It’s that time again when film lovers from all over the world descend upon the city and move between various theatres to see a plethora of movies at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
One of the films premiering at TIFF this year is Rachel House’s feature directorial debut, The Mountain. The movie follows a young trio consisting of Sam (Elizabeth Atkinson), Bronco (Terence Daniel), and Mallory (Reuben Francis) as they embark upon an unexpected journey. They bond as friends, learn more about themselves and their place in the world, and much more.
I had the fantastic opportunity to speak with House about directing The Mountain, co-writing the screenplay and the importance of adding Maōri culture, working with young actors, and music in the film.
What was your experience like directing your first feature film? I know you’ve done short films before, so did working on the short films inform any of your work during the filming of The Mountain?
Rachel House: Basically, my sort of directing arc is that I used to direct a ton of theatre, and I think people who don’t do theatre kind of don’t realize how well it prepares you to direct, just in general, you know? You learn quickly how to direct a performance. You have to learn about what are the tones of the piece, and all the elements that it requires in terms of communicating that tone, whether it be in lighting or stage setup. So, that was a really great basis for me to sort of begin.
Then I got pulled into doing directing a soap, a Maōri language soap. We had no money. It was such limited resources. We didn’t really even have a full crew, you know? And, so really, I probably picked up a lot of bad habits. Then I went to film school and kind of unlearned all those bad habits and got an even deeper understanding of how to make film and television. So, yeah, the short films, I made some at film school, and then I made another one when I got back to Aotearoa from Prague, and yeah, all of it helps.
But I think one of the greatest things, particularly for The Mountain, was that I’ve done a lot of acting coaching with young young people on Taika’s [Waititi] films, and that really set me up to direct The Mountain. I love working with young people. I think it’s such a privilege and they are just full of joy. It’s a really wonderful and fulfilling experience, particularly watching them grow.
When you’re an acting coach, you’re on set all the time, you’re behind the monitor all the time, you know? Generally speaking, the kids that I was acting coach for were the leads in their films, so I was there all the time on set. So, by the time I got to direct The Mountain, it felt very familiar. It didn’t feel difficult or unfamiliar. It just felt like I’ve been doing it for ages, to be to be honest.
Speaking of your work as an acting coach for young actors, what was it like for you during the casting process for this film? Everyone was so amazing, you would think they’d been acting for years and years, even though they’re so young.
House: Yeah, for the casting process we had a great casting director, Eryn Wilson, and you have to kind of understand the strength of social media, you know? So, he set up some messaging on Facebook, which is where a lot of our families kind of exchange information, particularly our Maōri families. And we just got kids to send in videos of themselves, and the first thing I really wanted to do was see what kind of people they were. So really, all we asked for to begin with was an introduction.
You know, something I’d learned from Taika is when you cast young people in particular, you want to find kids who have those qualities already, who are as close to the character as possible. I mean, of course, the characters change a little bit because of what the kids bring as any acting role does, but they all had very, very strong qualities that the characters had.
We then followed that up with an audition for the ones that I was really taken with in terms of the introductions. We got them to do some audition pieces, and then we finally got a shortlist together, and they came in to the audition room in Auckland with Eryn’s team and me, and Carthew, the producer, and we just had a really fun day, you know? We had Carrie Green, who is the kids acting coach, and she was there right from the get go. She was doing lovely games with them all throughout the day. Then we teamed them up, tried them out with different people. And it was very clear, to be honest, that it was Ted, that it was Reuben, that it was Elizabeth.
You also co-wrote the screenplay for The Mountain. So what was it like to tackle the screenplay for it as well as the directing?
House: The initial screenplay by Tom Furniss, was this really great, very kind of rambunctious journey about these three little boys who wanted to conquer a mountain. For me, as an Indigenous woman, the mountain hadn’t been named, and because mountains identify us tribally–you know, who we are–that felt quite discombobulating. And I thought, what a brilliant opportunity for me to infuse this script with our perspective of why mountains are important. So that involved naming the mountain. First of all, naming it from one of my own mountains, Taranaki. I connect tribally to Maunga Taranaki, and so, that was the hugest kind of change.
And then in order to kind of really clearly communicate that experience, that Indigenous experience, it involved a huge rewrite of Bronco, in particular. In the original script, he wasn’t Maōri, and he wasn’t a guardian of the earth or anything like that. So that’s what I made him; that’s how I rewrote him. You know, because being Maōri is so nuanced, there’s no one kind of example of what being Maōri is, and not all of us have been raised in our culture, and can speak our language and understand culturally what it is to be Maōri. So, I really wanted to kind of look at that as well. And Bronco is really our navigator throughout the whole story in terms of being able to relate to some of those Indigenous values and perspectives.
While you were making The Mountain, did you learn anything new about yourself as you worked on the project?
House: You know, a friend of mine last night, who’s the same age as me she said, “Were you able to have energy every single day throughout this?”
And I suppose if you take on a big project like this, you learn really quickly whether you’ve got what it takes or not, you know? Just simply on energy alone, and yeah, I suppose I learned that I’ve got real stamina and real passion for this and the craft of storytelling. It’s just my favourite thing in the world, you know? I was just so grateful every day to be there, particularly when we were shooting in Taranaki which was sort of four weeks of the shoot itself. But every day it was an honour, really, to work with those young people. They were just a delight to be around.
My final question for you is about the music. The music throughout the movie is so great and enhances many moments. How did you go about choosing the music for the film?
House: I worked with Troy Kingi, who plays Bronco’s dad. He’s a brilliant musician from home. He released this album back in 2017, which had that awesome funk, that ’70s funk sound to it. I knew when I was rewriting the script that I really wanted that kind of ’70s funk throughout it. And so I did a temporary score. The way that Troy likes to work is he likes to be given a temporary score, or temporary soundtrack, I should say, from which to work with. I had Curtis Mayfield, Sly and the Family Stone in there. I had all those big, cool numbers from them.
Also, Atticus Finch and Trent Reznor made a lot of their various beautiful movie scores that we’ve done parts of that. So, yeah, Troy wrote those tracks, and Arli Liberman did the score, and it worked really well. It was a wonderful process, really. You know, I feel like I learned a lot from the post-production process, because that’s definitely something I hadn’t done in such a full way before, you know? There’s a lot of trial and error. It’s all trial and error. So, that was actually a very fascinating part of the of the process.
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