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And still its widely socially accepted and has been here for thousands of years.
These were just thoughts.
She meets my daughter and says, So, what are you going to do today?
And Nanna says, Oh, Im going to trigger the lake run.
And this writer says, Whats that?
Nanna says, Oh, we have to run around this lake and empty a box of beer.
And then this American looks at me, the father, like, When are you going to interfere?
This kid is 17 years old.
And Im just giggling because Im used to drunk kids in the streets.
She says, But arent you going to get sick, Nanna?
And then Nanna goes, Well, if we vomit, time will be deducted.
The screenwriter starts to get agitated and says, What about the police?
And Nanna says, Oh, but the teachers are there!
I suddenly realized that was a mirror in front my society.
I had to look into this.
So is this .5 blood-alcohol thing a real theory?No, its not.
Thats only you guys in the film business calling it a theory.
In our world of academia, it doesnt come up to a theory.
Its just something I said.
But he loves the movie and he supports it and introduces it all over Norway.
Have you tested the theory out yourself?I havent.
The French distributor did actually have a full day where they measured every hour, but I didnt.
They were so excited about the movie that they felt they had to test it.
What did they find out?Youll have to ask them.
Honestly, cinemas closed down right after.
We got squeezed by reality.
But of course, this movie is not only about drinking.
At the beginning of the process, it was solely a celebration of alcohol.
Now its more: We kill someone; and we reveal someone; someones flying; someone is dying.
We can let the audience itself interpret what movie this is.
In Denmark, it set a massive box-office record here.
But next to them, you have the anonymous alcoholics who feel its a movie about them.
But this was meant to be a life-affirming film.
Because my life went into a catastrophe at that time.
My daughter [Ida] died four days into shooting this film.
It was about her school.
It takes place in her classroom.
She was in the movie.
Everything was destroyed in my life when it happened.
A couple months before shooting this movie, she had read the script, while she was in Africa.
And she was very, very honest with me.
Shed been tough on my scripts if she didnt like them.
I think she felt seen by this, as a youngster at that school.
And I said, I cant.
Because I cried all the time, and I still do.
We ended up making it to honor her memory.
I dont think Ill regret that.
[Points to the wall behind him.]
Can you see this black coat?
My wife is a priest.
Actually, a vicar, because were Lutheran.
Shes also in the movie.
Shes the one getting pissed on, in the bed.
Shes both a priest and an actor.
She is more clever than I am, and she tells me what the movie is about.
She says Thomas, this movie is about the uncontrollable.
And Im saying, Well, what is that?
Shes saying, Well, falling in love.
It says that you fall, its even in the narrative of the sentence.
Its beyond your control.
You cant order it on the internet.
You cant decide who to fall in love with, or when it happens.
For me, that has become a key thing about this movie.
You just said it yourself in your own words: Its about accepting life as it is.
We also live in a time when everything is really measured.
Then youll take your iPhone and walk around, and it will measure how many steps you take.
So theres no room left for the uncontrollable.And yet still the world is out of control somehow.
Are you a religious man?Im really trying to be.
I dont find it easy.
I was raised by aggressively atheistic academics.
Faith and doubt is a constant battle in my mind.
So Im trying my best.
I guess Im at the stage where Im hoping.
To those of us who are outside religion, it can often seem like religion is about control.
They have a lot of phrases about accepting the unexplainable.
Dont be controlled by your own rationality, which I think is very rich and beautiful.
Im trying to become religious.
I think, for the remainder of my life, itll be a thing that I will pursue.
But also, for the remainder of my life, therell be days where I really fail.
And where I remember all my academic fathers from the hippie commune.
They used to say, Thomas, theres less between heaven and earth than you think.
That became embedded in my system as a child.
So its a battle.
Maybe its the most important battle of my life.
I know you were raised in a commune.
The story is not autobiographical because, you know, the plot.
And yet still, some of it is from my previous marriage.
[Laughs] Here was a bunch of young people.
Theyre academics so they dont have that much money.
It was still super sexy because they could move into a very expensive house.
They could break off all the expensive oak floors and burn them in the garden and make a campfire.
They could feel very naughty together.
And there was no drugs.
It was just beer.
Not even that much weed.Alotof beer.
In the 80s, it was a different house.
It was suddenly three families enjoying a garden, having a cleaner.
And there were fights.
Some people moved in and some people moved out.
Times changed, and time changed in my house.
How did you leave?
Is the house still there?I left when I was 19.
My parents left before me, when I was 16 or 17.
My mother would prefer I say 17.
They got divorced, and they tried to live together for a while even though they were divorced.
They didnt manage and they left, and they wanted me to come with them.
But I wanted to stay in the house.
I loved the house and the house loved me.
And thats how I left home which was my parents leaving home.
It was the 70s, and it was in Scandinavia.
You had pipe-smoking women who ran the house basically.
And then you had a lot of guys who would say stuff like I am 80 percent woman!
And everyone would love it.
But then there were some brutes shouting, who wanted to decide things.
They kind of ran the house.
I remember one guy I loved him, actually who was a very noisy alpha male.
Very intelligent, he was a philosopher.
And he said, You have to pay rent per income.
Meaning that his own rent went up three times, because he was the one making the most money.
Which was kind of beautiful.
But of course, everything comes with a price.
Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, dinner would turn into a ball.
People would come from all the other communes.
They would bring guitars.
Then the next morning, no grown-ups would be around until one oclock.
So we had the whole place for ourselves.
It was full of love.
You mentioned that forAnother Round, you had a breakthrough when you decided to make the characters teachers.
And then of course, its an arena.
Those guys meet each other every day, and they can test their little experiment.
Also, I find that teachers are very heroic.
Its a very vulnerable position.
You stand there in front of aggressive, ambitious, fearful young people.
Every little weakness will be punished.
I find it heartbreaking sometimes to hear stories from my daughters about that.
And I remember my own time at school.
As a teacher, youre often saying the same things every year.
You cant really reinvent yourself every day.
And, I guess, being repetitious reminds you that you have to die.
They have lost the element of risk.
Theyve lost the element of exploration.
And theyve lost the element of inspiration.
The wordspiritis embedded in the wordinspiration.
Thats what theyre pursuing.
Because its not just a crowd, its a bunch of individuals.
And theyre all casted individually, and put together very carefully.
So Im kind of used to it.
But Im glad you appreciate it, because it does require a lot of work.
Lets talk about that final dance scene inAnother Round.
I know Mads Mikkelsen has a dance background.
I thought that was a wonderful way to end the film.
I worked with him onDear Wendy, ages ago.
Unfortunately, there wasnt any dancing in the movie, but between every take I had him dance.
I really enjoy watching people dance.
So I could do a musical.
Obviously, my Dogme 95 brother Lars von Trier did it already [withDancer in the Dark].
Which prevents me a little bit.
But Im open to it.
Mads was like, How does this not become about Mads Mikkelsen but about Martin?
How do we avoid this being ridiculous?
If you look at the scene, it very much describes that process because hesto-ing andfro-ing a lot.
This whole positioning of yourself in front of the world disappeared.
Mads was very close to her.
And the final scene, in which her name appears, there was no hesitation from Mads.
This film is actually a remarkable demonstration of his range.
But you do something here that you did inThe Hunt, too.
Im trying to give him glasses, and bad hairdos and shit.
It doesnt really help.
Hes such a dear friend of mine.
Hes so humorous and brilliant.
I can ask him so much, and hell do it, and I do ask him a lot.
Its very easily overdone.
But Mads is the most fine-tuned instrument you might get.
This is maybe the most challenging thing Ive ever asked any actor.
Whats the biggest disagreement youve had with Mads?I dont think weve had any disagreements.
Hes quite stubborn sometimes but not as stubborn as me.
I would say the dance scene is the one biggest doubt he had.
InThe Hunt, we had a disagreement whether he should die or not at the end.
I did shoot him actually [inThe Hunt].
I have material where he dies and he diesbeautifully.
But I thought it was too heavy, I thought it was too low for the end.
All that material is great.
All the shit I cut out was great.
Hes just really good.
I rewatchedThe Celebrationagain the other day.
It holds up really well, but it is fascinating to see it now.
We made a revolt against mediocre conservative filmmaking.
Also Lars would never agree against the mediocrity in ourselves.
We wanted to undress the movie.
We wanted to purify movie-making.
So it became, by accident, a digital movement.
That was naked; it was a risk.
People called and said, Youre committing career suicide.
Then suddenly, what was naked became fancy dress in Cannes, in 1998.
Suddenly, doing a Dogme movie was a ticket to every festival in the world.
It would be uniform.
It did influence a lot of people, and what more can you ask for?
But it took some years to get over it very difficult actually.
How does a movement like Dogme 95 start like, literally, start?
Are you and Lars von Trier sitting around having the beers one day?
Does somebody put everyone on a conference call?
How does it happen?Im trying not to serve him beer, to start with.
Well, we havent seen each other much.
But I had to break free of Lars von Trier after having doneDear Wendy.
That was sort of the ultimate get-together for us.
He was writing, I was directing.
The way we met back then was interesting.
I was at film school, and I had to do a movie.
So I found a guy from my year who did cinematography and who could hold the camera really still.
And I did a handheld film, and thats what Lars von Trier saw.
He asked me, Should we make this movement together?
That was about the time whenHomicide: Life on the Streetcame out, and was shaking a little bit.
It was all boiling at the same time.
But I guess youre right.
Im still being stopped in the street because that movie did influence a lot of people.
I cant see that, but I love his movie.
It was very difficult to come after.
Id gone as far as I could in one direction.
And when I turned around, the world was open, and suddenly full of offers and confusion.
I had a phone call with Ingmar Bergman at about that time.
He asked me, So what are you going to do now, Thomas?
And I said, I dont know, Im considering this offer and that offer.
And he said, Oh, yourefucked.
I was like, What are you talking about?
He said, Thomas, two things can happen when you open a movie.
One is you fail and youre paralyzed and you become strategic about what to do.
But the worst thing is you have a success then youre really fucked.
Always decide your next movie before the opening night.
And he said, Exactly.
You dont have time.
So theres a shorter distance from the heart to the hand.
You just make a decision like that.
That was the best advice Ive ever had in terms of career.
I rewatched it the other day.
Its still a crazy movie.I was lost.
And what I tried to do to avoid being lost was to reverse the idea of Dogme.
Instead of less of everything, more of everything.
There has to be a lot of music and makeup and it has to be in the future.
I remember writing a scene heading saying, INTERIOR.
And everybody was like, What the fuck are you talking about?
That was impossible to control.
It became a dramatically dysfunctional film.
But my body was falling apart, for some reason.
I really enjoyed shooting it.
That was really embarrassing that I couldnt create a miracle with him.
So I enjoyed shooting it, but in the editing, problems started.
I started grinding my teeth and they cracked and I started getting allergies and stuff.
I guess those were all signs that this is going the wrong way.
But still, theres some prophecy and some poetic moments in it that make me love it dearly.
Its a pandemic movie, for starters.It is.
Its a lot of things.
It may be one or two things too many.
But, I guess its like being a boxer.
Everyone was expecting a miracle from me, because theyd seenCelebration.
It was a massive public humiliation.
It comes off as my troubled child in a sense.
Maybe its the one child I love most, but it behaves really bad socially.
A lot of people dont get it.
Theres a very exclusive club of people who love it, though.
