In Wild Strawberries, I move effortlessly between different times, rooms, dreams, and reality at the same time.
I wanted to make a movie about a guy coming home sober and suddenly opening one door and stepping into his childhood? Then he opened another door and came back to reality? How about each individual period, to find that everything is as old as ever? This is the real creative motivation of "Wild Grass Curtain". One of my close friends is a doctor, so I thought it might be a good idea to make the protagonist a doctor. Then I thought that the old guy should be an old egocentr who doesn't get along with anyone around him - that's exactly what I wrote about.
Q: Shall we talk about any more visible alien influences in The Curtain? You said you don't think it has any alien influence but there must be a trace of Strindberg?
Answer: Obviously.
Q: "The Drama of a Dream" and "To Damascus".
A: Of course. Please don't forget Jonas Loew Almquist¹
Q: Let's talk about the ideas that are traced in "Weed Poison". It is a psychoanalytical film that has both religious ideas and psychotherapeutic stuff.
A: I didn't have that experience when I was shooting it. I photographed it as a brief summary of my early life, as a rigorous final test. As for psychoanalysis, I don't really have a grasp on it. It was later attached by someone else. For me, the film is real, concrete.
Q: There are many things that people can say afterwards "I didn't even think about it at the time, it was all made up by critics and smart people". However, one must have thought of something in the creative process. How much do you think is the connection between the theory that underlies the work and the theory that is constructed after the fact?
A: I will try to be as specific as possible on this point. In writing this book, I avoid all discussions that risk digressing. absolutely not. If there were, I think I'd get frustrated, feel like I was stripping myself and others, and I'd cancel the entire filming program out of sheer shame. The actors intervene in the work on a whole other level. They're always trying to understand the author and the characters from a performance point of view, always trying to figure out "what's behind this, why did he write this or that?" To avoid it, he said, "Absolutely not that, no." But in private they often agree with them. When shooting a film, I also steer clear of dangerous digressions. If I just follow my gut, I know it will lead me in the right direction. I don't need to argue with my intuition. If I start hesitating, discussing, deeply entangled in personal inner contradictions, and clearly aware of the truth of what I'm depicting, I can't take it anymore. On the other hand, it was clear to me from the very beginning that the engineer Allman and his wife were an ugly imitation of Stig Allgren¹ and his wife. Stig Algren just stabbed me for some reason, and it's my revenge on him.
Q: Yeah, the reason people remember that episode in "Weed Poison" very well is because it's like a short story that runs parallel to the main action and doesn't intersect.
Answer: Absolutely.
Q: Well, this scene is highly dramatic, aggressive, and very unpleasant. You cast this scene with two actors we have never seen in your film. You must have some definite purpose in choosing them, right?
A: Günner Sjöbg looks a lot like Stig Algren, and Günnell Brostbohm speaks in a way that suits my needs. So it is a conscious action based on feeling. Besides, I think I must have muddled the waters in terms of psychoanalytic concepts. The gang from The Cinébook has started approaching me, so I can't completely avoid the critics either. When Victor and Stig Algren/Guenna Sjöborg walked through the dreamy forest to the gravel where Montelud Fried and Ike Friedl had sex , the original idea was that people should find snakes everywhere. So we built a zoo without a pool in the studio and managed to get all the snake lovers in Sweden to bring their pets there. I think there must be two or three hundred frog snakes. When it was time to let them out, all the snakes were gone. Turns out there was a cave in the zoo. The snake lovers spent weeks in Resunda (where the Swedish production company is located) before recovering their little ones. It's one of those instances where I've been scolded for ingratiating myself to critics.
Q: You were going to do the same thing in "Wolf Hour," right? You collected a whole bunch of birds, and they didn't show up at all...
Answer: Yes. Another miscalculation that went unnoticed. Do it yourself.
Q: If nothing goes wrong, the idea of this narrative in Weed Poison will be psychological. The whole film is just about this Professor Isaac Polge and his relationship with himself and with those closest to him.
A: After writing the script for quite some time, I discovered an unintentional coincidence in one detail: Isaac Polge's initials happened to be the same as mine. I certainly didn't do it on purpose. I chose the name Is ak (Isaac) because he seems icy (cold)
Q: It's a self-recognition, and thus insight into oneself, which can bring peace to Isaac Polge, that's why he roams the world of his childhood.
A: This film is based on my experience of that trip to Uppsala. It is as simple, concrete and tangible as that trip. I got it done with no trouble. That coffin dream was a dream I had myself, a dream I had to dream about. I didn't lie in a coffin myself, that's my fiction. But the hearse came by, hit the lamppost, fell off the pavilion and exposed the body, all of which I have dreamed of many times.
Q: This psychological description seems to have a Catholic overtone. To what extent are you doing this on purpose?
A: Not at all intentional.
Q: The trip was actually a confession, it was Isaac Polge's fear of death and emotional indifference that was tormenting his sense of guilt... He seemed to want to prove his innocence before he died; So much so that he did a good deed to accumulate some spiritual capital...
A: His son owed him money. Wanted to pay it back, and Polger wrote off the debt—is that what you mean?
Q; No, I understand it more from a theological point of view.
Answer: I have never been tortured by Catholic doctrine. I have never believed in any religious dogma. There is an underlying religious feeling to the film -
A basic attitude, of course there is. But it does not contradict the whole psychological description.
Q: That's how your catholic monks interpret your films...
A: The Catholic Church has blacklisted me for years. Later, some sharp-minded teachers said, "We might as well take this child into the family."
Q: Have you ever had the idea of following religion?
Answer: No. Qian Kan did not feel any attraction to Catholicism to me. I believe Catholicism must be attractive, but Protestantism is messed up and useless.
Q: I think the narrative of "Wild Grass Gou" seems to be classical in structure - its purification process and its purification pattern are almost Aristotelian. Maybe it's because you have a strong relationship with the stage play?
A: You find a thread end, pull it hard, and it will naturally come out, and the end will stop. Your whole task is to carefully pull to the end.
Q: Its structure is very solid, with an almost classical cinematic singularity that can travel in any direction at a time. Like Rossellini's "Italian Voyage" and Godard's "Piero the Madman" as well. They are very different films, but both use travel extremely consciously.
A: Many of my videos are about travel, about people moving from one place to another. In "Weed Poison", as far as I can remember, the most lifeless are three young people. Not the one Bibi played in the flashbacks—she was a lovely girl—but the three who were meant to represent modern youth. Even at the time, the image was absolutely outdated.
Q: Many people see "Weeds Poison" first as your clean-up, retrospective film. What happens when people go back to where they always draw their inspiration (or where they think they are), back to childhood and childhood memories? Well, people find it a dead world. There are very few things available. I experienced this when I visited my father in the summer of 1968. Suddenly something is out of order. Now I ask you, can an artist come back to life even under these circumstances? Well, Weed Poison answered my question. It is so vibrant, so sensitive and deep.
A: To me it seems like two completely different things. When I often go to my parents - my mother is deceased - home to visit them at Stowe Street in Stockholm, where I grew up, I find that everything is as it was then, everything is in place; Like you, I feel that it is a dead world that has nothing to do with me anymore.
Q: It doesn't give you any inspiration?
Answer: Only a little peripheral vision and something infinitely sad; but nothing inspiring or uplifting. A sunken world exists only in memory, but on the other hand, it is still alive. True, it is a closed, secret, turned world. But its connotations are encouraging.
Q: Yet you revalued it?
A: Of course. I pick up images of my childhood, put them into a "projector", come to my mind, and value them in a whole new way.
Q: After putting them at a distance, you can control them too...doesn't that make you sad as well?
Answer: Not the same. But makes me sad.
Q: I'm referring specifically to Polger's two heartbreaks: his wife's infidelity (which is secondary), and first of all his story with Sarah. Here are two "outrageous" things he did. He was always haunted.
Answer: Certain painful experiences are closed, frozen, and inexorable.
Q: Günner Bujornstrand's son Ewald...he feels aloof and incapable of creating an atmosphere of genuine affection for his marriage, all apparently caused by that old-fashioned family. Both father and son are trying to find some kind of compensation for love - on the father's side, he has never been able to show love or create some kind of emotional environment for his son and his emotional suppression at home, is that so?
Answer: Indeed.
Q: In many ways, I think this is a critique of the traditional structure of the family that centers around the paternalistic father figure.
A: Obviously so. But all Ewald's entanglements with his father are entirely personal, and I can't tell. I also can't say enough about the relationship between Isaac Polge and his old mother.
Q: Is the cold relationship that we see in this film just inherited, almost from generation to generation? It affects the relationship between Ewald and Marianne. If the relationship is equally indifferent, it is because Ewald inherited his father's indifference, just as his father's generation inherited his mother's indifference.
A: Marianne is different. That's why things changed and the vicious circle broke. The consequences of spanking children have been studied—those who have been spanked go on to spank their children. Terrible.
Q: Why did you keep Isaac Polge's mother alive - I don't remember if the movie gave her age. She must be over ninety years old, right?
A: I think she's between ninety and one hundred years old—almost myth. She said: "I feel cold all the time, especially in my belly. What's the reason?" I remembered that some babies were born from cold wombs. How horrible, the weak embryos lay there shivering with cold .The image of the mother was born from that line in the line. She really should have died a long time ago. Marianne found herself in the pile of toys, and she saw the connection: made up of aggression and boredom the chain of indifference.
Q: Do you think Marianne can save Ewald?
A: I think it is possible.
Question: There is a contradiction here. Marianne is a person who represents a more positive attitude towards life, a more enthusiastic, more modern person. But you picked an actress who didn't have those qualities for the role, and you used her later to show some kind of cold sanity...
A: Ingrid Tilling is an excellent tool. The point is that Marianne should be a strong character and know how to show that - Ingrid has something tangible and I think that's exactly what I need. Not just anyone can play with someone as powerful as Victor.
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