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“I have an allegiance towards the moral superiority of children, and the script was written from that perspective,” Isaiah Saxon told me during an interview ahead of the release of his feature film debut The Legend of Ochi.
Right in the line of our favorite 80s coming-of-age movies, The Legend of Ochi takes place on the island of Carpathia, where Yuri, a young and shy girl played by Helena Zengel, befriends a wounded baby Ochi, an animal species feared and chased by her entire village.
When discussing the misunderstandings and disagreements between the adults and the kids in the movie, Saxon said, “Kids are just more open-minded, curious and often more alert to reality. Adults are often stuck in their own stories and patterns.”
In The Legend of Ochi, Yuri indeed has a complicated and rocky relationship with her father, played by Willem Dafoe. As for her mother, Dasha, played by Emily Watson, she left when Yuri was little.
Saxton cited Roald Dahl’s novels as a source of inspiration for these characters. He said, “Every adult in the Roald Dahl’s stories and their dialogues are just manipulation and pathetic.”
He added: “He was also allied with the innocence and authenticity of kids.”
Dafoe’s character has a huge influence on the kids of the village and teaches them how to fight against the Ochi. He wears an armor and acts like a mean Peter Pan with his Lost Boys, orders the kids around and fills their heads with hatred against the Ochi.
Wolfhard’s character, Petro, is on the other hand one of Yuri’s only allies and even helps her escape her home in the middle of the night with the baby Ochi.
In Yuri’s bedroom, we can see a poster that says ‘Destroy the Father’ which is very telling of the relationship between Yuri and her father. Details like this one hidden on a set decor or even in a script can have a huge impact on an actor’s performance.
During the interview, I asked Zengel and Wolfhard if they remembered how these details helped them have a deeper understanding of their characters, or if a detail in particular stood out the most while reading the script.
Wolfhard said, “That’s a great question! I read the script in 2020 but I remember just being really interested in my character’s internal conflict, between being someone who’s just like a normal kid, that just wants to express himself in some way by trying to be more like Yuri, more curious. But at the same time, he’s caught between that and trying to be this sort of traditional masculine figure.”
Wolfhard joked and added: “Which is very fake, because you know, when you think of me, you think of ‘Classic, masculine man!’. But I remember just really loving that in the script, I hadn’t seen that in a while, so I was excited to have that sort of challenge.”
The precision of her character’s description is especially what helped Academy Award nominee Emily Watson click right away with her character, Dasha, who now lives alone in the mountains, studying nature.
Watson said, “When I first read the script, instantly I thought ‘This woman smells bad, she’s messed up!’ She’s like a witch, there’s something about her that’s very knowledgable and true, she understands the science of these creatures, yet she kinds of missed the main thing, and her relationships are all completely dysfunctional. And she was married to a man who’s essentially a child.”
She added: “When I read the description of her character ‘The dash of her car is covered in litter, sweet wrappings and dead birds and there’s a wooden hand on the stirring wheel,’ I said, ‘This smells interesting.’”
Saxon’s was determined to use puppets for the Ochi and not CGI. Zengel declared that six puppeteers were in charge of baby Ochi while she was interacting with him. She said, “We wanted to really created a bond between the Ochi and Yuri and having it was almost like life to life, I was reacting to it with the different emotions, face expressions and the movement, it’s a totally different experience. I was so excited.”
Their bond reaches new heights when Yuri realizes that she can speak the Ochi’s language (which sounds a bit like a bird). I asked the director how writing the ‘dialogues’ between Ochi and Yuri also helped him get a new understanding of these characters.
He said, “They talk the Ochi language just a couple of times in the film, and the struggle is to just make it feel real, you know? Like what would be the common subject matter of these beings? What could they talk about?”
He added: “It’s very physical and grounded in the universe, talking about bugs and dirt and trees and eating. Later when they start talking about feelings, it’s not normally how you would write this type of scene, with a one word-dialogue. So the challenge was to see how much you can say with one word back and forth.”
