MULAN
Made Of HonourW W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K |^041
but in our movie is a huge throne room. Even I was
shocked when I went into it for the first time. When we
were working on the design, I kept saying: ‘Oh Grant, is
it big enough?’ And he said: ‘Niki, it goes to the outside
walls of the biggest stage we have!’ And when I walked
into it the first time, I was like: ‘Holy shit!’ It’s huge
and it’s all real. And it’s wonderful too. It’s wonderful
for actors to work in sets that are real.”
The scale of Mulan astounds. Caro mentions that
David Lean’s epic Lawrence Of Arabia (1962) was a
conscious influence on the film and indicates that
a good chunk of the movie was shot on 65mm film,
with similar lenses to those used on Lawrence back
in the day. Talking about Australian cinematographer
Mandy Walker, Caro says: “My collaboration with
Mandy has been one of the best of my career. She’s an
artist, a visionary and she pulled off a very rare and
special trick with this movie in that we deliver scaleand visceral raw action in the cinematography, but
also absolute beauty all the time. And that feminine
approach, like being really strong and kick-arse where
we need to be but being beautiful and sensitive also, is
something you get with the great cinematographers, of
which Mandy is certainly one. Her feminine vision is
really a very strong part of this movie.”
Concluding our chat, Caro discusses how, despite the
gargantuan upgrade in terms of budget and resources,
she sees Mulan as of a piece with debut feature Whale
Rider: “Both of them [have] strong and unusual female
protagonists in cinema terms, but in human terms
they are ordinary girls with unusual strength. And in
both of those movies, what’s starting to be recognised
in them as little girls is seen as not appropriate. And
yet, they are born to be leaders and they are born to be
warriors and heroes. In that way, they are emblematic
of any number of young girls. And I hope young girls
rise up in their millions now, inspired by a movie like
this to step into their own power and potential.”Mulan will be released in cinemas on 27 March.[Left]: Mulan director Niki Caro (with actress
Yifei Liu who plays Mulan) wanted to make sure
the live-action version of the film was grounded
in realism but on an epic scale and ensured the
movie was filmed on real landscapes.