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Danish director Kristian Levring is probably best known for his feature The King Is Alive, which was the fourth film put out under the Dogme 95 rules. His new movie Fear Me Not resides as the other end of that spectrum as a dark thriller that rests on the edge of becoming sinister at any moment. It’s a great commentary on modern day pharmaceuticals, and what they might or might not be doing to us.

Read on for our in-depth interview with Levring, in which he talks about pharmaceuticals, his favorite filmmakers, and the Dogme legacy.

You mentioned in the Q&A that you were inspired by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Yeah.

Was the pharmaceutical aspect of the film always an element of it, then? Because it was in that story.

Yeah. Yeah, it was. Pharmaceutical, you know, life is strange, but you know, I think things you experience when you are a child or a teenager, the books you read, you know, they stick. And then, you live a life, and all of a sudden they come back.And then, you have experiences, you see people when they’re drunk or take drugs, and you know, people that are perhaps very silent and all of a sudden they get very violent. And you start thinking, oh, there is truth, there’s some kind of truth in that book I read once. And that’s what that book is about.

Right.

It’s just made in a very Gothic way, which is of that time. So, I felt it could be fun to do something inspired, but of our time.

Yeah. Well, you mentioned later that same evening that you thought it was interesting that we play around with our minds every day with drugs and it’s accepted.

Yeah.

It’s fine if a doctor prescribes, you know, something to alter your brain chemicals, which is definitely true, and which is what I think makes Fear Me Not so terrifying. It’s like, this could happen to anybody.

Right. You know we wrote, I think, six drafts of the script, and slowly I took out all the violence. I felt it’s not really me to make that violent film that way. I just think there’s something much more interesting, sort of something scary, without knives, and you know, so that was a choice in the end.

Well, it was very scary because you did feel like at any moment he was just about to do something extremely bad, which I thought you did a great job with, walking that line, because it’s a very scary movie without being, I mean, there is not much violence, really, in the film. It sort of reminded me… Steven Spielberg said the reason Jaws was so scary is because you really don’t see the shark until the very end. That does have violence in it, but…

Of course, I’m of that generation, you know? I actually feel when you see the shark it’s a bit disappointing, even though they spent millions of dollars on it, you know? I would much rather never have seen the shark.

Interesting.

And I think that actually, it almost becomes a different movie when you see the shark in the end.

When you set about casting for this, what was that process like? Because all the actors, even the little girl, gave really good performances.

Some films just come together so easily. Some films are not great scenarios. This was the easy kind of film because the actors I wanted were all available. And then we found this girl, and it is quite a complicated part for someone who’s never done movies before, and she was just like an actress. She was there, I looked at many, many young girls, and she was just like, years above everybody. And on the set she was just like, in two days, you know, they forgot that she was a girl, the other actors improvised with her like she was a grownup, or a really educated actor.

So, the casting was, because Ulrich, we more or less wrote the part for him, because Ulrich has this quality, he does so little, but it’s like he carries a secret, so you are always interested in seeing, looking at his face, while doing very little, which is a very cinematic quality, and I feel, very good for this specific film. The other, Paprika, is an old friend. I’d never worked with her. And I called her, she was, I mean, she was obviously right for the part. And it was easy. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

The use of silence in the film, silence almost becomes a character, and in some ways, it’s a way for Ulrich to emote, like you’re saying, even though so many times he’s not speaking, but you’re processing what he’s going through mentally.

Yeah, yeah.

You said you worked a lot on the sound for this.

Right.

And I did notice throughout, there were amplified sound effects and a lot of attention to the sound. Was that a separate process after the filming was done, or just how it came out?

Oh, yeah. First of all, the sound is, for me, I’m very bad at dubbing, so with the sound guys, a fantastic sound engineer, everything is, there’s not one line in the film that’s dubbed. So, that’s like one challenge, because then you have a very realistic sound. So, the work was to fade that down and build up images like a universe, because in a Scandinavian context, this film could so easily have just become like what I would call a kitchen table film, you know, everything is like in kitchens, and…

Talking heads.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, and that was a big challenge, to make a movie that actually takes place in a house and not just having too, I didn’t want the world in which it was set to be too realistic. It should be so you can relate to it, but there should be oddness to it or something, and the sound was a very important part of that.

Yeah, like the snap and crackle of the pills is almost like a character.

Yeah, yeah. Of course, all these sounds we worked a lot on, they were all added, all those kinds of moments like that one.

Yeah. That worked really well.

So, there’s some kind of almost like a ritual in the sound, you know, when he takes the pills, it’s the same sound every time.

The cinematography in the film was stunning, it was really gorgeous. I mean, that opening shot with the boat along the water, the rowing or whatever, that was fantastic. And I noticed a lot of the framing, like when his wife is in bed and he’s laying next to her, it’s almost a mirror image, and just some amazing shots. This cinematographer, had you worked with before?

We are like a team, because I originally came from commercials, so I’m very much into framing and lighting. We’ve done three, three films I’ve done, we’ve done together, and we’re like, we don’t need to talk. He knows exactly what I want, and I know how he’s doing it. The whole film was actually storyboarded, every frame. And I like that because I feel that this is a quite controlled movie. The whole film is about control, so I felt it was fun to make a thing which was really controlled.

Yeah. I noticed that a lot of times when American audiences see foreign films, there tends to be a lot of nudity because they have a much more lax attitude in Europe. But, this, you almost seem to go to lengths to not have any nudity, even in the scene in the sauna when he goes in, she covers up before, and then the girl in the car, it doesn’t become as revealing as you’d think. Was that a conscious decision, to have it be like that?

Yeah. I felt it was good, it was same thing as with the violence. I felt it good to play all these things down. So, it didn’t become gratuitous, gratuitous, that’s what the saying is?

Yes.

I have… actually, I made one film which was incredibly nude, or whatever, and I just felt, is it really that interesting? Does it add anything? Does it add anything to this movie? And in a way, this movie, it’s all about holding back.

Right.

The character’s holding back, so let’s hold back the tricks and the things you can do to storm or to shock or, just hold it back, and in a way, it’s like holding back all the time, all the time, and yeah, then it goes.I thought a lot about that, actually, because in our tradition there’s a lot of nudity in films, yeah.

Did you ever think about making this more violent than it is?

In the beginning, the script was much more violent. And I just felt that it was a bit uninteresting. And it was not really me, I don’t like violence anymore. I used to love it, like most people, I mean, I’ve seen Chainsaw Massacre, the Texas, like 20 times or something, but it’s just I’m a little bit fed up with it. So, I felt, why should I do one when I’m really fed up?And it’s also a challenge to do a film where you don’t use all those tricks, so that’s how that…

Are there filmmakers that inspire you, you know, either American or world directors?

All over. All over.

Who do you sort of enjoy watching, maybe that doesn’t inspire your work, but who do you enjoy watching?

In the history of time, I will tell you my directors. When I was a kid, I was a huge Western fan. I’ve seen every John Ford movie. Then, I lived in France for many years, so I was a big fan of all the New Wave movies. In that way, I’m a film buff, or whatever you call it, a film nerd. And Italians, Bisconti is a good thing, for me. Fellini, of course, Bergman, pretty basic in that way. And then I… There’s so many directors, I mean, Kurosawa, of course, was huge, but in the modern, I must say, I really, those are, I really enjoy Haneke. I think, he’s a fantastic director.

Really fantastic. He’s so disturbing. And you get so angry at him, but that’s such a quality, you know. I tell you, I think you have to almost be a filmmaker or a critic to realize his craftsmanship because it’s absolutely huge. Then, of course, my friend Lars von Trier, who’s a big influence in my life. And then, Almodovar as well, you know, in a different genre.I love American film, like every film person. I love lots of films.

So, you had worked in the Dogme tradition of films.

Yeah, I was part of the original Dogeme 95 group. Yeah. But, actually, that was like a break away, because I came from commercials.

So, you kind of left that world. And now you’re back to making…

Controlled, yeah.

More controlled films. We talked to Jonathan Demme yesterday who said that Dogme is dead, but his film Rachel Getting Married is shot almost in that style. He uses available light and they have real musicians in the scenes playing the music you hear, and it’s all handheld camera. Do you think we’ll ever see a return to that sort of…

I think, there will always be a return. You know, I mean, Dogme was Dogme, and there was something, I mean, the New Wave was what is called breathless, you know, sensitive, and I think there’s like waves. And then, film gets too controlled, and then, you know, all the directors want to do something free. And even every director, you know, you can have, even every subject, you should think about what fits the subject.I’m not very pretentious about films, that’s sort of… For me it was great, I enjoyed it. But, I think, the great thing about it was not saying, because there is a tendency in the industry of saying, this is how you make movies, because Dogme was saying no, you can also make movies in this way, but you can also make it in that way and that way.

And I think that’s really, that’s what writers do. You can write in so many different ways. But, in movies, when I did commercials, that was quite, you know, I shot in Russia or in L.A. or Mexico or Scandinavia, France, and everybody seemed to shoot the same way. When you walk into a room, the OP would come in and he would say, OK, we’ll put the light, 18 Ks, HMI there, that’s kind of formula of how you shoot. And I think that becomes a little bit uninteresting.

So, I think, it’s all about finding a way to shoot something. And sometimes, at the moment, I have a feeling that European film is a little bit freer for that. But, that’s not always the case, you know. In the 70s, American film was much more, you know. It goes backwards and forwards, and should be inspiring both ways.Of course, if film gets too money controlled, sometimes it, you know, for the kind of filmmaker I am, it becomes a little bit uninteresting.

That’s what’s happened to American film.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s the most terrible thing about it. What was the hardest part about shooting this film? Was there a particular scene, or was it just setting the right tone, or what did you find the most challenging?

There are some scenes which I will have to shoot, which I was scared   like, is this going to work? Like, I’ll give you an example, the scene in the end when he was fighting with his daughter, that’s the kind of scene you say, “Is Emma,” I knew what we were reckoning with, “but is she going to be able to go into that kind of terrifying act?” So, when you start the scene in the morning you are a little bit, “ah,” because if it doesn’t work we don’t have any movie.

The other scene was the scene in the car with the girl. That girl also has never done a movie, and for a young girl to come in with a film crew to do something, to bring her into that kind of land… I think, we were on a trailer and all like that, the car was on a trailer, and when the car started rolling she started laughing, because Ulrich was not driving then. She had really never done anything much to bring her into that kind of emotional. So, OK, she’s not hugely huge, but she’s still human, she’s only 16… 17 years old, she says.

That’s also a scene where you go, “Are we going to be able to do it?” It’s nice on paper. Those scenes, of course, you’re scared not scared, I don’t know what the word is; and you’re having anxieties if it’s going to work. Also, if it doesn’t work, you have a problem, you know.

Sure. Maybe, that’s why it worked so well, because she was such a new actress.

Yeah.

She seemed very literally scared in that scene.

Yeah, I think she was.

Yeah, the audience really… Well, everyone that I left with was talking about it. It’s one of those cerebral films where you like to sit down afterwards and talk about, “What do you think this meant, and why?” So, I thought that’s a good sign.

I’m very aware of that, I don’t have any emotions. It’s the kind of film some people will like it. I hope that emotion is big enough, but also some of people are going to hate it. That’s what comes into mind.

Well, there are other types of films you hate, but still enjoy, it’s a reaction.

Yeah. Yeah, but also you don’t want people to say, “What should I go see this for? I want to have a good time tonight.” You know what I mean?

Right, true.

I can understand that, it’s a response too.

One audience member said at the Q&A, he said, “You guys did a really good job of balancing between making the character on the edge of likeability.” I was like, “Really? Wow!” because I didn’t find him that likeable. Other people I talked to a totally different reaction. Some people were like, “Oh, I pulled for him the whole time. I kept hoping he would break out of this and be a good father.”

It’s interesting that you still liked the film, and did not like him.

Oh, I did, yeah.

OK, I tried to play with that likeability. Sometimes, in movies, identification has become… it’s hard to be identified. That’s why you’re always told when you start, to identify. I mean, do you identify with Scarlett O’Hara? Is she likeable?

Right. That’s a good example.

It’s the biggest film, most viewed film of all times not the biggest proceeds, and it has a very sad ending. Do you know what I mean? [laughs]

Actually, they say if you adjust for inflation it is the highest grossing, even today.

OK. You like to see what she does. You don’t say what a lovely person she is. [laughs]

No, no you definitely don’t.

You can say that about Travis in Taxi Driver. I mean, you kind of like him, but you don’t really like him.

Right.

What is this thing that we have to like him? I mean then you can go back to “Crime and Punishment.” In the history of art, it’s not always been about liking all the time. I mean, film or anything, is also about showing the condition of human beings. I mean, you kind of like it to a point.

What I like is that the way the film opens, you don’t know how long this has been going on, how long he’s been… clearly, they don’t have the best marriage, because they have problems. It’s not like they’re super happy at the beginning, and then something happens. You come into knowing obviously something’s going on.

Of course, in the first clip they were super happy in the beginning. If you know that’s nice, it’s also quite implausible that idea of people getting unhappy over two weeks. It’s a long process. So, often when you start on scripts, they’re much more caricature and then what you do is…

Massage it.

Yeah, sure.

How long did you work on the script before you shot it?

It was like a two year process. We didn’t work for two years; we worked on it for three or four months, then we wrote a draft, and then we didn’t work on it for four months, and we read it and said, “Whoa, that’s really bad!” [laughs] and gave it a new, sharper focus. We had a total of six drafts.

It was a quite complicated film, the trial. So, yeah, it was quite complicated, because it’s out of our dozing role of balancing things. Also, the film was 90 minutes, the script was 90 pages. That’s not because I wanted it like that, but there’s not like one scene in it that’s not in the film.

Towards the end we tried to take out a scene, but it just seemed wrong. In the end, we would say all the scenes ended up… they were there for a reason. There’s probably a couple of scenes you would take out, but even then I think it works very well.

Did you put the subtitles in the film?

The translation, I worked it all on solo. I have an English assistant. We sat together with every… just to make sure, Bridgett, so that it meant what I wanted it to mean.

I was glad we could actually read them. So are you already working on something for your next film?

Yeah, we actually started like a couple of months ago a new script, which is a novel subject. It’s about a guy who had to remember a specific period of his childhood, who starts to investigate it.

Are you just in the writing process?

Yeah. Very much in the writing. I mean, we haven’t even wrote the first script, the first draft yet. We’re throwing around ideas.