How Ariana Greenblatt & Adam Driver Bonded During 65 With Almost No Dialogue
If you weren't aware going in that "65" hailed from the co-writers of "A Quiet Place," you'd pick up on the parallels quickly enough. There are grieving parents; an emotional story about family; a father figure and a surrogate daughter who often communicate non-verbally; and a whole lot of scary creatures itching to hunt down and kill the heroes. The big difference? This time, the creatures aren't blind aliens with super-sensitive hearing. They're a bunch of dinosaurs who all look and act like the Sharptooth from "The Land Before Time," be they tall as a house or tiny as a (still rather large) mouse.
"Forget anything you know about trophic dynamics and population control — this forest is all-murder, all the time," to quote Sarah Bea Milner's "65" review for /Film.
As the only survivors of a space expedition with the misfortune of crash-landing in this deadly prehistoric setting, it falls to Mills (Adam Driver) and Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) to navigate these murder-dinos and various other dangers (hot water geysers, quicksand pits, and arthropods who really don't respect personal boundaries). Not helping matters, the duo literally don't speak the same language ... and wouldn't you know it, any translator doohickeys Mills had on their ship were destroyed during the crash.
"It was definitely an interesting concept when I first found out about that, but [during] filming, it became really natural," Greenblatt told Comic Book Resources. Continuing, Greenblatt said that she and Driver became quite good at interpreting one another's body language over the course of production:
"Really learning how to communicate what you're thinking and what you're feeling, just by your eyes and how you move your body is incredibly, like, cool and fun to experiment with. Adam and I got to understand each other on a different level because of that."
A look is worth a thousand words
Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt's characters are admittedly thinly-drawn in "65," so much so what personality they have comes almost completely from the actors. Still, while their onscreen relationship might feel like a pale imitation of similar ones in other survival adventures (and not just "Jurassic Park," either), Driver and Greenblatt did their part to develop a working chemistry, and it shows in the film. Here's how Greenblatt described the duo's bond:
"Let's say we're both freezing, and we're both over it, and we just want to get some food and go home. We can look at each other for two seconds and know that's how we're feeling. It's a whole different language really, and communicating with your eyes is so special. I'm really happy I got to exercise that."
Their connection not only wound up being the glue that holds "65" together, but it also came into play in a major way during post-production. In a separate interview with SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar+), writers-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods revealed they added some key moments to the film during additional photography, many of which Beck admitted were among their "personal favorites" from the entire movie. That included a highly emotional yet mostly wordless sequence that cements Mills as the Joel to Koa's Ellie. (Yes, like almost everyone else on the planet, I've been watching "The Last of Us.")
"That's a scene where you almost could just set up the cameras and let Adam and Ariana just perform," Beck noted. That's basically what he and Woods did, too, and it absolutely works. "65" itself, sadly, is no "A Quiet Place: Dinosaur Edition" quality-wise, but in moments like this one, you can see how it could have been.
"65" is now playing in theaters.