10 Most Insanely Perfectionist Film Directors
Making films isn't easy.
Film is unique among many art forms in that it is a very collaborative kind of art. A wonderful film requires an immense number of talents, temperaments and personalities to mesh and work together well; from make-up artists to cinematographers to producers.
Or, of course, if you buy auteur theory, it really just requires one person: the director. While there is certainly a lot of truth to Francois Truffaut's idea that the director is ultimately the author of the film, some directors take this primacy a bit too far.
These directors see the film as their own singular and perfect vision and view other people as a mere tool for accomplishing this mission. Their methods are extensive, exhaustive and often eccentric. They burn down sets the size of small towns for the sake of seconds worth of screen time, they get involved in brawls with their actors and screaming matches with their cinematographers and they put themselves in their crew members in the jaws of death, hoping the grim reaper doesn't bite down because the shot they can get staring out of his mouth is perfect.
Many of the directors listed here have made some of my very favourite films of all time and their meticulous, obsessive and combative way of working has been an important part of producing such perfection. It also happens to be terrifying and hilarious in equal measure.
10. Ilya Khrzhanovsky Recreated Stalinist Russia On A Movie Set
It’s easy to liken directors to little dictators of their own cinematic world- barking orders and marching around hoping to make other people conform to their idea of what the movie should be. However, some directors take it a little further to organising matching costumes and giving their crew a mission statement- occasionally a director turns a movie set into a gulag.
This is precisely what happened on the set of Russia director Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s (director of Four) movie Dau. Dau tells the story of Soviet physicist Lev Landau and Khrzhanovsky hoped to recreate the isolation and paranoia of Landau’s Soviet Russia on the director’s set.
Khrzhanovsky enforced a regime whereby crew members were only allowed to dress in Stalin-era clothes, eat Stalin-era food and were even paid in Soviet money. The set was to be referred to as “the Institute” at all times with all reference to modern technology such as cgi or cell phones prompting a fine deducted from the crew's pay.
The director encouraged people to spy on their fellow crew members and report any infraction on the rules, mimicking the betrayal and paranoia of Soviet life. Shooting of the film lasted three years and Khrzhanovsky effectively took over the entire Ukrainian town of Kharkov to construct his enormous and totalitarian set. Production of the film began in 2006 and it is still unreleased as of 2015.