It was a moment of triumph that united a wounded city: Less than a month after two bombs ripped across the finish line of the Boston Marathon in April, 2013, one of the victims rolled his wheelchair onto the ice before a Bruins-Maple Leafs playoff game to rally the crowd with a banner. "Boston Strong," it read and the cheers thundered through the arena.
But for Jeff Bauman, whose legs had been amputated above the knee, the adulation felt sour and misplaced: He was not a hero, but a man who simply had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Stronger, an adaptation of Bauman's memoir about the bombing and its aftermath starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tatiana Maslany, the scene is one of many quietly subversive moments that confront viewers with their need for hero worship and the damage they do by imposing narratives – even positive ones – on others.
"It's important to tell the story that existed after the headlines have faded," explains David Gordon Green, the director of Stronger, during an interview on the first weekend of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. "To recognize that these chapters that can drift through our media, leave a permanent impression and resonance on people's lives."
Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance in Stronger by director David Gordon Green, right, is getting Oscar buzz.
Scott Garfield
Green approached Stronger with the same understated naturalism that he brought to his early films such as George Washington (2000) and All the Real Girls (2003). (More recently, he is known for bonkers comedies, such as Pineapple Express and the TV show Eastbound & Down; his next feature is a reboot of Halloween).
We watch Bauman give a wan, obligatory thumbs-up for the TV cameras as he is wheeled out of the hospital, then arrive home at the claustrophobic apartment he shares with his alcoholic mother, where he faces the gut-wrenching challenges of trying to adjust to his new limitations: getting up the apartment stairs, falling out of bed, confronting the inaccessible bathroom. "Boston Strong!" yelps his father, chugging a beer and walking away absentmindedly, as Bauman struggles to clean himself.
"There was an effort to strip away any sort of Hollywood intuition and sensibility, to make it feel raw, make it feel intimate, not go for the epic nature of the concept of the film but go for the frustrating, awkward intimacy of it," Green says. "That was the goal."
To that end, Green says, "we didn't bring lights on set. All lighting was done from windows or practical lights. There were no cables to step over when the actors were coming to set. Just try to create something that felt like a place to live and breathe and be honest with each other."
He adds: "I've never made a movie based on a true story before. That's a very intimidating thing, especially recent history, especially something that a nation, in particular a very specific community, is very opinionated about."
Jake Gyllenhaal, Miranda Richardson and Tatiana Maslany in a scene from Stronger.
Scott Garfield
Green largely avoids the politics of the story – though there is a moment (based, alas, on reality) in which a pair of conspiracy-minded dopes at a bar tell Bauman that the bombing was fake, a so-called "false flag" incident staged by the U.S. government – preferring instead to focus on its human dimensions.
Gyllenhaal plays Bauman as an irrepressible man-child who, even before the attack, seems simultaneously boyish and beaten-down by life. He has difficulty meeting his obligations: He messes up at his job as a chicken roaster at Costco, and, at the start of the film, he and his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Erin Hurley (Maslany), are on the outs. But he wants to do better, which is what leads him to stand at the Marathon finish line, waiting with a homemade sign in hand as Erin is in the home stretch and the bombs go off.
It is an impressive turn by Gyllenhaal, who helped stick-handle Stronger through the increasing uncertainties of independent American filmmaking by lending his muscle as a producer. But at TIFF, where the real Bauman walked the red carpet (with an assist from high-tech prosthetic legs) alongside him, he was downplaying the achievement, saying that he frequently felt like a fraud during production.
Actors, "live in a world where we pretend to get closer to the truth. So, there's the inevitability of pretend, always. It's what you're criticized for in the world, generally. There is always the allure, the vanity of this profession, this sort of grandiose nature and all this stuff that we perpetuate," notes Gyllenhaal, in a separate interview.
Gyllenhaal says he frequently felt like a fraud while making the film. ‘There’s the inevitability of pretend, always.’
Courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions
"I felt sometimes like I was getting thrown into the deep end, and I knew somewhere, no matter how hard I tried, I was gonna fail. Right? That was inevitable. But I felt like I had to. I think that's the drive, I think you want to try and get to something that feels true, right? You want to actually have a connection."
He adds: "That is my career. I've gotten lost, there are moments in scenes where I've thought, 'I've lost my imagination completely, I just – dove into this reality and there's no play here any more.' You know? So that was an engine here for me: look closer, look farther, try to understand more. It just pushed me more and more."
Where does he feel he failed? "Oh," he says suddenly, "you can't touch the pain that [Jeff] felt. You can't get anywhere near it! You can only seem to understand it and talk with him and try and feel his heart, but you can't get anywhere near that thing."
Even so, coming out of the festival, where Stronger had its world premiere, audiences and some in the industry were beginning to talk about the possibility that the role could bring Gyllenhaal an Academy Award nomination. So, as a publicist walks in to bring the interview to a close, a reporter asks if he may ask a question about "Oscar."
Gyllenhaal gives a sly smile. "You can ask me about my friend's dog," he says, with a chuckle. "He's a good dog. Not as good as my dog!"
He is pressed for a real answer. "It's a lovely thing for you to say," he replies, now quietly reflective. "It's a nice thing to hear. Even in that conversation, to be thought of in the history of what that means, is wonderful." But really, he says, "my concern, right now, as a producer of this movie, is that people see this film. Because movies like this are not easy to get to people."