Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
The Lesson was released via new digital platform Frightfest Presents earlier this week. The film screened as part of last summer’s festival and was hand picked by festival organisers Alan Jones and Paul McEvoy to open the second wave of releases. We at team THN were very pleased to hear this news as The Lesson was one of our festival favourites.
Writer and director of The Lesson, Ruth Platt, started her career in the industry as an actor. She had roles in Sparkling Cyanide and The Pianist, but stepped away from in front of the camera to get behind it. Prior to The Lesson she created two short films (which you can find out more about here) before making the plunge into features.
The Lesson is a tense and traumatic tale of a young, wayward student and a strung-out teacher whose paths collide in spectacular fashion. The film explores issues of growing up, the failings of the education system (both for teachers and students) and the family unit, and is well worth your time (read our review here).
Given how compelling we found the film and the story it conveys we tracked down director Ruth Platt and asked her a ton of questions.Our interview covers Platt’s inspiration for the story, the perils of ‘torture porn,’ and how difficult it was creating a feature on a shoe-string budget.
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
In addition to directing, you also wrote The Lesson, where did the idea come from?
There were a few threads of inspiration really. I didn’t have a great time at school; I was a bit of a geek at my big comprehensive school. I remember trying to work out what made a group turn on an individual, be it a student or a teacher, that collective unconscious, unspoken dynamic that caused a group or even a class to know just how far they could go. There was one teacher, he’d been there a while, and as a class we just knew we could push him a bit further. We locked him in the stationery cupboard once, and he cried. We wouldn’t have dared do that to another teacher.
I teach peripatetically and have observed that dynamic, or at least that potential, from the other side. I read about a teacher, a few years ago, with no history of outbursts or anger, who suddenly lost it with a teenage boy and caused him serious head injuries. It made me think – what happened circumstantially, psychologically, what chain of failures occurred to allow that situation to happen? Could it have been avoided? I am very interested in education, when it works, when it doesn’t, how teachers are failed, how kids are failed. And this film is a bit of blackly comic commentary on that whole situation.
You’ve previously directed a couple of short films, what challenges did you encounter making the transition to feature?
The biggest challenge was making a feature film on a short film budget! I directed The Heart Fails Without Warning, which I adapted from a Hilary Mantel short story, a few years ago – fifteen minutes, roughly 10 grand. That in itself was a struggle, but we had a RED camera, we had, not every head of department in the crew, but more crew that we had for The Lesson. We shot The Lesson for a bit over double of the budget of Heart Fails. We had a skeleton crew, every member of the crew had to double up in their roles. We had 18 days, one day off, 13 hours days. I was very, very lucky with my crew, and my cast. We used a lot of first time young actors, improvised scenes, involved them in the language of their interaction, to let their real personalities emerge, and we had little time to rehearse, we were constantly under the pressure of time and money, and having to find fast creative solutions to problems thrown up – I mean we had 5 lights, and when one broke, we were in trouble. It was also a real challenge, making the film work narratively, the whole narrative arc of a feature film – I have learned so much. That was why I needed to make the transition from shorts to features, to undergo that challenge – I’d just like to have more money to do it next time! I feel there are fewer opportunities for film makers to make that transition in the UK compared to say, the rest of Europe.
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
The film has a lot to say about the education system, what message were you hoping to convey through The Lesson?
I think I was trying to raise questions, but not necessarily answer them. I like films and stories where multiple points of view are held in suspension, with no easy answers. I guess, even though it is a very dark and uncompromising film, and very cynical in places, just as Dickens satirized a facts and figures kind of education in Hard Times, with no room in it for the individual or for individual perception, I was trying to suggest that education, without the space for creative thought and sense of self worth, can be quite a damaging thing. It can be damaging for both students and teachers.
I mean the idea of personal development is bandied around now quite a bit with regards to education – but how does that actually translate into a way of learning? And without that fostering of emotional intelligence and creative potential, you can’t expect kids to to be respectful of each other and other people. I mean some people think I’ve created some really bad kids, that deserve all they get. I think they are pretty average kids really, with just this potential to go any which way. You know there are a lot of great individual teachers. And lots of kids get through the system, even thrive, But some don’t. I think Joel has been let down, failed by the system, more than anyone. And obviously, it being a horror movie, the ‘what if’ scenario with regards to the teacher is pretty extreme – he has a psychotic episode, he is off the rails – but his frustration, his anger is fuelled not only by revenge, but by his real desire to get through to these kids, to break through their ennui and destructive bravado. And hopefully that comes across!
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
Well I guess I had to choose which writers worked within The Lesson – which quotes I could include and which ones had to go. The ones that stayed in the film are the ones that work within Mr Gale’s message but also include some of the writers most important to me. I read books to help me understand the world, to understand my own experience. Charles Lamb was trapped in an office all day, his ‘heart against this thorn of a desk’ taking care of his mentally ill sister, writing beautiful detailed observations of ordinary life. Charlotte Bronte created this extraordinary inner narrative in Jane Eyre – a woman, like her, with no financial means. William Blake was pretty poor, slightly nuts, visionary, and passionate about social justice. Maybe I just like writers who have had really hard lives! I think it informs their writing in a particular way. But Mr Gale’s ‘lesson’ is his own inquiry into what makes human beings good or bad, so I guess most of the writers I included had to have something to say on that subject – quite a universal line of inquiry I suppose. I bought [and literally fought off a dealer] a first edition of The Wide Sargasso Sea for 70 quid – one of my favourite novels of all time -just for a 2 second shot of it at the end [it is important in terms of The Lesson too but fairly peripherally] but I don’t know if anyone noticed!
You managed to get some incredible performances out of your cast, how did your acting past help with this?
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
We had quite a challenge in many of our cast being first time actors, as well as very experienced actors in Robert Hands and Dolya Gavanski. It was quite an intensive process, especially with such little time. As an actor, I have worked with loads of directors who just leave you to it, who just want you to hit your mark, but that wouldn’t have worked in this scenario! I tried to focus on just working with the boys on every single thought, stripping down their ideas of performance and just focusing on their internal processes, the thought behind each line, and having a memory to connect them to each emotional experience, getting them to respond as truthfully and in the moment as possible. Having Robert around, who is such an instinctive actor, really helped – I mean he is a very generous actor, and he had to learn these great swathes of monologues and shoot them in ridiculously short time frames – again with Robert we worked together on the thought processes, the emotional memory, and in those scenes with the boys, the boys were able to respond so spontaneously because of Robert’s interaction with them. The boys were great. I wish I could have pushed some actors, and some scenes further, if I’d had more time, more money. But I am very proud of them all.
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
The Lesson features a fair amount of violence and injury, how difficult was it to maintain the right balance and not veer off into the ‘torture porn’ domain?
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
The Lesson forms part of the second wave of Frightfest Presents releases. How does it feel knowing that the film has been singled out by the organisers as one of the best and having it feature in the line-up?
Amazing – when I found out I was dancing around the kitchen! And feel very proud to be one amongst some fantastic films. The FrightFest guys have been brilliant. They are so passionate and so knowledgeable about the whole genre. You know, we are a bunch of people who made this film for a very small budget, went out on a limb and took a risk, worked very hard, and I am so grateful for all their support and for them taking notice of us.
Why should viewers take the time to watch The Lesson?
Interview with Ruth Platt for The Lesson
The Lesson is a pretty heavy tale, will your next project be similar in tone or are you considering something lighter?
I have a few projects I am working on – one has a deeply personal streak to it but woven into a slightly nightmarish, ‘through the looking glass’ setting – it is probably darker in many ways than The Lesson! I learned so much making The Lesson, I have a very precise, but quite different vision for my next film. I am also working on a non genre film, which is blackly comic and about a family on holiday together – hope to have at least one of them shot within a year.
Download The Lesson now via Frightfest Presents.
