'Mayday' Cinematographer Sam Levy Explains How Dance Inspired The Film's Empowering Aesthetic
(Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences )
Karen Cinorre’s new action-packed fairy tale, ‘Mayday’, is equal parts Alice in Wonderland and Sucker Punch. The film revolves around an unhappy young woman named Ana, who leaves her life behind and joins a group of other girls just like her living in an abandoned wartime submarine.
What seems like paradise at first, quickly turns into a nightmare after Ana discovers a shocking secret about the group. This forces her to come to terms with her old life and decide whether or not she should return.
While the direction, plot, and acting are all solid, the cinematography steals the show. Complimenting Ana’s struggle to deal with the darkness she encounters and the darkness she’s spent her entire life engulfed by, light and shadow play a definitive role in the film.
Even though you wouldn’t know it, speaking in a recent interview with FilmSpeak’s Dempsey Pillot, Director of Photography Sam Levy explained that his work on this project wasn’t influenced by any other movies or photographs, but rather dance.
He says, “It really guided the aesthetic of this movie.” He admits that his own love and connection to dance is what propelled his vision. “I leaned into my love [and used it] as a guide for how these characters should move,” he added.
What really makes the choreography stand out in the film is the recurring presence (and theme) of water. As you might expect, the film’s island setting is surrounded by water, while the story serves as an entrance for other characters and a means for escape throughout the story, it also acts as a stage for Levy’s stellar shots.
As beautiful as the final product is, Levy admitted that the unpredictability and the amount of planning that went into them made them less fun to film.
He says, “The underwater stuff was great, but it involves a lot of logistics: getting on a boat, the underwater housing, keeping everyone safe - which is very important - but it's just meetings upon meetings, and conversations upon conversations… [unlike] the forest, which is an area I feel very at home.”
Aside from the forest sequences, Levy says that Mia Goth’s performance is also one of his favorite parts of the film. She’s not so much an antagonist as she is a fellow survivor of emotional abuse that sees revenge as the only option. Levy explains that although she isn’t a model character, she amplifies the film’s main message.
“This is a movie about [Ana] finding her voice, becoming Empowered and becoming a badass.” Levy adds, “It's a movie that, in a way, sort of defies gravity… like a feminist Wizard of Oz. Or another way to describe it: if Andre Tarkovsky had made it an action movie.”