There are directors whose films challenge a viewer to do little more than observe passively from the comfort of their theater seat, and then there are provocateurs who’s work creeps under the skin, pervading both one’s dreams and waking life, until it has touched the soul in a way that is irreversible.
Jagten (The Hunt), the breathtaking latest film from Danish auteur Thomas Vinterberg does exactly that. Featuring a tour de force from superstar Mads Mikkelsen and a visual style that represents the high water mark for a master filmmaker whose been working in his chosen medium for almost 25 years, the Dogme 95 founder’s exploration of accusation and tragedy in a small town is an emotional and often devastating triumph.
On a characteristically sun drenched Los Angeles morning in late November, I met up with Vinterberg to discuss his unforgettable new film, and let me just say, the Scandinavian dynamo, as famous for his unflinching honestly as he is for his curious intellect, piercing blue eyes, and thick head of sandy brown hair, did not disappoint. Save for a mention of his children and of course, his enviable resume, one would think he was newly out of film school – such is in his enthusiasm for his craft and curiosity about the world around him. In fact, the only hard part was keeping up!
You’ve dealt with Jagten’s controversial topic before, but certainly not from this angle… (Vinterberg’s Cannes Grand Jury Prize Winning 1998 film, Festen (The Celebration) tackled the issue of child molestation from the point of view of a grown man seeking justice for the atrocities that he and his sister suffered as children at the hands of their father). How did Jagten come to you?
“All the way back in 2001, it knocked on my door. There was this child psychologist that I didn’t know who essentially lived on the same street (as me), and he said, Did you do Festen? I said, Yes… and he said, There’s another film you have to do as well!”
He gave me this huge stack of files and, at first, I actually didn’t read them because there were so many cases and (I had dealt with a lot of people approaching me) who wanted their family tragedies explored. But like 6 or 7 years later, I read it and was disturbed by it and moved by it; just spellbound by this material. I thought his idea of wanting me to do the antithesis of Festen was interesting.
“I called Tobias (Lindholm, Borgen creator and Vinterberg’s co-writer) and said, Do you find this interesting? He said, Hell yeah! And we started writing. We actually wanted to make it in America at first, but that lasted about 10 minutes, because I called my agent and he said, You’ll never be able to convince a bank (to finance the film) with this topic in America! I’m actually glad that happened though because we ended up doing a very local film and I think one of the advantages of Jagten is that it is very local, though featuring a very universal topic.”
You mention that this is a universal topic, and sadly, it most certainly is… as well as one that speaks to the darker side of the human condition. Did you have to take much dramatic license when adapting these cases or was the crux of the story there?
“We changed the (screenplay) from the real stories in the sense that in many of the cases, the kindergarten sent out a letter to the grown-ups saying, If your children have wet the bed or get headaches, there’s a good chance that they have suffered (through something traumatic). Then suddenly 20 or so kids are being questioned about molestation, then it becomes, Well, someone couldn’t have acted alone… and then 40 people are imprisoned. In the Norwegian case that I studied most, 40 people were imprisoned, including the sheriff.”
Were you at all apprehensive about representing this very real, but potentially dangerous side of the coin?
“Obviously we have to acknowledge that some kids are being abused and also we have to acknowledge the danger of making a movie like this because I guess child molesters can hide behind the claim that children do lie.”
“But we have very conveniently relied on everything children say to be true for many years. My problem with that is that the children in these cases become the victims again because they go to these interrogations or gynecologists, and they see their mother cry, their father fighting – and the perfect illusion that something bad happened to them appears in front of them. As a child you can’t protect yourself from that and it becomes what they call added or implanted memory. These kids grow up with the same demons as those who actually were molested because ironically, they are abused by well-meaning grown-ups and by the system.”
“Again, the child is the loser and I just thought, We can’t do either or! We can’t do black and white! We have to point and say both sides, or we have to include all arguments. I know it’s very dangerous, especially for some kids that they may be called liars when they were not, but we did tell that story and I think we have to include the whole picture. I felt a little responsible after having said A in the 90’s to also say B as well.”
Do you think there is a bias against men who work with young children?
“Certainly, but what scares me even more is the following: this Supreme Court judge (in Denmark) who, since 1987 has worked with innocently accused men and women to try to get attention for these cases, but (he’s had) no success. He (told me), no one has ever wanted to listen to him and he wanted to call me and thank me because now it’s become public agenda thanks to this movie. I said, Why do you think they wanted to listen now? He (responded), Well, you’ve got Madds Mikkelson and everybody loves him! Very often the guys I represent are either ugly or unsympathetic, but that doesn’t make them criminals.”
“That for me was so scary! It talks about discrimination of socially incapable people. I’ll admit, a lot of (these people) look pitiful, but it’s so frightening that this goes all the way back to the witch hunts. There’s a lot of discrimination in our minds that isn’t necessarily sex discrimination, but look good discrimination. You have to be socially capable not to be punished (in society) and I think that is really frightening.”
It is frightening, and the fact that you are willing to explore this topic so unflinchingly seems brave, but also very Danish/Scandinavian. Your people have a way of embracing and accepting fatalism without growing despondent over it… like the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson – they never attempt to hide the darker aspects of life, but there’s still a stylish beauty and an eternal hope to regain innocence. What are your thoughts on that?
“We actually thought a lot about Hans Christian Anderson when making this film. We spoke about this story as if it was the loss of innocence. All the naked, happy people in the beginning, the threat comes into the society and then it all turns to dark, but then there’s some warmth at the end anyway. I guess it’s part of our tradition in Scandinavia. We have a tendency to portray the darkness and it actually becomes our way of portraying love in a weird way. There’s an honesty about it, but there’s also a bleakness to it.”
I take it you derive great pride from being a part of that artistic heritage?
“Actually, when I watch a lot of the independent movies at festivals now, there’s almost an automatic bleakness which I’m not so fond of. I’m not proud of being part of that because it feels contrived. The original Scandinavian dark tale I’m a big fan of, but this tendency to exploit the tragedy of human beings as a ticket to the film festivals makes me a little worried actually and I want to separate from that.”
“But then again, if you look at a film like (Austrian filmmaker, Michael Haneke’s 2012 Oscar-Winning film) Amour, it’s such a masterly crafted film that it totally separates from that. It has to do with the quality of the film and who is crafting it. We have a saying in Denmark: If you say the name if a troll it vanishes.”
“If you talk about the problems they get smaller or heal. I think Americans – at least Californians – are different sometimes. They’d rather not talk about things, which is very foreign to me. But I’m inspired by being here sometimes because (Americans) like to talk about the good things and create optimism in whatever (they) do. I’m generalizing of course, but it is still inspiring. “
Did you write the the part of Lucas specifically for Mads?
“I’ve followed him from the beginning, and I think he’s grown into an absolutely fantastic actor. He’s always been a huge talent but he’s become such a devoted, intelligent, handsome, strong performer, so I’ve always wanted to work with him.”
“I did have to write the script with someone else in mind though, because he wanted to read the script before saying yes. Normally in Denmark, I have the luxury of offering parts to people that have not been written yet. But he was too much of a star for that. So I wrote it for Robert De Niro and Mads hoping that he would do it.”
De Niro and Mikkelsen: two tough, onscreen dynamos, but certainly each with their own style…
“Lucas was more like a young De Niro in The Deerhunter at first: a man of few words, a strong independent blacksmith. But then when Madds came onboard, we thought it was interesting to try another part of his register, another part of his abilities and reverse that. That’s why we changed it like a month before shooting it.”
Did he show you aspects of the character that you had not thought of while writing?
“I do a lot of rehearsals and (during those sessions) a lot of stuff came out. That’s how I work. I try to make 3 dimensional characters and that’s what he does as well. It was hard work because he constantly challenged the character, but that’s great and I love it.”
“I think (Mad’s) softness really moved me. Suddenly a scene like the one where Lucas has a battle with his ex wife on the phone becomes key to his life. There’s something very sad about it and quite Scandinavian about it. There are a lot of soft men and strong women.”
The love interest, the relationship with his son… was that all there in the script?
“That was all there but Lucas was not a schoolteacher and he wasn’t taking so much shit from people. But he also wasn’t head butting people. The church scene where he hits his friend came a week before shooting as Mads and I (explored the character further). Another scene that came out during shooting was the last scene with him and (Annika Wedderkopp, who plays Klara) where he carries her over the lines in the floor because she was so amazing as an actress that I wanted to give that character more of an arc.”
“The process of (filmmaking) is about being open all the time; acknowledging your problem – like, this character doesn’t have an end – and being open to opportunities: there’s lines on the floor, there’s room in the schedule – let’s try something!”
The look of the film is so gorgeous, like pictures of a passion play on stain glass… a bit different from the terms you laid out in the Dogme 95 Manifesto with Lars Von Trier almost 20 years ago, yet both this film and his (2011 film) Melancholia, use style to convey truth. Can you talk about why you chose to do that?
“The first thing we talked about was, Should we do it as a Dogme movie? The whole idea of Dogme back then was to make something very truthful, but then it became fashionable like a 90’s outfit that has come back in style, which I thought seemed stylized and not very truthful. So we decided to create our own new version of (the Dogme style) making it vibrate as truthful as possible. We tried to create a feeling with the camera that sometimes it was too early, sometimes too late. You don’t see everything like a documentary.”
“We looked at (Bergman’s) Fanny and Alexander and some of the old Scandinavian classics. Then we talked about the blue and the dark, the black but with cracks of orange. I did a film (in 2010) called Submarino, which was entirely blue- it’s the darkest film I’ve ever done. Here we wanted the other part of the color scale. That’s why the church became so important. It’s very orange- warm and embracing.”
“The church is the place where you shouldn’t be able to throw people out. Mads is being ostracized but you can’t do that in the church. That’s why it made sense to have everything happening in there.”
Speaking of Dogme 95… It has been such an influential movement in filmmaking, as you mentioned, that it’s almost become too trendy. Yet it is also responsible for some really interesting work, for instance, the Mumblecore Movement, which I think is, in many ways, a direct offshoot of it? Do you enjoy those films?
“I have to be honest. I haven’t seen too many of them, because I have too many children. But I always meet people who say, You’ve changed things, or I started filmmaking because of you. And that’s a huge thing I’m real proud of obviously. If you can make situations, characters, movies that stay with people, (than) you’ve created life, in all humbleness. Very often that doesn’t happen, but if just something stays with someone, I think that is the finest thing an artist can achieve. These become part for our public communal family and we can relate to them and that’s as good as it gets.”
As the co-parent of Dogme 95, can you enjoy films like The Hunger Games or these Marvel pics?
“My problem with The Hunger Games is that it claims to have a moral agenda and it’s sleazily commercial. I rather like the films that are upfront and honestly commercial. It’s the kind of thing I have to tell my children when they see it so they actually understand that it’s not about good and evil. They are just being exploited to buy tickets. Whereas films about a superhero that show the budget on the poster- I buy that and I dig that. I love Jennifer Lawrence though, whatever she does.”
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