At this point, the quest for a director also began. For the producers, Sydney Pollack had been a top choice right from the beginning—and were blessed when the Oscar®-winning filmmaker had read the script independently and contacted the producers to set up a meeting. “I remember Sydney came into the room in a very self-effacing way, talking about this thriller Three Days of the Condor he had made many years ago—and of course we recognized it as a model of the type of film we aspired to make. Then he began talking indepth about The Interpreter, presenting his ideas about how a good thriller is constructed and how escalating suspense and intrigue are woven into the fabric of a human story. We saw immediately that he knew the material inside out and already had a lot of terrific ideas about how to make it vital to today’s audience,” recalls Misher.
Pollack began to collaborate with the screenwriters and immersed himself in research into United Nations procedures, the lives of interpreters and African politics. Early on, a decision was made to have both the character of Silvia Broome and the threatened head of state hail from an entirely fictional African country rather than use a real nation about which audiences would already have an impression. Pollack explains, “We didn’t want to use an existing country because it would run the risk of becoming too much like a documentary instead of a fictional thriller. But we were careful to be as authentic as possible in creating a reality-based history and believable language for our fictional country so that it feels as if it actually exists.”
Named “Matobo” by Charles Randolph, the country was created as a sub-Saharan nation in Southern Africa in the vicinity of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, two countries that, while not models for Matobo, have each had their own struggles with strife and war. Randolph imagined an entire political reality for the made-up country based on Southern Africa’s modern history, involving post-colonial struggles, warring tribal factions and institutionalized corruption. Then, working with linguists, the filmmakers helped to forge an imaginary language for Matobo, dubbed “Ku,” that would sound entirely real to most ears.
Sydney Pollack explains, “We went to a language center in England and worked with a professor there to develop a tongue that’s a cross between Swahili and Shona, two common African languages in Eastern and Southern Africa. This new language, Ku, has elements of both of those languages, along with a number of unique elements…and Nicole Kidman had to become fluent in this tongue that doesn’t truly exist.”
While using a fictionalized African country served the film’s tightly woven story, when it came to capturing the extraordinary inner world of the U.N., Pollack wanted as much authenticity as possible. After being handed the customary veto on movie cameras inside the U.N., Pollack did not give up. He was able eventually to speak directly to Secretary-General Kofi Annan to ask for permission to shoot inside the United Nations building.
Movie Database
In Theaters
