Mia Hansen-Løve: ​‘I admire Bergman’s apti­tude for being alone’

Bergman Island is a new film by the French writer/​director Mia Hansen-Løve, which explores the rela­tion­ship between two film­mak­ers – Vicky Krieps’ Chris and Tim Roth’s Tony – as they retreat to the island of Fårö to write screen­plays. The pair inter­act with the lega­cy of Ing­mar Bergman, spend­ing time in his house and explor­ing the loca­tions of his lat­er films, and his shad­ow looms large over their nascent projects.

LWLies: Regard­ing Bergman Island, when was your first encounter with Fårö? When did it occur to you that you may want to film there?

Hansen-Løve: It wasn’t when I saw films that were shot there, but it was the pic­tures of the island that were in the book that was made for the auc­tion of the Bergman estate. After Bergman died he want­ed to sell every­thing because he thought it would be too dif­fi­cult to divide among all his kids. And so every­thing was sup­posed to be sold and they made a book for the auc­tion. In the book there was pic­tures of many of the objects like the paint­ings that were in his house, but also every­day life objects like lamps and clocks. But also there were pic­tures of the hous­es, of his car. I remem­ber being impressed by the pic­tures of his cars. To me, it gave me a very strong feel­ing of the island as being a kind of haunt­ed place – like you see in a Hitch­cock film.

And that ghost­li­ness was attrac­tive as a film location?

Of course, it’s not what gave me the idea to do the film but I think that the attrac­tion that I felt to this haunt­ed place met my desire to make a film about a rela­tion­ship and artis­tic cre­ation. This must have been after I made Eden. Also, after Eden, I start­ed to have this idea of mak­ing a film about a cou­ple of direc­tors. It was this idea that was brew­ing up in me but it wasn’t clear yet where it was going or where it would be set. And then I met Gre­ta Ger­wig, who has a part in Eden, in Paris for a cou­ple of days and she was com­ing back from Fårö with Noah Baum­bach, and they told me about their expe­ri­ence of their trip, and all these things at some point came togeth­er and that was the start of the process of Bergman Island.

That’s so fun­ny that Noah Baum­bach would then go and make Mar­riage Sto­ry after going to Fårö.

Well it was cer­tain­ly not an acci­dent, I’m sure he’s a great fan of Bergman’s. And I’m sure it was influ­enced by Scenes from a Marriage.

I remem­ber see­ing those same shots you talked about from the auc­tion, and think­ing he must’ve been quite a lone­ly guy in his lat­er life – this her­met­ic exis­tence, where he was try­ing to close him­self off from the world. 

His wife died some 15 years before he did, so he spent the last part of his life more or less alone. He had a big fam­i­ly but he was liv­ing there for the last years – for a long time he used to go back and forth to Stock­holm where he had an apart­ment, but at some point he cut him­self off from the city and decid­ed to stay in Fårö. In this last part of his life he decid­ed to live there in this remote place through­out the year, alone. He made a point of not being dis­turbed. He would most­ly see the peo­ple on the island who would work with him to ren­o­vat­ing bits of his house.

Read our five star review of Bergman Island

Do you think it’s a good skill to know how to be alone? 

Yes – part of my admi­ra­tion for him has to do with his apti­tude for being alone. Which is actu­al­ly very unusu­al. Of course, we know a lot of great artists who must have lived alone and faced this lone­li­ness. But among film­mak­ers it is less com­mon. Because the job of a film­mak­er is a job where you are always sur­round­ed by peo­ple – you have to enjoy being with peo­ple. And I’m sure Bergman also enjoyed that a lot. There is footage of him on his sets of his films and you can see he actu­al­ly loved being there, he has this child­ish smile that is very seduc­tive. But he was able to get away from that at the end of his life as he became dark­er or more melan­cholic – he enjoyed soli­tude more than anything.

But I admire that because I think when you make films it is very dif­fi­cult to pre­serve that soli­tude and to desire it. There is a temp­ta­tion when you make films to nev­er be alone actu­al­ly. That’s why we see so many direc­tors, for instance, who write their first fea­ture alone, then maybe a sec­ond, then that’s over, they start writ­ing with co-writ­ers and then they can nev­er write alone again. I’ve seen so many of them around me.

And yet you still write alone, if I’m not mistaken?

Yes. And I think that’s part­ly why I’m so deter­mined to try and still work my scripts myself, not because I think I write bet­ter than any­body else, not that I think I’m gift­ed or any­thing, but because it’s actu­al­ly pret­ty dif­fi­cult for me to write. But I still think that the kind of things you can find when you face soli­tude – when you go into your­self – you can­not find if you dis­ap­pear among peo­ple all the time. If you do not face fears, or the mean­ing of your life or what­ev­er you want to call it. I think there are things that you can face, or say or express only if you can look into your­self alone, accept the silence and the voice. It’s about silence. It’s about God. It’s about patience too. I think that the job of a film­mak­er can real­ly take you away from that if you are not careful.

It’s inter­est­ing that you say that because the island that you present in the film is very dif­fer­ent to the one that is seen in Bergman’s films. The for­bid­ding and bleak place where he made Per­sona and Through the Glass Dark­ly and every­thing. There’s a real­ly inter­est­ing dif­fer­ence between the island that he saw and the one that you show us – now, it seems like a much more nor­mal place.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a much more nor­mal per­son. So it’s just the way I see it. Yeah, that’s what made the film pos­si­ble – to film it in a dif­fer­ent way to how he did it. If I’d been there and had found exact­ly the same places as those in his films, then I don’t think I would’ve known how to express myself or find my own voice there.

Going back to the auc­tion book – it was so inspir­ing because these pic­tures, they were not in black and white, they were in colour. And most of Bergman’s films that were shot on Fårö, they are in black and white. And most of them have to do with night­mares – they have to do with his demons as he was see­ing them. But the island that I saw when I went there was an island in colour. There was anoth­er way to expe­ri­ence the island. It could still be Bergman’s place and a haunt­ed place, but there was a way for me to make it mine.

Your film inter­sects with the world of Ing­mar Bergman and his lega­cy, and there’s almost this theme park aspect of vis­it­ing his house and doing the Bergman Safari. When you decid­ed that you want­ed to make a film there and it would be con­nect­ed to all these things, did the Bergman estate need to give you their blessing?

Well I need­ed them to open the hous­es for me. I wasn’t so wor­ried about get­ting autho­ri­sa­tion to film out­side, because these places don’t belong to him. But I was wor­ried about get­ting autho­ri­sa­tion to be able film in the Bergman cen­tre and espe­cial­ly in two of his hous­es – one you see in the first part of the film and the oth­er was where he ate and slept and spent most of the last years of his life. There was some­thing risky about that. The first time I went there was in 2014, but that was just a way to dis­cov­er the place and I wasn’t sure at that point whether I would write the film. But then I went back and stayed there for a month and wrote half of the film.

While I was writ­ing, I wasn’t sure if I would get access to all these loca­tions. Espe­cial­ly the mill, because it was cru­cial for me in terms of mise en scène but also in terms of the film’s struc­ture and mean­ing. I need­ed Tony to write in the big house and Chris to write in the small mill. Sym­bol­i­cal­ly it was so impor­tant for many rea­sons. But I had nev­er been into the mill because no one could go there because the Nor­we­gian guy who owns the Bergman estate today kept the mill for him­self. So basi­cal­ly it’s the only place where guests don’t go.

There’s a sequence in the film where we see Tony’s note­book, which con­tains all these notes and porno­graph­ic draw­ings. And it looks like a ser­i­al killer’s jour­nal. And I just want­ed to know how you came up with that idea of look­ing at the writ­ing process in that way? 

I think this in a way was in the heart of the film even before the idea of shoot­ing in Fårö came up. There was this idea of a cou­ple who have a real artis­tic com­plic­i­ty, they are still in love with each oth­er, they have a child, they are still very close in many ways. But as they are both writ­ers and film­mak­ers, they each have their own world – call it a secret gar­den or what­ev­er. They have their own inner worlds, you could say. They each have their own thing that they can­not real­ly share even though lat­er she tries to tell him a sto­ry. She is try­ing to be more trans­par­ent about her imag­i­na­tion. There is no real com­mu­ni­ca­tion between them about their films. She tries to know more about what he has in mind, but he doesn’t want to express any­thing deep about what he wants to do and why. And she tries to tell him about her sto­ry but he’s not real­ly listening.

So you can see that in many ways there is this com­plic­i­ty: they are both film­mak­ers; both Bergman fans; they have a lot in com­mon but at some point there is a dis­tance, some­thing they can­not share. So this idea of the book full of notes that express some­thing about him that’s very dif­fer­ent, if not oppo­site, from what he seems to be. That tells you about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of real­ly shar­ing every­thing. When you are in a cou­ple where both are artists, and they write, you have to accept the fact that there’s some­thing that escapes you, that you can­not reach, some­thing that can­not be shared. And that’s painful in many ways. And that is I think why I want­ed this note­book to be so dis­turb­ing and sur­pris­ing and in a way that it tells you some­thing about the char­ac­ter of Tony that noth­ing else tells you because he seems so nice and so easy and doesn’t seem that dark.

Which side are you on? When you’re writ­ing and you find peo­ple ask­ing you about cer­tain projects, do you demure and say, ​“No, I don’t want to talk about them,” or are there cer­tain impor­tant peo­ple who you tell these things to, who you trust? 

I love to talk about what I’m think­ing of, but only to one or two peo­ple. It’s even the same actu­al­ly when I fin­ish my films, when I’m in the edit­ing room also. Some direc­tors like to show a first draft to ten, 20, 30 peo­ple to test the film, like a screen test. But me no, I’m more pro­tec­tive. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m more inse­cure. I only show my films to one per­son, two and then the pro­duc­ers – I hate show­ing them to peo­ple I don’t know. And then when it’s over of course any­one can see it! But as long as I’m still work­ing on it, I hate shar­ing it.

But unlike Tony, who seems to be keep­ing it all to him­self from the first draft to the script, I do like shar­ing my ideas with the per­son who is clos­est to me. I do need this dia­logue. Just like Chris, you see she tries to have a dia­logue with Tony. And that leads me back to this notion of soli­tude that at the end we are alone in this and we have to face that, and that is the only way maybe to be com­plete­ly free is that we have to accept this and try to for­get about the opin­ion of any­body else. And you can’t look at your work from any­body else’s per­spec­tive except your­self. And that’s real­ly about that for me, is to try to get into myself and to for­get about any­body else’s reac­tion to what I need to tell.

With the sec­ond half of the film where we see The White Dress film play­ing out – I love this idea of a film­mak­er who’s also a writer being able to see the film in their own head. In the end we’re see­ing, rather than the film that Chris made, we’re see­ing the vision inside her head. Is that some­thing that you do when you’re writ­ing? Do you envis­age the shots and the per­form­ers and the fram­ings and everything?

It’s like a dream. I mean I see and I don’t see – when you dream and you remem­ber your dreams you can describe them, but when you try to get clos­er to them they van­ish. It’s a lit­tle bit like that for me when I imag­ine the films – writ­ing them is a way to try to get clos­er to what they are. When I write a film it is because I feel like there’s some­thing that already exists, like it’s already there. And my work is to try to approach it, to get clos­er to it so that it doesn’t dis­ap­pear. When you try to get clos­er to your dreams and express them, they van­ish. You know that strange feel­ing when you wake up and you remem­ber a dream and then when you try, 10 min­utes lat­er, to tell it, even to your­self, it has already dis­ap­peared. For me scripts are like that because I will get haunt­ed or inhab­it­ed by an idea for a film that’s very strong and pow­er­ful but also very fragile.

So I need to find the right words and the right way to approach it so that I can catch it before it goes. And that I think is what gives me so much ener­gy and deter­mi­na­tion when I write because I know how frag­ile the process is. In the film that Chris does with Mia, I enjoyed film­ing it and telling it because, just as you said, it was not just the film that she was going to do, but the one she was think­ing of, the one that’s still a dream. Not only does the film not exist, it may nev­er exist.

But for me it was just so excit­ing to make the dream film into a real film, but to have it still a dream. Because there is always a trans­for­ma­tion when you start with this film you have in mind and that’s still unre­al and you make it real when you write a script and you hire actors and you go into pro­duc­tion. Only then does it become a real film.

Bergman Island is released by MUBI and opens in cin­e­mas on 3 June. Read our 5 star review.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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