STACK #123 Jan 2015

DVD&BD

FEATURE

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WICKED CLAIM In FELONY, Matthew Saville and Joel Edgerton have created the stunning story of a celebrated cop who commits an accidental crime, and decides to cover it up. But it’s more about the relationship with the self than the police procedural genre, as the two explained to Zoë Radas.

I n Dostoyevsky’s seminal novel Crime and Punishment (1866), the crime to which the title refers is committed very early on, and the rest of the narrative is how the punishment plays out – how the murderer punishes himself in his own mind, aside from the legal affiliations the word holds. Matthew Saville and Joel Edgerton lay out a similar idea in their brilliant new crime drama Felony , which Saville directed and for which Edgerton wrote the screenplay, as well as playing the lead role. “It was very important to me, you know: the situation of the story comes first – this character who commits a crime – and the real crime is the second thing he does, which is to lie about the initial accident,” Edgerton says. “And the journey back to join the human race... I believe that when you do bad things, time sort of stops for you for a second, because you’re not really engaged in life, and you don’t really belong in life, and there’s this question of punishment and forgiveness.” The accident Edgerton speaks of involves his character, officer Mal Toohey, driving home from a drunken celebration. As he approaches his street, he side-swipes and injures a young boy, and conceals the fact from police who attend the scene. Mal’s guilt then proceeds to seep into all facets of his life. “[One character] says in the film, ‘prison is for people who don’t have their punishment up here in their head’,” Edgerton says.

right to forgive you. I felt like it was such rich material. ‘Cause I love thrillers, but oftentimes they end with a big shootout, and I wanted for it to be a shootout of ideas that still felt tense.” “It’s not a whodunnit...” Saville interjects. “Whydunnit!” Edgerton exclaims. “You’ve just defined a new genre. It’s a whydunnit.” Saville and Edgerton clearly have a marvellous working partnership as well as a personal one. Saville says directing Edgerton was a blast, but the rest of the cast – including Jai Courtney as a suspicious rookie cop, Melissa George as Mal’s wife Julie, and the revered Tom Wilkinson as Detective Carl Summer, the man who encourages Mal to keep his secret hidden – elevated Edgerton’s

script into something amazing. “A lot of the stuff on the page you could just read in very binary, forward

fashion; that this is the moment where they’re behaving badly, or this is the moment where they’re behaving admirably,” Saville says. “That all of the cast put so much breath and colour into the characters, that everything’s sort of happening at the same time in this sort of strange dance... for me, watching the film, I’m trying to look at it objectively now. I find my allegiance has shifted.” One of the great joys of Felony is Saville’s rich visual style, which bears many metaphors of shape to convey the story. Saville and Edgerton mention several shots – Mal enclosed in the darkness of a garage as the roller door descends; an overhead shot of the young boy being loaded into an ambulance, whose elements come together to resemble a crucifix; a shot of Mal angled within his car so as to suggest a cell – which are their favourites. “Sometimes I think they’re super planned, and sometimes Matthew will just see them in the moment,” Edgerton says. “I think you have to trust the performance as well,” Saville adds. “I think there is a style of directing which is footage gathering, where you just get every angle you can and you create everything in the edit. But, I’d much rather be there on the floor and make that commitment with the actor.”

“The film is a thriller and it’s entertainment, but within that are these different characters’

opinions and shifting points of view on what punishment fits what crime, and who has the

• Felony is out on Dec 31

JANUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.com.au

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