Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.05.2015, Blaðsíða 20

20
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2015
of dies as it passes through the orga-
nizational structure. At the same time,
though, you at least get paid for every
hour you work.
The Danes’ realist outlook per-
haps forces you to be organized,
but at the same time prevents
you from aiming as high as you
would...
Exactly. It would be fun you could some-
how join these qualities, if they could
meet in the middle, but instead there are
extremes in each direction.
Iceland as prostitute
People seem really worried
about Icelandic filmmaking at
the moment, due to funding cuts
and whatnot... what are your
thoughts on this?
The environment is a little too unstable.
It’s too dependent on whim, who’s run-
ning the country at a given time, and
that’s not a very good environment for
an industry to operate within. There
needs to be some stability, some sort of
base understanding that this is impor-
tant and that—for it to keep afloat—there
needs to be a certain support that is not
subject to fancy, that can’t be dimin-
ished without notice.
When the support for the industry
goes down forty to seventy percent in
a year, it creates an absurd working en-
vironment. Nobody imagines that the
National Theatre can in one year stage
a single play, and then fourteen in the
next.
Is there such a thing as “Icelan-
dic filmmaking?” How would you
describe it?
Yes and no. There are a lot of great film-
makers working in Iceland at the mo-
ment, each with their own strengths,
and the films they make are very dif-
ferent in style and emphasis. Of course,
there are certain elements that tie their
different projects together, mostly that
they are being made in this country, by
this nation.
The country itself has been
sold to international filmmak-
ers—to Hollywood—in a kind of
exploitative way in recent years.
Iceland’s landscapes and scener-
ies seem to be popping up in
every other blockbuster... Do you
have an opinion?
Well, I don’t know. I can’t really say I
have an opinion one way or the other.
But in general, Icelanders have this ten-
dency to sell themselves short.
Yeah. Iceland is a bit of a whore. At
the same time, it’s like, Miss Universe.
This is perhaps best displayed in how
we’ve sold our energy through the years,
to heavy industry megacorporations,
and this is reflected maybe in other ar-
eas... It’s kind of like Miss World saying,
you know, “I just had to resort to prosti-
tution, because I couldn’t think of any-
thing else.”
I think it’s kind of stuck to Iceland,
this idea that we’re ready to sell for really
cheap, to the lowest bidder. We should
strive to be more selective in choos-
ing our bedfellows, and, you know, we
shouldn’t always sell to the lowest bid-
der. Maybe we should start believing
that the quality of what we have to of-
fer should enable us to charge a higher
price... Maybe I’m on thin ice here...
This is certainly a topic worthy
of discussion, and perhaps
something we are about to have
to deal with, or should be dealing
with in any case. The conse-
quences of how we’re treating
the environment and how we’re
operating with regards to tourism
and the like. As editor of a tourist
publication, I’m painfully aware of
how we’re marketing ourselves,
and who we’re marketing our-
selves to...
Exactly. Instead of shaping a policy and
determining how we want things to
evolve, we’re always ready to swallow
whatever’s on offer, whatever’s handed
to us. Icelanders have always been this
way, if someone offers us five hundred
krónur today, we don’t care that means
we’ll get a bill for five thousand krónur at
the end of the week.
That’s the kind of shortsightedness
I’m talking about, this lack of foresight,
and pride. It’s absurd that we’re not tak-
ing a moment to define how we want to
go on about things.
Perhaps it’s connected to the
fact that we’ve usually had to get
while the getting’s good, because
nature is so unpredictable?
Yeah, it’s kind of like that. This tenden-
cy to fill the pantry while we can. This
sentiment runs very deep in Icelanders,
this shortsightedness, but it also has its
positive aspects. Planning three moves
ahead, we’d never make a single movie in
Iceland. There is a certain energy there,
just going for it and dealing with the
problems later.
A horrid situation
You currently head the Director’s
Programme at your old school,
The National Film School of Den-
mark. How did that come about?
Well, I’m good friends with the dean.
And he got in touch and offered me the
job, and it came about at a time where I
felt ready to try new things and a new
environment. Living in Iceland had got-
ten a little heavy, and the idea of trying
something new for a while felt liberat-
ing, so I jumped at the opportunity. And
yeah, it’s been very educational, return-
ing as a teacher.
How exactly did living in Iceland
get heavy?
Well, it’s that... you know, there’s a really
sort of horrid situation in Iceland, espe-
cially in politics.
Are you a political refugee, then?
Well, no. I suppose I’m some sort of a
refugee. One of the benefits of living
in a foreign country is that you can al-
low yourself a certain irresponsibility...
I don’t follow politics here at all. I just
read the two back pages of the newspa-
pers, you know, the gossip and culture,
that’s it. And that’s a rather comfortable
position to be in.
Do you consider yourself a politi-
cal artist?
No, in no way. Politics have never been
part of my creative process. I am first
and foremost concerned with people
and the circumstances they find them-
selves in. And if something political or
some level of social commentary slides
in with what I make, that’s happening
on a purely subconscious level.
What about your career? Where
do you see yourself taking it?
Would you be into tackling a
huge Hollywood blockbuster?
I can’t say that’s been a goal of mine.
However, I must admit, I’m in my forties
now, and shit broke. So, for the first time
in my life, I feel like I could be into doing
some sell-out project.
Have you gotten any tempting
offers?
Well, there’s a little heat after the film
won all these awards at Tribeca. Agents
and producers have been getting in
touch and whatnot. There’s a little buzz
going around at the moment, which
might turn into something. Then again,
it might fizzle out, as it tends to.
Plain, sincere
Speaking of Tribeca, you re-
ceived three award there, for
best original screenplay, best
narrative film and then Gunnar
won best lead actor. Did you go
into the festival expecting such
accolades?
No. I have to admit, I was completely
taken aback by all those awards. To be
honest, I hadn’t even entertained the
possibility of us winning anything at all.
I didn’t bother looking into what kinds
of awards they were giving out, or who
would be on the jury or anything. I went
to New York to open the film, basically
to have a bit of fun and enjoy the city.
‘Fúsi’ is kind of sincere and plain, you
know, and I was certain it wasn’t the
type of film that could catch the eyes of
a jury. So it was a pleasant surprise, that
they would deem it good enough to win
all these awards.
You weren’t there to accept any
of them, though?
No, unfortunately I’d gone home by the
time they were given out. Like I said, I
didn’t expect anything to come of it,
other than a fun trip to New York. So I
missed my chance to accept an award
from Robert De Niro, which I must ad-
mit would have been thrilling. I sent a
little thank you video instead.
That same week, the film was
also awarded at a Danish film
festival...
Yes, we got the audience award at CPH
PIX in Copenhagen... it was a good
week.
Is getting awards like these
important?
Yeah, it can be very beneficial for a film,
especially in cases like these, when we
get three big awards at the same festi-
val. It has a an exponential effect with
regards to attention, which in turn helps
getting it out there. The good thing
about Tribeca, we’re hoping that it will
raise attention in the US, which is a no-
toriously hard market to penetrate. So
we’re crossing our fingers that we might
score a distribution deal over there.
Lord of vomit
Anyway. Are you going to see the
new Avengers movie?
Nope.
Don’t like superheroes, huh?
Nope. There are two things that I abso-
lutely loathe in film: realism and fantasy.
How does that work out?
For me, the magic lies somewhere be-
tween the two. Stuff like ‘Lord Of The
Rings’ just makes me vomit. I just can’t.
It’s same with films that are hyper-real-
istic. Those are also really off-putting to
me. There’s... I hate using the word ‘po-
etic’, but there’s something there... you
can lift reality to a higher plane without
going all the way towards fantasy. That
is where I like to position myself.
Who do you make your films for?
Uhm... an audience? See, I can’t get up
and give a speech, I can’t really tell a
joke, but through films and other artis-
tic ventures, I can have a venue to make
people laugh, and to touch them.
Dagur first made a name for himself
around the year 2000 with shorts like
‘Old Spice’ (not about Spice Girls’s father),
‘Lost Weekend’ (not about vampires)
and ‘Líkið í lestinni’ (“The Body On The
Train”—actually about a dead body in
the backseat), a segment of the anthology
‘Villiljós’, which is inexplicably known as
‘Dramarama’ in English. But it was his
first feature that was to firmly place him
on Iceland’s movie map.
‘Nói Albínói’
(‘Nói The Albino’—2003)
One of the most impressive debuts in
Icelandic film history. More than that, it
could be credited for rejuvenating Icelan-
dic cinema for a new century, which went
through a rather meagre ‘90s after a fly-
ing start in the ‘80s). Dagur seems to (re)
discover a particularly Icelandic way of
telling a story on screen, the Westfjords’
landscape serving as the main character
along with the films titular albino. Every-
one here dreams of running off to Reyk-
javík—an oft repeated theme in Icelandic
cinema—while unbeknownst to them,
everyone in Reykjavík dreams of run-
ning off to Copenhagen. Or New York. Or
somewhere.
‘Voksne mennesker’
(‘Dark Horse’—2005)
Having made a uniquely Icelandic film,
Dagur’s next logical step was to go to
Denmark to make a particularly Danish
film. The director had gotten his film
degree over there, and he was able to get
top line actors such as Jacob Cedergren
(later seen in Vinterberg’s ‘Submarino’)
and Nicholas Bro to star in this story of
refusing to grow up and choosing friend-
ship over love (sort of like a bromance
take on ‘Frozen’). But this is really only
a good Danish movie rather than a great
Icelandic one. Bro’s character reminds
one of a younger Fúsi though, an indica-
tor of things to come.
‘The Good Heart’
(2009)
Having conquered our old colonial capi-
tal, Dagur headed off to the world city of
New York and made a film set in a local
institution, the neighbourhood bar. Da-
gur’s band Slowblow is very inspired by
Tom Waits at times, who was originally
set to star in ‘The Good Heart’, and per-
haps this was meant as a live action ver-
sion of a Waits song. Brian Cox works
well as Tom’s replacement bartender,
while Paul Dano holds up his end of
things. However, the end result is charm-
ing in parts rather than a truly great
whole. Couldn’t this have been set in a bar
in the Westfjords instead?
‘Fúsi’
(‘Virgin Mountain’—2015)
Dagur was now finally ready to make an
Icelandic film again, and it’s a treat. The
titular character is an instantly classic
persona, that guy you sometimes see in
the background as the butt of a joke but
is here given his own film. The story is
told with sensitivity as well as humour,
with each performance wonderfully un-
derstated. By now, we know most of the
constituent parts of the Dagur-verse.
Bonds between men tend to be the stron-
gest while relationships with women
are fleeting, everyone dreams of getting
away to somewhere and growing up is
hard to do. Dagur himself is by now a
fully mature filmmaker, and has never
been better.
Dagur Kári:
Filmography
By Valur Gunnarsson