Sink
Brett Michael Innes
Uitgewer: Tafelberg
ISBN: 9780624081340
Authors on their new books: Brett Michael Innes on Sink
You wrote the book Rachel weeping, the background to the film Sink (now published as a book by NB Publishers). What inspired you to write this story in the first place?
The story grew with me over time, but was birthed when I read a portion of Jewish Scripture that is also repeated in the Christian Bible from the prophet Jeremiah. The passage reads, “A voice was heard in Ramah. Lamentation, weeping, great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” These words left me with a visual of a mother weeping over the body of her deceased child, and became the foundation on which the story was built.
It was only last year, after we had filmed Sink, that I researched the origins of this passage, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was written to the Jewish people when they were exiles in Babylon, immigrants in a land that was not their own. The synergy of it all only serves to confirm that this is a story that wants to be told.
Why is the title of the movie Sink?
The film was financed by kykNET and was 70% Afrikaans, so we needed an Afrikaans title. “Rachel weeping” doesn’t translate well, and we felt that the word “sink” was a great reflection of the emotional state of the characters. It was an added bonus that the word means the same in both English and Afrikaans.
Can you tell the story in a few sentences, without giving away the most important plot twists?
Sink tells the story of Rachel, a nurse from Mozambique employed as a domestic worker in Johannesburg, who is forced to make a painful decision after her daughter dies while under the care of her South African employers: quit her job, which means her visa, income and means to support her parents back home, or continue working for those responsible for her loss. She decides to stay, and the story explores how three lives are drastically influenced by one horrible accident.
Is this story Rachel’s story, or the couple’s she works for – or is this a story about everywoman, and South African society in general?
This is a story both of individuals and of South Africa in general. On a microscale level, it is about both Rachel and her employers, the Jordaan family. On a macroscale level, it is about the class system in post-apartheid South Africa, one where foreign nationals from neighbouring countries seek work as cleaners and car guards in the homes of wealthy South Africans. The thing that makes the narrative universal is the shared understanding of loss we have, something that a person from any class can identify with. What makes the narrative, and thus the individual voices of Rachel, Michelle and Chris, specific, is the South African context in which their lives are set.
Did you ever think that the book you wrote would be made into a movie? You are a filmmaker anyway, but the story started out in book form, did it not? Please give us some background on how the movie was born.
It was always my intention that this would become a film, and I actually wrote the first draft of the screenplay before writing the novel. I like to use the screenplay as a skeleton on which to build a novel, and find that the two mediums serve to strengthen each other. The editors of both the script and the novel helped refine the story into what it is today, helping me see what worked better for screen and what worked better for page.
You wrote the story of the houseworker, but you are not unsympathetic toward the white couple. What can be done about white privilege – or all the societal privileges held in place in South African society? Or is this not what your book / the movie is about?
I think the story doesn’t shy away from the sensitive topics that come up when dealing with societal imbalances in South Africa, but it addresses them in a way that inspires empathy instead of pointing fingers. A surface-level approach would be to demonise the wealthy, white couple, and place the poor, black domestic worker on a pedestal, drawing very defined lines of good and evil. I don’t believe that life is like this, and I’m much more drawn to characters and narratives that show the shades of morality rather than the extreme and unrealistic edges. When we choose to look for the weakness in a hero and the virtue in a villain, we set out on a journey of discovery, one that inevitably shows us their point of view.
White privilege is a big part of the story of Sink, but, while the story unpacks a lot of what this is, it is not the focal point. Rather, the South African privilege structure is a frame within which the story of the loss of a child can be contextualised. Something that I am also very quick to point out, is that Rachel’s employers could have very easily been Zulu or Xhosa. The maid-madam dynamic is as present in contemporary black culture as it is with Afrikaans or English South Africans, but I chose to make the Jordaans white as it provided me with a familiar framework from which to create.
Sink explores how three people from vastly different backgrounds come to terms with loss and find a way to see one other through their pain. But is Sink not about the swimming pool and how we are all sinking deeper and deeper into the water?
The choice of the title is to do with the water connection in the narrative, as well as the emotional state that all the characters are in. It is a limbo of pain and circumstance, a place of entrapment.
What do you think is the importance of a movie script printed in book form?
As a screenwriter I love reading other scripts to see how other professionals write, but I don’t see much value for it on a general level. If I wasn’t in the film industry, I doubt I would read scripts. I’m assuming you're talking about actual scripts that are printed into books, and not adaptations of movies into books.
Can Sink be read as something like a novel, even though it is a film turned into a book (which started out as a book ...)?
The novel stands on its own two feet, and readers will find it to be a different experience to the film. I go much deeper into the thought life of the characters, and have many moments in the book that did not make it to the screen. There is also a prologue and an epilogue that give the reader insight into where Rachel came from, and what happens to her after the last scene of the film.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on another drama which will be a lot harsher than Sink in both tone and content. The script is almost complete, and I will, as I did with Sink, begin working on the novel once the screenplay is done.