NWinding Refn and his father, Anders, are the chalk and cheese of Danish cinema; connected by blood, separated by cinema. Here they are, sitting side by side in their small Zoom windows, each calling from their homes in Copenhagen. “But we are not close at all,” explains Nicolas by way of introduction. “He’s in the suburbs and I’m in the city.” Physically, spiritually, the two are opposite poles.
I have known Refn Jr’s work for years. He is the emerging talent behind the Drive, The Neon Demon and Pusher trilogy. He is seductive, exasperating, almost infinitely assistable. But I am less familiar with Anders, 76, who took a more relaxed course as an occasional director and prolific film editor; the kind of pair of safe hands that clean up the mess made by others. At one point, he explains that he filmed his first feature film, Copper, in 1976. “My first film was about a policeman. Nicolas’ first film was about a criminal. ”He laughs at the comparison. “So we are like two sides of the same coin.”
Today, for the first time, the old guard seems to have come out on top. Anders Refn’s most recent film, Into the Darkness, is a fleshy and richly textured piece, a film that shows the Nazi occupation of Denmark through the prism of the collapse of a bourgeois family. It is the first part of a story he has wanted to tell for years, an antidote to all false and selfish reports of heroic resistance. Occupied Denmark, he explains, was known as the “Whipped cream front”. It was sweet and supine, a comfortable post for German troops, the Nazi equivalent of cheerful work. “Collaboration has been a taboo subject in our country for many years,” he says. “But I think the public is finally ready to face it.”
Nicolas, for his part, wants to support the film and defend his father. But he is the worst publicist in the world, a film critic in disguise. When I ask him what he thought of Into the Darkness, he says it is a film made on an important topic. He says it is a successful narrative. Of course, it is not the kind of film he would dream of making for himself. “Fundamentally, I think my father and I disagree about the purpose of cinema,” he says. “It comes from a more classic tradition. For him, it is a story, a narrative. For me, it’s more of an act of expression. “
I just asked Refn Jr for his raw opinion about his father’s work. It is fair that we will see the game. See a film like The Neon Demon, Nicolas’ dark fairy tale about the Los Angeles modeling scene. It is elegant, covered in sugar and poisonous in its essence. But I wonder what Anders thought of all this.
Anders looks downcast. “What did I think of that?” he says. “Hmm …”
“My dad thinks The Neon Demon is inconsistent,” Nicolas adds. “He feels that a conventional narrative is missing. He doesn’t like anything that is supernatural. He does not like anything that does not convey the dogmatic political attitude of the 60s towards science ”.
“No,” protests Anders. “No.” But all he can do is get a word on the paths.
I think they love each other. I think they lock horns for fun, or out of habit. The problem is that Anders is the son of postwar European artistic cinema, while his son was raised on a diet of American grindhouse and horror films. Nicolas explains that his parents split up when he was a little boy. After that, he lived in New York with his mother and stepfather. He says: “My life changed when I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I don’t think my dad ever saw that movie. “
“Half of that,” says Anders.
“Yes, half.” Nicolas snorts. “He thinks it’s the most vile trash.”
I ask if they can think of a happy memory of going to the cinema and Anders remembers the time he took teenager Nicolas to see Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika. “He was saying, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to see that old film in black and white.’ He liked films like Star Wars and Ghostbusters. And he sat with his head down while the film was running. And I felt bad because I thought I had been very aggressive. Then I said: ‘Okay, Nicolas, do you want to go?’ And he looked at me with tears in his eyes because he was so touched by the film. “
Now it’s the young man’s turn to protest. “This, of course, is completely untrue. It’s all my father’s romanticization. Yes, I saw Summer With Monika at Cinematek in Copenhagen. And yes, it’s fine. It is a very accomplished film. But I certainly don’t remember the way he does. I can’t imagine anyone – least of all me – crying in a Bergman movie. ”He pauses. “Maybe crying to get out.”
Anders points out that for a time he and his son’s careers followed a similar pattern. Both men scored a success with their debut film, did well with the second and fell and burned with the third. In the case of Nicolas, the film in question was Fear X, an existential American thriller that broke out at the box office and left him with a debt of $ 1 million. As for Anders, he is still hurt by the collapse of his beloved 1985 circus melodrama, The Flying Devils. He recalls that Bergman had a copy of the film sent to his home on the Baltic island of Fårö, watched everything twice and wrote a very beautiful letter.
“Bergman,” scoffs Nicolas.
“Well, it was a good movie,” says his father. “I should have done better than you did.”
Looking back, Nicolas feels that Fear X may have been his cause. “You have to make a big mistake to understand the meaning of true creative success,” he says. “Total failure, in my case, was the only way to free myself from the prison of a more conventional career. It gave me clarity about who I was and what I wanted to do. “
Anders’ experience seems to have been slightly different. “It was very painful,” he says. “And it made me very demanding about the films I made afterwards. Because you have to do everything to know that you may not be successful. ”He laughs without joy. “Besides, making a movie always costs me a wedding.”
Nowadays, Anders is perhaps best known as Lars von Trier’s right-hand man. He edited Breaking the Waves and Antichrist. He was the assistant director for Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. It is a collaboration, he says, that has made him a more radical filmmaker. On the set of Into the Darkness, for example, he started to let go – shooting with two portable cameras and following the action on the run. Assuming the pandemic can be controlled, he plans to start shooting the second installment in May.
In Nicholas’s view, he and his father were simply born at different times and raised in different places: in Edenic Scandinavia; with 80’s jaundice in New York. In fact, he envies the innocence of Anders’ early years, at the dawn of the French New Wave. “I can fully understand the passion of that time. Because cinema was life. The innovative art form. The final art form. Pure and moralistic. This can change the world. Nobody will ever see a movie like that again. “
Slowly, reluctantly, the two seem to be moving towards common ground. Nicolas lets out a breath. “We came from very different backgrounds,” he says. “We have a fundamental difference in our approach to cinema. But at the end of the day, I probably learned more from my father than from any other filmmaker. He taught me about the subliminal power of the editing process. The importance of entering a scene late and leaving early. The importance of staying focused, never letting the public get bored. I stopped showing my work to my father today. But I always keep your advice in the back of my mind. “
They clashed over the Summer With Monika issue. They will always disagree about the chainsaw massacre. I’m wondering if there is a film in the world that they both love unequivocally.
“Sure,” says Nicolas, without missing a beat. “The Leopard, by Visconti.”
Anders plays hard on his son’s heels. “The Seven Samurai, by Kurosawa. Coppola’s The Godfather. Anything for Buñuel. “
The hostilities are over. Harmony is restored. Once the cinemas are open again, they may want to consider another trip from parent to child.
• Into the Darkness is released on demand on March 5