To make a film there are obviously some things you will need,
besides money that is. You will require a story or at least someone to adapt a
story and write a screenplay. Peter Morgan, a British screenwriter who
name has been synonymous with films like The
Queen (2006), The Other Boleyn Girl
(2008), The Damned United (2008) and
Clint Eastwood's supernatural drama Hereafter
(2010), should fit the bill. Then of course you're going to need a director
lets say Ron Howard who most of us will remember as Richie Cunningham in no
less than 171 episodes of the TV series Happy
Days that originally aired between 1974 and 1984. He made his directorial
debut in 1977 and has to his credit award winning films like Cocoon (1985), Apollo 13 (1995) and A
Beautiful Mind that won him an Oscar in 2001 for Best Director. Other films
of note have included the western The
Missing (2003), The De Vinci Code
(2006) and the political drama Frost/Nixon
in 2008. But of course without the Director of Photography you will have nothing
to look at! There are some very good cinematographers but none better than the
British camera man Anthony Dod Mantle who was responsible for the camerawork on
the first of the film’s made under the Dogme 95 banner Festen
(1998) directed by the Dane Thomas Vinterberg, and three films with Lars Von
Trier including 2009's controversial Antichrist.
He also worked with Danny Boyle on 5 movies including the recent psychological
thriller Trance
(2013). Now your need a sound track or a score, not all films need one but
generally if you intend to produce an exciting drama then you probable will and
one of the best composers in the business is Hans Zimmer who has been involved
with composing a great many film scores including Gladiator (2000), The Dark
Knight (2008) and another award winning Christopher Nolan film Inception
(2010).
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| Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl. |
Coincidently this team were used on the recent very well made
and extremely exciting biographical sporting drama Rush (2013), a dramatized
account of the rivalry between two very famous Formula One drivers. The drivers
involved were British born James Hunt, the George Best of motor racing, whose
climb to the top started with touring car racing and then the Formula Three route
driving for Lord Hesketh’s Racing team and then in 1973 entered Formula One leaving
Hesketh to join the McLaren team were he earned most of his success. The other
driver involved in this rivalry was the Austrian Niki Lauda who eventually won
the F1 World Championship three times.
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| Niki Lauda and James Hunt. |
The intense competitiveness between these two totally different
men is very well formulated, Hunt comes across as the devil may care playboy
who love of racing is only matched by his love of women, whereas Lauda is the
technocrat, more interested in mechanical engineering and risk assessment than
the high life. Two things make this film very special firstly great casting
with Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, best known for his role as the mighty Thor,
plays James Hunt with German actor Daniel Bruhl (Good Bye Lenin 2003, The
Edukators 2004, Inglourious
Basterds 2009) as Niki Lauda. Both actors bear an uncanny likeness to
the actual drivers as we witness at the end of the film when we get some
archive footage. Secondly its spectacular motor racing sequences which really
do have you on the edge of your seat. But what makes the film even more adsorbing
is that we are given a glimpse inside two of F1 great characters, and we are left
only to decide, as Peter Bradshaw asked ‘which was the champ and which was the chump?’[1]
