Once Upon a Time: FFC Interviews Marc Forster
November 14, 2004|Looking more than a little like Michael Stipe, German-born, Switzerland-raised director Marc Forster speaks with a soft Swiss accent, supplementing his thoughts with delicate hand gestures and a nervous self-deprecation. He seems almost too fragile for the world, and in fact admits that he retreats into fantasy, the womb of fable, when he can. His instinct to fashion metaphor out of life's cruelties drew his debut and sophomore features–the festival darling Everything Put Together (about the loss of a child) and arthouse smash Monster's Ball (which won an Oscar for Halle Berry while making of race and class a fairy tale of the reconstruction), respectively–their fair share of criticism. A gauzy look at the South, Monster's Ball, for instance, reminded me of Faulkner but many others of Jim Crow. Taking the harsher edges of life and rounding them into allegory rubs me, where Forster's first two films are concerned, the right way. I can't say the same for his latest, Finding Neverland.