Lars von Tri­er: ​‘I know how to kill’

Stran­gling is, accord­ing to the pathol­o­gist, a good way to go. It takes only 10 sec­onds before you faint. Then you hold on for a bit longer and then you’re dead. There’s only very lit­tle pres­sure you need to apply. Just stop the ante­ri­or arter­ies. You can do with two fin­gers. If you can make the vic­tim stand still.

If they want it to hap­pen to them, which you sug­gest with this film some­times peo­ple do. Maybe unknowingly.

Yes, almost. But doing death on film isn’t that excit­ing for me. It’s lots of spe­cial effects. You have to do it right though. The small boy who is shot is all done on a computer.

You’re plan­ning to do a film called Etudes where you look at dif­fer­ent types of dra­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions. You’ve said that you think it will be a hap­py process. Have you ever thought a film would be hap­py and then it end­ed up not being like that?

Dancer in the Dark. It was not so fun. I enjoyed mak­ing Dogville, very much. Even though there were 10 lions around me all the time. There was Ben Gaz­zara and Lau­ren Bacall. Every­body. As I said to Ben Gaz­zara, I can’t direct you because I’m a very big fan.

Quentin Taran­ti­no is a big fan of yours, espe­cial­ly Dogville. He said it should have won the Pulitzer Prize. Have you seen any of his recent films?

No.

He made films called The Hate­ful Eight and Djan­go: Unchained which feel like they were inspired by Dogville and Manderlay.

Okay, good. No, but I have this prin­ci­ple where I’m try­ing not to see mod­ern films. I have my lit­tle trea­sure chest filled with films that were made before I start­ed to make films. That’s where I nav­i­gate from. If I see new films, and get excit­ed by some­thing, I fol­low it. Then I get excit­ed by some­thing else, and fol­low it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. A lot of peo­ple fol­low trends. I’m try­ing to make the films that are miss­ing. Or that I feel are missing.

Is there any part of you that wish­es you could for­get the films you saw in your youth?

That would have been inter­est­ing, though a lit­tle strange. When I was at uni­ver­si­ty we saw four films a day. Every­body hoped that when the equip­ment got so cheap and that you could film on your tele­phone, that there would be an explo­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty. But I don’t real­ly know if it’s there. What would you say?

There are inter­est­ing things out there, but maybe noth­ing com­pa­ra­ble to the Dogme films. You’re still out there on your own.

Haha. I was born to be alone.

The House that Jack Built is released on 14 Decem­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.