Being able to connect with a film is one of the best feelings in the world. Whether it’s a movie that makes you laugh, cry, or tells a story very close to your heart, when a feature moves you, the director’s work is done! That They May Face the Rising Sun is undoubtedly a movie that does that. It might not be the most ‘filmable’ story, as there’s not much drama or things happening, but it’s highly relatable. It’s about love, loss, difficult decisions, and finding the place where you belong. We had a chat with director Pat Collins (The Dance) about this beautiful adaption of Irish author John McGahern’s same-named novel, the casting process and the impact of a rural environment on being creative.
Geek Vibes Nation: Congratulations, Pat, on this beautiful movie. That They May Face the Rising Sun is based on a novel. How did you come across the novel?
Director Pat Collins: I read the novel when it came out first in 2000. Then, I got an opportunity to make a documentary on McGahern. That was in 2004, 2005. It came out in 2006 on Irish television. So, over those years, I got to know John very well. It’s been on my mind ever since. I was thinking about it. I was always curious whether I could do something with it. I thought it would be such a challenging book to adapt. Much of the story is about the passing of time and seasons and tiny, little unfolding stories. There’s not much drama. I always thought it was going to be challenging to do.
I chatted with John McGahern’s wife, Madeline, in 2015, and I asked her what she thought of the idea of adapting the book. She gave me her blessing. We started writing it in 2016. The making of the movie took from 2016 to now.
Those kinds of films are slow and so quiet. They’re not hugely dramatic. It’s hard enough to get funding for something like that. Because it took a lot of time, it took a good few years to get the funding together. And it took a long time to make. It’s hard to get the right balance between the slowness, time passing, and the little stories that are there.
GVN: Why was getting the funding hard?
PC: The marketplace is a very unrelenting place. It just demands big stories, big stars, big noise, everything. It’s dependent on the stars. A lot of the characters in my film are cast from Ireland. If you’re chasing the money, you try to get an American actor playing an Irish character. It would be too much of a leap for an American or an English actor to inhabit characters like the one in this novel and film. The characters had to be played by people who were very close to the character and who would significantly understand what kind of people they were. It’s a more complex and slower funding process when casting locally like that.
GVN: You got a fantastic cast! How did they all come together?
PC: We did readings of the script around the table with different actors. We’d bring in different actors at certain stages, and people graciously give up their time reading the script. It was pretty slow. The person [Phillip Dolan] who plays Jamesie is a non-actor. I met him when he was telling stories in the pub. He stayed in my mind for a long time, and six months later, I rang him up and said, “Have you ever acted in a film?”. And he said that he hadn’t. He was an engineer. He was a massive fan of McGahern’s writing. So, we were in the right place. He understood the characters.
Lalor Roddy, who plays Patrick, had a fantastic understanding of the character and embodied him from the start. And the same with Sean McGinley, who plays Johnny, the immigrant. He could read the dialogue, and we would be moved by how he read the lines. For feature films, casting is nearly 60% of the battle. Once you get the script right, the casting is so crucial. Everything depends on it. Working with a good cast elevates it. That’s one of the exciting things for me. Because I usually work in documentaries, this was my first time working solely with a cast. Usually, I’d bring in archive elements and documentary elements. It could be an interview with somebody in the middle of the drama. This was my first time going for a drama film with a cast.
GVN: Was it what you expected of it? Or were there any difficulties?
PC: It’s such a long process. I wanted it to be faithful to the book. And I achieved that, hopefully. John’s wife, Madeline, saw it last week and liked it. That was a massive relief. She felt that it captured the world that she lived in. It captured the time and the book. I’m happy with the way the movie is. I hope that it meets an audience. It’s something we can all connect to. No matter whether we’re from Ireland or not. As a modern audience, you see the strangeness of the characters through Joe and Kate’s perspective.
GVN: The movie looks so beautiful. Is it all shot in Ireland?
PC: All shot in Ireland. Around North Galway and the lakes there. We tried filming it in Leitrim, where John set his book, but we couldn’t find the right lake. It’s a very isolated place that many people in Ireland wouldn’t know called Lough Neagh. You would only go through it if you were going to it. You wouldn’t be passing it on your way to something else. It’s a gorgeous, spectacular place and even better in real life.
GVN: What was the scene you were looking forward to the most when reading the book, and how was it when you started shooting it?
PC: The wake, I suppose. Also, the whole laying out of the body. That’s a difficult scene to film. As an audience, you need to be engaged with it and go through its stages. And then the praying at the wake. I wanted to capture that. One of the hardest things is the passing of time. And the seasons. That’s an ongoing challenge when working on drama and capturing the seasons. At the same time, making a big feature film can be challenging. Sometimes, the editor and I shot certain things in the middle of the edit. We went out and shot in the autumn, and then we went back with a crew and shot in the wintertime with snow in the mountains. That was essential for the film’s success.
The most challenging scene was without a doubt the hay scene. Suppose we’d known how difficult it was. It’s difficult to save hay in real life, but it’s nearly impossible when you’re trying to keep it in the schedule of a feature film. You’re looking for fine weather. The hay has to have fine weather for 4 or 5 days in a row. Before you save it, you’re trying to structure it. It was a lovely challenge to do that while making a feature film. It felt genuine. We were genuinely trying to save the hay while shooting the film.
GVN: In the film, the leading character has to decide whether to return to London or stay with her partner in the rural area. Would you have made the same decision if you were in her shoes?
PC: In this movie, we focused more on the “will she or won’t she?” than the book. For somebody who’s an artist, the work could only deepen in a place like that. Your life might be more exciting in London. It depends. If you’re very social, you might go insane in a quiet country area. However, not if you love nature, quietness, reading and painting. In Ireland, in particular, many people would gravitate to the countryside if they were painters or artists. It’s easier to do it in the countryside. You have fewer distractions. It can become all about the work. The work becomes your way of life. One of the great things about living in the countryside Is the interactions with people. That’s the real definition. It’s the real reward, especially in the Irish rural countryside.
As we see in the film, when people have misfortune, the community comes to the forefront to help. The level of support in a rural part of Ireland is phenomenal. It’s heightened and intense. It makes you understand why you lived there in the first place. In the city, it takes more work to find it. In the city, everyone is for themselves. It’s okay up to a point. It’s okay when you’re younger, but not when you get older. Support and kinship are stronger in rural Ireland. I’m not saying it’s stronger than in other countries. I’m just saying it is strong in Ireland. There is the usual fighting and arguing, and sometimes there’s hatred, but even people you don’t get on with come together in a crisis. Those disagreements are rarely carried through.
GVN: Do you like to write in rural areas, or do you prefer the vibrant city?
PC: I live in a rural area. I grew up on a small farm in West Cork and went to the city in my early twenties. I came to Brighton to live for six months, and then I moved to Galway and lived there for 13 years. After my wife and I got our first kid, we went back to live in the countryside and roughly the same area where I grew up. We’re still living there now. 20 years later. I can’t imagine living anywhere else now. It might disadvantage your career, but I don’t care about that.
When you’re younger, you have to think about your career. You may have to consider being near where things are happening in your twenties. You have to be very sure of yourself. Once you reach a certain age, you can pull back from it. It’s rewarding. McGahern found that people in the rural community didn’t care whether he was a writer. They didn’t think he was something very different. It’s inspiring that you can live in a rural community where nobody cares what others do, as long as they’re okay when you meet them.
GVN: Apart from the BFI London Film Festival, will this movie go to other festivals?
PC: It’s getting released in Ireland in the spring and then in the UK. It will slowly get out there rather than it being a big splash. Hopefully, it will get picked up.
Good luck with the release of That They May Face the Rising Sun!
That They May Face the Rising Sun was screened during the BFI London Film Festival 2023. No UK/US release yet. You can read our review here as well as our interview with the leading cast Barry Ward and Anna Bederke.