“To think, in terms of telling a story in 60 seconds, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been making pictures, this is a real workout” says legendary director Martin Scorsese smiling. “It’s probably even the most difficult thing to do.”
The acclaimed Killers Of The Flower Moon director first lent his inimitable lens to the house of CHANEL for its high octane BLEU DE CHANEL campaign starring French actor Gaspard Ulliel in 2010. Thirteen years later, the 80-year-old filmmaker has returned to do it again, this time starring Timothée Chalamet in a cinematic exploration of the delicate dance between an actor’s scripted version of his life, and the multi-faceted man he truly is.
This study of fame—and a call to embrace one’s true essence and forge one’s own path—is not dissimilar from Scorsese’s 2010 narrative. But as the American director notes, the fame landscape looks completely different now. That is to say there is a gulf between the celebrity experiences between Ulliel and Chalamet.
“The world has changed. There’s another aspect to celebrity in a way. Which is even more extreme than 10 or 15 years ago,” says Scorsese.
While Scorsese took three-and-a-half hours to tell the story of the Osage citizens in Killers Of The Flower Moon, he had all but 60 seconds to tell this one. Shot in black and white to resemble the reels of content we see of actors as celebrities, flashes of blue symbolise Chalamet’s character finding elements of his true self in his daily happenings. In the final scene, his character in plunged into a sea of blue driving home the campaign’s message: “Find your blue, find yourself.”
“BLEU DE CHANEL has just the right amount of conviction and intensity to represent a man who refuses to be typecast,” says Olivier Polge, CHANEL’s In-House Perfumer-Creator. “A man who dismisses facades and who is not afraid to let vulnerability show through his tough, disarming exterior.”
In an Australian exclusive, go behind-the-scenes with Scorsese as he discusses the making of the new BLUE DE CHANEL campaign.
The campaign’s full film will release on October 16.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.