Lukas Moodysson on 'We Are the Best', Punk & Christianity
By Oliver Lunn
http://grolschfilmworks.com/ca/features/lukas-moodysson-on-we-are-the-best-christianity-punk-interviewLukas Moodysson is, hands down, one of the greatest European auteurs of the last two decades – having directed Show Me Love (1998), Together (2000), Lilya 4-Ever (2002). And yet he’s a wildly unpredictable filmmaker whose work explores anything from small-town life to human trafficking and the messed up world of reality TV and porn. Confounding fans’ expectations again with We Are The Best!, Moodysson presents a wonderfully sweet but not saccharine coming-of-ager about a teen girl punk band in 1980s Stockholm.
I met Moodysson in London to chat about misfits, Christianity, being in a band in the 1980s, cinema as a second-rate art form, and what made him want to become a filmmaker in the first place.
GFW: We Are The Best! is adapted from your wife's graphic novel. Did she guide you along the way, or did you want to do your own thing with the film?
Lukas Moodysson: Well, she always guides me. But at the same time, she was quite tired of going back to her own childhood because she had already been there and lived it [laughs]. Then she made the graphic novel, so for her, I don't think she was that interested in the project – apart from that she was happy I made it of course.
How could you relate to the 80s girl punk band scenario?
Well, that's not too difficult because I was the same age. I was 13 years old in 1982, and we listened to the same music. It just feels very, very close to me. The big difference is that maybe I grew up in a small place. She grew up in Stockholm, I grew up much further away from the centre.
Were you in a band, too?
I played in a band, but I don't feel I have any talent for it. I play the drums. I was never capable of learning even one chord on the guitar, so I couldn't play it. So I was on drums, but I couldn't really play drums either. It didn't turn out very well.
You've been described as deeply Christian. Did you empathise more with the Hedvig character as a Christian guitarist?
Hmm, I'm not deeply Christian. Well, "deeply" implies... erm...
Orthodox?
I don't know. But it was fun because that's actually a character that doesn't really exist in the book. There's no Christianity in the book. That was a nice thing to add. Also it was nice the person who keeps the group together is actually the really lonely girl – the diplomat of the group. When we were making the film, it was difficult because Liv, who plays Hedvig, is not at all Christian. She was funny with us all when I was there, because she didn't find any reason to believe in God herself. So it was difficult.
But I do want to say with that, it's nice that she wins those arguments, the discussions about how Klara has a more materialistic view of things. Like, the only things that exist are the things you can touch and see. She defends the idea that there are a lot of things that you cannot see and touch that still exist.
(Mira Barkhammar. Image credit: Memfis Film/P-A Jorgensen)
Not many films really capture what it's actually like to be a teenager. Which ones have you admired over the years? Did you have any in mind for this – films or filmmakers?
No. I don't watch movies at all.
Really? Why not?
Because they're all my enemies.
I remember when I grew up, the one film that made me... what's it called in English? "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo", the German movie.
Christiane F.?
Yes.
It reminds me of your Lilya 4-Ever, actually.
Yeah. Well, I liked it when I was 5. I rewatched it some years ago. You shouldn't do that maybe because you copy but I really liked it when I was 12 or 13 years old and I wanted to take drugs [laughs]... I could still sort of relate to the kind of desperation or something without heroin, though.
Did that make you want to become a filmmaker?
No, I don't think it did. I think the film that really made me want to become a filmmaker wasn't really a film. It was a TV series, it was Twin Peaks. But that was when I was over 20. Before that, I always felt when I was younger and growing up that film was a sort of second-rate art form.
(Image credit: Memfis Film/Fanni Metelius)
To music?
Yeah. Music and literature. I still struggle with that. I have a little bit of a problem seeing – I know this sounds strange coming from a film director – but I have a little bit of a problem seeing film as... Sometimes I feel I have very, very simple taste in film. When I'm a spectator, when I'm watching something, I just really want to see something funny and simple and uplifting.
But yet you don't always want to make films like that?
No, that's a problem, that's a problem [laughs]. Some of the films I've made, I would really have liked to see, so that's a problem at least. I think I have more sophisticated taste in many other areas. At the moment, I feel I have very simple tastes in food and in film.
You don't think films can have the same life-changing effect that music has?
No. But yeah. As I said, it's very ambivalent. I feel things can happen, yeah. I think in many ways, Twin Peaks had that for me – all the orders of existential level, but all kinds of art can change your life. Music and books and films and everything. I think we're all products... we're all very influenced by what we see.
You're quite an unpredictable director – you've done so many different projects. How do you choose those projects? Do they come to you?
Yeah. It's difficult to know.
(Image credit: Memfis Film/P-A Jörgensen)
Do you come out of one movie and think, "God, that was really intense. Now I want to do a comedy"?
Yeah. Sometimes I feel like that, but it doesn't necessarily stay like that. I remember when I made my first film Fucking Amål/Show Me Love, I really felt next time I had to do something with grownups, because I was really tired with the teenagers and children. I wanted to do something with people my own age. So that was my own decision. But then why it turned into a film about the 70s and about a commune and everything, that's a different thing.
I had a little bit of the same feeling now, actually. Now I've made a film about children, I'm gonna have to do something about grownups. But I have so many different... it's more like a chaos in my head. Some days you just have to decide: this is the one you have to make. And then you just have to be a little bit stupid— not stupid, but narrow-minded and ignore all the other things surrounding you. Because it's really difficult.
Do you find it easier writing about younger people? I know that some of those films have maybe been a little bit more popular than the older ones?
I'm not sure if I find it easier or if it's that... I don't know. It all has to do with sort of feeling that there's a great need for good films for young people, because I feel also like part of a tradition. I feel almost nationalistic. I feel very proud of the Swedish tradition of making films – and not only films, but also books and things – that are for and about young people.
Also, some of the really heavy Swedish directors, including Bergman, made some of the best. Fanny and Alexander is really a film about children. Even he made something [funny].
It's still dark, though.
Yeah. Funny and sad at some times, too. I think there's a tradition in that which I feel at home in.
'We Are The Best' is released in cinemas on 18 April. Main image: Memfis Film/P-A Jörgensen.
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