Feb. 26--In Kris Swanberg's quiet and absorbing "Empire Builder," a young mother stares out the window of her Lake Shore Drive high-rise, the sound of traffic and street noise from below gradually becoming louder and overwhelming, as though mimicking the restless emotions hiding behind the placid look on her face.
Later, when she has decamped with her baby to an isolated cabin in rural Montana (her husband will be joining her later), there she is, this time gazing out at the tranquil landscape around her, the same look on her face as before. What is she thinking? There's something unsettled inside that head. Maybe she doesn't know what it is herself.
As played by the terrifically watchable Kate Lyn Sheil ("House of Cards," "Listen Up Philip"), this unreadable quality is intentional. (The film screens next week at Victory Gardens in a collaboration with Chicago Filmmakers.)
The character is meant to be a bit of blank slate, Swanberg said when we spoke, allowing you to project your own assumptions and feelings onto this woman who clearly loves her little boy but is profoundly ambivalent about the way her life has been upended -- her identity subsumed -- by this delightful baby (played by Swanberg's then 10-month-old son, Jude).
Her only other source of company is a good-looking if enigmatic carpenter (Bill Ross IV) hired to work on the cabin. He is just as quiet as she is. Just as unreadable. Their muted flirtation has an ease to it that is tinged with something slightly off.
Thematically, there is a clear thread between "Empire Builder" (released in 2012) and Swanberg's latest feature, "Unexpected," which debuted at Sundance last month and stars Cobie Smulders as a Chicago high school teacher who finds out she is pregnant and has rumblings of uncertainty about how impending motherhood will change her life. The film picked up strong reviews and was sold to a distributor, kicking into high gear the career of this Chicago-based director. Just before Sundance, she signed with an agent.
When we caught up last week, Swanberg was in Los Angeles. "I'm here taking meetings with studios and production companies, to get to know them and see if they will give me any kind of job. Or, once I have my next (project lined up), maybe I'll develop with them or get financing."
This is the standard process when a filmmaker (or screenwriter or actor) suddenly gains some notice, and if that person doesn't live in LA, those meetings almost always include a question about relocating.
"Believe me," Swanberg said, "every single meeting that I'm going on it's, 'When you are moving to LA?' It's more of an assumption -- as if we're not in LA because we haven't had the opportunity up until now."
"We" would include her husband, the filmmaker Joe Swanberg, whose well-regarded "Digging for Fire" was also at Sundance this year.
"It's really fun being in LA right now when it's 72 degrees and sunny," she said. "But we want to stay in Chicago. We own our house. And I'll tell you what, having a kid in LA just sounds like a nightmare. I just want him to have a nice Midwestern upbringing." Jude is now 4. "It's nice to come to LA and do all our industry business and then go back home and write. And being directors, we don't have to be here unless we're taking meetings or casting, and then we can come for a couple of weeks and then go home.
"But we have a community of friends in Chicago who are not filmmakers, and we value that. It kind of keeps us grounded. It's fun to come to LA and see all our filmmaker friends" -- in fact, she was staying with director Aaron Katz, whose film "Land Ho!" was singled out at the Independent Spirit Awards last weekend -- "but it's nice to have that separation."
"Empire Builder," which Swanberg shot for $6,000, was a story that began percolating when good friend Kate Johnston had a baby. (Johnston is credited as a co-writer with Swanberg, though the dialogue itself is improvised.)
"A lot of that stuff" -- about the somewhat rocky shift into full-time, all-consuming motherhood -- "was coming from her. And then when I went through it, a lot of that stuff was coming from me. I was really depressed at the time," she said with a wry laugh.
"I had had this ice cream company in Chicago called Nice Cream and it got shut down because the state had -- and still does -- this weird requirement for a dairy license that you have to have factory-grade equipment." Though the business was financially viable (the ice cream was available at Whole Foods), the stipulations from the state became cost-prohibitive. So she shut down the business altogether.
"We had just bought a house in Lincoln Square before that happened, so we found ourselves with this house and this baby and then we dropped down to one income. The thing that made the most sense was for Joe to work a lot, and for me to stay home with the baby. At the time his filmmaking career had a lot more potential than mine did for making money.
"So that's what we did. It made a lot of practical sense. But as time went on I found myself feeling really trapped by it. And really guilty because I loved my son, of course, but I was unhappy staying at home and not having another thing. I sort of felt like I had an identity crisis. So I went to make 'Empire Builder,' and that's kind of where the story and the feeling of that came from."
"Unexpected," which she said will likely be in theaters in June or July, was made as an indie film with commercial potential. "Empire Builder," though, is resolutely an art film and defies easy categorization.
"I wanted the movie to be a little scary and have a suspenseful feel," she said. Moving the setting out of Chicago "came from what I was feeling, to kind of escape and throw it all away and just leave! Which I think a lot of people who are going through any level of depression feel like: 'I wish I could just shed everything and go somewhere else.'"
The Montana scenes were filmed at a cabin that has been in her husband's family for generations. It hasn't been upgraded since the 1930s. There is no running water or electricity. The film is a drama but it has a sly sense of humor about the back-to-basics element, as this young woman chops wood and washes the windows while her baby is ... somewhere. Watching it you think, "She wouldn't fetishize this if she had to do it day in, day out. And who is watching the kid?"
"It's a totally hard way to live!" Swanberg said. "The hipster culture of canning your vegetables and making your own baby food and all of that stuff, I agree, it is fetishized.
"But it also sounds really satisfying."
Kris Swanberg's "Empire Builder" screens Thursday (March 5) at Victory Gardens Theater, along with Swanberg's short film "Baby Mary," which is about "a little girl on the West Side of Chicago who's walking home from school who finds a infant who is neglected and decides to kidnap her and take her home." Swanberg will be at the screening for a post-show Q Go to chicagofilmmakers.org.
Digital filmmaking
The Chicago Digital Media Production Fund is accepting applications through March 31. Grants will go projects that address social issues and demonstrate "a strong capacity to have a powerful community impact, while maintaining quality production values and aesthetics." This year's grants will be drawn from $100,000 available in funding. (Applicants can request as much as $20,000.) Go to chicagofilmmakers.org/cf/content/cdmpf-grant-guidelines.
Bugs on film
The 32nd Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign takes place Saturday and will feature screenings of the animated TV series "Growing up Creepie" and the 2005 SyFy TV movie "Mansquito," a monster movie about a serial killer-turned-man-sized mosquito. Admission is free. Go to to life.illinois.edu/entomology/egsa/ifff.html.
Annoyance Film Night
The longtime sketch and improv hub Annoyance Theatre is launching a monthly film night starting in March. with short scripted and documentary films "that run the gamut (topic-wise) from space heroes to stroke survivors." The lineup on Sunday features "The Video Transmissions of the Frequently Captured Buck Pirate" and "McTucky Fried High." Go to theannoyance.com.
Irish cinema
The Chicago Irish Film Festival runs this weekend and next and includes a screening of "Poison Pen," about a novelist forced to write for a trashy celebrity rag. The filmmakers will be present. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Go to musicboxtheatre.com.
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@NinaMetzNews
