The Big Picture

The Marsh King’s Daughter is a gripping thriller that explores the haunting impact of the past on the present and delves into the complexities of personal transformation. Director Neil Burger was drawn to the film because of its central themes and the focus on nature. The adaptation of a bestselling novel posed challenges, but Burger aimed to capture the essence of the story while also infusing it with his own artistic expression, despite the potential for criticism from fans of the book.

In The Marsh King’s Daughter, Daisy Ridley stars as Helena Pelletier, a wife, a mother, and the daughter of an infamous criminal mastermind known as the Marsh King, played by Ben Mendelsohn. It’s been years since Helena escaped from her abusive father, and she’s since made a life all her own, but in an instant, her security and safety all come crashing down. Jacob Holbrook, the Marsh King, has escaped from prison, and he’s never given up the need to possess her. To protect everything she holds dear, Helena is forced to confront her past, no matter how dangerous.

The movie is adapted from Karen Dionne’s bestseller, and Burger tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub that it’s a story “where the past comes back to haunt the present,” which is ultimately what drew him to make this his next feature. That, and the fact that Burger was looking for something that could make nature a central focus, “almost a character” itself. He certainly found it. According to the director, in spite of others’ opinions, Burger was intent on capturing the visual themes of the movie by filming in some pretty “brutal” and remote locations. That meant crew and cast, including Ridley, Mendelsohn, Brooklynn Prince, and Garrett Hedlund, had to be game for anything – except dressing rooms and bathrooms.

During their interview, which you can check out in the video above or the transcript below, Burger also talks about the challenges faced when adapting a bestselling novel, and why sometimes movies have to veer from the original narrative. He also discusses the editing process, deleted scenes, and how test screenings helped balance the character development and the suspense he was looking for. Check out all of this and more on his next movie, Inheritance, with Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor, in the full interview.

The Marsh King’s Daughter Release Date November 3, 2023 Director Neil Burger Rating R Runtime 108 minutes Main Genre Drama
COLLIDER: If someone has never seen anything you’ve directed before, what is the first thing you’d like them watching and why?

NEIL BURGER: Hmm, that’s a good question. I think the movies that are really most representative are The Illusionist and Limitless. So, maybe Limitless. It depends on who they are. There are, like, Limitless lovers, and there are Illusionist lovers. Then, I also was going to say you can start at the beginning. If you look at my first film, which is called Interview with The Assassin, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but I really like that movie. It’s representative of who I am as a filmmaker, the way it’s done and the risks that we take, and the way we choose to sort of tell that story. So, I haven’t answered your question at all, except, yeah, maybe Limitless.

Why ‘Voyagers’ Was a Difficult Exploration
Which of your films changed the most in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect?

BURGER: There isn’t, really. They were pretty much as they were conceived. I would say Voyagers, just to be completely honest with you, was the one that I had sort of the most difficulty with, with producers and things like that. And so I suppose that might be the one that changed the most. I’m still proud of the film, and I’m proud of that cast and things like that, but that got moved around. That is the one that changed the most, actually.

Not to devote too much time to it, but was that because people wanted you to focus on other things or were you trying to hit a rating?

BURGER: Partly, we were trying to hit a rating. Suddenly, we were like, “Why are we getting an R rating for this?” Because there were so many young people in it, they wanted it to appeal to young people, so we changed some things. And partly because the concept of that voyage is a concept of exploration, at least as it was in the written script, and nobody could sort of deal with that. They wanted it to be like, “Well, the planet is dying, and so we have to flee the planet.” Which was like, “Why? We know that story already. Why do we care? This is what’s happening. Why can’t we just be in space?” Maybe that’s why. And it became, like, imperative for some reason to sort of, I don’t know, explain too much. I didn’t do as much as was wanted, but I think any of it was too much.

I also think that it’s interesting because I think that sometimes explaining less is better because people’s imagination is always going to be more powerful.

BURGER: Right. You take your movie to preview screenings, and people are like, “I don’t understand…they never told us why they were leaving.” It was like, “Does that matter that we never told you that?” But then people are like, “Well, we should tell them why because they said…” which I don’t actually think. Just because they have the question doesn’t mean that– Sometimes it’s okay to have a question, you know?

Yeah. I don’t want to say there’s a difference between producers and artists but, you know.

BURGER: There’s also a difference between, like, confusion and ambiguity and holes in the plot. There’s different things where sometimes they get all lumped together. It’s like, it’s okay that it’s left unsaid, or it’s withheld or something like that. Anyway.

Image via Lionsgate

I completely agree. So, jumping into why I get to talk to you: what was it about this story that said, “I have to make this?”

BURGER: Well, I actually had been looking to make a movie that was set in nature where the wilderness, and where the natural world, was almost a character in it. So, this was definitely that. And then I also like this story of this woman where the past comes back to haunt the present, where it’s like, “What if the person that she loved the most turns out to be a monster?” What do you do with that? And in her case, you know, she put it in a box, and she buried it, and she never dealt with it again. Does that work? Maybe that works. For her, it almost does work, and then it all comes crashing down and falling apart. So I was interested in that story of, you know, can this woman and can anybody change the way they were shaped as a child? Can they free themselves? In her case, can she free herself from the trauma of her past, or can any of us change who we are in a substantial way and become the person that we want to be?

When you are making a movie based on a popular book, do you sort of accept that there are just gonna be people who don’t like what you’re doing because you’re deviating somehow from the book?

BURGER: I do.

I’m just curious, what’s your mindset when you’re making something like this? Do you sort of just have to accept that there’s gonna be certain people that don’t come along for the ride?

BURGER: You know, I don’t think I ever accept that, but I do know that that’s the risk. Look, the whole readership, like from the get-go, they have their own images of what the actors look like, how the scene unfolds, whatever it is. So, in a way, I wanna understand that. And I have my own images, as well, which is sort of what I’m building off of. And I hope that somehow, like with an honest sort of exploration of those characters, it may not be exactly what you were thinking of, but it’s expressive in a similar way to the original. And look, ultimately, a movie, it’s a different art form. It’s a different beast. It has different needs. It has different narrative issues, so it’s going to be different. And yes, there’s always people that are going to be unhappy, but hopefully very few, and hopefully you make something that’s as expressive as possible and, I don’t know, as juicy and as meaty as the original, or more so, that then they can kind of just invest into what’s put right in front of them.

Image via Lionsgate

Why ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’ Filmed in the Wilderness
So you made this movie in 37 days, which is a very tight schedule to begin with, but then you decided to film in very remote places that were so off the beaten path. At what point of the shoot were you like, “What the F was I thinking?”

BURGER: Well, I mean, I’m experienced enough and old enough that I knew what I was getting into. When you shoot in the woods, you know where they want you to shoot? They want you to shoot, like, at a ski resort where there’s a parking lot right next to some woods. But I was looking for forests and wilderness that felt, like, pristine or even primal, that had kind of that mysterious quality to them, that they’ve never been logged before, that they were untouched. Because I thought just thematically that was important, and somehow visually, we needed to have the proper representation for that.

So we found it, and they were remote, as you said. I always think that it was worth it. It was brutal. It was really hard, and we did crazy things. We had to have our equipment helicoptered into certain remote locations. The helicopters couldn’t even land; they had to lower it on a cable with a cargo net with the equipment inside, like just on the edge of a river bank. There was only, whatever, 15 feet of, like, a rocky river bank for them to land their stuff on. It was tough, and the crew worked really hard. I’m indebted to the crew for their hard work, but they pulled together, and they did it. The cast also hiked into places, no amenities, no dressing rooms, no toilets, even, in certain cases, and it was rough. We had to adapt to that.

Unfortunately, the schedule was longer, and then for whatever reasons because of COVID and things like that, which was going on, as well, they started just running out of money, and we had to cut days. So, you know, as a filmmaker, it makes you very nimble. You have to adapt, and you’re like, “Okay, we thought we were gonna shoot it like this, but we’re gonna actually find a more interesting, simpler way to do it.” That, often, is more interesting.

Every filmmaker I’ve spoken to said that overcoming the adversity of making a movie can sometimes make your film better because you’re forced to creatively find ways to solve your problems.

BURGER: Yes. If it doesn’t destroy it, hopefully it makes it better.

[Laughs] Exactly.

BURGER: So either option is on the table.

Image via Lionsgate

So you get in the editing room, you have a cut, and you’re showing it to friends and family; what are you learning from those early screenings that impacted the finished film?

BURGER: That’s a good question. I think we’re learning things about the suspense and about the thriller quality of it, when people are engaged and when they’re not. What’s interesting about the movie is that it is a thriller, and it wants to be a thriller, but alongside it is a very deep exploration of a certain character. Her emotional journey and her life and the way she is and the way she interacts with other people is important to…Look, I always say that the best thrillers are the ones where you are as connected as possible to the characters. So, the more you know the character, the more you’re invested in the character, the more the thrill ride is going to be that much [more] suspenseful or tense or scary or whatever. So it was learning that balance of how much character could we get away with or how much could we take out and still get what we wanted. How much do we have to have in? How much was too much? That sort of thing.

Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

BURGER: We did, actually. We did, yeah.

Is it like 10 minutes or more like 25?

BURGER: No, it’s maybe like 10 minutes of scenes. A lot of it was in the beginning, with the childhood things. The childhood stuff was so rich to me, their interaction and what went on, and there were a lot of things that we cut out actually just to get into the story a bit quicker, to get to Daisy’s character a little bit sooner.

Yeah, I understand. Also, the stuff with Brooklynn and Ben was so good that you almost want to spend more time there.

BURGER: You do, but then there’s a whole other story to tell.

Image via Netflix

What Is Neil Burger’s ‘Inheritance’ With Phoebe Dynevor?
I have to ask you because I’m running out of time, what are you thinking about doing next? Do you know what you’re doing?

BURGER: I’ve already shot another movie. It’s called Inheritance, actually. It’s with Phoebe Dynevor. Do you know Phoebe?

I do.

BURGER: Phoebe was in Bridgerton, and she’s great. It’s a movie that goes around the world, actually. It goes from New York to Cairo to Delhi to Seoul and back to New York, and we took the trip, and it was an amazing adventure.

It’s so funny because I stalked your Instagram last night, and I saw these pictures from where you were, and I was like, “What was he doing in all these places?”

BURGER: We were keeping it a secret. We’re selling the movie right now. The movie’s done. So we were keeping it a secret. We had this idea that we’re gonna keep the movie a secret while we were making it, which we did. You’re one of the first people I’ve said anything in public to, besides to friends. I’m not sure why I did, but I did.

It’s because I’m a fan and you know it. So can I ask you, because I don’t want to get you in trouble, can you tell people what it’s about, or are you keeping that a mystery?

BURGER: It’s an international thriller. That’s what I’ll say.

Got it. Are you selling it at AFM?

BURGER: No, we were at Toronto. We were kind of just on the market side of Toronto.

I totally get what you’re saying. I know other people that were selling films at Toronto without advertising they were there.

BURGER: That’s right. The deal-making is, like, taking forever, but it’s moving.

So basically, I get to see it next year.

BURGER: That’s correct.

The Marsh King’s Daughter is in theaters now.