Sundance Interview with Writer|Director Jay Dockendorf of Tolstoy Adaptation, THREE DEATHS

I had the privilege of speaking with talented New York-based Writer and Director Jay Dockendorf and cinematographer, Kenny Suleimanagich of the modern Tolstoy adaptation, THREE DEATHS based on the Tolstoy short story of the same name. The film made its World Premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.  This poignant film features stunning performances from Catherine Natasi, Sam Stillman and Keith Williams Richards. 

Emily Clark: I love that you pull from classical literature and incorporate it into your work. 

Jay Dockendorf: Tolstoy is near and dear to my heart. I read his [work] in a college class ten years ago. When I encountered this particular short story, "Three Deaths" I remember clearly thinking, "this is the most beautiful story I've ever read, it's so profound. I would love to make a film of it someday" and I probably forgot. Circumstances aligned that we had an opportunity to make a short film. This is going to be a really fascinating, interesting adaptation process. We have all this 35 mm film sitting around. Kenny and I have worked several times over on 35 mm now. I just knew that it would look the way I wanted it to look. I wanted to honor the sensitivity of Tolstoy too, the strangeness of his approach to the subject and the concept that we're all connected and the strange way [that] he sees that working. I wanted to put my own environmental spin on it. I think I pushed it to a place where you feel for the dead tree and that somehow speaks to the inhumanity of man towards his environment which is probably the leading issue of the day, as far as I'm concerned. How cool that Tolstoy anticipated that or left the window open for someone to adapt it and address that?

Emily Clark: How did you go about creating your characters? 

Jay Dockendorf: An adaptation challenge to taking characters that were written and designed for a story set in 1859 and bring them into 2020. Ours is a modern adaptation. We had to deal with the reality that no one gets around by horse-drawn carriage. Taking the carriage driver characters and then turning them into construction workers addicted to opioids was a delicate maneuver. I didn't like making them cab drivers or Uber drivers because I feel like cab drivers and Uber drivers are more well off than these particular characters that Tolstoy is writing about. The fact that one of them dies in his own home attended by others is the key concept that I had to seize on. I thought, only people who are addicted to drugs, ultra poor and kind of lost might be in the same scenario. All the pieces had to fit. That was a special process that Kenny was very helpful with as well. We tossed around a lot of ideas. At one point we were going to have him be a taxi driver in New York City. Taxi drivers are facing a lot of pressure because of Uber. Many of them are committing suicide over the past ten years. I was considering making it something relevant and topical. That's why I tried to adhere closely to Tolstoy's story plot because it has so much power and I didn't approach this with the state of mind that this is broken and needs fixing, but carefully putting it in a modern box and showing it to the world because I love it as it is. 

Emily Clark: Your film feels very quiet. The score feels minimalistic. I felt that it really drew my attention to the present moment through the focus on sound design. [I was] immediately being pulled into the present moment [through] all of these little things. It's like being confronted with death is a quiet process. It's almost like we have to quiet ourselves down to face the facts, the reality of it, bringing back to awareness of the fact that we all die. Tell me about your decision to do that. 

Jay Dockendorf: It was a matter of keeping the score minimal and keeping the camera relatively still as well. We were committed to sound design being a big part of it. I really love cutting between different atmospheric background sounds and then getting a little song out of [it]. [For example], different songs from birds, different times of day. Because the original story is so much about the external natural world, several of the scenes take place outside and then [there's] this weird cut inside where the humans die. There was a lot of opportunity. I think you put it well. Death can be violent and outrageous and tragic, and death can be quiet and devastating and tragic and subtle, even. One of these characters dies without anyone seeing him. The other one dies surrounded by family who don't understand her. I wanted to focus on breath also. We recorded characters after the fact. We ended up using a mixture of the two. Exhalations and inhalations are in the edit, too. I wanted the film to feel super intimate. 

Emily Clark: I wanted to talk to you about the differences in class. Tell me about your exploration of the themes of poverty and wealth. Was it in the Tolstoy story?

Jay Dockendorf: It's in the Tolstoy story. There's a wealthy woman and then there's an ultra poor man. The wealthy woman, I felt like she had to live on Park Avenue. I think in the original Tolstoy story she's described as living on the outskirts of one of the major cities in Russia, St. Petersburg or Moscow...she's on her way, via carriage to a very expensive spa treatment that might cure her tuberculosis in Ukraine, on the ocean, maybe even further. We wanted to put her in a rarified world. I like to think that Park Avenue is an iconic space with a look that is instantly recognizable. I do think that since we shot on location in a penthouse apartment on Park Ave, a lot of these decisions were communicated in a subtle way. I tried not to add any dialogue that wasn't in the Tolstoy story originally, but mostly subtract things or shift if we were dealing with something that wasn't strictly modern. 

Kenny Suleimanagich: Basically, there's this kind of obvious and big disparity when you see the sets. The sets are starkly contrasted. We were faithful to what they were like when you were in them. For example, the sitting room or the bedroom of the penthouse pretty much has beautiful lighting at all times of the day it has beautiful things it it and its lit so you can see those beautiful things and beautiful interiors. [This is] contrary to the old man's house which is fairly sparse with anything that's decor and rich with things like a space heater, and videotapes, ashtrays, and stuff like that that you don't really want to display. It's dark in there, it's grungy, maybe the walls haven't been painted in a while. We wanted the photography to monitor that a little bit. But also the biggest stylistic break I would say [was] when we made the choice to photograph the upper class people with a dirty and raw handheld style, and the junkies in the house with an extremely nailed down tripod [with] very few camera movements. If the camera is moving, it's steady-cam. [It's] like portraiture rather than documentary.

Jay Dockendorf: It occurs to me to ask my historical advisor who Tolstoy would have supported in the 2020 Democratic primaries but I have a feeling that it would have been Bernie Sanders. He really had an egalitarian spirit and he seems to be articulating something in this story that shares some of the rage against the millionaires and the billionaires that we've heard Bernie express. 

Emily Clark: He was a pacifist, too. We know that about Tolstoy.

Jay Dockendorf: Certainly. Some of his isolationist leanings that are going to continue to be debated over the past weeks were part of Tolstoy's worldview as well. I certainly didn't make the campaign ads for anyone or really [tried] to even harp on those ideals, but I do think they're fun and they're part of the conflict of modern life and the conflict of Tolstoy's story, so we definitely wanted to turn them on their heads.

Emily Clark: I loved your film. It was powerful in many ways.  Who were some of your influences and other filmmakers that you love? This question is for both of you. 

Jay Dockendorf: We love documentaries as much as we love fiction films. I have a giant Errol Morris THIN BLUE LINE poster on my wall. I also love Tarkovsky and Kubrick, and we talked a lot about the Dardenne Brothers and their amazing film L'Enfant, and Jonathan Grazer's films and particularly his film BIRTH with Nicole Kidman...those are [all] big influences. 

With this particular film there are two other Tolstoy adaptations from short stories that I think are the spiritual big brothers and sisters of this movie. One is Robert Bresson's last film L'ARGENT. It's amazing...and it's very still and quiet and then there's a much more raucous film, IVANS XTC that I think is one of the greatest films ever made. It's a modernization of "The Death of Ivan Illych" that takes a dying old Russian count and turns him into a talent agent in Hollywood who is addicted to cocaine and ruining his heart with drugs and alcohol and only has a few days to live...it is heartbreaking. It's by Bernard Rose and Lisa Enos. It was a huge influence.