Director Sally Potter On How ‘Anger Is Hurt Gone Wrong’ for Live Action Short Contender, ‘Look At Me’

It begins with the booming sound of drumming. One man expresses himself by striking the drums while another uses his tap shoes to pound a response. All the while, a third man serves as ringleader to gauge just how to keep it all together. In Sally Potter’s engaging and provocative short film, Look At Me, two men square off with unexpectedly emotional results, and we are left with thoughtful questions of masculinity and anger.

Do men need to talk more about their feeling? At a young age, a lot of young kids are taught to not express genuine, instinctive emotions, and we can carry that denial into our adult life. I told Potter that, even in the gay community, everyone will have an opinion about your emotions or they think you are being “too much.”

“It seems like a good plan. Not just to talk about them, but to have them,” she said. “We all need a place to express them. I’ve seen it again and again that young boys who become young men are very damaged because they aren’t “supposed” to have feelings. Or have vulnerability or cry. These are human responses, so exploring that male experience was very interesting for me. There can be judgement attached, too. Even if you are queer, there is supposed to be a “correct way,” or questions if you are queer enough. Men struggle a lot with judgement.”

Javier Bardem and Chris Rock are two titans, and their sparring shoots off fireworks. We are more familiar with Bardem in a dramatic role, but I don’t think he’s been this vulnerable on screen before. Rock is a revelation, and he surrenders himself to his role as a man struggling to keep his relationship afloat while maintaining his own dignity. Towards the end of the film, Rock tells Bardem, ‘We have to survive.’ His voice quivers and shakes, and we realize that we have never seen Rock deliver something too emotional.

“It’s always fascinating to cast against type and expectation,” Potter reveals. “Javier’s character is more similar to some things he’s played before, but we certainly haven’t seen him drumming. We haven’t seen the level of vulnerability that emerges by the end of this story. And the tenderness. Chris, as you rightly say, is giving us something he never has before. He is used to being exposed while alone on stage and putting out this incredible energy. It is vulnerable to be up on a stage alone, but it’s a different kind of vulnerable to be in front of a camera. A lot of live performers find it difficult to make that transition, but we worked together for diving off the precipice into that space. It was thrilling to see him explore that side as a performer. As a director, I had to create a lot of safety so somebody–if they are able to–could surrender that control. Chris was able to do that”

Most of the action of Look At Me takes place in a performance space as Bardem drums and dancer Savion Glover tap dances. As the argument takes shape, swirling spotlights accompany the anger. Potter wanted to silently explore themes of showmanship and incarceration.

“Lights like that are used in two places–either in stadiums or prisons,” she said. “The environment and the conflict is done in cages. That image of freedom and incarceration or repression and expression is a running them. I wanted the lights to serve as both surveillance and performance. He’s a wounded beast in that moment.”

Not only does Potter serve as director, but she also composed the score of Look At Me. We don’t often see directors providing the music, but it’s a unique way that Potter can register what we are hearing while we watch the drama unfold.

“The advantage of that is that I can try out many, many different things without risk of offending the composer. I can fire myself many times over,” she admits, jokingly. “The music comes from the same source, and it’s an extension of the writing of the script. It can add some feeling of the scene or a counterpoint to something that is happening in a scene. There is writing with words and composing is writing without words. They are very intimately linked, cinema and music. Music is there to evoke part of the soul.”

Sometimes we shouldn’t judge someone for their anger, because we don’t know what the root cause of it is. It’s very rare that someone is angry for the sake of being angry. Potter was interested in exploring why anger is a go-to emotion for a lot of men and how it is tied to swagger and put-on machismo.

“Anger, male or female, is often sitting on top of another emotion, so it’s disguising something else,” she said. “Anger is hurt gone wrong. What I discussed with both actors is the relationship between humiliation–especially for men–and that anger. It can be very misunderstood, especially if we focus on the top layer instead of peeling it back.”