Dominik Moll
Dominik Moll returns to the director's chair this week with his new movie The Monk, his first directorial outing since Lemming back in 2006.
I caught up with the filmmaker to discuss the movie, adapting such an old novel and what lies ahead.
- The Monk is about to be released into UK cinemas so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
It's the adaptation of the classic English gothic novel called The Monk written by Matthew Lewis in 1796.
It tells the story of a Capuchin monk in 17th Century Spain and he is immune to temptation and his faith is very strong - this is why he thinks that he is immune to temptation.
But we gradually find out that he is not and that there are other things to live for than religion.
- You have penned the screenplay as well as directed so how did you find out about the project and what was it about it that interested you?
I came to this project by reading the novel about five years ago and as I read it I just thought that it was visually very strong material.
I didn't immediate think that I had to turn it into a film but the images that came up while I read the book stuck in my mind and came back again and again and I started to think about it.
Also the idea of being able to play around with all those gothic elements such as graveyards and ghosts and devils and also with all those religious images I just felt that that would be very challenging.
And also the idea to create the character of Ambrosio who thinks that religion that enough to fill your life but gradually finds out that it is not, I was really interested in working on that.
- Did you always intend to direct the movie when you were penning the screenplay?
I have always written the screenplays that I have directed, so I have also done both. So when I started working on it it was always with the intention to direct it myself yes.
- The movie is an adaptation of the novel by Matthew Lewis as you said so just how familiar were you with the book before you started work on the movie? And how difficult did you find adapting such an old novel for a contemporary audience?
When I read the book for the first time it wasn't obvious to me that it should be turned into a film. But then I thought about it and I read it for a second time and a third time and I got more and more familiar with it that I started to see how it could be adapted.
I think that the main difficulty in adapting it was that Matthew Lewis had written it as a very anti-Catholic piece and he used that novel to denounce the hypocrisy of Spanish Catholicism and Catholicism in general.
This was an aspect that I was less interested in as I was more interested in the tragic, almost Greek tragedy, love story between Ambrosia and Antonia.
So in the book because of this anti-Catholic thing the characters are a bit caricature like, especially Ambrosio who is someone whose faith is not really true but someone who is more concerned with his appearance and the effect that he has on the audience.
I found it more interesting to turn him into someone who has real depth and whose faith was real and someone who was really convinced by what he was preaching and what he was doing. So I think that was the main difficulty to bring depth to the characters.
- Well you have touched slightly on my next question really as you say the book is very critical of the Catholic Church so I was wondering why you didn't really want to go down that path?
I think that criticising Catholicism at the end of the 18th Century is not the same as criticising it today - there are still things to criticise about Catholicism but because it doesn't have the power it use to have it's less urgent.
So I was more interested in the personal relationships of the story and how this character of Ambrosio works.
My previous films have been interested in showing what is on the surface and what is beneath the surface and this is exactly the case with Ambrosio.
On the surface he is a person who is very religious and very in control of himself but underneath there are all those impulsions and emotions that are still there even if he has succeeded in putting the lid of religion on them. So it was this aspect that I was really interested in.
- I was reading that you tend not to write a screenplay with an actor in mind so when did you start thinking about Vincent Cassel for the role of Ambrosio?
Once the screenplay was completed and once we started to think about the casting his name came up and I immediately thought that it was a very exciting and challenging idea because it wasn't that obvious to imagine him as a monk, and especially as a monk whose faith is real.
He is someone who is known for his energy, his physical aspect and also his sexual energy and I thought it was interesting to take him and restrain this energy and bring him to a way of acting that was much more controlled and restrained - that was important because that was very close to the character.
- So how did you find working with him? And what sort of ideas did he bring to the table for the character?
Well I found it very pleasant to work with him because he trusted me completely and he trusted my vision. He really wanted to go into the direction that I wanted him to go in, so that was very pleasant.
He brought a lot of things to the part, himself mainly and his charisma. When he is on screen he is an actor that you really enjoy watching as he is always interesting. It was important that this character of Ambrosio was quite charismatic so he did bring that.
- Joséphine Japy plays the role of Antonia in the film so what was it about this actresses that you thought would be particularly good for this role - she is very good in it?
I am glad you say that because I really like her a lot in the film. For me it was important that this part of a fifteen year old girl was played by someone who was really fifteen years old, when Josephine played the part she was.
She has this youth which was important for the part but at the same time she has this intellectual maturity that was just astonishing and that was important for the film.
She is the character that is the most well balanced and has the most balanced relationship with religion; she takes it as something positive in her life that will help but not something that will completely rule her life - unlike her mother who has a much more conflicted relationship with religion.
Antonia has this very positive, youthful energy and I think that Josephine brings that in a really strong way.
- This is your first movie project since Lemming back in 2006 so why has it taken you so long to get back in the director's chair - has it just been a case of finding the right material?
Yeah it has been mainly that. After Lemming I started to work on another project and another screenplay and that did take me quite some time. But after a while I realised that I didn't believe in it strongly enough and I threw it away and start all over again.
When I write it is quite a slow process because I need time to bring things to maturity and so time passes by really really quickly. I would really like to shorten the time between two films and hopefully the gap between The Monk and my next project will be a bit shorter.
- Finally what's next for you?
Well I am working right now on a screenplay with an English screen writer and it's a kind of Hitchockian/psychological thriller. We are currently in the middle of that and hopefully I will be able to shoot that next year.
The Monk is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw