In Stage D of Ardmore Studios, Co Wicklow, a small Irish town has been recreated. There is a pub, a flour wholesaler, a black High Nelly is leaning against a wall and a 1920s truck is parked right bang in the middle of the main street. The only give-away that all this is merely a facade are the carpenters hurriedly sawing wood and hammering nails between takes, the coloured lighting gels strewn around, and the frequent yells of "quiet on the set" and "rolling" every few minutes.
When you walk past the pub and come to the end of Main Street, you turn a corner and find Serbian director, Goran Paskaljevic, dressed in jeans and a warm fleece top, hunched in a director's chair. In front of him is a small colour monitor on which he watches actor Adrian Dunbar in a closed-set scene. A throng of silent and intensely concentrated people surround Paskaljevic. Every one freezes when the camera rolls and when it stops there is a buzz of manic activity, as A.D.s, second A.D.s and other members of the production crew rush around in a crazy swirl of business.
It's almost the end of the two-month shoot of Paskaljevic's new movie, the bizarrely titled How Harry Became a Tree. It's been a wild and turbulent two months - not because of in-production relations, but because of the insanely unpredictable nature of the Irish weather. We met on a break for lunch in Paskalijevic's hectic schedule. By now the film is in post-production in Belgrade, and it's likely to be the end of the year before it is in the cinemas. But back on set, it was the more immediate problems of finishing the shoot that were on the director's mind. He shrugs his shoulders, I accept the weather as a challenge, he says philosophically. "I accept the weather as a challenge," he says philosophically. "We shot in the real rain and fog, and we were really lucky. "The days we prepared a scene and needed the wind, the wind was there. Then two days later, I needed a scene with the sun and the sun was there. My producer thought I was blessed." Some of the cast may have felt otherwise, freezing their socks off on the cold, wet, exposed heights of Sally Gap.
As he sits in the canteen at Ardmore Studios, it's hard to believe that this mild-mannered Serbian munching his red cabbage is something of a giant in contemporary European cinema. With 11 feature films behind him, including Some- one Else's America and Tango Argentina, it was only with his last feature, Cabaret Balkan, that Paskaljevic came to wider attention. That film was a violent and disturbing black comedy set in Belgrade on the night of the Dayton Peace Agreement. With How Harry Became a Tree, he takes his dark yet comic vision to Ireland, albeit a kind of fabulous and surreal version of the place we know.
Starring Colm Meaney, Adrian Dunbar, Gail Fitzpatrick and Cillian Murphy, Paskaljevic tells me that the story is based on a Chinese short story that his son brought to him in his home in Paris, around the time of the bombing of Belgrade.
The narrative details how a widower, Harry, played by Meaney, has given up love because it has left him with nothing. Believing that a man is measured by his enemies, he decides to dedicate his life to hate, and chooses an enemy for himself in the shape of local matchmaker George, played by Dunbar. However, before the power keg of hatred starts to unravel, Harry avails of George's services to find a match for his son, Cillian Murphy. It is only when George seduces Harry's new daughter-in-law that the real conflict begins and the life of the little village gets disturbingly out of hand.
"It's a fable," says Paskaljevic, in his heavily-accented English. "I didn't try to make the real Irish movie. I watched more than 40 Irish movies since I came here. This film will be completely different to any other Irish movie. It's got an absolutely universal feeling, but it's also in many details an Irish film. It's an absurd story. Basically, it's an absurd comedy, and the film will look much more like a Beckett piece."
While Paskaljevic makes films about individuals, lurking in the background is a palpable political context. In Cabaret Balkan it was the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia. With this latest film it is a more universalised vision of conflict and hatred, and the evils they can lead to. As a director Paskaljevic is keenly aware of the political in a very personal way, having been forced to flee Serbia because of his outspoken opposition to the Milosevic regime. His reason for filming in Ireland seems to be the parallel he sees in a history of conflict that Ireland and Serbia share.
"It's a story about enemies. It's also a bit rural, like Serbia and Ireland - the same stubborn people. It's a story about how hate is a feeling like love. You can just hate somebody, without reason. It's our Christian mind that says that you have to have a reason to hate and no reason to love. "That's not true. Hate can be very destructive, I know that very well. I'm Serbian and we have a history full of hate. But I also wanted to show how hate is an absurd feeling, how hate can destroy everything around. Harry slowly involves his own son, his own daughter-in-law in that hate."
All around us in the Ardmore canteen are the sounds of German, Spanish, French, Italian and, of course, the odd smattering of Serbian. With only one day of filming left, a tired and worn-looking Adrian Dunbar sits down and comments with good humour: "It's a bit of a Eurostew, this; you might get asked a question here in three different languages". On the long days of torrential rain and exterior shots in rural Wicklow, Dunbar says: "It was difficult at times, the rain coming down sideways against you - everyone was happy to scuttle back down the hill and back into the studio".
Both Paskaljevic and Dunbar have that relaxed and confident feel that comes near the end of a shoot when everything is on time and in budget. For two men in the later stages of making what Dunbar describes as "a dark kind of fairytale", both are in pretty good form. Paskaljevic says he can explain the jovial air on set.
"Milosevic fell in the first week of production. We exploded with joy, all of us. And I have to tell you one thing. This film is between tragedy and comedy, drama and melodrama - a very unusual mixture. And I think that I pushed the film more to the comedy, more to the celebration of life than it had been written. Somehow my feelings changed. The producer will be very happy, it will be more commercial."
As my allotted interviewing time draws to a close, both men return to the set, where actors Gail Fitzpatrick, Kerry Condon and Maighread Ni Conghaile - of whom Paskaljevic speaks very highly - await them, poised for action. Before he goes, Paskaljevic assures me in his thick Serbian accent that Meaney's performance in How Harry Became a Tree will be "Shakespearean, his most important performance in his career up until now". Dunbar is more reticent: "The story holds, and that's the main thing. The story is a good story. It's a very surreal story - and it's very surreal how some of it's been shot. But like a lot of films, we have to wait. We're all waiting to see how it hangs together. We've taken a lot of risks with it."
When it comes to Irish film making, a little risk taking may be no bad thing.
