Set in Iraq, 'The Situation' Seeks Truth in Fiction

Director Philip Haas wanted to make a film about Iraq. (Shadow Distribution)

In director Philip Haas's new drama, "The Situation," Danish actress Connie Nielsen plays a journalist unafraid to root out stories in the midst of the Iraq war. Much like her character, Nielsen unflinchingly lambastes what she calls the "culpable indifference" of the public toward the conflict.

Nielsen's character, Anna Molyneux, is a freelance magazine writer based in Baghdad whose investigations into the suspicious deaths of several Iraqis lead to a dangerous intersection among battling local politicians, frustrated American authorities and civilians struggling for survival. Anna was based, in part, on screenwriter Wendell Steavenson, a female journalist who reported from Iraq before penning "The Situation," which is the first fictional American feature set in the ongoing war. (See review on Page 32.)

This isn't Nielsen's first film about a current war, though. After her breakout role in 2000's "Gladiator," the 41-year-old actress starred in her first Danish film, "Brothers" (2004), playing the wife of a U.N.-mission soldier in Afghanistan. Choosing another tough role about the consequences of war seems like a statement, but Nielsen denies it.

"I don't think it's a political conviction. I think it's something very different," she says. "It seems like it's very schizophrenic to me: You turn on the news today and it starts with, invariably with, 'Today, 200 people were killed in a marketplace in Baghdad, 80 people were killed in Najaf' . . . and yet people are acting like it's not happening, like soldiers are not being killed or being maimed and ruined for life every day. It's as if people are almost willfully trying to ignore what's going on, and I just find that so bizarre and disheartening."

Her choice of roles, then, is an effort to remedy that. Finding balance between her work and personal life includes raising her teenage son while expecting a baby with her boyfriend, fellow Dane and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Her roles act as a sort of bridge, she says, between entertainment and "what's relevant to my reality." She adds, "If I don't participate in stuff that speaks directly to our reality, then I feel as if I'm going to go crazy."

The filmmakers, including director Haas and producer Liaquat Ahamed, were searching, too, for a story that mirrored current events.

Haas says, "For us, what was exciting was being able to make something that reflects the reality of Iraq and the Iraqi people, and at the same time to reflect on what it's doing to our country."

A documentary filmmaker whose previous forays into fiction include the 1995 drama "Angels and Insects," Haas had a choice to make regarding his Iraq film. Ahamed steps in to explain: "Fiction is sometimes a more accurate way of describing the truth than documentaries. There's only a limited amount of coverage you can do in documentaries . . . whereas fiction allows you a wider canvas, and it creates a sort of truth that has more immediacy."

Once Haas, Ahamed and co-producer Michael Sternberg decided on their subject, they needed someone to write it. Haas was adamant about not hiring a Hollywood screenwriter, fearing he'd get "the convention of a Hollywood movie, which is 'Let's make a film about the soldiers, or let's make a film about the battle of Fallujah.' "

So they went with a war correspondent. Haas says, "We found this article that [Steavenson] wrote, which was originally in Granta [magazine] . . . a very objective piece where she followed this young jihadi around Baghdad." The producers' interest was further piqued by Steavenson's collection of short stories set in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Steavenson didn't just write the script, though; she helped scout locations in Rabat, Morocco, where the film was shot. She also talked with the cast and crew about her experiences in Iraq, including meeting and falling in love with an Iraqi photographer herself.

Steavenson was one of several war correspondents Nielsen talked with to prepare for the role. She says of those conversations, "All in all, what I got . . . was the deep, deep sense of nervousness, a constant sense of futility at the same time, a constant sense of frustration that they can see daily what the people need, and yet it never seems to work out."

The actress says she also tried to capture Steavenson's emotional carriage while leaving out some of the writer's quirks: "She has a very British way of doing things -- she'll tell you things that are absolutely outrageous, but in that droll English way."

As for the director, Steavenson's guidance proved invaluable in surprising ways. Haas says, "When we were shooting the scene with the dancing girls, we got real prostitutes, which was not very difficult in Morocco -- they come to the hotel. Wendy, who's a fantastic person [and] a little bit on the blue stockings side . . . thought [the prostitutes] were a little too prim, so she gave them a little demonstration of how a proper Iraqi prostitute would dance."

Overall, Haas says, the filmmakers' intentions were to make something that reflected the way things are in Iraq. "The film is trying to do two things simultaneously, which is give you the sense of what it's like there and at the same time trying to move you and get an audience to come to grips with it."

Which is, in essence, what Nielsen was hoping for when she signed on as Anna: "If we don't try to talk about what's going on, then we're willfully ignoring it. It's a sort of culpable indifference. It's as if everyone's putting their head under the covers and ignoring it and instead talking about whether this or this celebrity is wearing underpants."