‘Anemone’: Ronan Day-Lewis on Crafting a Requiem of War and Brotherhood With His Renowned Father Daniel Day-Lewis

Alci Rengifo

There is a comfortable casualness in the way Ronan Day-Lewis describes finding the plot for his feature debut, “Anemone.” No doubt this is because he wrote the screenplay with his father, the renowned thespian and multiple Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, who also stars in the film after an 8-year absence from the big screen. In a time where the offspring of famous names get double the scrutiny for breaking into the limelight, Ronan Day-Lewis is not playing it safe. This is a hallucinatory, dense film powered by a fierce intimacy. The cast is an impressive trio tasked with expressing naked, at times terrible feelings onscreen. 

The Day-Lewis’ screenplay focuses primarily on two brothers. First, we meet Jem (Sean Bean), who leaves his home one morning to venture into the woods of Northern England, leaving behind his wife Nessa (Samantha Morton) and adopted son Brian (Samuel Bottomley). Jem’s mission is to meet with his brother, Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), a former soldier now living alone in a cabin surrounded by forest. A battle of wills follows where Jem tries to make Ray realize he must come home and see Brian, who happens to be his biological son. The adolescent is troubled and much of it stems from the scrutiny he receives over Ray’s reputation. Not only is Brian seen as a kind of bastard, but Ray is known to have taken part in the British army’s brutalities during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

With a background in music videos and short films, Day-Lewis directs “Anemone” with a dreamlike tone that makes its emotional impact that much more wrenching. Hallucinatory images manifest during moments where it seems that Ray is grappling with private demons. Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean create an overwhelming atmosphere between the two of them in the secluded locale, with Jem attempting to understand the rages his brother won’t let rest. It’s a masterful display of control as well as the use of silence to create intensity. Daniel-Day spoke with Entertainment Voice about the making of “Anemone.”

Let’s start with the genesis of the story. Of course much attention will instantly go to the casting of your father, Daniel Day-Lewis, but you also wrote the screenplay together. Why focus on the Troubles and in this particular way?

Our way in originally was through brotherhood because I have brothers and for years have had this vague idea of wanting to write a story about brotherhood. At first I didn’t really know how to approach it. I originally thought of it as a coming of age story in some way. Once my dad and I started talking about finding a project to potentially work on together it turned out he independently had this fascination with brotherhood as an archetype, as something to write about, specifically the silence that can exist between brothers and siblings. You know that kind of telepathy that can exist between siblings. That was the seed and the idea of this man living in a state of self-banishment in the middle of nowhere, with his brother suddenly showing up. We didn’t know where he was at that point. Slowly the past of the two brothers began to reveal itself to us and the historical framework. We knew early on that he had been involved in some kind of conflict and didn’t know where at first. We knew we wanted it to take place in a contemporary time before cell phones. That was the tenet of the scenario. I had grown up in Ireland for six years from seven to thirteen. My dad has deep connections to Ireland. So, we started to think about the Troubles. The character had shown himself to be English and I felt there had been many stories already told from the other perspective, it would be intriguing to look at the story from the perspective of an English soldier. So these details about the characters began to present themselves over time.

The way you treat the material is distinct because it also doesn’t just stay firm as a grounded drama. There are these surreal moments that take place where reality is bent. Where did these dream sequences in the film come from?

That sensibility of the film, these moments that are bubbling to the surface of reality, they’re almost more hyper real than surreal in my eyes, because they’re revealing these aspects of the world and the characters that would normally be hidden. My paintings were definitely part of the road map for the film’s visual language. It allowed me a sense of freedom in telling the story in a way where it could have indeed just been this kitchen sink drama where you just listen to the bare bones of the plot. I think the spirit of freedom that we wrote it in also gave us room to dream early on of strange and mysterious ways this character’s past could come to light. Increasingly I became more and more entranced with the idea of the film having this hallucinatory intensity where there’s this historical framework, it has one foot in reality, but then there’s this slight wooziness to it where you’re never quite sure if you’re in a dream or waking reality.

For a feature debut you also have, aside from your father, some other notables here like Sean Bean and Samantha Morton. These are three powerhouses. What was that triangulation of talents like and directing them?

It was great because my dad and Sean got the chance to spend time together in a semi-isolated setting leading up to shooting (laughs). They had time to develop that familiarity. Working with each of them was special in its own way. With my dad, since we had written it together and obviously had that built-in familiarity, and had exhaustively talked about the story before getting to the set, we developed a short hand together. With Sean there are scenes where he’s almost in a torture chamber and he’s almost mute for these long of periods of time but he’s the eyes through which the audience sees this world. He has to communicate so much with so little and it’s like this master class watching him. We were trying to figure out what was the least he could do physically while communicating this roller coaster he’s on. With Samantha Morton, I had been a fan for a long time. Her performance in “Morvern Callar” in particular had this quality that it was hard to put my finger on, but it would be impossible to imagine the character without her. With her it’s a lot about creating the infrastructure around the character, what would Nessa have around the house and what would the literal circumstances of her life be. We worked on making a backstory for her character and giving her that armature. 

Even with its vast silences, the movie does speak much to the current state of the world. Conflict and war are something dominating the headlines and affecting people. What does “Anemone” say to us in these times?

We started writing it about five years ago. When we started writing it, obviously the conflicts happening right now were not in the front of our minds, but it’s been impossible not to think about them in relation to the film while doing post. It’s a lot of different things as a film and I wouldn’t want to reduce it to just one thing, but it is an anti-war film. What was important to me is that even as it explores this conflict through this character who was employed by the oppressor and was on the side of the oppressor, that the film’s perspective is divorced from that and not from the point of view of an oppressor. It takes a view of war and human bloodshed that’s almost from the point of view of nature. It was interesting the way current events began to shape the way I was thinking about the film as we went into post-production.

After such a unique debut, what can we expect from you next?

The world of the film that I hope to make next is very different. It’s set in upstate New York and it’s a kind of nightmare coming of age film about teenage girls, which couldn’t be any more different from the world of “Anemone.” There are still tonal similarities so I’m curious to see, if I get to make it, how it lives in the same kind of universe tonally.

Coming of age film? So, are there also autobiographical touches to the material?

(Laughs) There are some autobiographical aspects I think, through a very mediated distance, but yeah, I’m realizing more and more how personal some aspects of it are.“

“Anemone” releases Oct. 3 in New York and Oct. 10 in select theaters.