INTERVIEW LARS VON TRIER
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Lars von Trier’s happy ending » CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
my life. Do the fi lm yourself, you fucking idiot! If you are so goddamn clever, why the fuck don’t you do the fi lm yourself?’” It is three years now since Zentropa (the outfi t
he formed with Peter Aalbaek Jensen in the early 1990s) sold 50% of its shares to Nordisk. How does it feel for a fi ery, independent company to be in the embrace of a Scandinavian major? “I can give you a small metaphor. We have
a cannon out here at Zentropa and it was aimed at Nordisk Film when we were not together. It is still aimed at Nordisk after it bought half of us,” he states. “Let’s see what happens. Of course, it’s not fun to sell half of your shares. The only thing I told Nordisk was that if this thing [the merger] takes away a millimetre of my freedom, then I’m out of here… I have made a very well-behaved fi lm but I don’t think Nordisk is to blame for that.” Von Trier points out that when Zentropa
was founded, the idea behind it was for him to produce his own fi lms. Gradually, the company expanded. However, he makes it clear that if his own creative freedom were threatened, he would have no compunc- tions about leaving the company. “I’m here to make the fi lms I do. If I can’t do them, I wouldn’t cry about Zentropa or the [other] directors. It’s not important for me to have a big production company. Not at all.” Von Trier famously does not like to travel.
But now Zentropa is setting up offi ces across Europe, and he is making his own fi lms abroad (Melancholia was shot in Sweden). “One of the biggest problems in fi lm-
making is that the funding which was go- ing to a fi lm before is now going to an area. This, of course, is what we live on and it is how I make fi lms, but I’m sorry to say this tends to make fi lm production much more diffi cult than it has to be,” he says. “Regional funding is getting absurdly diffi cult. The in- tentions were good when they started but it has become more like an industry that has to be supported to keep the wheels rolling… I’m not there to keep the wheels rolling. I’m there to make a fi lm.” Why, then, doesn’t he return to his low-
budget Dogme roots? “The problem for me is that small-scale fi lms don’t work fi nancial- ly; I have an audience but it’s spread all over the world. It’s not very big but it is spread. That means the fi lm has to have some kind of scale and has to be in English.” In Melancholia, von Trier gets to destroy
the world on screen. “That, of course, is great fun.” However, this is not a conventional dis- aster movie. “Story-wise, you can compare it to Titanic in the sense that every body knows [the ship] is going down, it’s just a matter of how. There is not the matter of who will survive because nobody survives.” The challenge, he adds, is to start with
the catastrophe at the beginning and then to work back to it. One inspiration was Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood (adapted from the Tru- man Capote book about young drifters who
■ 32 Screen International in Berlin February 11, 2011 Peter Aalbaek Jensen
Magna faci tion um san ut ad ati ng eug ait ulla fac lis am ex erat exe dolo rperit ulla
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Lars von Trier
murder a farmer and his family in Kansas). “You know where every thing is going… you tell these characters, ‘Please don’t do it.’” Another point of reference was The Deer
Hunter (“one of my absolute favourites”) which, like Melancholia, features a big wed- ding scene early on. Von Trier did not have the budget for
Holly wood-style special effects. “But we be- lieve there is more horror in seeing a face watching the end of the world than in show- ing [the disaster itself ].”
Calm response Melancholia features two sisters with very different temperaments (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg). Both share certain traits of von Trier himself. “The fi lm is a lit- tle bit based on a fact I learnt from my thera- pist that a melancholic person, in the event of a great catastrophe, would be much more calm than a normal person, who would typi- cally panic.” Last year in Berlin, von Trier met Martin
Scorsese. The two directors discussed a pos- sible follow-up to Taxi Driver along the lines of The Five Obstructions. The Danish direc- tor was surprised by Scorsese’s courtesy. “He turned out to be a gentleman.” What was he expecting? “I don’t know. Maybe you could see him a little bit as a gangster! But he was certainly not — not on the surface anyway. We’re still discussing this project. Let’s see what happens,” he says with a laugh.
‘I am here to make the films I do. If I can’t do them, I wouldn’t cry
Melancholia The Dane will not reveal much about the
details. “The idea behind this Obstructions thing is you give each other tasks that will move you into an area where you have been reluctant to go yourself. Under protest, you do that and then you enlarge your repertoire.” Ask von Trier about his relationship with
about Zentropa’ Lars von Trier
business partner Aalbaek Jensen and he smiles. “You can have a meeting with Peter where he talks for an hour and you don’t un- derstand anything of what he is saying, and then he has bought something with your money. He’s talked you into doing something completely ridiculous… he’ll call me and say, ‘Congratulations, now you own a ship!’” The director acknowledges he is also a lit-
tle weary with the controversy which seems to trail him. “The fi lms that I like would al- ways divide an audience,” he says, pointing out it is only “logical” that his work does the same. However, when he has worked hard for two years to make a movie and then re- viewers attack it, he does not much enjoy the experience. “Critics have a tendency to be a little hateful,” he observes. “It isn’t pleasant.” Film-making, he adds, is “tough, tough
work and then some idiot in Cannes tells you [a movie] really stinks. I say, ‘Well, I didn’t force you to see it. The only thing I can promise is that I have done my best. I can’t do any better. And we can’t change the fi lm now. When it is running, it is fi nished. It might be good for you to say this is a piece of shit, but it doesn’t help me.’”
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Christian Geisnaes
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