HARRINGTON, Que. -- Savvy filmmaker Richard Donner is in a hurry. So he talks fast. He has a medieval village to pillage and torch.

"Burn, baby, burn," Donner was saying Wednesday with a mischievous laugh during filming of his new adventure movie, Timeline. Paramount is expecting to release the movie next year, perhaps in the summer.

With his eager and mostly young ensemble cast -- led by emerging American star Paul Walker of The Fast And The Furious, and the English-Australian siren Frances O'Connor of Windtalkers, The Importance Of Being Earnest and A.I. -- Donner is shooting the Michael Crichton novel.

This is the story of an eccentric, contemporary archeologist who, with his band of naive students, passes through a wormhole in time to take up residence in 1357 France. The prof and his proteges drop in during a brutally violent conflict between French and English troops in the Bordeaux area.

The romanticized notions that the moderns hold about the medieval period quickly mutate into a nightmare. Timeline has ambitions beyond action.

"It touches something very archaic in one," says Lambert Wilson, who plays a French knight.

"This is not an action movie, per se," Donner says. He prefers "mystery and suspense thriller."

BRUTAL THEMES

"There are moments of action but they come out of real, honest situations. If it was just an action film, I wouldn't want to do it."

The brutal themes of the movie are at odds with the mood on set this gorgeous day. We're holed up on the Campbell farm, a bucolic setting near Harrington, a small town in the Laurentides region, two hours northwest of Montreal. Big puffs of clouds float over the lush, green farm.

Donner's set has miraculously been spared the smoke pollution that has spread out from the nine fires raging out of control further north at James Bay. Instead, he'll create his own fires today, under strict control. A fire brigade spent hours hosing down the woodlot near the village to keep it safe during the shoot.

Other than that, things look real. Donner would rather build something tactile -- such as the medieval village and its ancient manor house here at the Campbell farm, or the full-scale castle the production built and then destroyed on another Quebec location -- than create it using slick computer effects.

"You swear it's real," Donner says of the sets created by production designer Daniel Dorrance and the rest of his team. "These guys are fabulous. They are geniuses. You're so limited with the CGI. I've never done it -- and I don't want to do it."

Timeline will have limited computer effects, but only in a few scenes. The size of the armies in battle will be CGI-enhanced, Donner says. But too many CGI effects and movies look fake, both to the actors and the audiences watching, the director of Superman and the four Lethal Weapon movies says.

"I guess I'm going to have to drop out sometime -- because it's all going to be that (CGI effects)," Donner says.

He turned 72 during the Timeline shoot, which kicked off in the Montreal suburb of St-Hubert on April 2. He figures he is too old to change his methodical, realistic style of filmmaking.

Meanwhile, he's having fun in Quebec, keeping his ensemble cast and solid, veteran crew loose with practical jokes.

"All of us are like one big, happy family," says first-time Canadian actor Rossif Sutherland, another son of Donald Sutherland and half-brother to Kiefer. "Everything surprised me. I was overwhelmed and somewhat confused. But I wasn't that nervous."

Generous co-stars eased his confusion, he says.

Sutherland says he is also impressed with the ambitions of the story. "They call it a time travel film but it's mostly about people, the notion of destiny and the notion of history."

Irascible Irish comic and character actor Billy Connolly, who plays the chief archaeologist and professor, agrees: "It's actually a wee bit more complex than a time-travel thing," Connolly says. "It's a pretty nice idea."

Unlike some of his co-stars, Connolly says he has refused to read the Crichton novel. He never reads books that lead to movies he's in. "I find it just gets in the way. Either you'll be led astray or you'll imitate the guy in the book."

'STIMULATING'

Connolly is intrigued that his character instantly sheds his romantic idealism about the medieval era as soon as he gets there.

"I hate this era. I'm deeply disappointed. It smells like s--t and it's brutal beyond belief."

By contrast, the working conditions on set are great, Connolly says. Co-star O'Connor agrees.

"Generally, it's been fantastic," she says. "Dick Donner makes it fun. He does a lot of improvisation and I love doing that, so it's kind of stimulating. And it's a nice group of people, too. There are not a lot of egos. It's very relaxed."

No kidding it's relaxed! Co-star Anna Friel, a feisty English sprite playing a 14th century French princess, needs a quick pee break before her interview sessions. The portable toilet is too far away, so she sneaks into one of the medieval-style village tents and relieves herself there before popping out to face reporters with a sheepish grin.

Other actors shrug it off. It's business-as-usual.

"It's been a good time," says Walker of the four-month shoot in Quebec, "although it gets hard, to be honest with you, after you've been away from home (L.A., in his case) for a long time. Because you start missing your family and friends and all that stuff.

"But this one has been really good. It's been a blast. We've all gotten along real well and Dick, he's fun to work with."

Just get out of the way when he's ready to burn the village.


More Artists