Most films tell stories. Stigmata contains a story that can be extracted by a thinking audience. The story opens in Brazil where Father Andrew (portrayed by Gabriel Byrne) is sent by the Vatican to investigate a possible miracle. A priest has died, and a religious icon is shedding tears of human blood. Stigmata was directed by Rupert Wainwright and produced by Frank Mancuso, Jr. for MGM/UA. The story: Frankie (Patricia Arquette) is a hairdresser who has lived an uneventful life. The setting is Pittsburgh in contemporary times. Suddenly and
Rupert Wainwright, director, (3rd from left) on the set of Stigmata.
inexplicably, strange things begin happening. Frankie bleeds from her forehead, hands and feet. Doctors and psychiatrists can't explain why. Her friends abandon her.
After a frightening incident involving a priest on a train, Father Andrew is sent to investigate. Church historians have cited examples of stigmata (people who bleed from places where Christ suffered wounds on the cross) dating back to St. Francis of Assisi in the 12th century. It turns out that Frankie's mother sent her a rosary which belonged to the priest in Brazil. Maybe Frankie has inherited the spirit of the dead priest.
Stigmata takes another twist, when Frankie begins speaking and writing in Aramaic, an ancient language lost for 2,000 years. That opens up a broader storyline, which heightens the drama and keeps the audience poised on the edge of its seat.
Wainwright was fascinated when he read Tom Lazarus's original draft of Stigmata about eight years ago, but could not form a collaboration with a producer until he teamed up with Mancuso.
Rick Ramage and Lazarus each rewrote several versions of the script, and Wainwright assembled a team, which included production designer Waldemar Kalinowski, costumer Louise Frogley and cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball ASC.
"I think all films should aspire to be art, and all art should aspire to be entertaining"
"I loved what Jeff did with Jacob's Ladder,"Wainwright says. "It went to the heart of what I wanted to do. I wanted a kind of gritty, bizarre look, that was not overdone."
While they were searching for a visual style, the director and cinematographer together watched Jacob's Ladder and True Romance, both shot by Kimball, and The Exorcist, Seven and Nostalgia. These films provided a visual frame of reference for discussing ideas.
"Stigmata is not a conventional story, but it has a beginning, middle and end, and we didn't want to do anything that would make it seem unreal," Wainwright says."I had a very clear vision, but I kept an open mind and encouraged everyone to contribute.
Wainwright believes that directors can keep a firm hand on the helm and still be sensitive to the people around them
"I wanted a cool palette of colors - blues, greens, black and whites - with no oranges, pinks or reds, except for the blood. Waldemar (Kalinowski) had a slightly different idea. He wanted to use reds to accent characters and props at certain times. There is an important scene on a subway, where Frankie wears a big, bright red scarf that makes her the center of attention."
Wainwright created a unique storyboard. He scanned traditional drawings into digital format, which were animated . . . and then combined with music and sound effects
Kimball and Wainwright discovered a visual style by experimenting with different camera films and lab processes while shooting costume and make-up tests.
Director Rupert Wainwright directs Gabriel Byrne during the filming of Stigmata.
"Film gives you tremendous flexibility to create looks that affect the audience's emotions," says Wainwright. "We shot in Super 35 format because the wider scope adds breadth. There are two distinct looks. One is Father Andrew's story set in Brazil, which is the first 10 minutes of the film. The colors are richer and the images are brighter than the remainder of the film. The rest is Frankie and Father Andrew's story together. For this part, we decided to skip bleach all the negative; use a high contrast interpositive film; and then print on Kodak Vision stock. The film gave us latitude and the process created deeper blacks, purer whites and compressed contrast and colors - a slightly posterized look."
Wainwright art directed with symbolic colors, using silver tones in costumes and settings in Pittsburgh, and rich crimsons, golds and purples in Rome.
On darkness: "I felt the less we revealed, the more believable the story became," he says.
"Our lens choices were very conservative," Wainwright adds. "I didn't want super-long lenses or a filtered, back-lit look. But, I was also not interested in having the movie feel like a documentary."
Wainwright and Kimball had to accommodate for the black robes of Father Andrew and the other priests. They found reasons to splash bits of ambient light around the sets to create highlights in the black areas so that the audience would see more than just faces and hands.
"I like really tight close-ups from the top of the eyebrows to the bottom of the lower lip," Wainwright says. "It forces viewers to look into the character's face. Sometimes we concealed their eyes in a silhouette shot. We didn't always work into close-ups from the masters. Sometimes we'd open a scene with a close-up."
Wainwright believes that directors can keep a firm hand on the helm and still be sensitive to the people around them.
"One day we were shooting a brutal scene in which Frankie comes at Father Andrew with a knife," he recalls. "We had it lit in one direction, and we were ready to shoot. Gabriel [Byrne] said he had another idea about staging. He acted it out. The problem was that we would have had to strike the set and re-light everything. You could hear the silence on the set. Everyone was watching to see how I would handle it. I said,'Okay,' because I wanted Gabriel and Patricia to know that their performance came first. It cost us an hour, but the actors gave me everything they had."
Wainwright created a unique storyboard. He scanned traditional drawings into digital format, which were animated by Bill Marmor at Santa Monica-based (California) Crew Cuts, and then combined with music and sound effects. Wainwright duplicated the 45-minute video-cassette to give everyone a feel for his vision.
However, the moving storyboard was just a place to start. One scene called for Frankie to visualize that nails were being driven into her wrists and hands while she was in the bath. Wainwright wanted to make it more intimate. He built two tubs. One was to scale and the other was two feet longer and twice as wide. On the latter tub, one side was made of Plexiglas.
Wainwright had the camera on a Hothead with an underwater housing and a Frazier lens. Part of the scene was shot in the larger tub with the camera traveling from Frankie's feet along her body. It is artfully composed so it isn't salacious. From another camera angle, the audience sees a perfect reflection of Frankie's face in the water.
"The bigger tub allowed us to use a 50mm instead of an ultra-wide angle lens," Wainwright explains. "That let us control what the audience sees, and it also looks more natural. I think that the audience will like and empathize with Frankie. If they believe her character, they'll believe the story. I'm never totally satisfied, but I feel we told an interesting story in an artful way. I think all films should aspire to be art, and all art should aspire to be entertaining."
info - Rupert Wainwright
Wainwright has an eclectic background. He was born in Oxford, England. While in college, he danced and acted with a regional troupe, and after graduating, studied ballet in Portugal and performed in a multi-racial theater in South Africa. He continued his studies at Oxford University, where he directed stage versions of many of the classics. Wainwright discovered film in 1984, when he performed in Another Country. Wainwright subsequently received a Fulbright Scholarship, which enabled him to earn a master's degree in filmmaking at UCLA while directing music videos for such pop and rap performers as Michael Jackson, N.W.A. and M.C. Hammer, and winning Grammy and MTV awards for his efforts.
Wainwright earned his first narrative credit for Dillinger, an award-winning movie of the week. In 1991, he merged his company (Fragile Films) with Propaganda Films to direct commercials as well as music videos. He is currently at Pavlov Productions, the TV commercial division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. His other narrative films include The Sadness of Sex, which earned critical raves after debuting at the Slamdance Festival in 1996.