The woman drives her vehicle at high speed. Park, go down and walk in the long corridor. The dry sound of his heels rumbles while heading to the classroom where his son’s teacher is waiting for her, who has the entrustment that nothing gets out of control without having the tools to get it. Something serious has happened. And although he does not know what, Elisabeth is noted the urgency. He has tried to contact someone without success.
“He really wanted him to feel powerful but also noisy,” he says in an interview with Forbes Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, director of the film Armand in which this scene appears. You could feel that there is something attractive in it because of the way it walks and the power in the way it walks. But there is also something disturbing. I work with these contradictions all the time in every aspect of the film. So this was also part of it. And in fact, that scene was shot much longer and for a long time I kept it like this, but in the end I decided to cut it a bit. ”
Armand It is Halfdan’s spring opera, 35 years old, who comes from a family of Abelengo in world cinema: he is the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman (something that does not take away his dream and of which he does not feel a particular responsibility). With this film, the Norwegian filmmaker won the Golden Chamber, precisely the award for the best first film work, at the Cannes Film Festival. “It was my first feature film, my first festival and my first prize. It meant a lot for me personally, for the film and its career. For me, Cannes is the Holy Grail of Cinema, and receiving the prize for the best premium opera in all sections was a great honor,” he says.
Halfdan listened to the story about two six -year -old children who were camping, and something terrible happened among them. “Then I began to imagine where they learned something like that. They used a very adult behavior or language. It intrigued me a lot how little I needed to invent such a great story about the parents, and told me a lot about prejudices against children, how we reflected children with their parents. I worked in a primary school for three years, and I needed a place to capture all the characters and thus the story emerged.”
The Armand that gives title to the film, whom we never see, is a six -year -old boy accused of assaulting his partner, who turns out that he is also his cousin. And although no one is certain of what has happened, the school authorities do not want the scandal to transcend and have summoned the parents of both children to a kind of careo to try to find a solution that reassures the parents of the assumption attacked and channels the alleged aggressor.
– I think your story is about the dichotomy of the human being. That is, humans can be friendly and generous, but also cruel and petty, they can have the best intentions, but act incorrectly. How did you decide to portray all this?
– I think one of the most important things for me in a movie is that the characters have contradictions, as you say, they are not heroes, but many different things. I feel that I am many different things. I can be cruel and friendly in the same phrase. So for me, playing those characters was very important. And in this specific case, I also wanted almost all the characters to be victims and abusers at the same time, because that was a fundamental issue in the film: if someone’s abuse, that person becomes a victim and perhaps abuse another. It is an abuse chain reaction that wanted to convey through generations and at school.
– Why did you decide to use claustrophobic spaces to develop history (it basically happens in a classroom, a bathroom and some corridors of a school)?
– It was a really good way to tell this specific story because I knew that the issue of child sexuality is a very tense issue in itself, and having those parents within that classroom, that small classroom to discuss it, generates a lot of tension. And, as was my first feature film, I worked logistically. And once I decided to roll like this, the identifications simply came to mind. I saw many films that were filmed almost in one place, and I felt a cinematographic energy when filming everything in one place.
– There are several scenes that move between the dreamlike and the fantastic, why did you decide to include them?
– Because I feel that many of the realistic things that also happen in the film, such as the way they talk about the situation and how different parents interpret or feel it, are based on their imagination or prejudices. So it was very natural to use the power of the imagination to show something that was obviously out of reality, simply to underline this kind of transition between fiction and reality.
***
Although Elisabeth is the main one, five other characters are enough to tell the story: the parents of the supposed assaulted child, the teacher, the director and a kind of counselor. Renate Reinsve loads with the weight of the narrative with her magnificent interpretation of Elisabeth. “She was part of the project even before there was a script, before there was a name for the character,” explains the director, who had worked with her in a short film. They had decided to make a feature film together and that is why she wrote the role specifically for her. As for the rest of the cast, he worked for about three years trying many people. “And for me, casting is about trying and failing, exploring and trying so many different things. I think that is the most important thing. So I tried men for the role of Sarah (finally in charge of Ellen Dorrit Petersen), I tried men for the role of teacher (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen), but I ended up using women in both cases. But I really explode and see what each actor contributes to the movie.”
To choose the actor who made the director (Øystein Røger), he did it between about fifty -five actors. “I asked them about this specific case, like that of the movie. I asked everyone the same questions, and they were fifty -five different answers with very different consequences. Some of the directors I talked to were very afraid of being asked those questions. It was incredible, and we have all seen that this leader is not a natural leader. They simply put it in that position and do not know what to do with her. He does not want any responsibility. It is the idea. ”
And, in fact, a curious fact is that several of the character’s dialogues are a literal transcription of the sayings of the Prime Minister of Norway during her press conferences by the Pandemia by Covid. “It gave leadership impression without assuming responsibility. I think that was the key to the main character.”
And since they only had 21 days of filming, very little time for any production, they did many essays. “As the scenes were so focused on the dialogue and were so difficult for the actors and for the camera, we did many rehearsals only to ensure that they were all at the same level, that the dialogue worked and that the actors knew what they were going to do.”
One of the most difficult scenes of filming was one in which Elisabeth begins to laugh without control. “It was a whole day, ten hours of filming – Halfdan says – for me it was not so difficult, but for the cast. Of course, Renate was laughing and crying for ten hours in a row. And I knew the importance of that scene. So, of course, I was very nervous about how it would develop, if it was possible to have a laughter that would last seven or eight minutes. But, fortunately, Renate is an incredible actress cast members were very important;
***
– This story is about children, both victims and perpetrators. We usually talk about them, not the parents. But you decided to see the other side, that of the parents, how did the idea arise?
– Yes, I guess I was more interested in parents. As I said, I worked in a primary school for three years, and I am very surprised how parents are reflected in their children: they are proud of them, of course, but they are also ashamed of them and try to defend them at all costs. As a father, I think it is very easy to have a tunnel vision when it comes to children, and it was interesting to experiment with that unilateral perspective. It is almost more terrible for a father who accuses his son of something than oneself. That’s why I wanted to talk about parents this time.
– What did you ask your sound editor for this movie because I think the sound is very important?
“Yes, I agree.” We play a lot with the sound. At first, it made them quite noisy, but the sound landscape was too intense. So we try to work with very simple sounds and integrate them into history, without exaggeration. We could wear very strong shoes, of course, or a strong breathing, but in that case we only wanted that. It was essential to capture the silence of the school, as well as the mystical atmosphere of the fog. We work hard with the contrast between noise and silence, and also with dialogues. He has done incredible job with dialogues throughout the film.
-I think that Armand It is also a story about the effects of unfounded accusations. Is this a reflection of our times?
-Yeah. It was much more at the beginning of the script process than in the end, but, of course, it is still very present. How an accusation can have very dramatic consequences without any evidence. I wrote everything during a time when everyone was accused of something, but there was no evidence. And I did not want to judge, because sometimes the accusation is true and sometimes not. I just wanted to analyze the concept of accusation and how it evolves and develops throughout different phases. And, of course, I was very inspired by Kafka, in The processand in his way of speaking, so circularly, without ever reaching the grain. I think all that was very interesting.
– And what really happened?
– What really happened among the boys? No. I am not going to say that. I have my own interpretations and everyone will have the answer alone.
Epilogue
– What is the responsibility, if any, to have such a prominent legacy in the cinema?
– I don’t feel any responsibility in this regard. Well, to be honest. That is, I think my sole responsibility is to make the movies I want to make and not think about them. And I know they didn’t want me to think about them too.
– What drives you to tell stories?
– I think I am a very emotional person. I have very strong feelings about many things, and I think many people do it to show characters that, you know, they are so driven by fear, anxiety, prejudices, terrifying thoughts, good intentions and all that. I think that for me is the key to what I want to tell.
*Javier Pérez He reports, chronicle and interview, as well as film critic and coverage of cultural issues. Directs Hole. Nobody wants to accompany him to the cinema: he does not stop eating popcorn or talking about anything else.
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