The romantic drama stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as law-breaking lovers in Texas during the '70s. The couple are separated when Affleck's character Bob Muldoon is jailed after taking the rap when Mara's Ruth Guthrie shoots a police officer. Ruth, pregnant at the time of Bob's arrest, is forced to raise their child alone.
© PA Images / Evan Agostini/AP
Ain't Them Bodies Saints premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January before screening at Cannes, where critics were quick to draw comparisons between Lowery's film and Malick's early works Badlands and Days of Heaven.
Lowery told Digital Spy that he didn't have Malick in mind when setting out to make Saints, although he acknowledged the narrative overlap between his film and the legendary director's acclaimed debut Badlands.
"On the one hand it's great to be compared with a great filmmaker, on the other hand it does get frustrating because I wasn't really thinking much about Terrence Malick when we made the movie," he explained.
"I certainly am aware that we're picking up where Badlands leaves off on a narrative level. I guess you can't really turn a camera on outside in Texas without getting Terrence Malick comparisons.
"There's only one scene in the entire film while we were shooting when I said, 'This is getting a bit Terrence Malick.' It's the scene where Rooney's character is giving birth and that was the one time we mentioned him on set.
"The rest of the time we were thinking of other filmmakers and hoping that people wouldn't notice us ripping them off!"
Lowery revealed that he originally conceived Ain't Them Bodies Saints as a more straight-forward action movie about a man breaking out of jail to reunite with his wife.
As the story evolved (an early, darker draft of the script saw all of the main characters die), Lowery began to think about who could play his lovers on the lam.
"I instantly wanted to meet with Casey Affleck because I've always been a fan of his and thought he'd be terrific in this part, he really would fit this character," he said.
"It was important to me that anybody in the movie blended into the time period. I knew from Assassination of Jesse James that he could fit into a period piece quite well and not stick out like a sore thumb."
The Texas-born filmmaker first met Rooney Mara before her breakthrough movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opened, and confessed that he had no idea what she looked like.
"That was enormously appealing because I love the idea of a movie star who nobody knows what they're like or who they really are. Rooney has an anonymity to her, at least at that point - she still does to a large degree," he noted.
Ben Foster takes on a supporting role as Patrick Wheeler, the police officer who is shot by Ruth and later develops a romantic interest in her. The part offered Foster the opportunity to sidestep away from the explosive roles for which's he best known.
"Naturally Ben's a very intense person, he gravitates towards conflict I would say. At the same time he's an incredible gentleman and a kind soul, when I first met him that was what stuck out to me," Lowery commented.
"I was seeing things about him as a person that I'd never seen on screen before. I was instantly very keen on getting him into this part and letting him flex those muscles.
"The character went from being a nice guy who was a pacifist to being a well-rounded character. That's all thanks to Ben. It was a treat to get him to lower his defences."
The defining image of the film - used across trailers and posters - arguably derives from early on in which Bob and Ruth are caught by the police and have to be physically pulled apart.
Lowery spoke of the importance of this scene in the film, saying: "That was the scene that had to carry the weight of the movie, that is the last time you're going to see them together for the rest of the film and you're seeing them torn asunder.
"It was always going to be that one shot, capturing the pain of separation in a single image. It has become the key image of the film, which I'm very pleased with."
Lowery is planning to reteam with Affleck next year on the sci-fi movie To Be Two, about transporting people by creating a copy of the passenger in new locations and vaporising the original. The filmmaker promised a genre picture that will be low tech.
"It's more a character-driven sci-fi, there's one special effect and it will be a very simple one," he said.
Ain't Them Bodies Saints is showing in US cinemas now, and will open in the UK on Friday, September 6.
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via All - Digital Spy - Entertainment and Media News
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