Thomas Vinterberg is back in the director’s chair with his new movie The Hunt - which sees him work with Mads Mikkelsen for the very first time.
We caught up with him at the BFI London Film Festival for a chat about the movie, working with Mads and with children.
- The Hunt is your new movie so can you tell me a little bit about it?
The Hunt is about a small and innocent village that is filled with togetherness but a lie spreads through the village about this male character who works in the kindergarten.
One of the girls in the kindergarten is very close friends with his daughter and she slightly falls in love with him - in a none sexual way of course.
He is rejecting her a little bit and she lies about him and therefore a witch hunt starts and he is then ostracised by society. I made a movie a few years ago called Festen and this is sort of the anti-thesis to that movie.
For me it is a movie primarily about friendship, love, forgiveness and maybe loss of innocence; they are all swimming together naked in a lake at the beginning and they end up as fearful people.
- It is a very challenging topic so what is your process when you are dealing with subject matter like this?
It is very dramatic this topic and s it was very fruitful as a writer because there is a conflict and you can undress the character through conflict.
When I make a movie I want to make it about something and I want to make it important; not morally speaking as a priest but there has to be something.
And I really felt that there was something here and that made it a very uplifting process, very joyful and bright even though it is quite a dark movie.
- Mads Mikkelsen takes on the central character of Lucas so how did you find working with him?
First thing that hits you is that he is so strikingly beautiful - that hurts a little and so I wanted to dress him down and destroy his good looks (laughs).
But then you learn that he is such a friendly, giving, heroic team player. He is an enormous enthusiast and very good, extremely good.
I changed the character for him because he was more of a hero, strong man, Robert de Niro type character in the script but we made him softer, a school teacher and very humble and weak somehow.
- Did he want that?
No I wanted that but he agreed on that. We were both inspired by that idea.
- So did you write it with Mads in mind?
No I wrote it for Robert De Niro but then Mads came on board and I re-wrote it for him. I always write for specific actors, even if they are dead; there has to be someone.
Mads does not attach to any project without a script and so I couldn’t write for him until he was attached - it is very complicated.
- What was it about Mads that you thought would be great for this role as he is fantastic in this movie?
There is something very truthful in his acting, he is very realistic. Away from all the clichés that the camera really wants to look at him he is very handsome and he does have huge commercial potential. There is something very real about him.
And I was curious to work with him as we have been in the same community for many years without working together. But the truthfulness was important for a film about lies.
I suppose this film’s theme is about how lies can spread and so everything was about making it as naked and truthful as possible - and Mads really fits into that. He is born out of the seventies attempts to make films in the street, American/Scorsese movies where realism was re-born.
- Annita Wedderkopp makes her big screen debut in this movie as Klara so how did you find shooting some of the more challenging scenes given her age?
She was wonderful. Normally we say working with animals or children you should avoid but on this movie it was the other way around - the dog and the girl were just spot on.
She was just incredibly good. Mads and the other actors were, of course with a smile on their face, intimidated by her because she was just wiping the floor every time - it was incredible.
We had a discussion about whether or not to tell her about these matters or not because she doesn’t understand sexuality and should not. But we told her everything else as she is being thrown around and she needs to know why.
This movie is also a revolt against the over protection and the victimisation of children so we thought ‘let’s talk to her like an adult’ - of course we agreed it with her parents first.
And it worked because she didn’t care she was like ‘ok, let’s shoot’ - then she did her ping pong.
- There is an interrogation film in the movie with Klara where the adults literally put words in her mouth. I was reading that this was from a real transcript so I was wondering if you could tell me about that?
It is a police transcript - I am not going to say which nationality because I don’t want to point fingers; I didn’t even want to point fingers at the police.
It is from the late nineties and they have improved, or at least they try to improve, so I changed the scene to be with some kind of interrogator. I also took out a lot of very very ugly stuff as it was much worse - and in all the cases it was much worse.
You wouldn’t believe how much people put in children’s minds and how leading the questions are as they anticipate that the child will immediately want to escape from it because it is unpleasant - so they insist on this. Through that they implant false memories and it has been done in many many places.
The police may not being doing that as much but I think parents and kindergarten workers don’t know what to do and so they ask the same questions and it becomes part of the child’s fantasy.
Again they end up as the victim’s because they grow up with the memory of being assaulted when they haven’t been assaulted. They are actually violated by the overprotection and fearfulness of our societies.
But in my film she appears to be a she-devil in people’s mind which was not intended. She is in love with him and it is an innocent love - and who wouldn’t be in love with Mads Mikkelson.
The Hunt is released 30th November
The BFI London Film Festival run 10 - 21 October
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in BFI