“ A that they could face the rising sun ” is a meditative portrait of traditional rural life in a changing Ireland

Based on the final novel of the same name of the Irish writer John McGahern (published in America in 2002 under the name of “By the Lake”), the film follows Joe and Kate, an artistic couple who returned to a small agricultural community in the west of Ireland after spending years in London. Their emerging ties with aging citizens of the city evoke a type of timeless human bond.

“I like the idea that people are lost in the world and feel that they are part of it,” said Collins, the director, during a recent video call. “I always try to make it a little meditative, I suppose.”

Collins, a former film critic and organizer of the festival, is known for his works of quiet grace and his beautiful attention to the rhythms of life. His documentaries include biographical films on McGahern, actor Gabriel Byrne and Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami as well as several “psycho-geographic exams” (as the Irish Film Institute calls them) from Ireland.

His first feature film, “Silence” (2012), tells the story of an audio engineer who revisits his past when he takes recordings on the ground in Western Ireland of his birth.

“I was born in 1967,” said Collins. “We did not have a phone before probably 13 or 14 years old. If you needed someone to make someone, you had to cross a few fields and announce the news to the neighbor.”

It is the world of “that they can face the rising sun”. Barry Ward, who plays Joe, grew up in a suburb of Dublin and now lives in London.

“For me, the film highlights a light on communication,” wrote Ward in an email. “Now now in my experience now is the Annonnements Cup to a fairly to discuss a safeguard.” He notes that even if “interpersonal relationships have never been so simple”, we are also “increasingly divided by technology” of modern life.

As they settle in their country chalet, Joe and Kate (Anna Bederke) hire the neighbors to help supervise a dependence and troop the sheep. Their life revolves around daily encounters with Jamesie and Mary; Jamesie’s brother Johnny, who lives but wants to go home; And Patrick (Lalor Roddy), an old crisp man who keeps his wisdom well kept.

What the little plot takes place implies the death of a character and the recruitment of Joe to help prepare the body for the burial.

“Everything is punctuated to bring the story out to its fullness,” said Collins, explaining that once you have introduced an intrigue, you are liable for it.

Obviously, there is a story in his new film, he continued: “Someone dies, and there are consequences. But that has not dominated the film from the start. I prefer time, nature and presence – the idea of ​​being present. ”

Writer, Joe is a close observer. The character spends a large part of his time on the screen to answer something that one of the other characters said.

Collins noted that Ward “was in personality for the film … very zen and calm, listened to and relaxed. You might say he doesn’t do much, but he does a lot. You realize how skillful it is. “

Ward, which is called “a very agitated individual”, explained the methods he used to help find the silence of his character.

“I started to transcribe Steinbeck’s” The Grapes of Wrath “from a manuscript limited edition copy to which I am the proud owner,” he wrote. He also read a key element of nature, “The Peregrine” (1967) by Ja Baker.

“I found these two useful activities to calm my mind, slowing down my pulse.”

As a child actor, Ward appeared in the 1994 “Family” television mini-series, written by Roddy Doyle, alongside Seán McGinley, who plays Johnny in “that he could face the rising sun”.

All actors in addition to Bederke, who is German, knew themselves previous roles.

“There was a fantastic atmosphere on the set,” said Collins. “I have never worked with such a collection of actors before. They supported each other. ”

This does not mean that it is about to abandon documentaries to make full -time feature films.

“The documentary is such a manageable form,” he said. “You work from two or three pages of text, a proposal, and you go out in the country with a solid person. You invent as you go.”

When he started making films, he said: “The idea of ​​the whole circus, 60 to 70 people on the crew, I would have been allergic to this.

“I still don’t like it,” he said. “Sometimes you feel like you are shooting a schedule, as opposed to a film.”

But the film does not betray any of this. Patrick is a strange man who lives alone in lean conditions. It is the kind of secular that can recite classical poetry and knows much more than it leaves.

Collins is a big fan of the amateur theatrical scene that is soaked from Ireland. He admires the accent put by the country on the role of art in daily life – the man of the local newspaper, for example, “who will put a poem announcing spring”.

The simple fact of listening to your neighbors can be “a political act,” said Ward. “To take stock and really listen,” he added, “is not so much a passive state as active behavior.”

James Sullivan reached jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.