British stars George MacKay and Rosy McEwen can admit: Mission was one of the least conventional shooting experiences they’ve ever had. It also happened to be one of the most liberating.
Director Paul Wright (Arcadia) throws caution to the wind in his latest feature film, set to premiere in competition at Edinburgh Film Festival on Saturday. The Glasgow-set Mission follows Dylan (MacKay), a young Scot who has reached the end of his tether with a dead-end job and lonely, unfulfilling existence. Over the course of a week, he seeks meaning in the wake of extreme chaos — such as breaking a monkey out of the local zoo, attacking a police officer and experimenting in some X-rated BDSM — as he attempts to feel alive. Dylan regularly gets in touch with his sister, Claire (McEwen), who is shocked by her sibling’s existential angst and frenetic energy.
The final product is, impressively, mostly improv. Wright didn’t have an initial script. “Paul made a huge lookbook of images to give a sense of the film tonally,” MacKay explains, “and then there were a series of circumstances and incidents for the characters to be in.” Much of the meaning of this film — to MacKay’s delight, having had his life “changed” by Wright on the set of 2013’s For Those in Peril — was discovered in the making of it. “[We were] exploring how much of a story or a character we could create by almost making an archive of material, and then have him discover a lot of it in the edit,” says MacKay. “It was, creatively, a really interesting idea.”
