It is clear, in conversation, that Casey Affleck is still trying to work Company out. His third directorial feature, set to premiere next week at the Venice Film Festival, begins on Christmas Day circa 1975, when a young woman (Emily Alyn Lind) arrives at a party and begins telling a strange story to those in attendance. From there, Company proves as rich in atmosphere as it is in ambiguity, unfurling a Gothic-infused mystery across three different timelines that click into collective place only in the film’s final moments. “There’s the story you think you’re going to tell, and then there’s the one that comes out of you,” Affleck says. “Those, at least in my experience, are never the same.”
When it comes to the final product, a haunting but earnest tale of loneliness and healing, the roots proved deeply personal for Affleck, though he’s reluctant to say too much on that score. The script was written over six years with Ron Hansen, with whom Affleck has remained close since starring in the 2007 adaptation of Hansen’s novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and evolved into a reflection on old wounds and how to move past them. “If there’s anything that can be taken from really awful experiences that seem to have no explanation and certainly no justification, it’s that if nothing else, they’re going to give you a way to connect to other people who have had similar kinds of hardships,” Affleck says.
