Vales­ka Grise­bach: ​‘The west­ern has always been a very excit­ing genre’

The wait for Vales­ka Grisebach’s third fea­ture has been well worth it. The film is entire­ly unique and con­fi­dent inter­pre­ta­tion of what we might define as a clas­si­cal movie west­ern. She casts new­com­er Mein­hard Neu­mann as an enig­mat­ic con­struc­tion work­er who heads to Bul­gar­ia for a job, only to be trapped in the mid­dle of a war of attri­tion between the brash ex-pats and sus­pi­cious locals.

LWLies: You made Long­ing in 2008 and there was this feel­ing of dis­cov­er­ing a great new direc­tor. Then you went away for 10 years. What happened?

Grise­bach: It was a mix of things: I had a child; I became a moth­er at 40 and I real­ly want­ed to spend some time with my daugh­ter. The oth­er rea­son is that I was teach­ing. I was giv­ing advice for oth­er projects. But also, to be hon­est, I real­ly spent a long time think­ing about this project. I think quite ear­ly on I decid­ed that I want­ed to do some­thing on my fas­ci­na­tion with the west­ern genre. But then I was think­ing and research­ing. It wasn’t so easy.

Do you enjoy the research stage?

I love research. I can do it for ages. For me it is the most beau­ti­ful part of film­mak­ing. In the end, it wasn’t easy to write. I want­ed to have a nar­ra­tive, but I also want­ed to hide it. I want­ed to make all these links and asso­ci­a­tions with oth­er movies. And then we had to post­pone for a year because there was some mon­ey miss­ing. The life between the films is very nice. It’s a time to not think about film.

Is research for you sit­ting alone in a library, or going out on the streets and talk­ing to people?

I read a lot of books. But for me it’s to go out­side and con­front an idea. I want to take a ques­tion and con­nect it with real­i­ty. In the begin­ning, I want­ed to talk to peo­ple, main­ly men, about their ​“west­ern” moments in life. I went onto the street and was look­ing for men that I could imag­ine on a horse in a west­ern. Very soon, I end­ed up mov­ing towards con­struc­tion work­ers. They have tools on their belt, and they wear work clothes and have this cer­tain surly atti­tude. I asked them if I could invite them for a cast­ing and an inter­view. It’s a beau­ti­ful moment, and a lot of peo­ple say, ​‘Yes, why not!’ In this sit­u­a­tion, these men were hes­i­tant, but as soon as I said I want­ed to make a west­ern, they agreed.

When you said it was going to be a west­ern, how did they react?

I told them it would be a con­tem­po­rary west­ern, and maybe only one that I knew secret­ly. It was a joke. I said that we wouldn’t be trav­el­ling back in time and there would be no need to act like a cow­boy would act.

How ear­ly in the process did you know you want­ed to give the film this ele­men­tal title?

For me, it was the title from the begin­ning. It was my work­ing title. It was a sign. When the film was fin­ished, I looked at it and thought it might have been too direct. In the end, I always come back to what I start­ed with. It’s inter­est­ing that you have this lit­tle sign at the begin­ning that you can con­nect to.

When did your orig­i­nal­ly fall in love with the western?

I share this love with a whole gen­er­a­tion. You asso­ciate this love with peo­ple in the States, or maybe in Italy. I was sit­ting in West Berlin, in front of the TV set, and watch­ing a lot of west­erns with my father. For me it was a very touch­ing and excit­ing genre. Lat­er I realised how much I felt attract­ed to that set­ting and those soli­tary male heroes. A friend of mine, who is also a direc­tor, told me that when she was a girl she iden­ti­fied with the male heroes of the west­erns, but at the same time she was falling in love.

It’s a uni­ver­sal roman­tic seam of the west­erns – search­ing for moments of free­dom and inde­pen­dence. Or maybe the idea of com­ing home from life on the bor­ders of soci­ety or in the wilder­ness. It’s a roman­tic seam, of peo­ple search­ing for a per­son­al des­tiny. I became inter­est­ed in the lat­er west­erns where they dis­cuss this idea of con­struct­ing a mod­ern soci­ety. The genre deals with ambiva­lence – the ques­tion of how much some­one wants to be part of a society.

But also nation­al­ism and colonialism.

Yes. Lat­er on, when I was think­ing about west­erns, I realised I want­ed to deal with this xeno­pho­bia. I live in Ger­many which has this spe­cial, ter­ri­ble his­to­ry. I did lots of inter­views with peo­ple for research, and in fam­i­lies there’s anoth­er oral his­to­ry which is dif­fer­ent to the offi­cial Ger­man his­to­ry. Some­times you can hear things between the lines. In Ger­many, if you do some­thing about nation­al­ism or xeno­pho­bia, there is almost a genre for this. When I thought of this idea of Ger­man con­struc­tion work­ers in anoth­er coun­try, I could have both lev­els. They’re strangers who have to deal with desire and mistrust.

Was there a fan­ta­sy ele­ment to the film?

When I told Mein­hardt about the role, I said that it’s like he’s in a Walt Dis­ney world – a fan­ta­sy place where he can total­ly rein­vent him­self. He can take all these emo­tions from the peo­ple who live there. But there’s a moment where it breaks and they feel a bit of his weak­ness. It was clear that the film had to end at the moment he has to deal with his shame.

West­ern is released 13 April. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.