The internationally-acclaimed director of the seven-time Academy Award nominated box-office hit Shine, Scott Hicks is known as a filmmaker with an ability to make films that not only move, but inspire. And this fall, Hicks has returned to themes of personal transformation amid family upheaval in the film The Boy are Back, a film that tells the story of a father and two sons left alone to fend for themselves after their wife and mother unexpectedly passes away.

"It's a very personal story about people trying to reconnect with each another and about all these ingredients—love, loss, humor—which make up our everyday existence," says Hicks. "As a father, I couldn't help but identify with the situations and emotional conflicts, which made it very close to home."

Thanks to a Bay Area publicist, I got the chance to sit down with Hicks while he was in town for the Mill Valley Film Festival and talk more about the true story he brought to life in the film, the grieving process, the hereafter, what it means to be a father, and love stories that reach beyond the constraints of standard romance.

HJ: The film is very much about grief and death but also about family and parenting, both of which have been covered in various different ways and various different films throughout the years, including your own film several years ago, No Reservations. When you came across this story, what about it made you think, this is a film I want to add to that collection; this is a film that has something new to offer that is worth making?

SH: It was the authenticity of it. Yes, it was based on a memoir by Simon Carr, but the screenplay caught that authentic sense of particularly how a father sort of struggles to communicate with both a six-year-old and fourteen-year-old. And I found that rang really true to me, and it was emotionally very powerful as well. So, for those reasons, I wanted to be involved. It actually predated No Reservations. It was 2004 when I first read it, and you know, got Clive involved. And then, for one reason or another, the film didn't happen right then, so I got an offer to make No Reservations and I made that and I think it was because the theme resonated. There was a similar idea in there.

HJ: In this journey of grieving that the film goes through, each character's experiences within that are very powerful. Do you have any memories of what you talked about when you were filming some of those pivotal scenes of the characters' grief? What were the discussions you had as you were trying to bring those scenes to life?

SH: I mean I talked very closely with Clive about those scenes, naturally. And in particular about how far to go in terms of Joe's expressions of grief. Because I felt it was really important, and Clive was of the same mind, that the audience understand that he is shattered by what's happened because he's then going to spend a great deal of the film holding those emotions in, either for the sake of his kids or because he's a guy, he's just got to get on with it. So, it was very important that we see how profoundly shattered he is by his wife's death. And we talked about the degree to go to, in the sense that there are a couple of scenes quite close together. The first is when he's telling his oldest son in England that his wife has died, and he really struggles not to reveal his distress because he doesn't want to burden his son. But we see nothing but his distress at this end of the phone. And that's followed by a scene just a short while later where he takes himself off out into the back of the hills and the trees outside, and he breaks down in this open field in a harrowing sort of way. And being able to show both of those elements—holding the grief in and then letting it out—was very important.

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