境界線を越えた女の物語

By Noriko Nakamura, Asahi Weekly

　暴力、復讐（しゅう）、連続殺人…。現在公開中の映画『ブレイブ　ワン』は、難しいテーマを扱った映画だ。議論を呼ぶ事を承知で制作に挑んだその理由とは？主演のジョディ・フォスターのこの映画への強い思い入れとは？

　Asked to define "bravery," Hollywood producer Joel Silver didn't have to look far. Seated next to him on stage in Tokyo were Jodie Foster, star of his new movie "The Brave One," and the director Neil Jordan.

　Silver said Foster's "creative force and confidence" made everyone brave enough to make the film, and Jordan is the one "who made an incredible movie and worked very hard to bring this idea to the screen."

　Indeed, "The Brave One" is a controversial theme in the United States, given the massacre at Virginia Tech in April and the daily bombardment of gun-related violence in the media.

　Foster plays Erica, a radio talk show host who gets a gun and starts killing criminals after her fiancè is killed by a mugger in Central Park in New York and she is badly injured.

　"I thought that there was a level of urgency about it, something to do with the world at large today, really, because the world is about revenge these days, it seems to me," Jordan said, in the press conference in Tokyo last month before the movie's release in Japan.

　"You know that she's wrong, she knows she's wrong," Foster continues. "I think what's interesting about the movie is that you empathize with her. You follow her on that journey, whether you like it or not. You follow her on a path where violence corrupts absolutely everything it touches -- not just the victim -- but everyone around them."

　Foster not only stars in the film, but was deeply involved behind the camera as an executive producer. She recommended Jordan be hired as the director and Terrence Howard be cast as the detective who investigates the serial shootings. Silver said Foster even designed the movie's poster.

　Foster also changed her character, from a journalist to that of a popular radio personality.

　Foster said she thought a "radio host was a specific choice that allowed for the film to have a certain kind of tone to have this narration that's this voice in the night where she's speaking, and she is almost able to have this manifesto."

　Foster said the moral issue that the film poses is one that has interested her for a long time. However, she avoided answering directly when asked about the gun problem in the United States, but explained her feelings as an actor working with one.

　"It's true that when you put a gun in your pocket, it changes everything," she said. "It changes how you walk, it changes how you see, it changes your confidence. In Erica's case, there's a side of her that's quite beautiful. She finds herself as a human being, she finds strength in herself. But then the flip side is the monstrous side, because if you depend on the power of the gun in order to say, 'I wanna live,' the consequences of that is that someone has to die."

　"It's a hard movie. It's a hard picture. It's not easy. It's not simple," Silver said in an interview prior to the press conference. "We ask a lot of questions, but don't give a lot of answers. I think that people are affected by it."

　One relief is that Foster apparently carries no traits of Erica in real life.

　"I think every day of our life there must be some little nagging part of us that would like someone else to feel the pain that we've felt, but we're a civilized society, and we don't act on that," she said. "But ..."

　Then, Foster changed her tone.

　"I have a problem with electronics," she smiled. "I can't ever get them to work, and it drives me crazy. It's the only time I lose it!"

• bravery　勇敢さ
• massacre...Tech　ヴァージニア工科大学で起きた銃乱射事件
• bombardment　衝撃
• empathize　感情移入する
• serial shootings　連続狙撃事件
• trait(s)　特性
　
• nagging　良心の痛みを感じさせる
• lose　我を忘れるほど頭にくる