Kristen talks to the Seattle Times for 'The Chronology of Water'

For most of the world, the first time they were introduced to actor Kristen Stewart was when she starred in the Washington-shot and -set “Twilight” film franchise in which she played a teenager who falls in love with an immortal vampire. Though her breakout role likely holds an immortal place in the minds of audiences who think of her and the region, she’s now reintroducing herself as Kristen Stewart the filmmaker via an acclaimed debut feature with deep local roots of its own.

The film is “The Chronology of Water,” an outstanding, one-of-a-kind adaptation of the memoir of the same name by the equally outstanding Oregon writer Lidia Yuknavitch. An evocative, slippery film that defies standard narrative structure and linear time, it takes us through the days of Yuknavitch’s life growing up in Washington state, her abusive father abruptly moving her family to Florida, initially escaping to college in Texas and eventually returning to the Pacific Northwest to finish school at the University of Oregon. It’s in Eugene where Yuknavitch began to discover her desire to write stories all her own. 

“The Chronology of Water,” which is being released through the new locally tied film distributor The Forge, similarly represents a key moment for Stewart in finding her voice. After “Twilight,” she worked alongside a wide range of incisive filmmakers, such as PNW indie favorite Kelly Reichardt on her delicate drama “Certain Women” and Olivier Assayas on the ghostly thriller “Personal Shopper.” She hungered to direct a film of her own, though, and has spent eight years attempting to make that first feature be “The Chronology of Water.” Now that it’s here, she’s proud of her work, which she feels was as fitting a debut as she could ever dream of. 

“Am I still shocked that it is here? Uh, yeah!” Stewart said. “That’s totally what the movie is about. That’s why it had to be my first movie because it’s about being allowed to say something. … It’s about reverse thievery, it’s about stealing back words.”

A key step in this stealing back, after she’d written and visualized much of the film in her mind, involved Stewart determining where she would shoot it. Though much of the story is set in Washington and Oregon, it was primarily shot in Latvia in 2024. Stewart felt the country best suited the film she was trying to make, as many of the locations in the Pacific Northwest have moved past the era that she was hoping to capture. 

“When we scouted Latvia, it was like it lived in this time warp, and the movie exists out of time. It’s all the right colors, and if you looked in little crevasses, and you found the right slivers of this environment, it totally evoked what it felt like to read the book and delve into her memories of these places,” Stewart said. “In real life, in Eugene and Portland and Washington, those places don’t look the same.”

Some elements of the environment didn’t quite capture the authentic Pacific Northwest Stewart was looking for. In one critical scene following a shattering loss, she’d hoped it would occur in a downpour. The solution? Lean on Yuknavitch as played by a great Imogen Poots.

“The weather had to come from Imogen. She just had to create this storm out from the middle of herself,” Stewart said. “We were not in a rainstorm … and I was really bummed about that, but you give and you take.”

That giving and taking was something that extended to how Stewart explored Yuknavitch’s past. Much of the film feels conjured from memory, as if we’re glimpsing old home movies. More than anything, Stewart said she wanted the memories to feel “distant and striking but with massive gaps” that give the experience an elliptical effect. Though she had some of this planned out, she said a key part of working with her “incredible” cinematographer Corey C. Waters was about being open to inspiration as it came to them.

“When I started hitting the ground running with Corey, everything started finding itself,” Stewart said. “All of these striking images that I had dreamed of for years and years were besting themselves or reinventing themselves or landing perfectly and precisely on their mark and satisfying the ever-living (expletive) out of me.”   

One of the key moments that the film lands on its mark is when we meet the iconic writer Ken Kesey (played by an excellent Jim Belushi) who helps give Yuknavitch the confidence to begin writing. Stewart said she’s had Kesey-esque directors come into her life and support her at key points. 

“Olivier Assayas has always been, like, ‘you are a filmmaker,’ and it’s because we’ve worked together and he doesn’t believe in this mythological creature that is the director,” Stewart said. “And also Pablo Larraín (who worked with Stewart on “Spencer”). I have both of their voices in certain times when I need them ringing in my ear. There was just space that they created around me to be purely visible.”

Stewart said she, too, wants to not center herself as a director and provide space for her crew.

“Your imagination is cool, but it’s never going to be as full and vivid as the world around you and your reaction to it. That includes your team,” Stewart said. “We’re doing this all together. The seed of the idea comes from one person, but it’s the entire ecosystem that makes it happen, unless you’re some kind of narcissistic, narrow-minded idiot who’s making movies we’ve all seen before.”

So now that she has made a movie nobody has seen before, what’s next? She isn’t giving up acting and is, among multiple upcoming roles, set to star in the vampire movie “Flesh of the Gods” from “Mandy” director Panos Cosmatos. However, it was the experience of making “The Chronology of Water” that showed her that the thing she loves more than anything is directing.

“I absolutely love being an actor, but it has led me here. This is where I want to be. Because the movie was on such a precarious path for so long, stepping off the boat onto dry, solid ground, and being happier than I’ve ever been, it’s not about achieving anything; it’s about being proven right that, yes, that was kind of brutalizing, but it’s all I want to do,” Stewart said. “It could have been something that I worked so hard for and then went, ‘I never want to do that again.’ Then who would I be? But now I know more than I’ve ever known. … I feel like I’m on fire.”

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