Writer and director Chris Durlacher on Septimius Severus and how to tell his story.
As a director, writer and producer, you have covered a wide range of subjects. What is it that attracted you to this
project?
I'm always looking for gripping characters. Septimius Severus, the Roman Emperor who led this Roman Invasion, is one of those
personalities who leap out of history. He was clever and forgiving, but also misguided and murderous. He was utterly ruthless but in
the end was undone by love.
It's always a need to get to know a character better that draws me into the story and I really wanted to find out about Severus. I also sensed he could show me another side to the story of ancient Rome - one that's surprisingly modern. Severus was an African who ruled Rome. It turns out that two thousand years ago the world's only superpower could be arrogant and overbearing, but also multicultural and open.
Meanwhile, in this story, the Brits are the freedom fighters in the hills. Severus fully expected to trample them into defeat only to find himself fighting ghosts and his entire brilliant life, in which he'd triumphed all over the known world, unravelled here in Britain. It's a story that has everything. That's what attracted me to it.
Did having extensive experience of both drama and documentary make combining the two in this way a natural choice of style for
you?
It was always the plan to mix documentary and drama in this programme. This is a really good way to bring out the emotional intensity
of the life story of Severus and the big history of Roman Britain. Certainly I feel very comfortable moving between these two forms
and I think they work very well together. The drama gives the documentary emotion and the documentary reminds us that this is a real
story and that it happened here.
What do think drama sequences add to a film about history?
There are many sides to every story that are difficult to reveal with a strictly documentary approach. What did people feel? Very
rarely have the great figures of history left precise records of what they thought deep inside. Actually, when they do leave records
behind they are mostly self-serving and a poor guide to what actually happened. So as a documentary maker I shy away from saying what
people really thought. I can present the facts, but sometimes that's not enough. Of course, there are very many clues, eyewitness
reports etc, and from these I can make powerful and authentic dramatic scenes that put flesh on the factual skeleton.
Also, by putting people into a story it reminds us that even in the ancient past, people were still like us. Even if their Gods were different and their values were different, emotionally, we can still understand them, their need for respect, love, their fears and hopes.
Had you ever worked with animators before?
I have worked with animators before. The process has it's own particular technical challenges but otherwise it's like every other
form of filmmaking. My job as director is to have a very clear vision of the story I'm telling and how I want to tell it. Working
with animators I have to hand over more of the realisation of that vision, which means finding colleagues who I can really trust, but
in principle its the same as working with a cameraman or an editor or an actor.
People like me are called film-makers but most of us don't really make anything, we find other people who will do that for us. Film-making is a collaboration and that's one of the things I enjoy most about it.
Where did the dialogue for the dramatic sequences come from?
The dialogue was all adapted from Roman sources. Two of them were written by contemporaries of Severus, one of whom, a Senator turned
historian called Dio Cassisus, knew Severus quite well. Dio Cassisus seems to have been both fascinated by and terrified of Severus.
Severus did write an autobiography, but it was lost many years ago. Thankfully, it is believed to have been the main source for a
Roman biography of him called the Historia Augusta, which was another important source to me.
And then there are various accounts from around this period in which the Romans describe the British - often in not very complimentary terms. One old Roman letter talks about the 'Brittunculi', which means 'wretched little Brits'. But the Romans also had a strange respect for the simple and fearless Barbarian Brits, who of course were neither wretched nor simple - and that was Severus's problem.
