Born in Montreal, Shawn Levy has become, over the past twenty years, one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. Director of the fantasy saga Night at the Museum (One night at museum), he is also the producer of the remarkable Arrival (The arrival), by Denis Villeneuve, and the popular series Stranger Things, from Netflix. Moreover, it is within the fold of the digital giant that he produced and directed All the Light We Cannot See (All the light we can’t see), a miniseries set during World War II based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr. The duty sat down with Shawn Levy to discuss what he calls “his most ambitious project to date.”
Taking place over several years and divided into four episodes, All the Light We Cannot See is interested in Marie-Laure, a young blind French woman (Aria Mia Loberti) who has taken refuge in the countryside after fleeing Paris with her father (Mark Ruffalo), as well as in Werner (Louis Hofmann), a young German who was forced to join the Nazi army.
“I read the novel during a holiday vacation, and I had no intention of adapting it in mind: I was simply reading it because I had been told good things about it,” recounts Shawn Levy during a interview held in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he received the Norman Jewison Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I was completely captivated, intoxicated: it was full of suspense and emotion, epic and intimate all at the same time… I immediately tried to acquire the adaptation rights, but they had already been sold. There was a film project. I was disappointed, but I asked all my colleagues to stay alert. Two or three years later, this film project fell through. »
A failure that Shawn Levy can easily explain. “I believe that if the initial project did not work, it was not because of the script, but because of the format chosen. It’s a 500-page novel, and in my opinion it’s more suitable for a miniseries than a film. This is what I told Anthony, the author, when I approached him. I mentioned a limited series, which would do justice to his novel. »
A solid screenwriter
With her uncle (Hugh Laurie), Marie-Laure transmits secret codes by radio waves. Werner is responsible for detecting such clandestine broadcasts. Like the novel, the miniseries alternates periods, i.e. childhood, adolescence and very young adulthood of the two protagonists, whose parallel destinies will eventually intersect.
Screenwriter of the film Eastern Promises (Shadow Promises) and creator of the series Peaky BlindersSteven Knight scripted the entire adaptation.
“My producer friend Dan Levine and I have a lot of respect for Steven. His name was at the top of our list of potential screenwriters. He agreed right away, but when we asked him how many co-writers he wanted to direct on his team, he told us: “No, no, no co-writers: I will write the entire adaptation.” This is very unusual, because normally, on a series, there is a main writer [showrunner] and assistant screenwriters. Steven’s first drafts were better than many people’s final versions. »
Like Steven Knight, Shawn Levy opted for a global approach. In addition to producing the miniseries, he directed all the episodes. Of all the characteristics of the novel that pleased him, undoubtedly the one he was most keen to preserve was this balance between “the epic and the intimate”.
“To translate that into images, I think the best I could do was trust my instincts. When I look at the script, I see what the film or series should look like, and I perceive the emotions that should emerge from it. I come back to the script every day, for every scene, to recalibrate my priorities. In this miniseries in particular, it was as much for an intimate scene of family conversation in the kitchen with Marie-Laure as for a large-scale sequence like the exodus from Paris with thousands of people. When the script is good, it contains the answers to all the questions I could ask myself. »
Two strangers
In a bold decision for such an anticipated and expensive production, Shawn Levy decided not to cast the roles of Marie-Laure and Werner with established stars.
“I didn’t want well-known actors for the protagonists, because I wanted Marie-Laure and Werner to be immediately accepted by the public as these two characters. I didn’t want people to remember them in this or that film: I wanted that newness, that freshness. Louis Hofmann played very young in the series Dark, but we met him in an audition with hundreds of other candidates, and he had this mixture of simplicity and depth of soul which seemed perfect to me for Werner. »
Finding the actress who would play Marie-Laure proved more complicated, particularly because of the character’s blindness.
“I realized quite early on that the actress who would play Marie-Laure would have to viscerally understand the character’s blindness, rather than simulating it. I therefore organized a vast campaign aimed at finding two young blind actresses who could play Marie-Laure at 8 years old, and at 18 years old. I was treated to not one, but two miracles: Nell Sutton, for the child version, and Aria Mia Loberti, for the adult version. Neither had played before. Aria, in particular, is the star of the miniseries, and she had never even auditioned. »
The survival of hope
Apart from the absence of stars as figureheads, another bias of Shawn Levy lies in the bill. In fact, unlike many historical productions looking back on the Second World War, Come on Light We Cannot See does not sport a cold, washed-out palette synonymous with despair. On the contrary.
“I admit to being completely in love with the aesthetic: I have never done anything that looks like this show-there. Tobias A. Schliessler, my cinematographer, and Simon Elliott, my visual designer, did an outstanding job — and I’m not talking about the music of the legendary James Newton Howard! When I was putting together images to show them to establish the aesthetic and the atmosphere, I was spontaneously into warm, intimate, authentic things… Because, the main theme, what this story is about, basically, is is the survival of hope in the heart of darkness. Marie-Laure’s house, Werner’s orphanage: these places were to represent havens, islands of light in the ambient darkness. My goal was for us to feel that this is a world that we don’t want to leave, and above all that we don’t want to see destroyed…”
After a pause, Shawn Levy continues: “The subject matter is intense and dramatic, but despite that, I want the audience to have fun to watch the miniseries. My films, my series, I never make them to be cool or fashionable: I do them in order to establish a connection with the audience. »
Which public has, as a general rule, given it back well. And if the past is a guarantor of the future, it should not be any different for this proposal.
Since the filming ofAll the Light We Cannot See, Shawn Levy has not been idle. Indeed, it is at the post-production stage of the superheroic satire Deadpool 3, which he co-wrote, co-produced and directed, and which constitutes his first foray into this saga. However, this is his third collaboration with Ryan Reynolds after Free Guy (The free man) And The Adam Project (Adam through time). In short, another guaranteed success for Shawn Levy.
All the Light We Cannot See will be released on November 2 on Netflix.