Malcolm & Marie director Sam Levinson on toxic relationships, collaboration and filming in black-and-white
This intense romantic drama starring Zendaya is written and directed by a filmmaker who loves “crazy relationships”.
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There’s a line in Malcolm & Marie in which John David Washington’s character Malcolm asks Zendaya’s Marie to marry him.
He says that they will probably get married and divorced twice, the mark of a rollercoaster relationship in which passionate love sits alongside furious and hurtful scraps.
Of course, the first cinematic couple you might think of that’s been married and divorced twice is Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who also immortalised the fireworks of a hot-blooded relationship in Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
There’s a lot in Malcolm & Marie that recalls Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though Malcolm & Marie writer and director Sam Levinson says he wasn’t directly referencing Taylor and Burton with that line, at least not consciously.
“I love toxic, crazy relationships, they’re just fascinating to me,” Levinson tells news.com.au over Zoom. “I also just love Virginia Woolf. I don’t know if it’s a direct reference to them, but I guess it is in some way because if I’m thinking about couples that get married and divorced, they’re the first couple that comes to mind.
“But it’s not a direct reference so much as it was what I think [Malcolm and Marie’s] future might hold.”
You’d have to love the biting, all-consuming state of toxic relationships to craft Malcolm & Marie, a visually breathtaking film shot in just two weeks under strict COVID protocols, and starring two of Hollywood’s freshest, most in-demand actors in Zendaya and Washington.
Zendaya is even being touted for an Oscar nomination for her striking turn.
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Filmed in textured black-and-white 35mm, Malcolm & Marie is set over one night and in one house, as a couple – he a filmmaker, she an aspiring actor – returns from his movie premiere.
A speech Malcolm made at the premiere riles up something inside Marie and the next 110 minutes is spent jerking between grievances against each other and grievances against the world, as they both try to be heard and seen.
It’s a romantic drama that asks a lot of its audience, to invest in this couple that are more at odds than not. But in the intensity is a thoughtful through-line about what we owe each other in partnerships.
The John Cassavetes-evoking Malcolm & Marie has the rhythm of an intimate argument many of us may have had, the slow start that crescendos and eventually ebbs into an accord, before it all starts again because even though it seems the fight is over, someone still feels wronged.
“One of my favourite moments in the entire movie is when Malcolm is saying to Marie, ‘You said it was fine, you said it was OK’ and she says, ‘I know, but I changed my mind’. It’s one of my favourite moments because what she’s admitting is what you normally don’t in a fight, that ‘I’m still angry, I said it was over but it’s not’.”
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It’s a relatable moment, as was the first image Levinson had in his mind when he first started writing the film.
“I had this image of my head of Zendaya in a bathtub with her mascara running down, because sometimes my wife takes a bath, and she has mascara on. I love the way it hangs under her eyes and stuff. So, I had this image of Zendaya looking up at him and he’s tearing into her.”
Despite the very real inspirations, everything about Malcolm & Marie is designed to feel heightened, which is why its non-traditional set-pieces feel more like a stage production with its lengthy, grand dialogue and elevated performances.
Levinson, son of Diner and Wag the Dog director Barry Levinson, explains it was always his intention to shoot on black-and-white film, which lends the movie that feeling of being removed from our world, cocooning the characters in their own bubble.
“I wanted to get away from realism and any feeling that it’s a documentary of sorts,” Levinson says of his choice to film on double-X Kodak stock.
“I was sold on black-and-white for a multitude of reasons, and particularly on film, because I think there’s a certain mystery to film that no one can explain, and everyone fails at doing so. But there’s a magic and beauty to it that I love.
“At the same time, as I think about movies that I love that are in black-and-white and was going back through a few of them – La Notte, The Servant, The Best Years of Our Lives and Virginia Woolf – I just noticed that everyone was white.
“And I thought, we’re making a movie about Hollywood, we’re making a movie about the industry, and about certain tough conversations that people are having with the industry.
“The idea of taking [Zendaya and Washington] and reclaiming that Golden Age of Hollywood, especially as they’re so charismatic, radiant and stunning, I wanted it to be like the Bogart and Bacall feeling, the iconography of Hollywood.
“I wanted to take it and say, ‘It’s these two, this couple, this could be the future’. Hopefully this is the future, and then bring all that glamour to it and the things that make movies a little larger-than-life and awe-inspiring.”
Levinson conceived Malcolm & Marie at the beginning of lockdown after the TV series he created, Euphoria which also stars Zendaya, went into production hiatus because of COVID.
The structure, set-up and story of the film was driven by logistic necessities to shoot in California during a pandemic, hence the single location, two actors and minimal crew.
“The story was a matter of can we sustain the audience’s attention, can we make it suspenseful enough that people are going to lean into it and ask what happens next?
“At the same time, I would try to dig each character into a hole that felt impossible to get out of.”
Levinson describes the dynamic of Malcolm and Marie’s fiery arguments are a “kind of Socratic dialogue”, wherein one person stakes a position and then the other challenges them.
Wrapped up in the personal pain of each character are bold if unreconciled ideas of ownership of art.
Malcolm fiercely rails against film critics who he argues misinterpret his work, while Marie feels as if Malcolm stole her life story for his film without acknowledgment.
Given the bitter veracity with which Malcolm attacks film criticism, it would be easy to imagine the fictional director is Levinson’s on-screen avatar. But he says Marie’s counterarguments about who owns art represent as much of him as Malcolm does.
“I’m not sure that I even have fixed opinions about it other than that I love the discussion of it,” he says. “I think what’s fascinating about filmmaking as a medium is, by nature, that it’s maybe the most collaborative art form.
“Because of the power of film and what it can mean to an individual in terms of empathy and understanding, there’s a lot of responsibility that’s put on it.
“So, what’s interesting about a film set, and this is why diversity is such an important fight, is that when you’re making a movie, you’re constantly interacting with hundreds of people who have unique, beautiful life experiences. Different race, gender, sexuality, everything – and they bring that perspective to whatever it is you’re working on.
“And out of that collision of identities and perspectives, if you listen to it and remain open to it, you can bottle up something that feels universal.”
Perhaps that’s also the key to making intimate partnerships work – listening and being open. That’s certainly something Malcolm & Marie grapples with.
Malcolm & Marie starts streaming on Netflix on Friday, February 5 at 7pm AEDT, and is also playing in select cinemas now
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Originally published as Malcolm & Marie director Sam Levinson on toxic relationships, collaboration and filming in black-and-white
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