Daina O. Pusic is dark, but a hilarious tale of a mother and daughter and a supernatural bat. Nada is a 100 year-old lady, that’s right, 100. She lives with her 75 year-old daughter and their relationship is strained. Vera, helps her mute mother who in her old age is frail and helpless. One day, a bat flies into the house and stays under Nada’s bed and strange things start happening. I recently caught up with O. Pusic to find out more about the idea behind her film and find out what was behind the symbolism of the bat in this Croatian film.
Awards Daily: Beast is fantastically dark and fun, appealing to the dark side.
Daina O. Pusic: That’s the point. It’s just how I wanted it to be. I’m really glad when people find it fun and funny. It’s so dark in a way that it crosses over that line that it goes into funny.
AD: What was the process of getting the film made?
DOP: I wrote the script and spent about a year trying to persuade people to let me make it. It went through screenwriting and a development process with NISI MASA, a short film development process and it won a pitch competition which subsequently allowed us to have a Croatian/Finnish production for the film and that gave the film some traction and generate finance.
Once we had that, we could do some CGI because it has aging makeup and CGI that needed to be invested in.
The post process was a little under a year, and that CGI bit was a challenge, but we got there in the end.
AD: What inspired the theme of The Beast?
DOP: I tell people it’s a true story of memory. It is the story of my grandmother and my great grandmother who had a big impact on me growing up. They passed on a fascination with darkness and flowers which were a big influence on them. It was really my memory of them and as I got older, their impact on me grew.
Now that I’m in film, the more I developed the idea, I thought it was necessary to talk about old women in film. They’re the most interesting, the funniest and also the most dramatic. Film doesn’t tend to treat them as humans, but as props, or characters who give meaning to others, rather than stand alone. I’ve always had a fascination with aging and older women and female isolation.
AD: The actress who is 100-years old in the film is great. How did you find her?
DOP: I approached actresses who I admired, and it was easier to convince the younger actresses to take on their parts, but with the older actresses, it was harder. She had to trust me to let her do that scene. She’s in a bath and if I had in any way misused my position, it was a really vulnerable place for her to be. What gave the film the extra kick is that Doris Šarić Kukuljica is a comedy actress so she’s incredibly good with timing and took to swearing like a fish to water.
She’s a very elegant lady and when the camera started rolling, she was great.
AD: I adored her. What was the symbolism of the bat and where did it come from?
DOP: The theme is female isolation and the bat is an outside intruder who misshapes their relationship and messes up their equilibrium.
My cinematographer, Arthur Mulhern said, “It was a phallic symbol.” I didn’t originally think that, but it serves its purpose well. It’s that outside element that breaks up this female isolation.
AD: What camera did you use for the filming?
DOP: It was an Alexa. I used a digital camera, and Arthur made it look fantastic.
AD: What’s the current state of the Croatian film industry and you being a female filmmaker?
DOP: It’s had a renaissance because there are a lot of new investments in young filmmakers and short filmmakers. A lot of films coming out of the country were progressive and now it’s there’s right-wing, and a lot of that work is slightly endangered, and there’s a huge shift in the cultural scene every time there’s a political change. That’s a bit disconcerting but other than that it’s been hopeful and inspiring for female filmmakers.
AD: Why this movie?
DOP: A lot of my work is connected to memory and nostalgia, and a lot of the films I make are based on memories from childhood and get morphed into stories that I feel I have to make a story from. This was just one of those stories that came from my childhood that came from growing up.