Director hunts for authenticity in 'Animal Kingdom'

David Michod is unknown to American audiences, but he's the director of a terrific new crime movie made in Australia. It's titled "Animal Kingdom."

The story concerns a 17-year-old lad named J (played by James Frecheville) whose mother dies, and he's sent to live with his thug relatives, a group of bank robbers, thieves and killers enabled by their mother, a Ma Barker-like woman with the unlikely name of Smurf.

I interviewed Michod when he hit Chicago on a whirlwind publicity tour.

Q. You use a really wide, wide screen in "Animal Kingdom." Why so wide?A. The first and most important reason I wanted to shoot (widescreen) was that we're so used to seeing cops and robbers on television. I wanted to do whatever I could on a basic and technical and visual level to make sure it didn't feel like television. I wanted to shoot on 35 mm, even though doing so is expensive. I wanted a strong score. I wanted all these things to make it feel like cinema and not television.What makes "Animal Kingdom" different from most Hollywood crime movies?A. I wanted the thing to feel classic and I wanted it to feel grounded in reality and authentic ... I was insistent in terms of building characters who felt authentic, even if that authenticity means that they don't function the way traditional characters function in film.How do you mean?A. Our main kid, J, he's not a classic lead character. At points, I did feel pressure to turn him into a traditional protagonist who has dreams and goals that are interrupted by things. None of that ever rang true to me, not for a lad of 17.If I had felt forced to generate a much more active protagonist, I would have invariably been forced to fall back on cinema clich#233;. That was exactly the thing I was trying to avoid.J seems to be like a pinball, bouncing back and forth between his other family members.A. That's very much the experience of a 17-year-old. Having a 17-year-old old driving the story with all the other characters following him doesn't ring true. This story is about a kid who lets himself be bumped around from one incredibly dangerous situation to another, until, like all adults, he understands he must start being the architect of his own future.What's wrong with American movies today?A. I think it's incredibly difficult to make interesting films that are slightly more difficult to sell than tentpoles (big-budget Hollywood blockbusters). So many of those wonderful films from America during the 1970s just would not be made today. That's a tragedy. I'm not quite sure why that is. I wish it were different.