A film firmly seated in the pernicious nature of toxic masculinity and its corrosive reverberations through the generations, writer/director Christopher Andrews’ bold feature debut Bring Them Down isn’t one for the faint of heart. Pitting Christopher Abbott’s Michael, the tortured last son of a farming family against Barry Keoghan’s wayward impetuous Jack, Andrews’ thriller uses the microcosm of two warring families set against one another in the harsh landscape of rural west Ireland to explore the increasingly prevalent instinct to ensure that even the smallest slight is answered tenfold, igniting spirals of violence from which no one escapes unscathed. The unforgiving revenge tale also puts paid to the regressive view that audiences are hesitant to engage with non-English dialogue by being one of two feature debuts nominated for BIFA’s The Douglas Hickox Award this year to prominently feature the Irish language. In our interview Andrews reflects on the destructive nature of toxicity, how he used the film’s visual language to ratchet up the tension throughout and why he was disappointed that Ireland didn’t deliver its typical barrage of wind and rain during the shoot.
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
Could you tell us a little bit about your background and how Bring Them Down came to be your debut feature?
So my name’s Christopher Andrews. I’m a writer and director. I worked my way up through the camera department until I got to second operator and then I got sick, which meant I couldn’t operate any more, but through that process, I started writing. I wrote my first feature screenplay and then I started working as a screenwriter. The first draft of Bring Them Down was about eight years ago when I was writing another film for Creative England called Scuttler, which is a British Western set between Manchester and Northumberland. That was going to be my debut feature but it was just proving too expensive so I was looking for something else that could be my first feature film. I had the idea of Bring Them Down, which isn’t that much cheaper, but it’s got sheep as opposed to horses so that brought the budget down a little bit, and that became the first one.
The story unfolds within a very toxic male rivalry and is experienced very much through a male lens, in an environment where women are for the most part missing.
It was always about the absence of a parent and the influence that can have on a person or a family. I lost my father when I was quite young and that spectre of his being has always been ever present over my life for good and for bad. So it was the idea of a missing parent mixed in with this idea of toxic masculinity and what is passed down. I was trying to weave both things into the same story, having this female figure that is now missing who was the linchpin that held them together. She was the barrier, the dam that stopped the toxicity from becoming all-encompassing and now without her it is all-encompassing. Susan Lynch (Peggy) is only in the film for a very short space of time but her resonance is huge.
It was the idea of a missing parent mixed in with this idea of toxic masculinity and what is passed down.
You also get a sense of who her character is by experiencing Caroline. NJ’s (Nora-Jane Noone) performance is extraordinary because she’s got a lot of work to do, being the only real present female character throughout the whole narrative. What she’s experiencing and what she’s reflecting to the past, the present and into the future is really important to how all these men live.
She’s such a pivotal character. I could feel myself crying out for more of her but at the same time crying out for her because in that environment there’s no release.
When I write, I write the narrative from everybody’s point of view, it’s like these little novellas. Caroline’s was fascinating, as was Peggy’s. There was a conversation I had about what if we just tell it from Caroline’s point of view and that being a really interesting project. Picking it up maybe in a slightly different part of the story, pushing it through and seeing where that takes her because I feel like she’s on the precipice of starting her life into something that could be really exciting, an adventure. But she’s also got a lot of stuff that she’s got to get rid of and work through. This aggression, violence and toxicity have infected her too, she deals with things in very similar ways. We’re talking into the space of violence and how it affects people. It’s like a virus, it gets inside you and once it puts hate in your heart, it’s very difficult to have control of yourself.
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The whole film is very high pressure. I read an interview in which you spoke about shifting the visual language to tune that visceral feeling as things unfold.
I think that I have a problem where I start stories quite hard and I just go really hard at it. Sometimes it’s hard to sustain that but it’s always about tightening that screw so the wood starts to splinter, that’s what gets me excited. Transferring that into the image, we start locked off with Christopher Abbott as Michael in the landscape, seeing his character and the world at the same time. Then as he moves – because his part of the story is a mystery, he’s trying to work out what’s happening to him and to the farm – and as he finds things out we start to move the camera into track and dolly. Then when he enters the field at night and it turns into this kind of horror film, we go handheld and it has that energy.
It’s always about tightening that screw so the wood starts to splinter, that’s what gets me excited.
When we come back into the story with Barry Keoghan as Jack, we stay handheld because he’s young, he’s energetic, he’s not feeling connected to the landscape and we reverse that language. As he starts to become more errant and the decisions that he makes become more serious we track and dolly, slowing it down to the point where he’s trapped. We put him in a prison to sort of bookend it, but also to reflect their characters, their personality and the way they feel about the landscape that they’re in. Having that relates to the way that they’re feeling so it was never meant to be something that you would see. Stylistically, I wanted there to be no edge to the frame so you feel that you’re immersed, that you’re leaning forward into the story and therefore the movement, or lack of movement, affects the way that you feel as opposed to you consciously reading it.
How much research went into seeding this narrative within the reality of these farming communities and the relationships that exist between them?
We did extensive research travelling down the west coast of Ireland and meeting shepherds and farmers as we relocated the film from the UK to Ireland. That’s when the language became really important because everybody spoke Irish on the west coast. We were talking to them about the story and they all could see that these kinds of beefs happen between families. Most of their families have lived there for four/five hundred years, maybe more. What you don’t see, and we tried to allude to it in the film, is that there’s a collective responsibility. They all look out for each other. The sheep are on the mountains and there are no walls, no fences so that’s why it’s such a big thing what happens with the animals and it’s so transgressive what Jack does. It feels so innocuous cause it’s only initially two animals that he’s taking, but for that landscape and those relationships that circle of trust has been broken.
Stylistically, I wanted there to be no edge to the frame so you feel that you’re immersed, that you’re leaning forward into the story.
I heard you had a lack of the rain you wanted in the film, which is unusual for Ireland.
Oh God, it was a nightmare! I mean, it’s hard to get people out of cars if it’s really rattling down and windy and horrible so it did us a lot of favours. But I wanted it to feel visceral and have that kind of elemental feel. It was perishing cold but we just didn’t have any wind and we didn’t have any rain – the two things that I wanted to create a soundscape out of.
With Bring Them Down being your debut feature what were the sources of inspiration that you drew from for the look and tone of the film?
I don’t really ape people’s work in that way. There are all these films that I’m influenced by but when I’m talking to Nick Cooke, my DP, or Fletcher Jarvis, the production designer, about the film it’s more about paintings and photographs rather than films, cause I don’t want it to feel in any way like anybody else’s. I just want it to come through us and through me. I think that I have a very strangely specific way of talking about the language and where we put the camera. What I do is I talk a lot beforehand and talk very little when we’re actually on set, unless we’ve got a problem. Nick is incredibly good at listening, absorbing and then re-presenting it to you again so that we all know what we’re trying to achieve. I also give the actors freedom. Again, I talk to them a lot before we’re on set but when we get there I don’t want to spoil what they’re going to give me so I keep my mouth shut. We block it and if they have a question and I know the answer, I’ll answer it and if I don’t, then I’ll say I don’t. Generally, I allow them to find their space and then I turn around and Nick is in the right place so it’s great, you’re just keeping it going. What I’m trying to reach for is something which feels like a moment of grace.
I don’t want it to feel in any way like anybody else’s. I just want it to come through us and through me.
I’m very interested in transcendental cinema, which is a terrible thing to mention in meetings so I never do. You can hear the safe locking if say you’re influenced by Bresson, Dreyer or Tarkovsky. They used genre and I love what genre can do and allow you to move towards. It gives you a space which you can push and pull, and find character in a way that is quite unique. You can put people into unique situations. Therefore I’m looking for these spiritual journeys of characters so that’s why deconstructing the parable of the good shepherd was really important. It’s my growing up in quite a religious world of Catholic and Anglican and the friction that had, but then having a strong sense of my own desire to understand spirituality and my connection to the other people in the world that I live in. I wanted to explore that for the characters because of their relationship with animals and with the landscape.
The film didn’t go where I expected it to, particularly the journey that Michael goes on which is terrifying but so compelling. Christopher Abbott’s performance blew my mind.
He’s an incredible actor, what he’s capable of and how he can transform himself into anything. Also, the way that he approaches things is so considered and so smart. Chris has that thing that’s special where you can feel that he ‘is’ that person. There’s that rage, that torment and torture that’s inside him, you can see it sort of bubbling away like lava. You get these little moments where he allows you to see him, there’s a little crack in his facade and then he shuts the door again. To be able to do that speak in a foreign language and then when you’re speaking in English, you’re speaking in a really difficult accent. There have been a lot of examples of that not going very well. That in itself is incredibly brave to put yourself in that firing line.
So Bring Them Down is a 2024 BIFA nominee for The Douglas Hickox award, what’s that like for you as a new director?
It’s amazing. I didn’t have any expectations at all. Cause you’ve delivered the film, you’ve worked really hard for an awfully long time and the bits that stick in your head are the things that didn’t go right so I was really getting myself in a bit of a spin. Then screening it in Toronto and sitting there with the cast and crew, them loving it and the audience responding so well was one of the most transformative experiences – apart from becoming a father – but it’s up there. It changed me as a human being and it was so wonderful. This whole journey since the beginning of has been extraordinary. Then to be nominated for a BIFA is just incredible and it’s such a strong year. It’s a huge, huge compliment.
And there are two Irish language films in the running this year.
For years, people have thought that that wouldn’t sit. When I was talking about the Irish language for this there were conversations asking, “Will audiences want it or respond to it?” and they completely do! By accident, we had a screening a few months ago and they projected the wrong version with no subtitles. Then I did the Q&A and everybody thought I was really brave like, “This choice that you made” and I was like, “It’s not a choice”. But people really loved it and they found it fascinating what you understood and what you didn’t understand, and the language of the image was pulling them in. But I think, for Irish cinema which is on the up, for what Kneecap have done for the Irish language, and what hopefully this can do too, I just hope that it means that more people want to start making movies there.
