NAPLES FF INTERVIEWS: Chris Hansen talks about his film SEVEN SHORT FILMS ABOUT (OUR) MARRIAGE
Chris Hansen’s SEVEN SHORT FILMS ABOUT (OUR) MARRIAGE, which recently screened at the Naples International Film Festival, takes a unique chapter-esque approach to showing the life of a marriage from beginning to end. Noah and Madison are artists who want to change the world, and they begin their marriage as most couples do – sure that love will solve all problems. However, their concerns about dealing with the challenges of being an interracial couple naively forgets that marriages have to overcome A LOT of issues even without that. The arguments over petty stuff and bigger stuff, and the longstanding resentments that no one wants to even bring up – can sometimes seem unsurmountable. SEVEN SHORT FILMS ABOUT (OUR) MARRIAGE tells a story of raw authenticity in seven episodes spanning fourteen years of marriage as they reckon with racism, career challenges, medical issues, and more.
The film has been a festival favorite, winning a handful of awards both for the direction and the performances and the connection it has made with audiences across the country clearly demonstrates the success Hansen had in utilizing both the structure of the film and his cast to deliver a meditation on marriage that isn’t a glossed over bromide or a melodramatic takedown. The film excels by playing in the middle of the field, so-to-speak, by accenting the highs and lows among our thwarted ambitions and life’s goals nudged aside by circumstance, the communication wins and losses, and the low-grade hope and heartbreak that almost every single married couple experiences on some level.
In the interview, I talk to Hansen about why he chose to structure the film the way he did to properly portray the “raw, real life junk” that marriages are chock full of. He also discusses how much the actors’ had to shoulder when it comes to delivering a nuanced look at a relationship and how shooting out of order and shooting primarily at night could have complicated that effort – yet didn’t. And we end talking about the evergreen truth that “You never know what you’re going to need in the editing room”, and how he managed that while shooting.
