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Love & Savagery (2009)

Production Notes

"Love & Savagery is a universal, atavistic story set in a what is at once a real and yet mythical landscape, " asserts acclaimed John N. Smith, director of the Peabody Award winning The Boys of St. Vincent and the multi Gemini-nominated The Englishman's Boy. "Loving someone with all your heart and losing them is a terrible, if common, ordeal. Although the film is set in another time and in a far away place, audiences will find reflections of emotions they know well."

Writer Des Wash agrees, "Love & Savagery touches nothing unfamiliar. Human love is a universal experience and the collapse of love is always savage. The film is about two people meant to meet and change each other, carry each other in their hearts forever. Such a meeting should be cherished and respected. But the loss of the loved one is bitter and often unbearable."

"Michael (Allan Hawco) and Kathleen (Sarah Greene) risk opening their hearts but this act of bravery must confront the obstacle of a commitment to faith. Love & Savagery is partially an exploration of the spiritual needs and yearnings that exist in all of us but for which many of us find no organized expression. But, it must be admitted that many modern, scientific, generous and smart people are indeed sustained by the Church."

"This is a drop dead great love story," says producer Kevin Tierney. "The challenge is to make a story about love and spirituality and 'sell' it to a modern audience. As a director, John has a deep background of social realism. He brings his considerable skills of truthful story telling to the issue of romance There is also something impish and mischievous about John - like our character Thomas Collins. You want that lightness on a set."

The Lovers: Michael and Kathleen

Love & Savagery is a story of deep love between Michael McCarthy from Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, and Kathleen O'Connell from County Clare, Ireland. "Allan (Hawco) and Sarah (Greene) have great authenticity in their roles," says director Smith. "They are from the places that their characters live and so they do not have to struggle with accents and can simply shine through the script. I auditioned actors in LA, Toronto, London, Dublin. It was a big gulp gamble for the financiers of this picture to cast these two but who else could our lovers be?

"Hawco is already established as a brilliant young actor and Sarah is a discovery. I pride myself on performance and I take special delight in new screen talent, showing them what the camera can do. My job is to provide an environment which sets the actors free to be their characters, to prevent the huge machine that exists behind the camera to interfere with what goes on in front of the camera. I love actors. Casting is a terrifying process because once I make a choice, I am handing over the script."

"Kathleen is an intriguing combination, both modern and traditional," explains producer Kevin Tierney. She owns her passion for Michael. She knows that it's true and she has no sense of guilt. She celebrates her experience of lust and the understanding she gains will make her a better nun. It's really a fabulous paradox. As she matures and tests herself she finds spiritual peace. I think audiences will respond to this voyage.

"Des (Walsh) writes poetic dialogue. Allan has a lightness and charm that allows him to deliver these lines in a very natural way. There's something still very innocent in Hawco's being that shines through the camera lens. He is the perfect representative of the New World," Tierney continues. "Sarah is sensual and innocent and totally believable as the seductress. She is an extremely talented young woman with a wide palette."

"Allan Hawco was part of our third season at Soulpepper in 'La Ronde' and 'Present Laughter'," remembers Gemini and Genie Award-winning actress Martha Burns who plays the Mother Superior in Love & Savagery. "He is very smart and thoughtful and he has a great sense of his responsibility to his character and his fellow actors. He's also very, very funny."

"Des Walsh is my favourite poet. I admire him greatly," Hawco explains. "I can see his handprint on the characters. But, as an actor, you can't be looking over your shoulder. I had to claim Michael and make him my own. Des' script is about falling in love but, just because there is mutual bonding which is complete and right doesn't always mean that you are going to spend the rest of your lives together. There's a bitter truth.

"For me, the underlying element of the story is Michael's vendetta against God," continues Allan Hawco. "He's a geologist, a scientist, a poet but he's still a believer. He's not comfortable with that belief. God has betrayed him in the past but now when the girl he wants to build his life with turns away from him for God, Michael has nothing but his stubbornness and his art. What he learns is that his love can surmount his loss of Kathleen.

"Michael can't understand that he is seen as 'the outsider'. He is open and generous. The harsh life of the fishing village, the importance of music and poetry, the power of religion are familiar to him. It's all a mirror of his experiences in Newfoundland.

"We are exploring feelings of love, spiritual longing and commitment as well as the situation of a stranger in an environment that has developed its sense of place over 5,000 years - on the edge of the ocean/on the edge of the world. This is the land of Celtic warriors. When violence is required, violence happens. And Michael doesn't leave the town much choice. He is hopelessly, completely in love with this beautiful girl and, although she loves him, she remains committed to the Church. It's incomprehensible to him. That's the power of obsession."

"Allan has taught me so much," says is co-star Sarah Greene. "He made Michael gorgeous and easy for Kathleen to fall in love with. He was not only kind to me on set, he was also very good to me in St. John's. He showed me his side of the Atlantic, explained the tight relationship between Newfoundlanders and the Irish. How magical that two peoples who live so far apart could be so closely tied together!"

"Kathleen is the one with the power in this story," declares actress Sarah. "It is she who decides how the love story will unfold. Her inner struggle with this great passion is even more poignant that it might be today because in 1968 Ireland, sex was taboo. There was no way she could act on her feelings.

"Her life was all mapped out until Michael turned up, " Greene continues. "As an orphan, she was raised by her uncle. To honour her mother she would become a nun. The town has watched her grow and everyone feels they have a part of her, something invested in her. So, she feels betrayed when the town assumes that she has turned away from her path.

"I think that her lovemaking with Michael is an act of love and an act of savagery. Of course, she adores him but she's also angry at him for disrupting her life and she's angry at the town and her obligations to its people. Everything happens for a reason. What's meant to be will be. It's a very sad story but yet it's wonderful because now they both know love," Greene concludes.

Writing Love & Savagery

"My friendship with Des is my gateway to Newfoundland, " says director John Smith of writer Des Walsh." We met in 1989, when he auditioned for the role of an RCMP officer in Welcome to Canada. I discovered Des was part of the generation which revived traditional Newfoundland music. His band Tickle Harbour did much of the music for Welcome to Canada.

"As a writer, the acting gig was welcome money," laughs writer Des Walsh. "That same year, I was on a book tour with 'Love & Savagery' and John approached me about getting involved."

"I wanted Des involved because, as a poet, he is incapable of writing a cliché - it offends his ear, " says Smith. "And, as a Newfoundlander of Catholic background I knew he would keep the project authentic. It was a very, very tough project and I didn't go near that kind of darkness again until The Englishman's Boy.

"Des and I become close friends and shared our personal stories of love and loss. We decided to explore this personal territory on film so after shooting Random Passage (directed by Smith, written by Walsh and produced by Barbara Doran), we rented a place in Ballyvaughan, County Clare, and started shaping the script for Love & Savagery.

"Barbara Doran, one of Newfoundland's leading producers, had produced Random Passage so it was natural for us to take the script to her," explains Smith. "She involved Kevin (Tierney) who got behind it right away. He gave the project legitimacy."

"I'm ruined for work with any other director," claims writer Des Walsh. "It's comforting working with friends and local people. John has great sense of story. He's demanding but fair. Still, writing a script is tougher than writing a poem. It's less traumatic, less depressing to write a poem. Filmmaking is collaborative and involves budgetary concerns. Poetry isn't and doesn't.

"I'm not perfectly comfortable in the shoes of a screenwriter," says the man who wrote The Boys of St. Vincent and Random Passage. "The poet's shoes are softer to wear. I don't feel the nails quite as sharply. I write to exorcise pain from my heart. Writing is my way to tell the truth."

In 1978, Walsh spent three months in County Clare with Newfoundland painter Garry Squires. "The Burren enthralled me. Its harsh beauty and weather spirit of the people all echo Newfoundland.

"The book of poems 'Love & Savagery' has the poet as observer, writing diary entries for the principals. Of course the work is based on memory and experience but it is not linear; there is no through line. The script Love & Savagery has the book as an emotional blueprint not as a plot outline.

"This is a story about people who were meant to find each other," Walsh continues. "I believe in fate but it is not always kind or gentle. Fate can bring two people together but it can also tear them apart.

"I didn't apply for the job of poet. I was seduced by Yeats, Dickenson, Elliot. I quit school two weeks into grade ten. At the age of 13, I was pumping gas and devouring poetry by the Beatles. Everyone was playing music or writing poems then - that's what young people did - especially here. I just never found my way out of it.

Currently, Walsh is adapting Federico Garcia Lorca's 'Yerma' for Richard Rose and Tarragon Theatre. "The themes are familiar," says Walsh. "Class structure, the tragedy of men and women. Here we are fishermen. Lorca's people are sheep and goat farmers. We must all face the elements and ourselves."

Filming in Ireland

"Love & Savagery focuses on three main characters - Michael, Kathleen and the isolated part of Ireland north-west County Clare," says producer Barbara Doran. " The haunting and harsh beauty of the Burren stands in stark contrast to the lush tourist image of Ireland. Des set the script in Ballyvaughan and the Burren - these are the places he visited with Newfoundland painter Gerry Squires in 1978 reflected by Michael (Allan Hawco) and Wilfred (Sean Panting). We had to shoot there. But Ballyvaughan has become an expensive, get-away community. Carrigaholt, with its 83 souls, has the architectural integrity of a coastal town from a different century. We needed to place the story in Ireland before the arrival of the Celtic Tiger, in a time when families were large, community strong and devotion to the Church unquestioned. 1968 seemed the perfect frame."

"The people of Carrigaholt who are our background gave us the beautiful faces of the west of Ireland, faces that have known harshness," says John Smith. "They brought their knowledge of grief and comportment. We found similar character in the faces of those we cast in Newfoundland."

Among those people was Postmaster Pat Gavin. "We loved the hustle and bustle of the filmmaking and I've expanded my business thanks to Love & Savagery." Gavin has transformed the bus-stop built by the crew into a protected outdoor coffee shop adjacent to his post office which is nestled in the Fisherman's Co-op building. "It's a blessing," commented well-known publican Seamus Carmody whose establishment was a favourite hangout for the crew. "Sure it's an ideal place for a film. And they have provided employment for many of our farmers and fishermen. We'll miss those fellas."

Carrigaholt is a small sea-side village, renowned for it's oysters,sets at the mouth of the Shannon River on the Loop Head peninsula. Silhouetted on the pier is the main tower of a medieval castle. Built by the McMahons', the tower has a long and colourful history of siege, capture, betrayal. In 1588, seven ships of the Spanish Armada sheltered in the harbour; one was set alight by the crew and allowed to sink in the estuary.

The area is steeped in magic and mythology. The legendary warrior Cúchulaiun is supposed to have leaped from the Loop Head to escape the attentions of the witch Mal, who drowned trying to follow. It is now home to Ireland's only resident group of bottlenose dolphins which leap and play around the spectacular rock formation know as the Bridge of Ross.

" Of course we had to film on The Burren. It is Michael's destination. It's an extravagant masterpiece with its graves markers, thousands of years old which face the setting sun, the new world," comments producer Kevin Tierney. "It's a place where people, animals and flora have mingled for centuries. Its mystical, emotional, spiritual quality is at the heart of Love & Savagery."

The Burren derives its name from the Gaelic "bhoireann" which means "a stony place". The stone is mainly carboniferous "karst" limestone. Hundreds of thousands of years old, it defines the unique landscape in strange, yet beautiful, bare and fissured terraces which conceal a myriad of caves. Though bare at first glance, the stony outward face of the Burren is far from barren. Within the many crevices and cracks, which punctuate its craggy pavement hills, grow some of the world's rarest flowers. This remarkable terrain is also home to a rich variety of fauna. Virtually every field, every wall, every stone formation has its own remarkable story to tell. The stories detail the history of Irish civilisation going back over 7,000 years. The Burren houses ancient monuments megalithic tombs, prehistoric burial mounds, Bronze and Iron Age forts, ancient settlements and field systems, churches, monasteries, graveyards, holy wells and medieval castles.