Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter, Diego Calva and Sasha Calle were done in Toronto for the best of On Swift Horses at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Directed by Daniel Minahan, based upon the unique by Shannon Pufahl, the movie brings us to the 1950s for a tale that Minahan called a “reimagining of the American dream.”
On Swift Horses starts in what appears like a flawlessly aspiration middle-class life. Muriel (Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Poulter) are readied to begin their lives with each other in California, with strategies to begin a family members.
When Lee’s sibling Julius (Elordi) go back to the united state from the Korean War, it’s clear that Julius and Muriel share a link, a secret their avoiding the outdoors.
“We have this paradigm set up in the film. One is Muriel is pursuing this very conventional relationship with her husband Lee, and Julius is living on the road, literally, this kind of freewheeling gambling. They’re both aspirational stories,” Minahan informedYahoo Canada “The idea of buying a house as a young couple in a housing development and creating community and buying a car is very American, and it’s very aspirational. The idea of going to Las Vegas and gambling and winning a ton of money, and overnight becoming a rich person is also.”
“Add to it that they’re both outsiders, … they’re both hiding. And I think you get to the truth of what it is, which is that I think even people who are living that life, living the dream so to speak, still feel like outsiders. These characters truly are because they’re queer in a time when homosexuality is criminalized. … But I think everyone can relate to the idea of having to hide yourself and your real feelings, and your real desires. … That’s why I do describe it as a reimagining of the American dream.”
‘No one ever before actually discusses those sort of partnerships’
Minahan “fell in love” with Pufahl publication when he read it, and was specifically tourist attraction to the “unspoken alliance” in the tale in between Muriel and Julius.
“Muriel and Julius meet, recognize each other, have this intense attraction and change the course of each other’s lives,” Minahan claimed. “I thought that was really beautiful. I hadn’t seen that before.”
“They spend three-quarters of the film apart, but have this huge influence on each other. I thought that was so beautiful and no one ever really talks about those kinds of alliances that form. … I was talking to Shannon Pufahl … about this, and I was like, it’s so interesting that homosexuality is criminalized at this time, but these people managed to find each other and make these incredible lives together.”
‘ I really did not intend to seem like we were mimicing a duration movie’
Assisting in bringing On Swift Horses to the display is prize-winning Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier, including a genuine aesthetic splendor to the tale we see unravel.
“In the beginning he said, ‘What films should we look at together?’ And I said, how about instead of looking at films, if we look at documentary, photography from the period,” Minahan shared.
“I didn’t want to feel like we were imitating a period film. I wanted this to be very accessible. So we watched some documentary stuff from the period, Gordon Parks the photographer, Bruce Davidson the photographer, paintings of John Koch. Each very unique. I think that kind of informed what we were doing. Then we just used our instincts on set to decide how things would look.”
In regards to dealing with the stars in the film, throughout a two-week duration prior to they began shooting, they workshopped various minute from the tale and did points like found out 1950s dancings, which Minahan highlighted actually “bonded” the actors.
“Daisy, in particular, asked, ‘What would she be reading?’ … So I sent her two books,” Minahan shared.
“Interestingly, in the year that our film is set, the two top books are ‘Peyton Place,’ which was a real kind of steamy exposé of a small town in America where people are having affairs and there’s an abusive husband, and then someone has an abortion. It was a very controversial novel. … Then the other book was ‘On the Road’, the Kerouac book. And that’s so interesting to me.”
Overall, the stars in On Swift Horses effectively lean right into this expedition of everyone’s needs and desires, in this sweeping love that stands for various types of love.
