for which director Paul Greengrass has become known, evident in much of his filmography, notably United 93, which chronicled one of the 9/11 flight hijackings, and Bloody Sunday, capturing a notorious day of violence in Northern Ireland in 1972.
SHOOT asked Greengrass to detail how he attains this sense of authenticity and he cites in part his documentary roots. He spent the first decade of his career covering global conflict for the UK’s ITV current affairs program World in Action, and writing and directing assorted documentaries. Greengrass then had a long and distinguished run in British television, penning and directing TV films centered on social and political issues. And he successfully diversified into features with a filmography that ranges from Bloody Sunday to Green Zone, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and United 93.
The latter earned Greengrass a Best Director Oscar nomination, BAFTA’s David Lean Award for Direction and Best Director Awards from the London Film Critics’ Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics.
Yet Greengrass is quick to point out that often he gets too much credit for what in essence is a collaborative process. He noted for example that like him, cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, BSC, who shot Captain Phillips, United 93 and Green Zone, came up through the British documentary ranks. “Our grounding is in observation,” related Greengrass. (See this issue’s Cinematographers & Cameras Series feature story which includes a profile of Ackroyd.)
Greengrass also cited his editor Christopher Rouse, A.C.E. who cut five of the director’s films: Green Zone, United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremacy and Captain Phillips. Greengrass described Rouse–who’s also a co-producer of Captain Phillips–as being “my closest collaborator. He sees the world and movies the same way I do. He’s my hardest task master as we try to capture and realize the truth. His editing is like constructing the architecture of truth. He builds sequences and builds structure across a film.”
Rouse won an Oscar, a BAFTA and Eddie Award for The Bourne Ultimatum.
And then Greengrass shared, “Most directors feel the person whose contribution is least noted is the assistant director. My first assistant director, Chris Carreras, is invaluable. He enables so much of what happens on a film set. He knows my mind often better than I know it myself. I can say that of all three of them–Chris, Christopher and Barry.
“Barry will tell me when something doesn’t feel quite right. Chris Rouse will say, ‘I think you’re missing such and such.’ Chris Carreras will say, ‘You wanted me to set it up this way. But I think you’re better off doing it that way.’ They’re all part of a team I’m privileged to be a part of. Collaboration is a precious thing. It’s the gift of having talented people who share with you on a daily basis, an hourly basis, a minute-by-minute basis their instincts. And their instincts are geared to help you get to where you need to be.”
Nurturing actors Still, though, Greengrass noted that he and his ensemble of collaborators–which includes many more–“are all about setting a framework and environment” so that another group of essential collaborators–the actors–can be as free as possible and do their best work.” The cast of Captain Phillips, he observed, ran the gamut from an accomplished, lauded actor in Hanks–the quintessential everyman–to four Somali Americans who never acted professionally before.
Helping the cast, particularly the first-time Somali actors, was the decision not to block scenes. Instead, the camera follows the performers wherever they may chose to go during the course of a scene. “Once you stop asking actors to perform for the camera, it gives them a kind of freedom,” said DP Ackroyd, explaining his and Greengrass’ approach.
Greengrass affirmed that he was committed to finding Somalis to play the pirates. “I thought it would be an impossible task but it’s the kind of challenge great casting directors like,” he said, alluding to casting director Francine Maisler whose intensive search eventually led to Minneapolis, the largest Somali-American community in the U.S. She distributed flyers announcing an open casting call, attracting more than 1,000 candidates for the role of pirate leader Muse and his three crewmates. Mailer worked with Minnesota casting director Debbie DeLisi to narrow the field down. Maisler broke them into foursomes to see the chemistry among them. One of those initial quartets consisted of Barkhad Abdi as Muse, Barkhad Abdirahman as Bilal, Faysal Ahmed as Najee, and Mahat M. Ali as Elmi. “Once we grouped them, they began to rehearse on their own time, with Barkhad Abdi leading the group’s rehearsal sessions,” said Maisler. “Later, we swapped other actors in and out of the foursome as an experiment, but we kept reuniting that original foursome and ultimately Paul cast them in the movie.”
Greengrass observed, “They were friends and had worked together as a group. There was something about them that already looked and felt like a crew…The degree of intensity they projected and the nuances they found were incredible–and the ability to do it all opposite the extraordinary power of Tom Hanks was something special.”
Greengrass’ documentary acumen also came into play for the Somali pirate characters, providing observational insights into what led them to a life of violence. He shows the hopeless world they came from, where so many are competing to be recruited as pirates. “These guys are desperate,” said Greengrass. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a young man with a gun who has nothing to lose.
