Maren Ade: ​‘Mak­ing films helps me to dis­cov­er things about myself’

Fol­low­ing the 2016 Cannes world pre­mière of her third fea­ture, Toni Erd­mann, Ger­man writer/​director Maren Ade became an instant celebri­ty. The film con­cerns a father who goes to absurd lengths to regain close­ness with his daugh­ter. Its mak­er spends years ges­tat­ing ideas, play­ing the long game of pro­duc­ing only a few, high­ly-refined movies a decade, as opposed to crank­ing them out annu­al­ly. Her fea­tures, to date, reveal an inter­est in char­ac­ter dra­mas pow­ered by obser­va­tions on the bungling ways that humans – some­times com­i­cal­ly, often painful­ly – try to con­nect with those clos­est to them.

Her debut The For­est for the Trees, from 2003, is a dead­pan study of adult lone­li­ness and alien­ation chan­nelled through wide-eyed, well-mean­ing school­teacher, Melanie Pröschle (Eva Löbau). The more des­per­ate­ly Melanie tries to find a com­pan­ion, the more it eludes her. To com­pound this, her total inabil­i­ty to read social cues leads to a string of excru­ci­at­ing­ly awk­ward rejections.

Lat­er, in 2009, came Every­one Else, a mean­der­ing sum­mer sto­ry about Chris (Lars Eidinger) and Git­ti (Bir­git Minich­mayr) who are sex­u­al­ly com­pat­i­ble but strug­gle for mutu­al under­stand­ing in oth­er areas. The abid­ing enig­ma of whether they will stay togeth­er or drift apart makes for an open end­ing that holds answers with­out giv­ing them away.

Read more in LWLies 68

On to the film that trans­formed Ade from a respect­ed art­house direc­tor to an exalt­ed icon of the scene: Toni Erd­mann. Deserv­ing of its plau­dits by virtue of mas­ter­ful pac­ing that caus­es three hours to fly by in a throng of hilar­i­ous sit­u­a­tions that move towards a hard-won har­mo­ny between a father and his daugh­ter. When we meet Ines (San­dra Hüller) she is a stressed and seri­ous busi­ness­woman, who is only exas­per­at­ed when father Win­fried (Peter Simonis­chek), cam­ou­flaged in false teeth and a wig, begins intro­duc­ing him­self to her col­leagues under the alias ​‘Toni Erdmann’.

Unde­terred by his daughter’s reac­tion, Winifred per­sists in long-haul prank­ing. Simonischek’s phys­i­cal­i­ty – hulk­ing yet poised, with dark eye­brows that sit under white hair – con­tributes to an air of good-natured buf­foon­ery. Per­for­mance wise, Hüller is tenser and tauter, but the pair share a cer­tain restraint that reveals a sub­tle sense of the unspo­ken respect puls­ing between them.

We spoke to Ade back in Octo­ber 2016 on the day of her BAF­TA Screen­writ­ing Talk dur­ing the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val. Inter­view­ing her is a com­plex plea­sure, one that offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to mine her rig­or­ous tech­nique and emo­tion­al savvy. It leads to an under­stand­ing of how form influ­ences con­tent, cre­at­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing reflec­tion of the inter­ests buried with­in her films.

LWLies: You make films about the com­plex­i­ty of human rela­tion­ships. Does it make those rela­tion­ships any eas­i­er to han­dle in real life?

Ade: A film for me is some­thing that shows what I was think­ing about the last five years, or some­times three or six years. I dis­cov­er things about myself. The films trans­form with what hap­pens in my life. You can­not say it’s like this or that because I had this or that expe­ri­ence, it’s more that it gets rich­er the longer or the deep­er I go into a top­ic. It feels like dig­ging a hole and I come out some­where else in the end. But actu­al­ly, it’s also some­times very stu­pid. With Toni Erd­mann, for exam­ple, I’m doing a film about a father/​daughter rela­tion­ship and I don’t have any time to call my par­ents. Doing a film like that you could also become like Ines, so you have to be care­ful. There’s always a risk.

How do you give your­self over to mak­ing your films good while keep­ing life good?

That’s the thing. Films sucks a lot of ener­gy out of you. When I do a film I give up part of my own life and that’s not always nice. That’s why it takes so long [to put out fea­tures] because I try to put a relaxed life in between. I have two chil­dren now, aged one and near­ly five, and that’s a very good thing because there’s no dis­cus­sion, you need to be in the moment with them.

When you’re ded­i­cat­ing your­self to life, does it get to a point where you grow rest­less to make your next film?

The moment I start doing some­thing or the moment I have an idea I feel I will always go until the end. So, I said to myself that I real­ly want to take a break now, after Toni Erd­mann, just for a year or some­thing. I fin­ished the film with a small child, now and I need some time. I said to myself, ​‘I’m not allowed to start writ­ing some­thing down’ because if I start I will con­tin­ue. But actu­al­ly there’s a lot of joy to mak­ing a film. There are so many dif­fer­ent phas­es and not every phase is equal­ly tir­ing. With the writ­ing, you’re very free in how you spend your day. And with edit­ing it’s the same. It’s just this thing in the mid­dle – the shoot­ing – where it feels like you go on an oil plat­form. You’re com­plete­ly gone.

Do you remem­ber where you were when the idea for Toni Erd­mann land­ed in what­ev­er form?

I don’t remem­ber that. It goes back very far because since a long time ago there was an inter­est in doing some­thing about fam­i­ly, or fam­i­ly structures.

What was that inter­est in fam­i­ly struc­tures inspired by?

By my own fam­i­ly. My father is some­one who also likes to joke. He has a good reper­toire. It always inter­est­ed me what he’s doing with this approach to life – to solve things with humour on one side and, on the oth­er, how peo­ple react to him. This fam­i­ly thing is always an inter­est­ing top­ic because it’s a life­long rela­tion­ship so it’s very heavy. It’s hard to escape these roles. You don’t know where they real­ly come from. It goes back so far into childhood.

If you’re nat­u­ral­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by a sub­ject, that’s a good motor for you to address it in a film?

That’s good. ​‘Nat­u­ral­ly fas­ci­nat­ed’. [Ade makes a note] That doesn’t per­son­al­ly inter­est me but beschäftigen… where I feel the need to say some­thing about it that emo­tion­al­ly dri­ves me.

What is ​‘beschäftigen’?

Beschäftigen is things that you think about a lot.

Like obses­sions or fixations?

Nah, that’s too much. It’s in between think­ing and being obsessed. Some­times in dif­fer­ent lan­guages you don’t have a word.

At what stage in the writ­ing process do you bring in oth­er collaborators?

I’m writ­ing alone and I enjoy that very much. [Ade makes a note.] ​‘Writ­ing alone’ is good. I’m sor­ry! I’ve got that BAF­TA talk and I didn’t pre­pare the intro so dur­ing the inter­view when some­thing comes into my mind I have to write it down. So, I enjoy writ­ing alone, but at a cer­tain point I show it to sev­er­al peo­ple and I also have one, the actress in my first film, The For­est for the Trees, who played Melanie Pröschle, the teacher? She’s a friend and she was a dra­matur­gy con­sul­tant on Toni Erd­mann. We met and talked about what inter­ests us, our fam­i­lies and the script. I always alter­nate between being alone with my sub­ject and my script, and then I open it to the rest of the world – I go out, I do research, I give it to peo­ple, I try to see films. When I’m writ­ing I’m com­plete­ly into it and I’m try­ing not to analyse it.

That’s great, so you don’t judge your­self when you’re writing?

Yeah and that’s what’s impor­tant. I real­ly try not to judge myself and I try to write down every­thing even if it feels stu­pid or not serv­ing the plot or the script. Even if it’s like a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent idea that maybe doesn’t real­ly fit in at first sight. I try to be cre­ative, you know?

You have these two big, rich char­ac­ters in Ines and Winifred. How do you build up small­er char­ac­ters and make them compelling?

I try to be equal­ly inter­est­ed in them as in the main char­ac­ters. Actu­al­ly, I think it comes out of the fact that I’m inter­est­ed in the char­ac­ters and not in the plot as much, so I’m think­ing of work­ing out of the sit­u­a­tion – ​‘What is the biggest need for a char­ac­ter in this sit­u­a­tion, even if it’s a side char­ac­ter?’ and, ​‘Where does he come from?’ and ​‘Why is he say­ing what he’s say­ing?’ and ​‘What is he hid­ing?’ This is the sto­ry for me. The sto­ry is not, ​‘How do they solve the prob­lem they are dis­cussing?’ It’s more the dynam­ic between two char­ac­ters. It’s always about hier­ar­chies or the sta­tus between characters.

Do you let your­self be influ­enced by your col­lab­o­ra­tors once you’re build­ing a crew and once you’ve cast your characters?

The actors always bring some­thing in so you have to work with them, for sure. But with Toni Erd­mann and all my oth­er films, although they feel impro­vised, it’s 95 per cent a writ­ten script. The actors learn the dia­logue. The dia­logue is some­thing that I try to make as nat­ur­al as I can. It’s some­thing that I hear.

Is that because you lis­ten to people?

I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know if I’m such a good lis­ten­er. At a cer­tain point I allow the actors to impro­vise a lit­tle bit and then I feel, ​‘Ah no, it gets unprecise, so please, let’s stay with the script.’ Some­times I’m so obsessed that I let the assis­tant con­trol each sen­tence so that we’re real­ly sure that noth­ing is for­got­ten. Impro­vi­sa­tion always makes things longer, and often the actors have the feel­ing that they have to be inven­tive and that they maybe have to put emo­tions into the dia­logue. That’s some­thing that I don’t like so much. I like it more when the emo­tion hap­pens on a sub-lev­el and the dia­logue is often very banal.

Some­thing that’s fas­ci­nat­ing about your films is that at the same time as you’re show­ing very nat­u­ral­is­tic sit­u­a­tions, yet there’s always emo­tion under­neath it.

That’s a process. The dia­logue and the stag­ing is some­thing that I pre­pare with the actors before the shoot­ing day. That’s some­thing that is planned. They learn the text. We meet before. I try to always get a rehearsal on every loca­tion, which is real­ly impor­tant. Direct­ing is so often just about arrang­ing peo­ple, chairs, glass­es and a cam­era until you real­ly come to the point where you can work on emo­tions. It takes a while and some­times you don’t have enough time for that on a shoot­ing day. I try to leave some­thing open for the shoot­ing day to be able to sur­prise the actors with ideas of what hap­pens on the sub-lev­el. The sub-lev­el work is tir­ing for every­body because, for me, it works bet­ter when you have to repeat it more often as it’s much hard­er to hit.

The thing with direct­ing in gen­er­al is if you say how you want it to look, in the end you almost nev­er get that result. If you have a very good actor, he can do that but imag­ine you say to some­one, ​‘You sit there and feel sad.’ Imag­ine how you would play that your­self. You would sit and play sad. [Ade mugs exag­ger­at­ed sad­ness]. Some­times you need adjec­tives to direct. You near­ly always need to find a bet­ter rea­son for the actor, and it’s good when you have an active verb, where it’s real­ly some­thing going on inside of some­one. Like say­ing, ​‘You’re not sure if you’re going to leave’, ​‘You’re afraid that you might start crying’.

I like when a scene is rich on the sub-lev­el. I think that we often do things that we don’t want to do. For exam­ple, Win­fried, he buys that cheese grater and he knows it’s a very bad present. It’s the fifth bad present he has bought, and he knows all about this present, but still he has to go through and give it to some­one. Imme­di­ate­ly, you have a much more com­pli­cat­ed scene. With that scene it seems very sim­ple. She gets a present from her father. She should be hap­py. It’s nice to get some­thing. Still, it’s very annoy­ing that it’s a cheese grater. She’s not say­ing it. With fam­i­ly so many things are rit­u­alised. Peo­ple can­not escape. There was always a con­flict going on.

When you describe the cheese grater scene it sounds so melan­cholic, but then it’s so funny.

For us in the end, yeah, but for them it’s not fun­ny! With a scene like that, it’s just the fact that he’s giv­ing her a cheese grater and the dia­logue that is fun­ny, that he’s say­ing the flight was cheap, cheese grater and that’s it. It’s not a fun­ny scene. Def­i­nite­ly not when we were film­ing. Maybe watch­ing it behind the video mon­i­tor I have a feel­ing that it will be fun­ny in the end but in the first place it’s painful.

Is it fun­ny for you that Toni Erd­mann is cat­e­gorised as a comedy?

Yeah, he plays com­e­dy in the film but the rea­son he’s doing it is com­plete­ly dra­ma. It’s very des­per­ate. He’s doing what he’s doing out of des­per­a­tion and it’s the same for Ines. I’m hap­py that it’s a comedy.