The village is small and dense, lined with crumbling structures and the exploded remains of cars. The women, hanging laundry or selling American movies on DVD out of dusty briefcases, are suspicious. The men are outright paranoid, ducking down alleys or peering out of second-story windows. American troops patrol the area with assault rifles, where IEDs and chemical weapons await them. It’s a hellish war zone, and it’s entirely fake.
This is Atropia, the fictional town named after a very real military training camp in the Nevada desert. It’s the subject of Hailey Gates’ new film of the same name, playing in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, starring Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner
“Growing up in L.A., there was a lot of lore about these places. You could see them from the freeway,” Gates told Variety on the eve of her feature directorial debut. “It was the same for Alia, who grew up in Palm Desert. There’s a huge marine base called Twentynine Palms where these villages are built.”
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The mock towns were constructed by the military and widely used during the Iraq War, which began in 2003 and lasted eight years, to help soldiers acclimate to life in battle. The townspeople? Actors. The IEDs? Mostly fog machines. Gates said the defense department even had a contract with air freshener company Glade, who manufactured scents that would mimic spiced teas, baked bread, fish markets and, disturbingly, “burning flesh.” Talk about going method.
Gates originally wanted to make a documentary about these camps. She spent nearly four years researching and ultimately wanted to land a job as an actor on one of the elaborate sets – gigs that last three weeks at a time, always in character.
“The military,” she said with a tight smile, “was not so psyched about that idea.”
Instead, Gates skillfully built a narrative around one of the craziest worlds we’ve never quite seen on screen. Tonally, it evokes “Argo,” a fetishistic love story set in the worst possible conditions and, at times, a National Lampoon’s satire.
The director spent years building a resume as a “bit actor” in projects like the rebooted “Twin Peaks” series, “Uncut Gems” and “Challengers.” She described it as a kind of gonzo film school.
“I’ve always used it to get on other director’s sets. When you’re shadowing someone, it’s like being a eunuch at an orgy. There’s nothing for you to do, per se, but you’re invited to their party,” Gates said.
And it pays off. Gates and Luca Guadagnino had been friends for a few years before she arrived to the Boston set of “Challengers” for a bit part. He challenged her to write the script for “Atropia” in only four weeks.
“It was my most romantic writing experience because I was writing directly toward him,” she recalled. Gates and Shawkat, both Iraqi women who came of age during the George W. Bush-led war, both said they felt a “void” in cinema regarding this particular moment in history. Creatively frustrated, they drove to Palm Desert for an “experimental, one-day shoot.”
“It was no money and a bunch of friends, but it just felt so good,” said Gates. She shared the experience with Guadagnino, who at that point had read the script. He called her and pledged to come on board as a producer, saying in his glorious Italian accent: “Ok. We make a moo-vie.”
Shawkat plays a veteran performer in Atropia, which is nicknamed “The Box” by its cynical leadership and oversight officials. While her peers are jaded day players, Shawkat is always looking for her most authentic performance. She laments that her best work will not be seen by wide audiences, but never fails to posture for the best “roles” in the training exercise (a bride whose wedding is raided by insurgents, a chemist deploying mustard gas). Callum, a new actor to The Box with intensity to match or best her own, arrives on base and ignites some of her other passions.
When production finally did come together, Gates was thrown a curveball in the form of Shawkat’s late-stage pregnancy in real life. The character required rewriting, she said, and Shawkat trusted Turner implicitly thanks to their 10-year old friendship forged on the set of another Sundance sensation, “Green Room.”
“There’s a scene with a really intense confrontation between Alia and Callum, and her son Bruno just started moving wildly in her belly,” Gates recalled with bluster. “I thought, ‘I’m scarring this kid already.””
It was a moment she doesn’t mind sharing credit for as she brings her own baby to the Eccles Theater on Saturday.
“Bruno definitely directed some of those scenes,” she said.