TL: I remember she asked me to go to Marburg a month or two weeks before. Just a month before to walk around, explore the town. She showed me the place that I’m staying in on the campus. She showed me the garden and everything. That’s how we started. She let me just spend time on my set. The first time when I went onto my set, I was like, “Wow.” And I called my friend right after, William Chang, who is the art director for Wong Kar-Wai’s films, and I said, “Wow, the set is really beautiful.” He said, “Can you show it to me? ” I said, “No.” 

IE: What was important was to be on the same page about what the film is about. I wouldn’t ever need to give advice to him on how to act. It’s a beautiful addition––the element of surprise––to what he brings into the scene. I try to create the physical environment, but also the human environment where it can freely develop. Our production designer, Imola Lang, I worked with her for quite awhile already for this [to make a] very boring professor home in a German university. It was a very tricky thing to make it very simple, but at the same time, serving as a life background for Tony. I think she gathered hundreds of closeups from Tony’s previous films just to learn his face, learn his being, and somehow to fit into this environment, to serve him in a very secret way.

TL: Ildikó used to give me a lot of space to play around. When I prepared for this character, I approached this character from the neuroscientist angle. I study, I try to convince myself that I’m a neuroscientist. After all the preparation work I did with neuroscience, plants, intelligence, stuff like that, I asked, “What else do I need to do for the character, the personality of this character or what? ” She said, “No, you don’t need to prepare anything. You just need to come here.” I think she wants me to feel for every scene. Maybe she wants some authentic, true feelings from that character.

AVC: Speaking of preparation, you’ve performed such a variety of roles throughout your career, including some that rely on very subtle performances like this one. Are there preparation methods you use for those quieter scenes? 

TL: No, I just approach it as I would if I was a neuroscientist. I try to convince myself to be a neuroscientist, and I study all the materials. There’s a lot of study because I still have to go to different universities to meet the real neuroscientists to do research. I have a lot of that kind of stuff inside me. I don’t know where, but somewhere, I just go into that character. I don’t need anything else to help me to act because you have all those things inside you, and you have a different mindset or maybe a different perspective when you look at trees or babies, or you have a different mindset than before you study all this knowledge.

AVC: There are three stories that make up Silent Friend, and each of them have a very distinct visual style. One is in black and white, one is a little bit more grainy like it was shot on film, and then we have the digital age of the 2020s. How did you decide to give each story its own look and aesthetic to build those different timelines out?

IE: The whole film is about exploring the modern human, having sensory experiences, and in cinema, what you have [is] sound and image. The texture of the film is important. The sound design is very important. It has a lot of the story. The only storyline which is really arcing through the film is the 2020 one; the silent friends are really Professor Wong and the old ginkgo tree. I just wanted to give a very direct sensory experience about the worldview of those people who were in that given episode. That’s why the 16mm color––with these very blurry, bright-colored patches, very similar to an Impressionist painting––fitted that worldview of the ’70s, which were all about experiences with your own senses in every sense, really in every territory of life.

What Grete discovers around the turn of the century is the structure of plants. That’s how she approaches natural science. She discovers in everyday, simple plants cosmic structures, and for that, the precision and richness of the 35mm and black and white was perfect because it’s not about the moment in the ’70s, [but] about these holy structures hidden in the plants. That sort of precision of the digital for 2020––these huge spaces, these huge windows––first separates Tony from the garden, which then slowly dissolves. It was just the right choice for 2020, a bit of the loneliness, being separated, and longing for connection.

AVC: What about the ginkgo tree intrigued you to pick that particular species to root your story in? 

IE: The ginkgo is an outsider like our human heroes, an outsider in an environment. It is not by chance. It’s called the Living Fossil. It mainly went extinct about six million years ago. It very much fitted these lonely souls, which are the human heroes of this film.

AVC: There’s a quiet sensuality to Silent Friend, including the project to pollinate the tree, but all three human characters experience some form of longing. How did you imbue the film with this subtle sensuality?

IE: It was meant to be an essential part of the film to show that part of life is not limited to humans. A flowering tree enjoys existence, enjoys being alive, enjoys being pollinated. Actually, you can, with sensors, see if a tree is pollinated—it reacts to pollination. The sexual and sensual beauty of life is not limited to humans. That was one of the very important layers of the film. Of course, humans are not excluded from that. We create a world through our sensory experiences.

AVC: As one of the masters of longing on camera, how do you prepare for scenes you know will be a little more tender or vulnerable?

TL: No, I never do any preparation before any scenes. I just go there, do it, and figure it out. This kind of silence is––I think it’s my first time doing that many silent scenes, but I think it’s a pretty different experience for me. I found this silence very powerful too, but at the same time, I feel very calm through all that silence. I don’t know why. When you know exactly who you are, and you are really inside a character, you don’t need anything. Everything just comes out naturally and in a default mode, so you won’t look blank in your eyes or [like] you don’t know what to do.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In Some Kind Of Heaven, Oppenheim also took his camera to Florida, filming at The Villages, the country’s largest retirement community. There he found misfits trying to settle into the busy social schedule, sustain their marital spark, or perhaps even find love in a kind of fantasyland where residents drive golf carts and hold high expectations for their golden years. In 2024, Oppenheim followed up Some Kind Of Heaven with the unexpected Spermworld, a look at various families searching for sperm donors through the internet instead of a lab. That same year, his series Ren Faire followed a dying king of America’s largest renaissance festival with a Succession-struggle to find his successor. Throughout the films and TV series, Oppenheim avoids traditional talking-head interviews and instead puts his audience in the spaces where his subjects live, observing them through their daily routine and giving them the space to talk to the camera (often in voiceover), as his stylish coverage takes over the screen. The audience feels the Florida heat sending retirees to the pool, the awkwardness of approaching a stranger from the internet to be one genetic half of a couple’s future child, and the self-mythologizing a potential royal successor dabbles in to create and sustain a fantasy. 

That same sensibility exists in The Python Hunt, where Robin looks at a number of teams on the hunt for the invasive species. There’s Toby, a Floridian writer with deep roots in the region who’s acting as a guide for Anne, an 80-something retiree who wants one more adventure before retreating back to her quiet life in her new state. The latter is one of the film’s most striking personalities, carrying a long knife at the ready should the occasion to kill a python arise. Then there’s the kindly San Franciscan, Richard, who hosts a big get-together for fellow snake hunters and seems equally driven by adventure and the chance to help the environment. Professional python hunter Jimbo and his daughter Shannon search for pythons together despite Jimbo’s disdain for the 1000 or so out-of-towners swooping in to kill snakes. Even though Jimbo can’t officially participate in the challenge, he does whip up interest in other local python-themed events, still cashing in on python season.

The subjects of The Python Hunt make for an intricate portrait of the different kinds of people who take on the daunting challenge of tracking down pythons in the dark, but it also counterbalances the state’s famous competition with a conflicting viewpoint: What if the snakes are not the only problem facing the Everglades? Briefly, the documentary explores the possibility that perhaps pesticides and human encroachment may have impacted local wildlife just as much as the theory that Hurricane Andrew knocked down a reptile dealer’s storage facility, setting hundreds of invasive snakes loose in the Everglades. The film doesn’t directly explore the xenophobic rhetoric from snake hunters, but the angry calls to protect the country from foreign invaders feels especially poignant given how much has politically changed in Florida in recent years. It’s a reminder that not all oddballs are harmless fun, and it’s an idea that Oppenheim has also featured in his earlier work, following subjects who could be just as cruel or inconsiderate as they could be charming. 

Driving through Alligator Alley, the roadway cutting through the Everglades from South to Central Florida, you can only see so much of the local wildlife from the safety of your speeding car. This is why works like The Python Hunt, Some Kind Of Heaven, Spermworld, and Ren Faire are so important. They bring audiences into specific spaces, tiny worlds that may or may not be in plain sight, in order to humanize the people who are relearning who they are in their retirement age, trying to start a family no matter the route, attempting to entertain us—all the people you might see interviewed on the morning news. By immersing viewers in their stories and postcard-perfect views of the Everglades, The Python Hunt is just as much a love letter to this strange 10-day event as it is to the Floridians who give the state its characters and the visitors who keep coming back year after year hoping to catch a big snake. 

You can count on one hand the Car Wash scenes where you don’t hear a Rose Royce song. Whether it’s over the loudspeaker or on the portable radio carried by portly employee Hippo (James Spinks), their tunes get airplay via the fictitious KGYS radio station, with actual DJs and radio personalities (including the late MTV VJ J.J. Jackson) spinning tunes and reading absurd news reports and PSAs. (“Remember: cancer cures smoking.”) I don’t know if it was Whitfield’s intention to come up with energetic funk tunes that could also be described as “bubbly,” but that’s what you get right out the gate when Car Wash begins. As the sun rises over L.A. and the staff begins trickling into work, the film starts off with “Righteous Rhythm,” where Lequeint “Duke” Jobe’s percolating bass forms a nasty, nimble groove with Victor Nix’s ferocious keyboards.

In fitting Blaxploitation-soundtrack fashion, most of the score has Rose Royce serving as an off-screen Greek chorus, musically commenting on what’s happening on screen. They provide pimpalicious theme music for the cane-wielding, smooth-talking preacher Daddy Rich (Richard Pryor) who rolls into the wash in his stretched ride. (“Here comes Daddy Rich in his millimousine / People come from everywhere when he’s on the scene,” sings Dickey.) This is also where we get the movie’s most musical-like moment: Rich’s testifying associates The Wilson Sisters (real-life sibling singers The Pointer Sisters) shut up a blaspheming revolutionary employee (Deep Cover director Bill Duke) with the piano-thumping finger-wagger “You Gotta Believe.”

The film also sees characters lip-synching two ballads that would become quiet-storm mainstays. Afro-sporting superhero wannabe T.C. (comedian Franklyn Ajaye) sings that please-baby-please slow jam “I Wanna Get Next To You” as he swoons over hard-to-get waitress Mona (Tracy Reed) at a nearby lunch spot. He spends most of the day trying to win radio-giveaway concert tickets for them, usually failing when someone or something prevents him from using the resident payphone. At one point, a wandering, lovesick prostitute (Lauren Jones) keeps the phone booth occupied, trying to contact a lover while singing “I’m Going Down”—a torchy, horn-heavy heartbreaker that would get successfully remade by Mary J. Blige 18 years later. Later in the film, she and Hippo barter a bathroom hookup (he gives up his precious radio for it) to the sounds of “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.”

Whitfield invited some session musicians from his Motown days to add more instrumental flavor, like guitar virtuoso Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin (from Motown’s longtime backing band The Funk Brothers), who brought his wah wah pedal and his waka-waka wizardry to several tracks. (He definitely brings some sinister string-picking to “Rich.”) Trombonist and arranger Paul Riser—another Funk Brother—led the orchestra for “Down” and other string-heavy numbers. 

With Car Wash, Whitfield got some old pros to help out an up-and-coming band and ultimately created one of the most relentlessly funky soundtracks to come out of the ’70s. It would go on to win the 1977 Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack Album. Also, like so many Blaxploitation soundtracks, its samples and breaks have been found in popular music ever since. (The Beastie Boys stripped this joint for parts on the classic Paul’s Boutique jam “Shake Your Rump.”) 

In fact, it would make sense if younger folks reading this only know the theme tune “Car Wash” because Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott sang it (as sea creatures!) in the 2004 CGI-animated flick Shark Tale. But we should always give props to the late, great Norman Whitfield for writing a working-class anthem that also ruled the disco dance floors—and for turning a young group of funksters into one of the baddest R&B groups of the era.

Next time: Two jazz legends provide righteous fight music for a pair of militant actioners.

But in her return to the world of Runway, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna goes for a much more black-and-white palette. Turns out, Miranda was right about everything: Andy’s eventual success as a journalist, Emily’s unsuitability for the magazine world, keeping Nigel (Stanley Tucci) by her side even if it meant stymying his career. The sequel further drives home that point by setting up not one of multiple billionaires who have either strung Miranda along or threatened to kill the magazine by a thousand budget cuts as the real foe, but Emily, the person who dared to gun directly for Miranda’s job. I’m not saying Emily would have been a good EIC—in fact, the film doesn’t bother to set up her skills or inadequacies one way or the other. But no matter what Andy’s peacemaking gesture at the end says, Emily is made out to be the villain simply for thinking she could do what Miranda’s done.

Jacob Oller: Because The Devil Wears Prada 2 takes place in a fairy tale world where benevolent rich divorcees save print—where even the nouveau riche are depicted as entertainingly ignorant foils to the Patagonia-clad scions of big business—the real villain has to be someone disconnected from this relatively grounded (but still silly) vision of journalism’s place in the economy. In this way, the sequel mirrors the original: The villain is Andy’s taste in men. This is not to say that there is a ton wrong with Peter, the cinematically useless and handsome high-end contractor played by Patrick Brammall, aside from being a waste of screentime. He’s nice enough, his social media presence passes muster, and he actually reads some of Andy’s journalistic work. But this last point is the problem (again, aside from being so, so boring). Andy says none of her other boyfriends ever read her writing, over two decades of cranking out stories for respected outlets. If the point of the first film was Andy finding some self-respect while figuring out her career ambitions and personal values, her continued romantic slumming with illiterates is a real backslide.

Saloni Gajjar: The real villain is whoever decided not to give Simone Ashley’s Amari more to do. I kid (kind of). Much like the original, this sequel gave Miranda and Emily more complexity than just “she’s the cutthroat foe,” even though it’s obviously what they’re largely like. The Devil Wears Prada 2 zooms out of the leading quartet to depict the broader picture of why the media industry is in decline since the last time we saw them. And it’s undeniable that a huge reason is how imprudent CEOs who perceive themselves as driven actually end up ruining the business—not just journalism, but a lot of creative fields. To paraphrase Miranda, they’re vendors and not visionaries. 

Perhaps I’m triggered by characters like Jay Ravitz (and his consultants), but to me, they are the Bad Guys at this moment in time. It’s not just because of the money-making goals they share, but because there’s no real attempt to find ways to support Runway and its writers/editors/employees. The only solution is to cut out everything that made it special. It’s then up to Andy to save the day because who else is going to do it? Is it wish fulfillment and fantasy that it works out for her and someone like Sasha Barnes agrees to help? Absolutely. Reality could never match up, but I found myself feeling oddly hopeful because Jay and Benji (and, yes, Emily to an extent) lost this round. 

Drew Gillis: Most of the billionaires in The Devil Wears Prada 2 don’t actually end up looking that bad. Of course there’s Sasha who ultimately saves the day, but Benji, the unholy mix of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, still ultimately was going to save the magazine. He was just going to do it at the expense of Miranda, which the movie wants us to believe is a bad thing, despite learning 20 years ago that she was often abusive as a person to work for. Here, we find her humbled, begging advertisers not to pull out and *gasp* hanging up her own coats. She can’t pop off in meetings that same way she used to, but still has to be reminded of this fact. She’s ultimately a person who’s both deeply set in her ways yet adaptable enough to survive; Miranda was seemingly fine with everyone else losing their jobs after Jay (the most asshole-ish of the billionaires) brought in his hatchet guys people. I’m ultimately not all that convinced that letting Miranda hold onto all that power is a net good. Even if she is uniquely talented, she’s not going to live forever, and I would hope that Runway can survive beyond her tenure. Billionaires are bad, obviously, but we need to hold the gerontocracy to account, too.