Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Blaðsíða 21

Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Blaðsíða 21
21 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 15 — 2012 Feature | Film the all boundaries and show that we could make it on the world stage. When we started to enjoy all this success, we became a little megalomaniac. And when the economy crumbled, we lost all our footing. We started to see ourselves through the eyes of foreigners, and based our self-image on how they ref lected on us. As if that was something that mattered when we had completely lost every- thing. When you shit yourself, you clean up, and take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror. You have to go through a process of self analy- sis; you can’t overcome a crisis by inspecting what everyone else thinks of you. It is not important. You have to find yourself, and build from there. I am not saying that a film can do that, in and of itself, but I want it to be a part of that process. That is why I wanted to tell a story that can bring us together and ref lects these values. Do you think people will view these two films together as a commentary on this era as we move on? I think it would probably be very interesting. I think it would be interesting to analyse what I was saying then, and what I am saying now, and how I have developed as a filmmaker during this time. I have changed since then. I was lot tougher back then. I think I have more for people today. I have more empathy. I hope that comes across. I am very proud of ‘The Sea’ and what I was trying to accomplish when I made it. Some people thought the film was making little of life in small towns, which is not at all what I had in mind. It was movie about people. I like to use a small town as a micro- cosm for society as a whole. This current movie is not just a movie about the Westman Islands, it is a movie about Iceland. A small town can be a great stage to examine a larger society. Three of your recent films (‘The Deep’, ‘The Sea’ and ‘White Night Wedding’) are based on plays. Your background is in stage acting, do you specifically look towards your background in theatre for stories? No I don’t really pursue it; these stories have just found me. Plays often have a stronger gallery of characters than movie scripts, but I have also made films based on novels and written my own scripts. In this case it had more to do with the way I approach the story. Although it is based on a play, we did a lot of original research on this project and based the script as much on the events that trans- pired as on the play. There are certain scenes that come directly from the play, but other scenes are recreations of documented events, television inter- views and so forth. I tried to stay true to the story, to the extent that it was possible. The Laughable Hardship Of Ólafur Darri We should talk about the role of (main actor) Ólafur Darri in this film. He gives an incredible performance. Yes, I could not have given the part to anyone else. He is a big actor, both figuratively and liter- ally, and he was just right for the part. He went through hell making this movie, and he knew that he would have to when he took the part. But it becomes rather ridiculous to talk about hardship when you are dealing with such an extraordinary feat. Even if you spend three weeks filming out at sea, and you are wet and cold the whole time, it is just laughable in comparison. Could you have made this movie in Hol- lywood, using union actors? I think that would have been very difficult. I don’t think we could even have gotten insurance for the production, the way we did it here, and what I had to do myself on the set, shooting scenes while swimming in the ocean a mile off shore to get the right angle for the shot, and taking shore in the cliffs in the surf like we did. You can’t really do that in a Hollywood production. This was a big and complex production. There are underwater scenes, we had to shoot in a sinking boat, and shoot way out in the ocean and there is a volcanic eruption. The budget would probably have been 30–40 mil- lion dollars if I were making this movie in Holly- wood. And I don’t think I would have gotten many actors to sign up for what we had to go through. This was very trying for Ólafur Darri at times, and there were moments when he felt like throwing in the towel, but that was never an option. He must be proud of his role in the movie? He is, and he has said as much to me. There came a point when he completely broke down and did not want to go on. It was a very difficult mo- ment to diffuse, because when you have pushed someone as far as they can go, and you keep on pushing, you are responsible for everything that happens after that. We talked then and I told him to think about the premiere, how satisfied he would be knowing that we took this all the way, and did not skip anything. He gave me a look, but then he kept going. He mentioned this to me after the premiere last night, how good that felt, know- ing that we never compromised. The only way to do the film properly was to give it everything. I could not bear the thought of cheating. We sank the boat and filmed inside while it was sinking. And we swam through the surf and into the cliffs to film the footage when he reached land. I didn’t have the budget to create that in CGI, and I don’t think the film would have resonated like it does if we had done that. I looked at the option of shooting certain scenes in a tank, using a green screen, the way ‘Titanic’ was shot, but it would have been impossible to make it look authentic, and I don’t think it would have passed muster with an Icelandic audience if it didn’t. So I decided we would just take the equipment and film it in the sea. We even had to swim with the cameras from the boat to where we shot the scene because there was no place to dock the boat. We had the search and rescue team standing by on the boat, and when we had set up, and it was time to shoot, the guy from the search and rescue team did not want to let us do it, naturally. He simply said it wouldn’t be possible to take land in the cliffs in these waves. I thought to myself, we can’t lose a whole day of shooting. We have all this equipment, and every- thing is set up and we don’t have the option to do it again. So, I told him I was going to do it anyway, and then I dove in. The waves threw me into the cliffs and out again, but I made it on the second try, and that was the shot we used in the film. At least I didn’t put anyone in a situation that I was not willing to take on myself. Let’s put it like that. What are you like as a director? Are you an actor’s director? I might not be the best person to answer that question, but I think that if you asked actors that I’ve worked with, they might describe me as such. My background is in acting, so I understand actors very well, and I understand what they need from me. Actors need to work from a premise. If the premise is not there, the smallest thing becomes very difficult. But I am also very preoccupied with the frame and the visual aspect. My father is a painter and my mother is a sculptor, and I come from a very visual environment, so the breakdown and the visual part of the shot is very important to me. It is not something that I want to leave it to the cinematographer. The Beckoning Of Hollywood Is the disaster genre something that has gotten a grip on you? I hear you are preparing to make a film about the 1996 Everest disaster [which claimed eight lives]? Well, that is a script that has been bouncing around for a long time. Stephen Daldry was as- signed to it, and then David Fincher was going to do it. And now it has ended up with me and the ball is rolling. I am going to meet with an actor next month, who has the star power to get a movie like this into production if he’s willing take on the part. If it happens, I want to shoot it here in Ice- land on Vatnajökull. You can’t really shoot on Ever- est, so the glacier will mostly have to stand in for Everest. Some directors would probably rather shoot on the beaches of Brazil, but if someone offers me Everest, I can’t say no. Being from Iceland, I enjoy grappling with the elements. I spend my summer vacations riding horses up in the highlands, which is probably the most difficult thing you can do for a summer vacation, riding horses for 12–14 hours. I can’t describe what it does to you. I am never as physically tired as when I return, but at the same time, I never feel as rested. You reconnect with yourself. Just man against nature. Maybe I am just that primitive. But I don’t really think about making films in terms of genres. I just choose to tell the stories that appeal to me at that time. I don’t want to limit my- self or make the same movie over and over again. There is a certain difference between the movies that you have made here in Iceland and the films you are directing in Hollywood. Your Icelandic productions are a lot more serious. This is a far more serious subject matter than say, ‘Contra- band.’ Yes, but I am very proud of ‘Contraband,’ espe- cially because it opened many doors for me. It is a thriller based on an established formula that you try to put your f lavour on. But just the fact that it did so well at the box office gave me an opportu- nity to do other things. And ‘2 Guns,’ although it is a very different film, and a lot more commercial. I will probably leave more of a mark on it, myself. It will be a lot more stylised and we are experiment- ing with a different form of narrative, and we’ll see how that works. Then comes ‘Everest,’ which is a very big movie, but still closer to the films I have been making here in Iceland. You just have to pay your dues, and hopefully I am moving in a direc- tion where I can select from a range of projects that I really want do. If ‘2 Guns’ does well, how established will you be as a director in Hollywood? I don’t really want to make any proclamation as to what I will be. But, if you can deliver a big project like this one on budget and on time, and the movie does good, you are likely to be in a very good place. There are different categories of direc- tors, and the A-list always get their first picks of scripts that they want to do, and obviously this is where everybody wants to be. But just by wrapping up shooting on ‘2 Guns,’ I establish more credibil- ity and move up a niche in the pecking order. One of my old acting coaches gave me good advice: “don’t think about the final destination— but love the journey.” That is something I take to heart. “ Björk was really the first Icelander to break the all boundaries and show that we could make it on the world stage. When we started to enjoy all this suc- cess, we became a little megalomaniac. And when the economy crumbled, we lost all our footing. We start- ed to see ourselves through the eyes of foreigners, and based our self-image on how they reflected on us.„ Yesterday I went to see Baltasar Kormákur's ‘Djúpið’ (“The Deep”), an exceptionally well made docudrama based on the true story of a burly fisherman and his miraculous six-hour swim to Heimaey island from a sinking ship in the winter of 1984. The event cost four men their lives, and Icelanders who remember the incident are split in their opinion about this tragic yet incredible story being made into a film. Icelandic filmmakers have been telling true stories about bad stuff in the past for decades. Most of them took place hundreds of years ago so nobody really cares about how historically accurate they are, as long as they're entertaining or artistically significant. In comparison to those medieval stories, Baltasar Kormákur's film deals with fairly recent events. The real-life fisherman portrayed in the movie (Guðlaugur Friðþórsson) is still alive and well, now in his early 50s. On top of that, he's made known that he is disgruntled about the making of the film. He has stated his opinion in the media and probably has many reasons for feeling the way he does. The public, however, isn't emotionally involved with the tragedy, apart from reading about it in newspapers some 26 years ago. I sense that those who are opposed to the project are so either out of respect for Guðlaugur or due to the fact that we're not really used to watching our recent nightmares on the silver screen. But the Icelandic film industry is constantly growing, and more films are getting made each year. I'm not going to make the dumb argument that screenwriters are facing a "shortage" of stories as a result, but different genres of film are finally being explored and the docudrama is just one of those genres. Of course somebody would want to make a film about what Guðlaugur went through. And "Djúpið" is a very good film. It's not entirely flawless, but the subject matter is treated with utmost respect and the visuals are stunning. I'm convinced that the film will pave the way for other magnificent true stories we'd all like to see as films. Icelanders are fascinated by the past, and the horror stories are no exception. Can anybody honestly say they didn't like "Sönn íslensk sakamál" (an Icelandic true-crime show that ran in the early ‘00s)? However, while Baltasar Kormákur is raising the bar in an already established genre, others genres are in their infant stage. A few weeks ago Reynir Lyngdal's second feature film, ‘Frost’ (“Frost”), was premiered. Despite having received mixed-to- negative reviews, the film itself is a small landmark in Icelandic film history, since it is "our" first attempt in the sci-fi thriller genre. Next month we also get an official grand opening of the "low budget ass-kicking martial arts" genre, when first time director Ingó Ingólfs premieres his long awaited Van Damme-esque action movie ‘Blóðhefnd’ (“Blood Vengeance”). For the last five years a lot of brave Icelandic filmmakers have been taking a lot of chances. Although the resulting films have been varying in quality, the industry will benefit artistically from those chances, and already has. What excites me the most is the opportunity to witness the birth of so many new genres in Icelandic cinema. On top of that, every month there seems to be a new, locally made film for us to enjoy. Or hate. Now we get a handful of thrillers each year, a few comedies, an animated film, a slasher film, a 3D adventure film, a bunch of in- teresting documentaries, and of course a few more "serious" films from the major players, just like the ones we all grew up on. Variety is the key to success and if you won't like ‘Djúpið,’ maybe you'll love next month's ‘Blóðhefnd.’ Baltasar Kormákur BIO: Baltasar Kormákur (1966) is an Icelandic actor, theatre and film director, and film pro- ducer. He has directed films like 101 Reykjavík, The Sea and Jar City, and won the Crystal Globe award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2007 for Jar City, based on a novel by the same name by author Arnaldur Indriðason. Baltasar Kormákur also made the films A Little Trip to Heaven (Julia Stiles, Forest Whitaker), and the box-hit Contraband (Mark Wahlberg, Giovanni Ribisi), and his film 2 Guns (Mark Wahlberg, Denzel Washington) is scheduled for release in 2013. The Deep is his latest movie. Filmography (as Director) 101 Reykjavík (2000) The Sea (2002) A Little Trip to Heaven (2005) Jar City (2006) White Night Wedding (2008) Inhale (2009) Contraband (2012) The Deep (2012) 'Djúpið' ("The Deep") will be shown everyday at 17:50 with English subtitles at Háskólabíó Haukur Viðar Alfreðsson is a graduate of the Icelandic Film School and a film critic for local newspaper Fréttablaðið. He also plays bass and sings for a lovely band called Morðingjarnir. “The Deep” And The State Of The Icelandic Film Industry

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