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Surreal jewelry >> A legend comes to life in The Ring by MATTHEW HAYS
The Ring, Wormser's 50-minute epic based on an actual legend, is certainly ambitious. A sprawling cast populates a bizarre mediaeval world, and Wormser and cast and crew went to great lengths to create an "entirely fictional culture." The king (Gilles Pelletier) at the centre of the plot finds himself unhappy and bored with the state of his life. He's soon infatuated with a young girl and decides to marry her, despite the objections of many of his subjects. The girl appears to have special powers due to a mystical ring she wears. "The story was just a paragraph when I first read it, but that magic ring stuck in my mind." Wormser managed to secure a grant from the Canada Council and, amazingly, shot The Ring on a mere $30,000 (a subsequent SODEC grant allowed him to finish the film). "The level of commitment from people was amazing. I've never worked with such a large crew, and everyone seemed to agree we were doing something very different, which made it all the more worthwhile." Wormser gleans some intriguing performances from his cast. Though punctuated with a wondrous score by Ganesh Anandan, The Ring is a silent movie--bilingual intertitles provide the dialogue. Wormser set out to create an entirely new performance style for the film. "I watched a lot of silent films--Stroheim, Eisenstein--to get an idea of how they acted, the ways they conveyed emotions. In the end we tried to create something slightly different than that style." The Ring marks a huge stylistic shift for Wormser. After completing his film degree at Concordia University in 1991, the filmmaker has explored a variety of genres. His award-winning 1996 film (an NFB co-production) Faces of the Hand was a doc about hands. Wormser explains The Ring is a bit of a reaction to that. "After doing a documentary, I wanted to try something entirely different. Above all, I want to avoid being boxed into one category. I want to explore the medium thoroughly and expand our notions of it." The Ring and Faces of the Hand premieres this Wednesday, December 9, at 9pm at the Cinémathèque québécoise and plays again on Thursday and Friday, Dec. 10-11 at 9pm at Cinéma Parallèle
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Tamàs Wormser pauses when I ask him what the most difficult aspect of making his latest film was. "With a costume drama," he responds, "there simply are no easy parts."