Jason James’ new feature Entanglement is about our shared interconnectedness, family secrets, and how just one detail, one detour can alter the course of one’s life.
All came into play a few years ago, when Jason Filiatrault asked for a pair of fresh eyes on a script he was writing. “I read it and I could immediately see the whole movie in my head, which doesn’t always happen,” says James. “I thought it was funny and fragile and beautiful, with a handmade, warm esthetic.
“I’ve never pitched a writer so hard, I really wanted to be a part of it!”
The film stars Thomas Middleditch (HBO’s Silicon Valley) as a man already in the midst of a personal crisis who discovers that he nearly had an adopted sister. The new information puts Ben on a mission to track down his almost-sister and discover how his life might have been different in her orbit.
But the family secret component came courtesy of the director’s mother: at age 35 James learned who his real father was. “And so I really connected with this idea of where you come from, all these ideas about nature versus nurture,” he says. “It was a really fascinating moment in my life and the script came at the same time. There was something special about that, a kind of synchronicity.” (James met his birth father shortly after the conversation with his mom. Dad is the mayor of a small town in B.C., and James later shot one of his projects there.)
Ben’s soul-searching and sister-search, meanwhile, leads him to Hanna (Jess Weixler), a woman who challenges Ben to start living again after his failed suicide attempts, seen in a darkly comic opening montage. He maps out a timeline of his life with red yarn and indelible marker on his apartment wall, breaks into the local pool for a nighttime swim, and sees animated jellyfish and friendly woodland creatures while growing closer to Hanna, all to the consternation of his concerned neighbour (Diana Bang).
Middleditch leaped to the top of James’ must-cast list after the director saw him in an interview at Sundance. “He was talking about his favourite song – Neutral Milk Hotel’s “King of Carrot Flowers” – and he starts crying!” remembers James. “Thomas is a very emotional person, very raw, with so much of the fragility of Ben.” Apart from turning in a beautiful performance, James says, he was happy to showcase Middleditch in his first romantic leading role, to let audiences see a different side of the actor.
The local shoot was a short commute for James, who now splits time between Vancouver and Los Angeles. He says Vancouver is an amazing place to work, “very much a Hollywood service town.” The crews are well-trained and good at their jobs thanks to working on other, bigger projects, he says. “So when I have a tiny indie film I get people who worked on Deadpool, it’s great!”
The film has played for much of the past year on the festival circuit, including here at VIFF. James is most proud of the conversations the film engenders around mental health issues, and how honest people often are at Q&A sessions following the film. “I’m just amazed at how open people are. (The film) is a great conversation starter.”
“The film is a conversation about mental health, which affects us all either personally or through someone we care about.” James was determined to get Ben’s fragile state of mind right on film. “It’s such a writerly device, but OK, what’s the real-world version?” He consulted with a psychologist who diagnosed the character with schizoaffective bipolar disorder. That allowed James to think about what kind of medications Ben might be on, what kind of side effects he might be suffering from. “I wanted to tap into the most real version of this character, set against this magical backdrop.”
James grew up in Deep Cove and went to Windsor Secondary, where he found his true calling in the drama department… though not where he expected: “We would put on these elaborate productions,” he remembers. “All the students would paint sets, map out how we would stand, costumes. Then it would come to opening night, and I was like ‘f**k, I do not want to go out there’!” he laughs. “I liked the collaboration, the preparation… that’s where I realized I wanted to be behind the camera.”
With eight films under his belt James doesn’t feel the pressure to look too far into the future, and he’s certainly not ready to map out his life with red string: “I feel like that’s a slippery slope!” But he does have a dream project (adapting one of those “cinematic and weird” Murakami novels for the screen) and he does identify with some of the “deep thoughts” and quantum entanglement theories from which Entanglement got its name. “Sure, I believe some of that,” he says. “I often think of all of the things that need to line up for our lives to evolve the way they do… I’m constantly amazed by how many things need to line up to get us to work on time. That’s pretty cool.”
