Dan Reynolds is pretty much the definition of dad goals.
The Imagine Dragons frontman and his wife, Aja Volkman, welcomed twin daughters -- Coco Rae and Gia James -- on March 28, joining big sister Arrow Eve, 4. According to the 29-year-old singer/songwriter, living in a house full of ladies has inspired new music on the band's third studio album, Evolve, out June 23.
"I will say that there are a couple songs on this record that are love songs and typically, I do not write love songs," he told Et on Tuesday, just before hitting the stage for a performance at YouTube Space La. "I think having all these girls in the house with me has softened my heart a little bit and led me to higher grounds."
When he's not on the road, Reynolds says he couldn't be happier to be surrounded by girls.
"I am [outnumbered], yes, and I'm grateful for it," he gushes...
The Imagine Dragons frontman and his wife, Aja Volkman, welcomed twin daughters -- Coco Rae and Gia James -- on March 28, joining big sister Arrow Eve, 4. According to the 29-year-old singer/songwriter, living in a house full of ladies has inspired new music on the band's third studio album, Evolve, out June 23.
"I will say that there are a couple songs on this record that are love songs and typically, I do not write love songs," he told Et on Tuesday, just before hitting the stage for a performance at YouTube Space La. "I think having all these girls in the house with me has softened my heart a little bit and led me to higher grounds."
When he's not on the road, Reynolds says he couldn't be happier to be surrounded by girls.
"I am [outnumbered], yes, and I'm grateful for it," he gushes...
- 5/12/2017
- Entertainment Tonight
Oversimplification is a dangerous practice when speaking about justice and punishment. Deciding what is right and what is wrong is never a clear-cut affair whether the situation being judged is a simple offense or a mortal sin. To come a conclusion on the moral quality of a someone’s actions is a game ridden with subjectivity and susceptible to biased observations or assumptions, which becomes terrifyingly dangerous when a person’s fate is on the line. But to see the world with such a definitive gaze is not something Danish auteur Tobias Lindholm would ever be accused of. Like in his previous directorial effort, “A Hijacking,” his latest searing drama, “A War,” explores a story where a single act is simultaneously considered heroic and barbaric depending on who you ask. Both are rational interpretations of the same events, but is Tobias mission to eliminate the idea of a nicely wrapped resolution and focus on the vast gray space between these two perceptions of the truth.
In “A War,” we meet company commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) first in action as he leads his team’s mission in Afghanistan and then in a gloomy courtroom, an equally threatening battlefront, where he must face the consequences of a choice made during an unnerving incident. Freedom will not bring him closure and incarceration will only expand the ripples of pain already caused. Lindholm leaves his protagonist without a single easy decision while always cautiously considering their repercussions, thus guilt becomes the prevalent looming entity that dictates the narrative. It’s such the level of commitment to resembling reality in Tobias Lindholm’s every artistic move that it’s nearly impossible not to be riveted by the mere humanity of its characters.
We sat down with Tobias Lindholm and lead actor Pilou Asbæk to talk about the extreme steps taken to ensure every ounce of effort put into “A War” worked towards making an honest film and why the real world fascinates Lindholm much more than his own imagination.
The film is currently nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Note: Several of Lindholm and Asbæk's answers contain spoilers and specific plot details that some readers might want to avoid till after watching the film
Carlos Aguilar: There is a lot of moral ambiguity in "A War," but the recurrent emotion that seems to torture the protagonist and drive the narrative is guilt. It doesn't matter what the resolution is, Claus can't rid himself of that guilt. Why did you feel this needed to be the central concept of the story?
Tobias Lindholm: I think that the phase the world is in right now looking at Afghanistan is a guilty phase. We need to cope with that and understand what happened and for me to materialize that into a human being, one single individual's life, was the whole point. A natural and typical Scandinavian ending would be sending him off to jail and making it dark. But to free him and then trap or making him captive inside himself as he watches those feet getting thrown back knowing, "I will never be able to forgive myself for what happened," was a much more nuanced and interesting story.
Thinking of it, I believe I learned that from "The Hunt." When we wrote that ending, the natural ending for that film as an Scandinavian movie would be to shoot Mads. That would be the dark and gritty side of it, but it just wasn't fulfilling. I was afraid of getting away with this because there are so many emotional setups in the film. Having them compels an ending with him sitting there coping with all these feelings. To be honest we shot both endings because I needed that ending in the editing room. If I hadn't done my job good enough throughout the film at least I knew, "I have an ending that people will respond to because they don't want this guy, this kids' father to go to jail." I knew we could do that, but the truth is that the real ending is a guy who can't live with himself afterwards and is very far away from being freed as he sits in the courtyard.
That guilt became a theme throughout the film in all aspects and I always thought that the best title for this film was already taken and it's "The Goodwill." I think that's an extremely interesting human dilemma because you can't walk into the sun without drawing a shade and, by drawing that shade, you will steal the sun from somebody and that makes you feel guilty. It's kind of a ground rule in life. You can't get away from that. That guilt became, for me, the most important thing to deal with throughout the film; therefore, she is not allowed to have the Afghan family live in the camp. She feels guilty about it but there is no way around it. Everything, no matter what you do, there are no easy choices, and there is always a slice of guilt for you in the big plate of life for you.
CA: How did you Pilou, as an actor, interpret the guilt your character is feeling? What was your approach to such a complex character whose actions might be justifiable depending on who you ask and what moral standpoint you take?
Pilou Asbæk: The guilt is always there no matter what you do, especially when you become a father. It becomes even worse. The script is 120 pages long, I only got 115, so I didn’t know what this guy was hiding. I didn’t know the ending. I didn’t know if the character was guilty or not guilty. I knew that we would end up in a courtroom. I knew I would be prosecuted, but I didn’t know if I was guilty or not guilty. That was never important to me. We made the very early decision that I had a job to portray a professional soldier, but is not just a professional soldier, he is a dad, he is a husband, he is a son. He is all these other things, much more than just a professional soldier. That was the most important for me. I’ll tell you something, if this was a real thing that happened and you’d ask me what I would have done, I would say, “I would have done the same thing." I think that’s what’s interesting. I’m defending my character, and while we were shooting it I would still think that when Maria (Tuva Novotny) was sitting in the car saying, “You Pid. Say it! You might have killed 8 children, but you have three alive at home." I would still be in doubt. In the film I’m a military guy and I trained 20 years for this. This is not ethically correct. Life is not black and white, there is some gray nuance to it.
CA: One of the most thought-provoking lines in the film is when the Afghan man seeking refuge in the Danish camp confronts Claus about how his kids are in a safe place while his might die that night. It's difficult to judge either of the two men because their worldviews are based on different experiences.
Tobias Lindholm: I enjoy the complexity of life. I think that during my childhood, growing up in the 80s, for some reason it became Ok to be politically judgmental and to say, “You are a blond man and not homosexual, so you are privileged.“ That could be right from a political point of view, but on a personal point of view it’s not necessarily true. It could be really hard to be that person. At the same, “Oh there is a black woman in a wheelchair. What a pity. It must be so hard to be her. “ Not necessarily. From a political point of view yes, but on a human level not necessarily. I think it’s time to tell all the complexity of being a human being. I do believe that Klaus is right when he says, “I understand how you feel. I have three kids,” because he identified with this person.
At the same time, the Afghan man has a good point saying, “Yeah, well they are back home. You might miss them but your problem is not as big as mine because my kids are going to die tonight if you don’t help me,” and that’s true as well. If both things are right, then we’ve at least proven the complexity of the world. If we defend both voices or both stances in this film, and in “A Hijacking” as well, if we are able to do that, we will get pretty close to the truth of what it means to be human in this world. That’s the whole point of doing that. Not pointing at anybody saying, “He is a bad” or “He is a good guy.” I do believe that we are all just human beings and we are caught up in our own world. We try to relate to the rest of the world and that is a really hard job.
For some reason right now in our time we have Twitter and Facebook and we try to simplify everything - to communicate. Even our politicians, when they do interviews they know that they need a punch line in 15 seconds explaining the whole problem of a war or a financial crisis. They only have 15 seconds because they want to make it to the news. That’s way too simple because the problem is the world is complex. I do believe that we have a responsibility as storytellers. We have the audience for two hours, so let’s admit that it’s complex and try to create a story knowing that. That was the idea.
CA: In terms of the writing process, how did you tackle a story in which you are juxtaposing two completely distinct settings: a war zone and a courtroom? You did something similar in "A Hijacking," though in that film it was simultaneous, here you first you expose the incident and then analyze its consequences. How do you balance these two battlegrounds?
Tobias Lindholm: I think, as a writer at the beginning is a gut feeling. I had to think about, "When have I been long enough in Afghanistan so that I can allow myself to go home and when have I been home long enough that I want to go have back and see what happened to the guys down there?" The structure is challenging in this one because we have two arenas that we go back and forth to until he is home. Then it all transforms into this courtroom drama and we are in this cold, gray, room where it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about whether you can prove what’s right or wrong. The whole coldness of that was challenging. It was a challenge to go there, but I felt that we had done well and learned a lot in “A Hijacking.” I thought, “Let’s try to see if, without using flashbacks, we can create scenes that will recall emotions from early on.” I do believe that the performance of Dar Salim in the courtroom, the soldier who is uniform, is so important because it calls back emotions to the whole war thing. Butcher is important because he is a game-changer in the courtroom, but the guy that actually puts the war there and reminds me of the war is Dar Salim, particularly when he says, “You have no idea what’s like to be out there.” When I saw that during editing I was like, “Yes! We got it,” because I could feel my brain would start to remember images from what had happened in the war and that made it work.
CA: Pilou, what was different about portraying a character like Claus and the one you play in Tobias' previous film "A Hijacking"? They are both caught up in a situation bigger than themselves but one has clearly more power and options than the other when facing these extraordinary circumstances.
Pilou Asbæk: One is a very external character and one is a very internal character. I do it in a collaboration with the director, which in this case is also the writer. Thank God, because when something didn't work he could rewrite new scenes or new lines for me. I don’t think any character is the same, so I don’t think the approach to any character is the same. With “A Hijacking” I didn’t talked to anyone who had been hijacked, but with “A War” I talked to as many soldiers as possible trying to understand how is it in Afghanistan. Things like, "Are you going around being constantly stressed because you are in a war zone or you forget about it and talk about women? How do you communicate? How are you a leader for your soldiers?" In “A Hijacking” the characters are low status people. That character was a pawn, I’m the king now in this film [Laughs]. That was a complete new way of approaching the character that Tobias created because I’m not a natural king and that’s one of the reasons why he brought in professional soldiers, guys who have served in Afghanistan or served in Iraq. He knew that if I could create the character he would create environments that would protect my acting.
Ca: But being the king is more difficult right? What sort of discussions would you have with Tobias about the character and how did this affect the way you became Klaus?
Pilou Asbæk: You know what they say, at the top of the hill the view is the best. It’s lonely up there, but the view is the best. You have to make decisions. We would discuss this. Every single day I would go and have a discussion with Tobias saying, “Is this the right decision?” and he would be like, “Let’s see. Do the scene.” I’d ask, “Should I call a medic? Should I call the chopper? Should I call the bomb,” he’d answer, “We gotta do the scene.Let’s see.” That constantly frustrating communication between me as an actor and the director transformed into the character Claus. We were discussing the level of stress in that scene. "Is he screaming into the microphone or is he not screaming? What level of stress could a good leader handle?" When we shot the scene I didn’t knot when the explosions were coming and I didn’t know when people would be shooting at us. He created this whole circus and he put us all in it so we would navigate it naturally. It’s the funnest job I’ve ever had.
CA: Tobias, why did you feel it was important for you as a director to create this artificial sense of reality and bring this element of surprise for the actors? In a sense they are as lost as the characters themselves not knowing what comes next or what the protagonist fate will be.
Tobias Lindholm: Because life surprises us and I don’t like the actors to act. I like them to react to the environment around them That’s what we do in real life. Adding those elements of surprise and of real life gives us an edge because everybody needs to be alert all the time and nobody is just waiting for their time to say their line. Everybody needs to listen to what’s going on because things can change around you. Pilou wouldn’t get the lines that the Afghan characters would say, he would only get his own lines. Sometimes they weren’t even lines, I would read the scenes and we would talk about motivation but when talking to the Afghan locals Pilou didn’t know what they were going to say. He just waited for the interpreter to translate it and then react to it. You can feel that because he needs to listen, so his emotions are not something he had decided two weeks before like, “I’m going to react emotionally like this.” It’s all in the moment, “I need to be here right now.” It’s like free jazz, once in a while you do a recording of two hours and it’s really bad and once in a while you do five minutes of magic. We shoot digitally so we can keep on shooting [Laughs].
Pilou Asbæk: That’s scene is 100% written in the script, but when we did the scene Tobias would say, “Is this interesting? We have a whole day. We could shoot this scene the whole day.” Then he went to the Afghan family and I didn’t know shit because I was sitting all alone because that’s the actor I am. I want to concentrate. I want to give it everything. He would say to the Afghan cast, which I found out afterwards, “You don’t want to leave the camp. You are not going to leave the camp. When you enter that door, you, your wife, and your two little children are going to stay. So whatever happens none of you is going to leave the camp.” Then I’m sitting there and Tobias came to me and said, “They can’t stay. Right now I don’t know what’s going to happen in that scene, but I want you to get them out.” To have the director doing this is crazy, but what he was asking was my job. I’m the voice of reason, “We cannot have these people here because this is not a refugee camp.” Then suddenly I had to try to persuade them you, to try to communicate, then you try to get them out physically, all these different things and that’s what I love. That’s why I love working with him.
CA: One of the standout supporting characters in the film is prosecutor Lisbeth Danning. She is brutally unemotional and fiercely resolute about punishing Klaus and making an example out of him. She is not in the film for very long, but she definitely makes an impact.
Tobias Lindholm: I wrote it for Charlotte Munck, I had wanted to work with her for a long time. I think she is extremely brilliant. I think that for some reason, and I don’t get it, she is not working enough. Maybe it’s because she is picky and doesn’t want to do just anything. She is doing a lot of theater and she is extremely good. I felt so confident in her knowing that she would deliver. We didn’t see her before in the story and suddenly she is there. She is so important in the end, but normally I would follow the rules and say, “ I will not introduce any new characters after the middle of the film because we need to have seen everything before climax," but in this case we are in a whole new world for the ending. She was just really honest and precise. I would have the real military prosecutor in Denmark beside her throughout the whole shoot. Whenever she was in doubt I wouldn’t direct her, he would, which gave her that documentary feeling of not seeking emotional expression with me. She was just a tool in the box going for it and that became so clean. There was no fat on that bone. That made it work for me. She decisively avoided any emotion.
At some I really disliked her and felt angry towards her relentlessness. When she was questioning Claus my first instinct was to think, “You don’t know what he went through. You weren’t there!” But at the same time I knew why he was there.
Tobias Lindholm: [Laughs] That’s the moral compass going all sorts of ways because 14 civilians did die after all.
CA: On that same note, the judge was another character that added much more to the films nuanced ethical dilemmas despite being on screen for a very small time. When the verdict was read, something in me told me that she knew the truth and still made that decision.
Tobias Lindholm: When you work like we do there are a lot of obstacles and problems, but one of the gifts is that the audience reads these characters as real human beings. You are invested in them. You try to read them, which is why you are looking for signs. I didn’t talk to her about that. It’s not part of my direction and it’s not part of my intention, but it happens because she is human. She is a real judge and she’s controlled courtrooms before, so she knows what she was doing. I believe that people will read a lot of stuff into that because we are not trying to push feelings and emotions down your throat. We opened up for you to invest in them and by doing that you’ll find truth in these people. In this case, she knew that he was going to be freed from the beginning.
Pilou Asbæk: She did? I didn’t know that because I didn’t have those pages.
Tobias Lindholm: She knew because I needed her to justify it from a legal perspective. I needed to know if could do this or not. She helped me build the whole thing. In real life we are experts in walking around this world reading people, that’s what we do. We enter rooms with strangers and rapidly adapt to what happens there. That’s not something we leave outside a movie theater. We bring it in. If we allow the audience to be invested like that in a movie, they’ll will find truth in what happens no matter what happens.
Pilou Asbæk: It’s interesting because, the way we shot some o the war scenes in Afghanistan was the same way we shot some of the scenes in the courtroom. We would do it as realistic as possible. People wouldn’t be chitchatting. This is a real life courtroom and they treat it with respect. We filmed it chronologically. We had to because we didn’t know the ending. The judge would have all the prosecutor’s arguments, the defense’s arguments, and some days I was sitting there in the courtroom thinking, “She fucking got me,” because I didn’t know my character's fate. I would look at Søren Malling, who played my defense lawyer, and he would say, “Yeah, this is not good,” but the following day was his turn to defend me. It was surreal. When you shoot that way you make it possible for reality to happen. Just like with the kids, and I don’t want to blow our own horn, but I’ve never seen kids be as realistic in a film.
Tobias Lindholm: The key for that was not to write any lines for the kids. I just let them be kids.
CA: I’m going to assume that you’ve never been to Afghanistan, that you’ve never been to war, and that you’ve never been tried. So where did the inspiration come from to create this character and represent this experience so realistically? Did you have extensive conversations with soldiers and people involved? What obstacles did face in your quest to bring as much realism as possible to the screen?
Tobias Lindholm: Exactly. I talked to soldiers, I talked to soldiers’ wives, I talked to Afghan refugees that escaped the war, I talked to Taliban warriors, I talked to defense lawyers, I talked to prosecutors, I talked to judges, kids whose parents have been to war, and in this whole research process I was trying to cope with, from a human standpoint, what is the logic of this story. We went to an Afghan refugee camp in Turkey and cast these locals that were from Helmand, Afghanistan, which is where the Danish soldiers that were part of the film were. After casting them one of the guys told me, “I used to fight for the Taliban.” Suddenly I felt bad. It was a dilemma. I thought, “What is the right choice? What do I do?” So I asked Rene Ezra, my producer, in Danish, so nobody else understood, “Could you please just fake a phone call, tell me that is really important and say that I have to step outside so that we have a chance to talk about this?” So he said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, there is a phone call for him and we have to go?” I had a tear in my eye and I was choking. I felt that I had gotten so close to reality and I didn’t know what to do with it.
Then I called one of the soldiers who helped build the whole thing, he was kind of responsible for finding the fright guys for me to cast, and I said to him, “What do I do?” He said, “Do what you do all the time. Be honest. Let’s gather all the guys and tell them.” We came home and I sat with all these real soldiers and I said, “I’ve cast this guy. I’m not sure if he is going to be in the film but we are going to work with him because he knows a lot of stuff, but he is former Taliban. He may have been in a firefight with you and he may have even killed one of your friends. How do you feel about that?” Surprisingly the answer was, “Let’s meet him. “
We went back down to Turkey, we met him and we had tea at his house and it ended up being a beautiful conversation where former enemies sat down and actually, on a professional level, had a discussion. They'd ask, “How did you do that? How did you dig those tunnels so you could put in that ID?” and he would answer. Then one of the Danes turned to me and said, “Don’t be nervous. I understand him better than I understand you. He fought the war. You just stayed home and had fun.” I was like, “Ok, got it,” and we started working. He helped us throughout the process making sure that point of view was defended as well, that we didn’t lie about their methods, and that we didn’t tell something that wasn’t true about the way that they would fight. That, of course, gave our Dane soldiers a lot of realty to channel in their acting.
Pilou Asbæk: I remember Tobias having this meeting with this refugee who had been fighting for the Taliban. He called me at night when I was Copenhagen and he said, “Pilou, would you mind acting in a film where we have real ex-Taliban and real life Danish soldiers?” I said, “I don’t know what do you think?,” and Tobias goes, “I'm not sure, but I can tell you one thing, even if the film sucks, the behind the scenes is going to be great!”
CA: There numerous films about the American experience in Afghanistan, "A War" is clearly a story of that same war from a Danish perspective. Although it might be from a specific cultural point of view the universal qualities embedded in these characters and the drama are undeniably compelling regardless of what is our personal idea of a war like this.
Tobias Lindholm: I think the only thing we can contribute in this world is honesty. For me trying to have an American point of view in a film would be impossible, but I do believe that the reason that a film like this can translate and can be seen all over the world is the fact that it’s really honest and bound to a local identity because then one can relate to that. Had we tried to change the Danish reality so that it looked a little more like an American reality we wouldn’t have gained this honesty and we would have kept the audience from connecting to the characters. I don’t like my own imagination. I’m not entertained by it. I think it’s pretty boring to sit there and make stuff up, but I love the world around me. The world that I can access is a Danish world, I’m from there, so it makes so much sense to just go in a portray that. Of course, we are proud and happy that it’s now traveling and we are fortunate enough to travel with it, show it, and meet people that have seen it and have these conversations. It makes it all worth it. We don’t have careers, we have lives and they have to make sense. It definitely makes sense to sit here and talk with you and then show an audience our little Danish film.
"A War" will opens today in La the Sundance Cinemas and Laemmle Royal and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema and AMC Empire 25...
In “A War,” we meet company commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) first in action as he leads his team’s mission in Afghanistan and then in a gloomy courtroom, an equally threatening battlefront, where he must face the consequences of a choice made during an unnerving incident. Freedom will not bring him closure and incarceration will only expand the ripples of pain already caused. Lindholm leaves his protagonist without a single easy decision while always cautiously considering their repercussions, thus guilt becomes the prevalent looming entity that dictates the narrative. It’s such the level of commitment to resembling reality in Tobias Lindholm’s every artistic move that it’s nearly impossible not to be riveted by the mere humanity of its characters.
We sat down with Tobias Lindholm and lead actor Pilou Asbæk to talk about the extreme steps taken to ensure every ounce of effort put into “A War” worked towards making an honest film and why the real world fascinates Lindholm much more than his own imagination.
The film is currently nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Note: Several of Lindholm and Asbæk's answers contain spoilers and specific plot details that some readers might want to avoid till after watching the film
Carlos Aguilar: There is a lot of moral ambiguity in "A War," but the recurrent emotion that seems to torture the protagonist and drive the narrative is guilt. It doesn't matter what the resolution is, Claus can't rid himself of that guilt. Why did you feel this needed to be the central concept of the story?
Tobias Lindholm: I think that the phase the world is in right now looking at Afghanistan is a guilty phase. We need to cope with that and understand what happened and for me to materialize that into a human being, one single individual's life, was the whole point. A natural and typical Scandinavian ending would be sending him off to jail and making it dark. But to free him and then trap or making him captive inside himself as he watches those feet getting thrown back knowing, "I will never be able to forgive myself for what happened," was a much more nuanced and interesting story.
Thinking of it, I believe I learned that from "The Hunt." When we wrote that ending, the natural ending for that film as an Scandinavian movie would be to shoot Mads. That would be the dark and gritty side of it, but it just wasn't fulfilling. I was afraid of getting away with this because there are so many emotional setups in the film. Having them compels an ending with him sitting there coping with all these feelings. To be honest we shot both endings because I needed that ending in the editing room. If I hadn't done my job good enough throughout the film at least I knew, "I have an ending that people will respond to because they don't want this guy, this kids' father to go to jail." I knew we could do that, but the truth is that the real ending is a guy who can't live with himself afterwards and is very far away from being freed as he sits in the courtyard.
That guilt became a theme throughout the film in all aspects and I always thought that the best title for this film was already taken and it's "The Goodwill." I think that's an extremely interesting human dilemma because you can't walk into the sun without drawing a shade and, by drawing that shade, you will steal the sun from somebody and that makes you feel guilty. It's kind of a ground rule in life. You can't get away from that. That guilt became, for me, the most important thing to deal with throughout the film; therefore, she is not allowed to have the Afghan family live in the camp. She feels guilty about it but there is no way around it. Everything, no matter what you do, there are no easy choices, and there is always a slice of guilt for you in the big plate of life for you.
CA: How did you Pilou, as an actor, interpret the guilt your character is feeling? What was your approach to such a complex character whose actions might be justifiable depending on who you ask and what moral standpoint you take?
Pilou Asbæk: The guilt is always there no matter what you do, especially when you become a father. It becomes even worse. The script is 120 pages long, I only got 115, so I didn’t know what this guy was hiding. I didn’t know the ending. I didn’t know if the character was guilty or not guilty. I knew that we would end up in a courtroom. I knew I would be prosecuted, but I didn’t know if I was guilty or not guilty. That was never important to me. We made the very early decision that I had a job to portray a professional soldier, but is not just a professional soldier, he is a dad, he is a husband, he is a son. He is all these other things, much more than just a professional soldier. That was the most important for me. I’ll tell you something, if this was a real thing that happened and you’d ask me what I would have done, I would say, “I would have done the same thing." I think that’s what’s interesting. I’m defending my character, and while we were shooting it I would still think that when Maria (Tuva Novotny) was sitting in the car saying, “You Pid. Say it! You might have killed 8 children, but you have three alive at home." I would still be in doubt. In the film I’m a military guy and I trained 20 years for this. This is not ethically correct. Life is not black and white, there is some gray nuance to it.
CA: One of the most thought-provoking lines in the film is when the Afghan man seeking refuge in the Danish camp confronts Claus about how his kids are in a safe place while his might die that night. It's difficult to judge either of the two men because their worldviews are based on different experiences.
Tobias Lindholm: I enjoy the complexity of life. I think that during my childhood, growing up in the 80s, for some reason it became Ok to be politically judgmental and to say, “You are a blond man and not homosexual, so you are privileged.“ That could be right from a political point of view, but on a personal point of view it’s not necessarily true. It could be really hard to be that person. At the same, “Oh there is a black woman in a wheelchair. What a pity. It must be so hard to be her. “ Not necessarily. From a political point of view yes, but on a human level not necessarily. I think it’s time to tell all the complexity of being a human being. I do believe that Klaus is right when he says, “I understand how you feel. I have three kids,” because he identified with this person.
At the same time, the Afghan man has a good point saying, “Yeah, well they are back home. You might miss them but your problem is not as big as mine because my kids are going to die tonight if you don’t help me,” and that’s true as well. If both things are right, then we’ve at least proven the complexity of the world. If we defend both voices or both stances in this film, and in “A Hijacking” as well, if we are able to do that, we will get pretty close to the truth of what it means to be human in this world. That’s the whole point of doing that. Not pointing at anybody saying, “He is a bad” or “He is a good guy.” I do believe that we are all just human beings and we are caught up in our own world. We try to relate to the rest of the world and that is a really hard job.
For some reason right now in our time we have Twitter and Facebook and we try to simplify everything - to communicate. Even our politicians, when they do interviews they know that they need a punch line in 15 seconds explaining the whole problem of a war or a financial crisis. They only have 15 seconds because they want to make it to the news. That’s way too simple because the problem is the world is complex. I do believe that we have a responsibility as storytellers. We have the audience for two hours, so let’s admit that it’s complex and try to create a story knowing that. That was the idea.
CA: In terms of the writing process, how did you tackle a story in which you are juxtaposing two completely distinct settings: a war zone and a courtroom? You did something similar in "A Hijacking," though in that film it was simultaneous, here you first you expose the incident and then analyze its consequences. How do you balance these two battlegrounds?
Tobias Lindholm: I think, as a writer at the beginning is a gut feeling. I had to think about, "When have I been long enough in Afghanistan so that I can allow myself to go home and when have I been home long enough that I want to go have back and see what happened to the guys down there?" The structure is challenging in this one because we have two arenas that we go back and forth to until he is home. Then it all transforms into this courtroom drama and we are in this cold, gray, room where it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about whether you can prove what’s right or wrong. The whole coldness of that was challenging. It was a challenge to go there, but I felt that we had done well and learned a lot in “A Hijacking.” I thought, “Let’s try to see if, without using flashbacks, we can create scenes that will recall emotions from early on.” I do believe that the performance of Dar Salim in the courtroom, the soldier who is uniform, is so important because it calls back emotions to the whole war thing. Butcher is important because he is a game-changer in the courtroom, but the guy that actually puts the war there and reminds me of the war is Dar Salim, particularly when he says, “You have no idea what’s like to be out there.” When I saw that during editing I was like, “Yes! We got it,” because I could feel my brain would start to remember images from what had happened in the war and that made it work.
CA: Pilou, what was different about portraying a character like Claus and the one you play in Tobias' previous film "A Hijacking"? They are both caught up in a situation bigger than themselves but one has clearly more power and options than the other when facing these extraordinary circumstances.
Pilou Asbæk: One is a very external character and one is a very internal character. I do it in a collaboration with the director, which in this case is also the writer. Thank God, because when something didn't work he could rewrite new scenes or new lines for me. I don’t think any character is the same, so I don’t think the approach to any character is the same. With “A Hijacking” I didn’t talked to anyone who had been hijacked, but with “A War” I talked to as many soldiers as possible trying to understand how is it in Afghanistan. Things like, "Are you going around being constantly stressed because you are in a war zone or you forget about it and talk about women? How do you communicate? How are you a leader for your soldiers?" In “A Hijacking” the characters are low status people. That character was a pawn, I’m the king now in this film [Laughs]. That was a complete new way of approaching the character that Tobias created because I’m not a natural king and that’s one of the reasons why he brought in professional soldiers, guys who have served in Afghanistan or served in Iraq. He knew that if I could create the character he would create environments that would protect my acting.
Ca: But being the king is more difficult right? What sort of discussions would you have with Tobias about the character and how did this affect the way you became Klaus?
Pilou Asbæk: You know what they say, at the top of the hill the view is the best. It’s lonely up there, but the view is the best. You have to make decisions. We would discuss this. Every single day I would go and have a discussion with Tobias saying, “Is this the right decision?” and he would be like, “Let’s see. Do the scene.” I’d ask, “Should I call a medic? Should I call the chopper? Should I call the bomb,” he’d answer, “We gotta do the scene.Let’s see.” That constantly frustrating communication between me as an actor and the director transformed into the character Claus. We were discussing the level of stress in that scene. "Is he screaming into the microphone or is he not screaming? What level of stress could a good leader handle?" When we shot the scene I didn’t knot when the explosions were coming and I didn’t know when people would be shooting at us. He created this whole circus and he put us all in it so we would navigate it naturally. It’s the funnest job I’ve ever had.
CA: Tobias, why did you feel it was important for you as a director to create this artificial sense of reality and bring this element of surprise for the actors? In a sense they are as lost as the characters themselves not knowing what comes next or what the protagonist fate will be.
Tobias Lindholm: Because life surprises us and I don’t like the actors to act. I like them to react to the environment around them That’s what we do in real life. Adding those elements of surprise and of real life gives us an edge because everybody needs to be alert all the time and nobody is just waiting for their time to say their line. Everybody needs to listen to what’s going on because things can change around you. Pilou wouldn’t get the lines that the Afghan characters would say, he would only get his own lines. Sometimes they weren’t even lines, I would read the scenes and we would talk about motivation but when talking to the Afghan locals Pilou didn’t know what they were going to say. He just waited for the interpreter to translate it and then react to it. You can feel that because he needs to listen, so his emotions are not something he had decided two weeks before like, “I’m going to react emotionally like this.” It’s all in the moment, “I need to be here right now.” It’s like free jazz, once in a while you do a recording of two hours and it’s really bad and once in a while you do five minutes of magic. We shoot digitally so we can keep on shooting [Laughs].
Pilou Asbæk: That’s scene is 100% written in the script, but when we did the scene Tobias would say, “Is this interesting? We have a whole day. We could shoot this scene the whole day.” Then he went to the Afghan family and I didn’t know shit because I was sitting all alone because that’s the actor I am. I want to concentrate. I want to give it everything. He would say to the Afghan cast, which I found out afterwards, “You don’t want to leave the camp. You are not going to leave the camp. When you enter that door, you, your wife, and your two little children are going to stay. So whatever happens none of you is going to leave the camp.” Then I’m sitting there and Tobias came to me and said, “They can’t stay. Right now I don’t know what’s going to happen in that scene, but I want you to get them out.” To have the director doing this is crazy, but what he was asking was my job. I’m the voice of reason, “We cannot have these people here because this is not a refugee camp.” Then suddenly I had to try to persuade them you, to try to communicate, then you try to get them out physically, all these different things and that’s what I love. That’s why I love working with him.
CA: One of the standout supporting characters in the film is prosecutor Lisbeth Danning. She is brutally unemotional and fiercely resolute about punishing Klaus and making an example out of him. She is not in the film for very long, but she definitely makes an impact.
Tobias Lindholm: I wrote it for Charlotte Munck, I had wanted to work with her for a long time. I think she is extremely brilliant. I think that for some reason, and I don’t get it, she is not working enough. Maybe it’s because she is picky and doesn’t want to do just anything. She is doing a lot of theater and she is extremely good. I felt so confident in her knowing that she would deliver. We didn’t see her before in the story and suddenly she is there. She is so important in the end, but normally I would follow the rules and say, “ I will not introduce any new characters after the middle of the film because we need to have seen everything before climax," but in this case we are in a whole new world for the ending. She was just really honest and precise. I would have the real military prosecutor in Denmark beside her throughout the whole shoot. Whenever she was in doubt I wouldn’t direct her, he would, which gave her that documentary feeling of not seeking emotional expression with me. She was just a tool in the box going for it and that became so clean. There was no fat on that bone. That made it work for me. She decisively avoided any emotion.
At some I really disliked her and felt angry towards her relentlessness. When she was questioning Claus my first instinct was to think, “You don’t know what he went through. You weren’t there!” But at the same time I knew why he was there.
Tobias Lindholm: [Laughs] That’s the moral compass going all sorts of ways because 14 civilians did die after all.
CA: On that same note, the judge was another character that added much more to the films nuanced ethical dilemmas despite being on screen for a very small time. When the verdict was read, something in me told me that she knew the truth and still made that decision.
Tobias Lindholm: When you work like we do there are a lot of obstacles and problems, but one of the gifts is that the audience reads these characters as real human beings. You are invested in them. You try to read them, which is why you are looking for signs. I didn’t talk to her about that. It’s not part of my direction and it’s not part of my intention, but it happens because she is human. She is a real judge and she’s controlled courtrooms before, so she knows what she was doing. I believe that people will read a lot of stuff into that because we are not trying to push feelings and emotions down your throat. We opened up for you to invest in them and by doing that you’ll find truth in these people. In this case, she knew that he was going to be freed from the beginning.
Pilou Asbæk: She did? I didn’t know that because I didn’t have those pages.
Tobias Lindholm: She knew because I needed her to justify it from a legal perspective. I needed to know if could do this or not. She helped me build the whole thing. In real life we are experts in walking around this world reading people, that’s what we do. We enter rooms with strangers and rapidly adapt to what happens there. That’s not something we leave outside a movie theater. We bring it in. If we allow the audience to be invested like that in a movie, they’ll will find truth in what happens no matter what happens.
Pilou Asbæk: It’s interesting because, the way we shot some o the war scenes in Afghanistan was the same way we shot some of the scenes in the courtroom. We would do it as realistic as possible. People wouldn’t be chitchatting. This is a real life courtroom and they treat it with respect. We filmed it chronologically. We had to because we didn’t know the ending. The judge would have all the prosecutor’s arguments, the defense’s arguments, and some days I was sitting there in the courtroom thinking, “She fucking got me,” because I didn’t know my character's fate. I would look at Søren Malling, who played my defense lawyer, and he would say, “Yeah, this is not good,” but the following day was his turn to defend me. It was surreal. When you shoot that way you make it possible for reality to happen. Just like with the kids, and I don’t want to blow our own horn, but I’ve never seen kids be as realistic in a film.
Tobias Lindholm: The key for that was not to write any lines for the kids. I just let them be kids.
CA: I’m going to assume that you’ve never been to Afghanistan, that you’ve never been to war, and that you’ve never been tried. So where did the inspiration come from to create this character and represent this experience so realistically? Did you have extensive conversations with soldiers and people involved? What obstacles did face in your quest to bring as much realism as possible to the screen?
Tobias Lindholm: Exactly. I talked to soldiers, I talked to soldiers’ wives, I talked to Afghan refugees that escaped the war, I talked to Taliban warriors, I talked to defense lawyers, I talked to prosecutors, I talked to judges, kids whose parents have been to war, and in this whole research process I was trying to cope with, from a human standpoint, what is the logic of this story. We went to an Afghan refugee camp in Turkey and cast these locals that were from Helmand, Afghanistan, which is where the Danish soldiers that were part of the film were. After casting them one of the guys told me, “I used to fight for the Taliban.” Suddenly I felt bad. It was a dilemma. I thought, “What is the right choice? What do I do?” So I asked Rene Ezra, my producer, in Danish, so nobody else understood, “Could you please just fake a phone call, tell me that is really important and say that I have to step outside so that we have a chance to talk about this?” So he said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, there is a phone call for him and we have to go?” I had a tear in my eye and I was choking. I felt that I had gotten so close to reality and I didn’t know what to do with it.
Then I called one of the soldiers who helped build the whole thing, he was kind of responsible for finding the fright guys for me to cast, and I said to him, “What do I do?” He said, “Do what you do all the time. Be honest. Let’s gather all the guys and tell them.” We came home and I sat with all these real soldiers and I said, “I’ve cast this guy. I’m not sure if he is going to be in the film but we are going to work with him because he knows a lot of stuff, but he is former Taliban. He may have been in a firefight with you and he may have even killed one of your friends. How do you feel about that?” Surprisingly the answer was, “Let’s meet him. “
We went back down to Turkey, we met him and we had tea at his house and it ended up being a beautiful conversation where former enemies sat down and actually, on a professional level, had a discussion. They'd ask, “How did you do that? How did you dig those tunnels so you could put in that ID?” and he would answer. Then one of the Danes turned to me and said, “Don’t be nervous. I understand him better than I understand you. He fought the war. You just stayed home and had fun.” I was like, “Ok, got it,” and we started working. He helped us throughout the process making sure that point of view was defended as well, that we didn’t lie about their methods, and that we didn’t tell something that wasn’t true about the way that they would fight. That, of course, gave our Dane soldiers a lot of realty to channel in their acting.
Pilou Asbæk: I remember Tobias having this meeting with this refugee who had been fighting for the Taliban. He called me at night when I was Copenhagen and he said, “Pilou, would you mind acting in a film where we have real ex-Taliban and real life Danish soldiers?” I said, “I don’t know what do you think?,” and Tobias goes, “I'm not sure, but I can tell you one thing, even if the film sucks, the behind the scenes is going to be great!”
CA: There numerous films about the American experience in Afghanistan, "A War" is clearly a story of that same war from a Danish perspective. Although it might be from a specific cultural point of view the universal qualities embedded in these characters and the drama are undeniably compelling regardless of what is our personal idea of a war like this.
Tobias Lindholm: I think the only thing we can contribute in this world is honesty. For me trying to have an American point of view in a film would be impossible, but I do believe that the reason that a film like this can translate and can be seen all over the world is the fact that it’s really honest and bound to a local identity because then one can relate to that. Had we tried to change the Danish reality so that it looked a little more like an American reality we wouldn’t have gained this honesty and we would have kept the audience from connecting to the characters. I don’t like my own imagination. I’m not entertained by it. I think it’s pretty boring to sit there and make stuff up, but I love the world around me. The world that I can access is a Danish world, I’m from there, so it makes so much sense to just go in a portray that. Of course, we are proud and happy that it’s now traveling and we are fortunate enough to travel with it, show it, and meet people that have seen it and have these conversations. It makes it all worth it. We don’t have careers, we have lives and they have to make sense. It definitely makes sense to sit here and talk with you and then show an audience our little Danish film.
"A War" will opens today in La the Sundance Cinemas and Laemmle Royal and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema and AMC Empire 25...
- 2/13/2016
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
Nothing can be bigger than Hercules.
Then again, nothing can be bigger than Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson arrived early at CinemaCon in Las Vegas to speak to a small handful of journalists about the revealing of his “Hercules” trailer.
Latino-Review was present at this conversation. We’ve discussed many details about “Hercules” movie. And we even got into other topics about a possible superhero movie, G.I. Joe movie and San Andreas film.
“Hercules” will be in theaters on July 25.
Read the full transcript below.
Question: I’m very curious about the balance between playing it real versus fantasy. Is it like 300 exaggerations?
Dwayne Johnson: Well, there had been a few iterations in the past of Hercules. The idea was to take the spirit of the graphic novel, which we liked, and then create a script and a story based on that that still gave a very unique twist on the story of Hercules.
Then again, nothing can be bigger than Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson arrived early at CinemaCon in Las Vegas to speak to a small handful of journalists about the revealing of his “Hercules” trailer.
Latino-Review was present at this conversation. We’ve discussed many details about “Hercules” movie. And we even got into other topics about a possible superhero movie, G.I. Joe movie and San Andreas film.
“Hercules” will be in theaters on July 25.
Read the full transcript below.
Question: I’m very curious about the balance between playing it real versus fantasy. Is it like 300 exaggerations?
Dwayne Johnson: Well, there had been a few iterations in the past of Hercules. The idea was to take the spirit of the graphic novel, which we liked, and then create a script and a story based on that that still gave a very unique twist on the story of Hercules.
- 3/25/2014
- by Gig Patta
- LRMonline.com
Los Angeles native Ariana Delawari's documentary We Came Home follows her father's return to his homeland of Afghanistan to build the new financial system after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, yet this story goes far beyond politics and war. It's Ariana's moving journey of love and understanding for her family, the music of Afghanistan, and the beauty of the Afghan people. It was a blessing to interview Ariana, considering how much is unfolding with the success of her film on the international festival circuit, her career as a musician, and an activist with a voice for peace and intercultural understanding.
Erin: Please talk about the inspiration that fueled the making of We Came Home.
Ariana: I think as citizens in the world right now we can get so frustrated or feel powerless with government. And then when you actually start meeting people one on one, you realize there are human beings within these systems. If we (as storytellers) do the work and create something that can penetrate, it actually can touch hearts and affect people to create changes.
Afghanistan has its own timing, and it's sort of an energetic thing. We got called to do something and put this effort into it, but the film will be born when it serves Afghanistan the most. I really feel in my heart that it's such an important year for Afghanistan. I could've finished this film four years ago. It would have been a different story, but there was something inside saying, "It's not ready yet. There's more to the story. Keep going." So many things changed as we kept shooting, and all of that was meant to be in the film. I believe that it's a crucial time. We don't know what's going to happen with the withdrawal and with the elections. We're in this precious moment. Why I've done any of this art about Afghanistan is to serve Afghanistan. There's a surrender knowing that there was something that called me in the first place to make this whole thing and go on this journey. That is continuing to guide me.
Erin: What were the main challenges of your creative process?
Ariana: The first few years of going to Afghanistan were pure joy. It was thrilling, beautiful, soul opening and an expansive experience of finding my love, of finding my long lost home and the part of my heart that was waiting to blossom. I was just in love with Afghanistan: everyone I met, every face, every bit of the landscape, and everything about it. I couldn't stop capturing it in photos and film. I didn't have a plan of what the film would be or anything. I was just capturing my journeys.
When I started to see it fall apart, the first challenge came, which was an emotional challenge. As I was coming of age in a way, I was realizing the gravity of what it would mean for all these friends that I've met and for this country. What would it mean for these people if it went backwards? Suicide bombings started to emerge in 2005. I was there in Kabul and I felt a change. I came back and started frantically writing all these songs about Afghanistan. It was interesting because at the time I was an actress. I had been acting for many years and my career was just starting to blossom. I had just done 'The Sopranos', 'Entourage', and all these things that are exciting as an actor. I came back from Afghanistan and had this moment of "Wow, just as this is blooming, I have to let it go because I have to make this album here. I have to make a film about it." I had this call that said, "Now you have to put all your energy into Afghanistan, because who else is going to do it the way that I'm supposed to do it?" That's when I decided that I wanted to make an album there. I started writing all this music about it, while seeing it get worse and worse.
When we decided to record there, lots of doors opened. We got the musicians on board quickly. My dad was practically an executive producer in Kabul. He was helping to arrange that part of it. We had the equipment promised to us. Within three months we had pre-produced everything. We were on the plane, and then we get there and everything is hard. The promises with the equipment changed. It went from "You have three weeks with the equipment" to "You have four days."
Once we started recording, everything you could imagine went wrong. We couldn't get the equipment to work. We were supposed to have an engineer the whole time, but we only had him for a day. Neither my band mate nor I had ever produced an album, so we had to learn on the fly. Then the electricity blew and the generator died. Then all of the sudden it's the weekend; the traffic was horrendous and we had to nail dusty carpets (for sound proofing) to every single wall in my parents house.
At that point we weren't getting along as well because we were so stressed out, so the energy in the room was different. Finally, when we finished the recordings and said goodbye to the musicians, we had a few more days in Kabul. We played a live show at this French Expat party. I had a bite of a tomato and got deathly sick. During the last few days in Kabul, I was the sickest that I had ever been in my life. We couldn't enjoy it after all that work. When you're recording like that, you're in a compound; you're not getting fresh air. You're not going for walks. It's hard enough when you're recording an album. You need those breaks. There were no breaks. We had stress and armed guards at the compound. After all of this was said and done, we didn't get to see much of the country. We left Afghanistan, and then my producer loses her passport in Dubai. Finally at the end of seven days of sitting in Dubai, she finds it, just as she was issued a new one.
Erin: Is the final edit of "We Came Home" what you expected?
Ariana: We thought the footage was basically going to be about the music and the trials and tribulations of making an album. I showed my producer five years of footage of my journey and these interviews of my parents; I had also thought about making just a feature film about my parents. When she saw all of this, she said, "All of this is the film!" It dawned on me that this thing had been coming through me that I didn't realize was being made. My parents didn't think their interviews would be used for the film, so there was a rawness in doing it this way; they didn't know this would end up on a screen. You can't recreate that. That's so special. It was two in the morning. I was just drinking tea with my mom in Kabul asking her to tell me stories without the thought of "this is going to be a film".
The ascetic of this film had to be so raw, because it happened so organically. I started going through the garage after that trip in 2009 and digitizing so much footage--vhs tapes, super 8mm film, and everything that we had in our family archive. When it came to these VHS tapes, we could’ve gotten the real footage from the news station, but for 20 years, my dad had blank VHS tapes next to the Vcr player. Anytime there was news about Afghanistan, he'd hit record. So there was our archive. We didn't have to go looking. It was there, and when we digitized it, it looked so gritty, grainy and bleached out. I didn't want the real footage. I thought, "I want the audience to watch this and have the feeling of what 20 years in the garage meant because that's the silence of what my dad experienced.
Erin: And that's Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been in the garage for more than 20 years.
Ariana: Exactly, so those were the kinds of decisions that I made. On that trip in 2009, I really hit rock bottom. The energy there felt grim. I came back and I was a mess for a year. We assembled the post team, and in the summer of 2010, we started a Kickstarter fund that ended up raising 23 grand. It was a full year of editing. When the film was finally done, I felt the heaviness lift. I felt "Finally, I'm telling this story and maybe it can do something! Maybe this story can help the situation in Afghanistan."
Erin: Watching your film, I really felt the spirit of the Afghan people. You captured them in a way that I haven't seen with other films about the country. Was this your intention?
Ariana: That was my main goal. You experienced the spirit of Afghanistan and that was what changed my life. Afghanistan brought so much joy to my life, and I wondered how do I go on with my life and my opportunities when these people I love so much ... they're so generous. How do I not give it back? They gave me so much.
As we were editing, a big challenge was making sure that the spirit of the people was always in the film. Especially because I'm in the film, I felt really sensitive about any kind of vanity. I just wanted to be the pied piper. I wanted to take the audience on this journey and really wanted the film to be more about my dad, the musicians, and the country. I wanted to be a doorway for the essence to come through and really this land of people, the spirit of generosity and love that has been the most important part of my entire life. I wanted to give a gift to the audience, so that no matter what happens, they walk out of this film and they feel the generosity of Afghanistan has given them something for their life.
Erin: What do people who haven't been to Afghanistan say about your film?
Ariana: They all say that they want to go to Afghanistan. They all thank us for telling the true Afghanistan. I hear that so often, and Americans always say, "The whole world has to see this film. They have to see this film because this is the true Afghanistan. They need to know how beautiful it is." This is the biggest message. I wanted people to get excited from the journey and go on it with us so they're like, "Wait a minute. I want to go there now!” On a universal level, I wanted people to say, "Well if that's Afghanistan, I wonder what all these other countries are. What is this world we're living in? What are these different places?" All of them are magical. All of them are beautiful, and there are gifts everywhere. We're not here to fight over it. We're here to celebrate it.
Erin: Please talk about the power of film to shift consciousness on the global scale.
Ariana: I feel that story is something that transcends logic. When a story is told well, we enter a reality, and yes we can absorb facts and information more easily because we've entered another reality. More than anything, it's an education of the heart if storytelling is done right. I think that reaching people's hearts is more transformative than just facts. Another thing is that when we watch a story, and when we go on a journey, it becomes a part of us. It becomes personal and experiential, without even having to go experience it. I think it's the ultimate form of empathy in a time when there's so much changing in the world. There's so much to change. Systems are breaking down, and we don't have all the answers. No one does, but we have a tool that we can share and use to educate each other. The solutions can emerge, the more that we share through film. We're in a time of this exponential explosion of communication in the world. It's a part of our transformation, to create the new systems, to create the new narrative. We're essentially writing our new story together. We're telling our stories and the stories of our past to write a new one together. If we embrace what's happening with this opening of communication, then maybe the new story of the world is a story of peace and equality.
Erin: Please talk about the inspiration that fueled the making of We Came Home.
Ariana: I think as citizens in the world right now we can get so frustrated or feel powerless with government. And then when you actually start meeting people one on one, you realize there are human beings within these systems. If we (as storytellers) do the work and create something that can penetrate, it actually can touch hearts and affect people to create changes.
Afghanistan has its own timing, and it's sort of an energetic thing. We got called to do something and put this effort into it, but the film will be born when it serves Afghanistan the most. I really feel in my heart that it's such an important year for Afghanistan. I could've finished this film four years ago. It would have been a different story, but there was something inside saying, "It's not ready yet. There's more to the story. Keep going." So many things changed as we kept shooting, and all of that was meant to be in the film. I believe that it's a crucial time. We don't know what's going to happen with the withdrawal and with the elections. We're in this precious moment. Why I've done any of this art about Afghanistan is to serve Afghanistan. There's a surrender knowing that there was something that called me in the first place to make this whole thing and go on this journey. That is continuing to guide me.
Erin: What were the main challenges of your creative process?
Ariana: The first few years of going to Afghanistan were pure joy. It was thrilling, beautiful, soul opening and an expansive experience of finding my love, of finding my long lost home and the part of my heart that was waiting to blossom. I was just in love with Afghanistan: everyone I met, every face, every bit of the landscape, and everything about it. I couldn't stop capturing it in photos and film. I didn't have a plan of what the film would be or anything. I was just capturing my journeys.
When I started to see it fall apart, the first challenge came, which was an emotional challenge. As I was coming of age in a way, I was realizing the gravity of what it would mean for all these friends that I've met and for this country. What would it mean for these people if it went backwards? Suicide bombings started to emerge in 2005. I was there in Kabul and I felt a change. I came back and started frantically writing all these songs about Afghanistan. It was interesting because at the time I was an actress. I had been acting for many years and my career was just starting to blossom. I had just done 'The Sopranos', 'Entourage', and all these things that are exciting as an actor. I came back from Afghanistan and had this moment of "Wow, just as this is blooming, I have to let it go because I have to make this album here. I have to make a film about it." I had this call that said, "Now you have to put all your energy into Afghanistan, because who else is going to do it the way that I'm supposed to do it?" That's when I decided that I wanted to make an album there. I started writing all this music about it, while seeing it get worse and worse.
When we decided to record there, lots of doors opened. We got the musicians on board quickly. My dad was practically an executive producer in Kabul. He was helping to arrange that part of it. We had the equipment promised to us. Within three months we had pre-produced everything. We were on the plane, and then we get there and everything is hard. The promises with the equipment changed. It went from "You have three weeks with the equipment" to "You have four days."
Once we started recording, everything you could imagine went wrong. We couldn't get the equipment to work. We were supposed to have an engineer the whole time, but we only had him for a day. Neither my band mate nor I had ever produced an album, so we had to learn on the fly. Then the electricity blew and the generator died. Then all of the sudden it's the weekend; the traffic was horrendous and we had to nail dusty carpets (for sound proofing) to every single wall in my parents house.
At that point we weren't getting along as well because we were so stressed out, so the energy in the room was different. Finally, when we finished the recordings and said goodbye to the musicians, we had a few more days in Kabul. We played a live show at this French Expat party. I had a bite of a tomato and got deathly sick. During the last few days in Kabul, I was the sickest that I had ever been in my life. We couldn't enjoy it after all that work. When you're recording like that, you're in a compound; you're not getting fresh air. You're not going for walks. It's hard enough when you're recording an album. You need those breaks. There were no breaks. We had stress and armed guards at the compound. After all of this was said and done, we didn't get to see much of the country. We left Afghanistan, and then my producer loses her passport in Dubai. Finally at the end of seven days of sitting in Dubai, she finds it, just as she was issued a new one.
Erin: Is the final edit of "We Came Home" what you expected?
Ariana: We thought the footage was basically going to be about the music and the trials and tribulations of making an album. I showed my producer five years of footage of my journey and these interviews of my parents; I had also thought about making just a feature film about my parents. When she saw all of this, she said, "All of this is the film!" It dawned on me that this thing had been coming through me that I didn't realize was being made. My parents didn't think their interviews would be used for the film, so there was a rawness in doing it this way; they didn't know this would end up on a screen. You can't recreate that. That's so special. It was two in the morning. I was just drinking tea with my mom in Kabul asking her to tell me stories without the thought of "this is going to be a film".
The ascetic of this film had to be so raw, because it happened so organically. I started going through the garage after that trip in 2009 and digitizing so much footage--vhs tapes, super 8mm film, and everything that we had in our family archive. When it came to these VHS tapes, we could’ve gotten the real footage from the news station, but for 20 years, my dad had blank VHS tapes next to the Vcr player. Anytime there was news about Afghanistan, he'd hit record. So there was our archive. We didn't have to go looking. It was there, and when we digitized it, it looked so gritty, grainy and bleached out. I didn't want the real footage. I thought, "I want the audience to watch this and have the feeling of what 20 years in the garage meant because that's the silence of what my dad experienced.
Erin: And that's Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been in the garage for more than 20 years.
Ariana: Exactly, so those were the kinds of decisions that I made. On that trip in 2009, I really hit rock bottom. The energy there felt grim. I came back and I was a mess for a year. We assembled the post team, and in the summer of 2010, we started a Kickstarter fund that ended up raising 23 grand. It was a full year of editing. When the film was finally done, I felt the heaviness lift. I felt "Finally, I'm telling this story and maybe it can do something! Maybe this story can help the situation in Afghanistan."
Erin: Watching your film, I really felt the spirit of the Afghan people. You captured them in a way that I haven't seen with other films about the country. Was this your intention?
Ariana: That was my main goal. You experienced the spirit of Afghanistan and that was what changed my life. Afghanistan brought so much joy to my life, and I wondered how do I go on with my life and my opportunities when these people I love so much ... they're so generous. How do I not give it back? They gave me so much.
As we were editing, a big challenge was making sure that the spirit of the people was always in the film. Especially because I'm in the film, I felt really sensitive about any kind of vanity. I just wanted to be the pied piper. I wanted to take the audience on this journey and really wanted the film to be more about my dad, the musicians, and the country. I wanted to be a doorway for the essence to come through and really this land of people, the spirit of generosity and love that has been the most important part of my entire life. I wanted to give a gift to the audience, so that no matter what happens, they walk out of this film and they feel the generosity of Afghanistan has given them something for their life.
Erin: What do people who haven't been to Afghanistan say about your film?
Ariana: They all say that they want to go to Afghanistan. They all thank us for telling the true Afghanistan. I hear that so often, and Americans always say, "The whole world has to see this film. They have to see this film because this is the true Afghanistan. They need to know how beautiful it is." This is the biggest message. I wanted people to get excited from the journey and go on it with us so they're like, "Wait a minute. I want to go there now!” On a universal level, I wanted people to say, "Well if that's Afghanistan, I wonder what all these other countries are. What is this world we're living in? What are these different places?" All of them are magical. All of them are beautiful, and there are gifts everywhere. We're not here to fight over it. We're here to celebrate it.
Erin: Please talk about the power of film to shift consciousness on the global scale.
Ariana: I feel that story is something that transcends logic. When a story is told well, we enter a reality, and yes we can absorb facts and information more easily because we've entered another reality. More than anything, it's an education of the heart if storytelling is done right. I think that reaching people's hearts is more transformative than just facts. Another thing is that when we watch a story, and when we go on a journey, it becomes a part of us. It becomes personal and experiential, without even having to go experience it. I think it's the ultimate form of empathy in a time when there's so much changing in the world. There's so much to change. Systems are breaking down, and we don't have all the answers. No one does, but we have a tool that we can share and use to educate each other. The solutions can emerge, the more that we share through film. We're in a time of this exponential explosion of communication in the world. It's a part of our transformation, to create the new systems, to create the new narrative. We're essentially writing our new story together. We're telling our stories and the stories of our past to write a new one together. If we embrace what's happening with this opening of communication, then maybe the new story of the world is a story of peace and equality.
- 11/15/2013
- by Erin Grover
- Sydney's Buzz
Carrying all the markings of a well-intentioned first documentary effort by someone with fantastic family circumstances, We Came Home is ultimately more interesting to talk about than to watch. Director Ariana Delawari's father, Noor Delawari, has served as governor of Afghanistan's Central Bank since 2011, weathering the faltering promises of U.S. nation-building, the crumbling credibility of Hamid Karzai's presidency, and a corruption scandal—all after 33 years of war, 32 years of expatriation, and three children. The director's half-Sicilian, half-Afghan mother also clearly has many stories to tell, having met Noor during a lengthy late-'60s trip through a thoroughly modern Afghanistan, moving into the dangerous, bombed-out shell of Kabul post–9/11, and returning ...
- 9/25/2013
- Village Voice
AFI Fest 2012 presented by Audi, a program of the American Film Institute, today announced the events and screenings in its Presentations and Conversations programs, an additional screening and some of the guests who are expected to attend this year.s festival. AFI Fest, which annually presents the best of world cinema in the movie capital of the world, will take place November 1 through 8 at the historic Grauman.s Chinese Theatre, the Chinese 6 Theatres, the Egyptian Theatre and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Stay with us here at Wamg as we bring you the latest from the AFI Fest screenings, panels and after-parties right here in Hollywood!
Presentations:
This variety of special screening events offers audiences a unique festival experience.
Sunset Boulevard: Dir Billy Wilder
With restoration services by Technicolor, be among the first to experience one of Hollywood.s most beloved films as it was originally intended. A fitting release...
Stay with us here at Wamg as we bring you the latest from the AFI Fest screenings, panels and after-parties right here in Hollywood!
Presentations:
This variety of special screening events offers audiences a unique festival experience.
Sunset Boulevard: Dir Billy Wilder
With restoration services by Technicolor, be among the first to experience one of Hollywood.s most beloved films as it was originally intended. A fitting release...
- 10/31/2012
- by Melissa Thompson
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
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