Like Minds

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1. #001

   Cinematographer Nigel Bluck said of the film: "Like Minds was an extremely visual script, so there were many opportunities to experiment in making the photography striking. We went for something dark, with physiological tension as its foundation, but with a lower contrast across the whole film, based on naturalism yet with a high elegance, heading toward something less predictable. We set out to deal with fear realistically, where the story required it, but without sensationalism. In part we adopted a more classical approach, imposed by the fact that these boys live in a beautiful world. This is the English public school system, conservative, traditional: the architecture says everything. It particularly feeds Tom's (Tom Sturridge, playing Nigel Colbie) fantasy world, so we avoided a more modern approach and preferred the classical, restrained and understated. Elegant."

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2. #002

   This is Kate Maberly's first nude scene. As of May 2024, it remains her only one.

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3. #003

   With its wintry locations and ancient stone buildings, England was reserved for the shooting locations of much of the narrative in which Alex (Eddie Redmayne) recalls, at the behest of Sally Rowe (Toni Collette), his schoolboy relationship with Nigel (Tom Sturridge).

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4. #004

   The film's post-production was done in Australia; its editing was by Mark Warner, sound design by Andrew Plain and the musical score by Carlo Giacco, and it was split between Sydney in New South Wales and Adelaide in South Australia.

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5. #005

   Production designer Steven Jones-Evans said of the film: "Our approach to the story was to understate the violence, never to represent it graphically. We wanted the film to have an ominous undercurrent, a kind of eeriness, that moves through the cracks of the film rather than being overt or showy. This is not a slasher film, it is more psychological, and we had to find a way to represent that intent. So part of the logic feeding the design and the photography was to imply violence or threat rather than represent it graphically. Similarly, we chose motifs and designs that would heighten the psychological threat in the film. We did not want everything to be clear or revealed, so we often used large amounts of black in the frame to conceal and to give a threat or an impression of threat. Many of the sets had a tunnel-like structure; Nigel's secret room beneath the morgue, the police cell and the school corridors. These were used to increase unease or to evoke feelings of being trapped. Susan's dismembered body was shot either in detail, for example a hand tied to a shovel, or through dirty glass, that is, rarely openly… We also played with the idea of contrasts, parallel to the psychopath's extreme hypocrisy, and considered the fact that they can be very normal one moment and extremely violent the next, or quite charming one moment and cold and ruthless the next. Throughout the film you are led to believe that Alex is a normal middle-class boy, but in fact he turns out to be a psychopath. We contrasted the old world of the boarding school with the clean, modern fluorescent-lit world of the police cell and the interrogation room. Similarly, we contrasted the beauty and elegance of the old architecture with the ugliness of violence. We also wanted the film to have an almost crystalline beauty, to be fragile in most of its images, and to give the feeling that everything could crack or shatter at any moment."

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6. #006

   This debut was the screenwriter Gregory Read's first screenplay for a feature film.

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7. #007

   The alternative title for 'Like Minds', 'Murderous Intent' (2006), had been used twice recently, just as it had been used at exactly two-decade intervals in the twenty years immediately before this film [see: Murderous Intent (1985) and Murderous Intent (1995) (TV Movie)].

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8. #008

   Two Australian actors took significant roles in this United Kingdom-Australia co-production. Toni Collette and Richard Roxburgh play the forensic psychologist Sally Rowe and the police inspector Martin McKenzie, respectively.

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9. #009

   Richard Roxburgh, the actor playing Inspector Martin McKenzie, said of the film: "Like Minds is a film about an extremely dark and disturbing relationship between a pair of adolescents who enter into a dark pact to take lives and push boundaries. It is in a way a deal with the devil, and it has disastrous and ugly consequences. Inspector McKenzie is called in to investigate this series of brutal murders at their school. McKenzie is a really instinctive policeman and apparently right. But like many policemen he has a rather dark soul himself. He also had a relationship with Toni Collette's character (Sally Rowe) in the past, so it was a difficult event for him when she turned up as the forensic scientist in his investigation. I found the script really well constructed. It is creative storytelling, and at the same time it is frightening and very dark."

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10. #010

    Patrick Malahide, the actor playing Dr. Forbes's headmaster, said of the film: "Dr. Forbes is the headmaster of the school where the two boys are students. What is interesting about Forbes is that he initially appears to be a bad man but then you realise there is more to it than that. You also see the public face of the headmaster, who is also the father of Alex, one of the boys suspected of the murder. So the story shows both the public mask and the private anguish. The man's role is the struggle between doing the right thing and worrying about his son. From my point of view that makes him very interesting to play… When playing the villain I always like to get behind the mask. On the face of it Dr. Forbes is an extremely unsympathetic man. He has probably contributed to Alex being a psychopath out of touch with reality, but at the same time he is trying to make amends; because of the boy's mother's death he sees it as a duty to do the best for his son. He gets everything wrong, but that does not make him such a broken man, and that is the area I find interesting: the man's obvious humanity."

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11. #011

    The Australian actors Toni Collette and Richard Roxburgh collaborated on leading roles in the Australian television crime drama miniseries 'Blue Murder: Killer Cop' (2017) about a decade later. The pair also did voice work on the Australian CGI animated film 'Blinky Bill the Movie' (2015), and both appeared in the episode 'R vs Mohammed' (2012) of the Australian series 'Rake'.

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12. #012

    Cinematographer Nigel Bluck commented: "In Adelaide [in South Australia] we were shooting a series of exterior scenes in the middle of summer on forty-degree days, evoking the depths of winter in the English Midlands. Adelaide is one of Australia's driest cities because it borders almost on the Outback, so for some locations this was a difficult decision."

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13. #013

    Producer Jonathan Shteinman and writer-director Gregory Read realised that making the story in English fitted the film's setting perfectly: public schools, gentlemen's clubs and medieval mythological-historical references. Piers Tempest served as the producer on the England side of the production, while the Australian Carol Hughes was the third producer, steering the production between the two countries.

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14. #014

    Film investment for the Australian-British co-production of 'Like Minds' was provided by Film Finance Corporation Australia Limited, the South Australian Film Corporation, the Australian Film Commission, Stamen Constructions Pty Ltd, Designer Graphics International Pty Ltd, Screen Yorkshire Limited, Bluewater Pictures Pty Ltd and Gunpowder Films Limited.

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15. #015

    The division between shooting this film in England and in Australia was in fact not so neat. Some scenes and sets were inevitably split between the countries, and the challenges faced by Nigel Bluck's cinematography and Steven Jones-Evans's production design departments were considerable. And that is not even to mention the weather between the different northern and southern hemispheres and the corresponding continuity of light and season.

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16. #016

    Despite the difficulties, cinematographer Nigel Bluck was particularly struck by the atmosphere provided by many of the locations in England. He said: "The Yorkshire landscape was wonderful. The simplicity of the leafless trees and the soft colours, the soft, low English light, the classical stone architecture and the atmosphere of snow were perfect for the mood we were trying to create in the film."

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