CraveOnline: There’s a certain number of films about people finding peace, or inner peace, or a certain amount of acceptance of their lives, but they tend to reach a dramatic crescendo at the end, where it all builds up to an elaborate metaphor like crossing a gorge or winning a car race or your father’s love. Here it’s a little straighter. Just plowing through seems more important than fighting one specific obstacle.
Jean-Marc Vallée: When you think of it, this woman at the end… First, she doesn’t define herself through a man. She has nothing. No relationship, no money, no apartment, no parents, and yet it’s a fucking beautiful ending. She’s letting go. And you feel that, “Oh my god, yeah, she’s at peace.” She’s accepting. She learned something about herself. What if all this shit was okay? What if you just move and learn through this? And she’s not telling us.
The beauty, also, about the book, and I hope the film, is that Cheryl doesn’t tell us, “Here’s one specific advice in life, here’s one specific life lesson and you should do…” It’s not about aid. It’s about, she’s describing her life, her story, in a way, a fashion where you feel good about … if I’m lost, I hope I’m going to have the courage to find myself and try to find myself. I don’t know how. It might be a fucking hike on a trail, or I don’t know what. But see, I think it’s a book, a story that’s going to…
Inspire?
Inspire people, or just give a light, a hope to people that have this feeling. Because I think in our lives we all have this moment where we feel lost. Am I doing the right thing? Am I my family, my parents, my spouse, my job? What am I doing with my life when I feel lost? I think this book has this power, this thing that… you know what I mean?
“What if all this shit was okay? What if you just move and learn through this?”
I think I do. It sounds to me like almost a heavy responsibility to take it upon yourself to try to inspire people, to reach that level of connection with your audience.
No. No, because it’s not a responsibility, and it’s not a goal. It’s just an observation. I think, how do you feel about this book, how does it make you feel?
Were you inspired by the book?
Yeah, of course.
And did it make you want to evoke that in your film as well, or were just trying to tell the story straight and hope that people…?
Yeah, yeah, I was hoping. I was trying to be as emotional as the book, and trying to find the right way to tell this story in film now. Since we cannot use 400 pages, we now have under two hours to tell the story, so what are we keeping? What are we using? How? Where are the flashbacks, the voice-over, the present tense? Of course Nick Hornby [the screenwriter] did the first part, he created that structure, and we created from that.
