The film director Danny Boyle’s decision to walk away from directing the latest James Bond movie has freed him to devote his attention to “real heroes … rather than fictional ones”, he said, by planning a nationwide commemoration to mark the centenary of Armistice Day in November.
Speaking at the launch of the project, Boyle said that backing out of the 25th Bond film in August, throwing the immediate future of the franchise into disarray, had “certainly helped” when it came to working on his remembrance project, which will invite people to gather on beaches across Britain to create portraits of the dead of the first world war before the images are washed away by the tide for the final time.
“I was absolutely, desperately keen to do this,” said Boyle, whose previous act of national commemoration was the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. “My involvement in it would have been slightly compromised by [the Bond] workload. But I was still very, very keen to do it, because it’s a real, proper privilege to do something like this where you hope to connect with everybody in the country in some way … rather than through your normal channels like the box office.”
The Oscar-winning director said it would be “quite wrong” to elaborate at the armistice launch on his reasons for pulling out of Bond – ascribed at the time to “artistic differences” – though he hinted he might say more in future. “We are talking about real heroes today, rather than fictional ones.”
In Boyle’s project, Pages of the Sea, the culmination of four years of national commemorations of the war, giant portraits of casualties of the war will be carved by sand artists on to beaches around the UK at low tide, while members of the public will be invited to create their own silhouettes in the sand of people important to them, before the tide sweeps the beaches clean again.
The poet Carol Ann Duffy has written an “absolutely amazing, wonderful” poem for the event, on 11 November, he said, which he hopes will be read by individuals or groups at the informal ceremonies.
Boyle said he had chosen beaches because they were “dramatic, unruly, democratic” places where “nobody rules but the tide”. “The tide goes out and with a bunch of volunteers we would create a huge portrait, and when the tide returns – we’re all at the mercy of the tides – it would be washed away. So it’s a way of saying a final goodbye, and a tremulous thank you for all the people who sacrificed so much.”
He was speaking on the beach in Folkestone, which was the port of departure for an estimated 8 million British and Canadian troops during the war. Among them was the poet Wilfred Owen, whose giant portrait will be traced on the sand in Folkestone, one of 12 beaches already confirmed as taking part. They include Murlough beach in county Down, Waulkmill Bay in Mainland, Orkney, and Swansea, Formby and Weymouth beaches, though the organisers said they hoped up to 30 locations would be involved.
The director said the project was very different to working on the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, but that that had been “one of the transforming things of my life”.
“I want this to go to all corners of the country and I hope as many volunteers will turn up and bring the same spirit. [The opening ceremony] taught me a lesson about how much people want to contribute if they are given a chance.”
When he began working on the project, Boyle said, he had assumed that the centenary of the armistice would mark “the final line in the sand, the final goodbye” for remembrance of the first world war. “At some point the nation moves on,” he said.
“But I have changed, I have to say. I think we should go on [remembering]. When you make that personal connection ... and you see their faces and hear their backgrounds, when you see them in colour, if feels new. It feels timeless. I felt that connection to them. It felt like it would be wrong to forget them.”