Buried, which opens in limited release Friday following its Fantastic Fest premiere Thursday, takes place entirely inside a wooden box 2 feet beneath the ground. For 94 minutes, Reynolds’ character, Paul Conroy — a civilian truck driver in Iraq — fights to stay alive armed with little more than a cellphone and a Zippo.

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s single-setting classic Lifeboat, Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés made it his mission to milk maximum dramatic tension from minimal physical space.

“The size of a story cannot be measured in square feet and inches,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. “Instead, it is dependent on one thing only: the story itself and whether it captures our attention and makes us want to know what’s going to happen next.”

Cortés breaks down his R-rated movie Buried into its constituent parts:

Coffin

As the literal container within which Buried takes place, the coffin became a character unto itself. Says Cortés: “We reinvented something as basic as an old wooden box crack by crack, plank by plank, making it slightly older, oxidizing the nails, creating textures … inventing a story.”

Seven coffins were used in the production. “One coffin had a specially reinforced design,” says Cortés, “so Ryan could push as hard as he could and the pressure of thousands of tons of sand was totally believable.”

Ryan Reynolds, left, and director Rodrigo Cortés discuss a scene on the set of Buried.

Actor

Reynolds, star of 2011’s Green Lantern, liked Chris Sparling’s Buried script as a writing exercise but thought the story was unfilmable until Cortés convinced him otherwise.

“The key thing was to get the spectators into the confused and tortured head of Paul Conroy,” Cortés says, “and make them feel the dense dampness of his sweat, the suffocating heat, the lack of oxygen, the sand lacerating and eroding his skin, the rough, splintered wood, the flattened-down nails, rusty and dangerous.”

Reynolds acted in near-total blackness for hours at a time, recalls Cortés. “We shot in a medium-size soundstage surrounded by big black curtains that helped control any rebound of the sound and gave Ryan the delicate intimacy he needed to go through the whole catalog of human emotions: anguish, panic, desperation, calm, resignation, violence, denial, terror, hope, sadness, suffering, black comedy, exasperation, pain, fatigue. Ryan searched for the truth in each and every shot.

Cellphone

“If there were no cellphone there wouldn’t be a movie,” says Sparling, author of the Buried screenplay. “It’s Paul’s only hope and serves as a sort of prism into the character. He uses the device to the fullest.”

The phone’s built-in video camera plays a key role in the plot, but Sparling wasn’t overly picky about brand or model. “It could be any somewhat modern cellphone that can handle video and pictures,” he says.

Fading battery life contributed “ticking clock” urgency to the drama while erratic reception became a matter of life or death. “When the phone suddenly goes dead in the middle of a conversation,” Sparling says, “that just adds to the madness.”

Buried concept art pictures Ryan Reynolds inside a coffin with his trusty Zippy.
Images courtesy Lionsgate

Lighter

Playing a supporting role to the cellphone is Paul’s trusty Zippo lighter, selected by Cortés from hundreds of models. “The devil is in the details,” he says. “We thought very deeply about every object. Each decision helps people know more about Ryan’s character or about the tangibility of his surrounding nightmare.”

Buried writer Sparling realizes the lighter raises a Science 101 question: “Why would you light up a lighter if you need oxygen?” he mused. “But the thing is, he’s scared as hell! Would you want to sit in complete darkness? If I had a lighter, I would light it. You could use your cellphone for light but then you’re going to waste battery doing that.”

Buried opens in limited release Friday.

Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire.

See Also:

• Win a Chance to Watch Buried From Inside a Casket

Authors: Hugh Hart

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