IBC
The cracks in the inheritance of DNA, relatives and property is at the heart of critically acclaimed Norwegian tragicomedy
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It is a sophisticated drama which both pays homage to and pastiches the work of Swedish legend Ingmar Bergman while covering intense topics like grief, suicide and family ties. In brief, Skarsgärd plays Gustav Borg, a once-celebrated director eager to reclaim his former glory. When he offers his daughter Nora (Reinsve) the lead role in his comeback film, she refuses, only to learn that he has given the part to a rising Hollywood star Rachel (Elle Fanning). The presence of the American forces the Borgs to confront their fragile relationships.
Though set like Trier’s previous films Oslo, 31st August (2011) and Academy Award nominated The Worst Person in the World (2021) in Norway’s capital, this production is a deeper and more sprawling affair. “This one is driven by multiple characters and that opened up new possibility in our writing, “ Trier says of his work with co-writer Eskil Vogt. “Jumping between characters and back and forth in time, creates a more polyphonic experience – a bigger idea than subjectively following the journey of one character.”
The film features a huge range of visual situations as it contains a multitude of time periods, from the 1930s to the present day, all coupled with a modern visual sensitivity, films within films and a rich selection of shooting locations.
Reuniting with Trier after shooting The Worst Person in the World is Danish cinematographer Kasper Tuxen who highlights the distinct look of Oslo as a city, and its very specific light.
“The main location, the house, offered a lot of opportunities but also a fair share of challenges. It has large windows in every direction, so to sustain the exterior lighting situations and keep the specificity of changing seasons was a big task.”
He spent several days in prep visiting the house to understand how the light varied during the day and how he would need to manage the natural illumination.
Trier mandated a shoot on film with Tuxen choosing Kodak VISION3 250D Colour 5207 for most of the day exteriors and brighter day interiors, plus VISION3 500T 5219 for the low-light/night interior and exteriors. The neg was processed and scanned to 2K at Cinelab often involving push-processing to subtly enhance the colours.
Paired with the Arricam LT 35mm camera and framed for 1.85:1, Tuxen selected Cooke 5/i's “because of the appealing softness they give to the image, especially on close-ups.”
A clip from a WW2-set film that Gustav has made was lensed with vintage Cooke Varotal zooms treated with a bleach bypass at the lab. For flashbacks set in the ‘20s and '30s he used an Arriflex 416 16mm camera with a classic 16mm T1.8 16-40mm zoom.
The house as lived in character
The red wood trimmed central house itself is the same one as seen at the end of Oslo 31st of August and owned in real life by musician Lars Lillo-Stenberg. Most of the present day scenes in the film were shot inside but they rebuilt a replica of the first and second floor layout on a soundstage at Gateway Studios (Drammen, outside of Oslo) in order to redress the set for time periods ranging from the early 20th century through the 1930s to the sixties up to the 80s.
“Design is like an extra layer of narrative,” says production designer Jørgen Stangebye Larsen. “I worked a lot on finding the story of the house, how it changed through the years and why. The house is physically altered by time, grief and artistic inspiration just as the generation of characters which inhabit it.”
The stage was ringed with LED screens which would not only change with exteriors or time and season but reflect light back into the rooms.
“Shooting LED screens on analogue film works really well,” Tuxen reports. “Film grain does a whole lot to make the pixels invisible, and the results looked great. We shot everything on-stage with LED screens, except for the final scene, where we replaced the LED walls with traditional bluescreen.”
The film’s prologue sets out the geography of this family home along with a voice over driven narrative relaying its history
“It's intentionally cut as if the house is a character and were witness to the tragedy and drama,” editor Olivier Bugge Coutté explains to CinemaEditor. “We use a lot of shots with windows, which are - if you will - the eyes of the house. The scene is often cut in a way that shows an empty frame, then a person enters the frame and they exit again, giving the house a subjective view.”
Other locations included Nora’s flat which was shot in Sweden and at Deauville in France during the town’s film festival where Tuxen had to light an expansive stretch of beach at dusk for scenes in which Gustav meets Rachel.
An unusual sequence in the film, not scripted, is a black and white montage of the faces of the Borg family superimposed on one another. It is not an FX shot but done in-camera by Tuxen by physically rewinding the film and shooting a new face on top, inspired by a personal documentary he was making of his own family.
The final scene is a lengthy ‘oner’ in which the camera operated by Tuxen on a dolly aided by key grip Christian Scheibe winds through the house following Nora and was achieved after nine attempts.
“It was quite obvious that take number nine was the best,” says Coutté. “Even though I know how the film ends when I watch this scene I feel all the emotions of the film and of the chaos that this family has gone through and a fear for Nora’s mental state.”
Coutté has edited all six of Trier’s features and their relationship goes back thirty years to the time they met at film school in Copenhagen.
“We're great friends on a personal level. Even though I live in Denmark and he lives in Oslo and we both have children we try to juggle private life and work life. We have this rule that on Sundays during editorial I send a lot of Quicktimes to Joachim and rather than have him write long emails with notes to me we arrange a remote session and record his feedback live.”
He says that while some of the drama is personal to Trier, the character of Gustav couldn’t be farther removed.
“Obviously there is a meta narrative of making movies and performers performing but I can’t say I see Joaquim in Gustav. I would say that his personality is blended into all his characters but he’s not Gustav. He's actually a very present dad to his daughters.”
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