Understanding the spectator as an active participant in the film

He or she should think about what he or she is seeing.

On the use of World War I in the film

It was clear from the beginning. To take this moment because 1914 was the break of the feudal tradition so it was clear from this time.

On the connection of the crimes and the viewer as a detective

I think there is a rational explanation for each or every act that takes place in the film, but its certainly not to me to point those out.

Using the genre conventions of the thriller to conceive his films

The genre conventions are the means that I use, the tools that I use, the glue that I use to keep the audience in their seats. Suspense is a dramatic means—a process that I use—for that end.

The highest role in both cinema and on stage is not to bore your audience, and suspense is the best means of achieving that.

On fascism in the school system or in households

The film shows how people can be prepared to follow an idea or ideology. And for that reason I used the best known ideology, which is German, fascism. I don’t think the film is that much about German fascism, rather it uses the social-historical context to examine, rather, the broader question of how people can be made, or manipulated, to follow the ideology, and want to grasp at that ideology.

On interpretations of the crimes

Nothing surprises me! It really depends, the explanations, on how interesting the persons offering them. Some, the interpretations, are silly, but others I find very interesting. However, I don’t want to give the appearance of approving them, because that puts the stamp of approval on them and forces other viewers to see the film in the same way.

On whether he knows the answers

I think so! As I said before, and this holds for Caché as well, that for every act, for every crime in the film, there is a rational explanation, but its up for the viewer to see them. In the same way, the explanation can’t be that simple, it can’t be that obvious or simple, it has to be someway hidden. In the same way, as I explained for dramatic reasons, to create this tension, I tried for each of the crimes to hold several different, possible explanations. If the explanation is too unrealistic, it would simply be silly and counterproductive.

Nothing in the films suggests that all the acts, all the crimes, were necessarily committed by the same person.

Structural comparisons to novels such as Dostoevsky

That’s a very complimentary comparison! You are absolutely right that I did choose a novelistic form. The explanation is that most of us know this period through novels that we read about the time. So it made it easier for the spectator to identify with the story. That also laid behind, well one of the reasons I made the choice to use black and white, because we know this period from the numerous black and white photographs that we’ve seen.

That’s also behind the choice of using the narrator present the film at the beginning. As you know, the film starts with him saying, “I’m not sure how accurate my depiction I’m going to tell you is.” In all my films I try to fuel the mistrust that the audience has for what I’m depicting. I never pretend that what I’m showing is an accurate or exact depiction of what actually took place. That’s the problem with historic films that claim or pretend to depict things exactly as they were.

On working with children who cannot even comprehend the thematic material of the film

Of course you don’t expect—a child doesn’t have to understand the entire film in order to shoot a specific scene. All that’s required is that you explain what the scene is about and that’s something they can identity with. The youngest kids were too young to understand the story and they were even too young to understand the script, so with them you don’t expect them to understand the whole film but instead explain what each scene is about, and the scenes themselves are something they can understand.

I’m not sure even when I’m working with adult actors whether they understand the material. In fact its important to not give them too much information then what they deliver isn’t situation acting for the situation, but rather providing a meta-commentary on the situation, so you try and give them as little as possible so they are only confronting the material in the scene.

About the current state of children

I think that every human being is capable of doing the worst, anything at all. You just have to observe children playing in a sandbox to see that there’s not much left of this idea of the innocent child.

The use of locations as a thematic device

In this film that’s certainly the case, as well as in Time of the Wolf that’s the case, because the films are shot large extent in exteriors, while many of my films are shot in interiors. I think in this film even if you were to put together the scenes that take place outside there are far more shots that take place in interiors. However in this case, the landscape is so beautiful that you notice it more.

Everything has to contribute to the whole, whether it’s the costumes or the sound—everything was made to be as specific as possible, and precise as possible. In this case, that’s because so much of the film takes place outdoors, but in general, I prefer to work in studio because its far more comfortable.

On influences of Ingmar Bergman’s black and white films

I’ve heard that before, and I’ve also heard comparisons to [director Carl Theodor] Dreyer. Because of that, I went back and looked at the film Ordet, and found that the film is actually very different—the earlier films are much more theatrical in terms of lighting. Because of the means that were available at the time in Dreyer, its extremely theatrical in terms of lighting and the ways the actors are staged. Now with current technical advances, it’s possible to use black and white in a realistic sense that is so different from the works of both Bergman and Dreyer.

On the influence of his favorite film, Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, which was #1 on his top films for BFI’s Sight & Sound list in 2002

There are many directors I admire, and it’s well known that Bresson is a huge influence on me. However, its not so much that when I’m dealing with a specific film I try and imagine how other people would do it, rather I try and discover my own approach of what that film requires.

If you want me to mention a visual reference for this film, I would cite rather the photos of August Sanders, who is the German photographer that influenced us, when trying to create a look for the film.

The extreme sharpness of the images you see on screen was impossible to create up until a few years ago with the advent of digital postproduction. Even though the film is in black and white we had to shoot the film in color film stock because black and white stock isn’t strong enough to use natural lighting in the candle and gas lamps we used. So the problem there however is when you are shooting with color film stock in candlelight, it gives a pinkish shimmer and you are left with faces that are a little bit fuzzy, a little bit blurry. So we had to sharpen each face each, individually which was very difficult.

On coming full circle with his career

I never think about such questions. The fact that I shot the film now is coincidence. I wrote the script 10 years ago, and I wanted to make it even earlier than that. I wasn’t able to because I couldn’t get the financing. The success of Caché allowed me to put together the budget to finance this film.

Depicting scenes of extreme physical violence

In fact, there’s almost never violence in my films that are depicted on screen. If you were to bring together all the violence in all of my films and put them end-to-end, you would find there’s far little violence that’s depicted than the most banal TV thriller. The only reason the violence is so powerful, or appears so powerful, is because it’s not shown, because it’s not visible. I call instead on the spectator’s imagination to call on what I’m alluding to, because the spectator’s imagination is far more powerful than any image you can provide them.

I remember reading a very amusing review of Benny’s Video that described exactly how Benny killed the girl in the film and it went into great detail to exactly it was done. Its all the more striking because that murder doesn’t take place on screen, but that critic responded if he did.

On returning to his natural language of German

It’s true that you are much more comfortable working in your mother tongue, but not because your means of expression are limited. When you are talking with actors for example they are forced to listen to you, and listen while your explaining what you want. The problem is rather it’s harder for you to follow what’s going on around you, and that’s a problem especially when you are a control freak like me—you just can follow things as closely. You can think of the example of if you are sitting in a restaurant, and people are talking at the table next to you in your mother tongue, it’s very easy to follow their conversation. But if you are traveling in another country, even if you speak that language its impossible for you to understand. So its very uncomfortable and unsettling for all this commotion to be happening around you and what’s going on.

On the particularities of Protestantism

The Protestantism is evident in the film because Germany is in the vast majority composed of Protestants, and because of the rigor, the severity of their Protestantism is better suited to the story I was trying to tell.

On dialect of German in the film

We in fact to chose the film as little as possible in the old dialect for the simple fact that if we wanted to use the regional dialect we would have been limited to actors that came from that region. So the film is pretty much in standard German, and that’s what we call “high German.” There’s one exception to that and that’s the farm administrator, the man in charge of the farm. In the film he speaks the very strong Bavarian accent, but its explained—the midwife refers to him as the Bavarian pighead, and he’s an actor I like very much and admire, and I wanted to work with him, and I allowed myself to give that explanation to justify his presence in the film. The farmer himself though, in the film who’s wife dies, he’s an Austrian actor, his accent wasn’t right so we looped him during the mix.

On attempting to cast Ulrich Muhe before his death

[He was to be] the pastor. He’s simply my favorite actor; he was the lead in so many of my films.

On the possibility of a longer cut

The original script would have been three and a half hours long. The film itself—everything I wrote, everything in the script, you see on screen. There wasn’t anything on script that I wrote that I didn’t shoot.