Also, the nonsense of trying to “elevate Shakespeare.”
Abel ferrara started shooting Siberia, the last film in his incredible multi-decade career, long before the pandemic took over the world. But in many ways Siberia it feels like an examination of what can happen to all of us when we are forced to rely on ourselves and our fickle subconscious in the sheer isolation of loneliness (i.e. caught in a pandemic).
The truly wild and experimental movie stars Willem dafoe (one of Ferrara’s most prolific muses) as a man who has chosen to live his life isolated from the majority, tending a bar in a remote Siberian outpost. But when forced on a literal cave trip, he travels through many metaphorical caves of dreams, desires, fears, and utter madness. If you combined the brain emotions of David Cronenberg with racing out of your mind of Darren aronofsky, you could get something close to hallucinatory Siberia.
I was lucky enough to speak to the legendary Ferrara via Zoom, and well, I loved our chat together, not just to immerse myself in this movie and his career, but to witness his casual use of words like “brother” and “you? digging?” We delve into doing SiberiaThe literally physical metaphysical themes, how his association with Dafoe benefits both individuals, how personal the film is to both men despite its surrealism, and the procedure of making a documentary, Sportin ‘life, about attending a film festival during the onset of a pandemic. We also talked about Ferrara’s career in general, including her only starring role in The Piercing Killer, his previous Dafoe film Pasolini, the purity of chinese girlinspirations from Shakespeare, and his next Ethan hawke suspense novel Zeros and ones.
See the full interview above. Siberia is available in digital and Blu-ray format on June 18, 2021.
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