David Ayer last directed Brad Pitt in Fury, the 2014 World War II movie in which the actor was the US commander of a Sherman tank rumbling its way into the hell of Nazi Germany’s last days. It was among Pitt’s grittiest performances, and for Ayer, it was something of a departure from the LA crime thrillers he had become a specialist in.
His second film with the star, who, in last year’s F1, had the biggest box office of this career, involves fewer moving parts and no panzer divisions.
Heart of the Beast is mostly about a man and his dog trying to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. But these are no ordinary owner and pet. Pitt’s James Belmont is a retired army special forces dog handler and Odin is the German shepherd that was in action with him. Both came out of their service, which looks from the flashbacks to have been in Afghanistan, with physical and emotional scars.
When their backwoods fishing and hunting trip goes terribly wrong, the pair must depend on each other for survival in the sub-Arctic terrain.
But this seemingly all-American film was shot around South Island lakes and alpine country substituting for Alaska. Quite aside from the financial incentive of the rebate offered to the production, Ayer says making the film in Alaska wasn’t feasible, because it doesn’t have the infrastructure or the experienced crews.
Coming to NZ meant just Ayer, his leading man, two supporting actors and a few other key American crew members, including the dog trainers, made the journey here early last year.
The script by Cameron Alexander had been kicking around Hollywood for a few years before it found its way to Ayer via the production company of La La Land director Damien Chazelle. Ayer, who grew up with a family pet German shepherd, said he cried when he read it.
“It was like a tone poem,” he says. Though there were a few tones he thought the film could do without. “The script had the dog’s inner monologue. It’s like the dog talking about stuff and telling us what’s going on. I’m like, ‘Hmm, I better not dub in the dog talking. I’m going to have to figure this out visually.’”
Ayer’s first and only choice for the film’s leading human was Pitt.
“It just made sense. It was only ever Brad. He’s the only actor I went out to. I think the script really did it. Obviously, we have a history, and we worked together really well and really enjoy the working relationship. But I think with him as much as me, there was just something powerful and resonant in the script. I knew I had to tell that story, and he read it and he felt what I felt. He said he was crying, too.”
As for the dog, he’s a local named “Uber” which is apt because on screen, he delivers. The film’s animal co-ordinator, Andrew Simpson, came to New Zealand to find the right pooch, met local breeders of working dog German shepherds, and heard about Uber, a family pet that had worked in mountain rescue. The film also needed some lookalikes and stand-ins, so three of Uber’s sons were cast as well.
Pitt came to NZ early to work with the dogs and their trainers.
“He really learned how to manage the dogs. On set, he had to do the work of his job, which is deliver this incredible, profound performance, but at the same time manage and wrangle Uber. When it worked, when it snapped in, there was nothing like it.”
But making a film where a dog is a major character requires a lot of patience and having trainers involved so closely that sometimes they would have to be painted out digitally afterwards.
“I learned a lot about working with dogs. They have a mind of their own. They understand bits of chicken more than they do bits of English.
“It just takes a lot of patience. I purposely kept my distance from the dogs. I never pet the dogs because I’m on set with a camera and I didn’t want them coming up and saying hi because they knew me.”
It might seem a simple film to make – a man, a dog, a vast landscape – but it proved otherwise for both Ayer and Pitt.
“It’s such a stripped-down world and the movie is really about that relationship. Brad and I would go through these intense gruelling days in the wilderness and be cold, wet and tired, and we’d just look at each other, shake our heads and say, ‘It’s a guy and a dog. How hard can this be? What were we thinking?’
“There is action and a lot that happens, but the austerity of the environment – and because it’s just Brad and the dog – the technical execution, the craft, the storytelling … you’re incredibly exposed.
“Brad had no breaks, no slack. His performance was a very demanding, physical performance … like he’s this huge movie star, but in his heart of hearts, he’s just a very old-school, honest, hardworking kind of method actor.”
Ayer shot in some areas that have been the backdrop to many screen productions before – Glenorchy, Milford Sound and Mt Aspiring National Park. Some days, he’d be shoving Pitt and Uber out of a helicopter to get a shot of them walking along a glacier ridge. After the South Island shoot, there was a foray to the crystal-clear waters of Kumeū Film Studios’ water tank for a plane crash sequence under water.
After the rest of his high-action oeuvre, Ayer thinks making Heart of the Beast, during which he often shouldered a camera himself, has been a therapeutic exercise for him personally and as a film-maker.
“It helped me work through some personal things. I lost my father when I was really young, and I think that’s why I connected so much with the story because it felt almost father-son in a way. The idea of unconditional love ‒ it’s the dream relationship I think we all wish we had. As a film-maker, you take away the noise and the trappings of so much of the modern world and compress down to simplicity. So, it really taught me to see, make the frame and the composition my collaborator."
Heart of the Beast opens at cinemas on September 24 with public previews from September 19.