interview de Marion HANSEL concernant le film Dust-630
Why did you decide to adapt Coetzee’s novel "In the Heart of the Country" ?
It’s the story of a woman told by a man. That surprised and fascinated me because he describes her by standing back from her body and her feelings. Filming a neurotic and sick woman didn’t necessarily interest me. I was won over by Coetzee’s approach and writing, his way of viewing Magda. We’re in a seedy, perverse and painful world. That was the feeling that his book left me with and that is the atmosphere that I wished to recreate. My adaptation is faithful to the novel but, as always with a rich and magical text, one has to make choices, eliminate and cut. To be honest, it should have been a film fleuve. I got to the heart of the matter, continually respecting the chronology and the number of characters.
You’ve made two feature films. Both are adaptations. Is that a coincidence ?
Not really. Having a story in front of me reassures me. I’m a little scared of launching into a story whose end I don’t know. I’m not a writer. But when a novel touches me, I can analyse why and know if it will interest other people than me, an audience that goes to the cinema. I don’t pick a book at random. There are hundreds of excellent ones. I pick one that concerns me directly, that I can project myself onto and that I can enrich with my experience and my life. Here, the relationship with the father was the element that attracted me. I have never lived in Africa so this isn’t an exile’s nostalgia. I have never lived with other races either, black or Asian. The racial relationship didn’t attract me. However, my father is very important and present for me, despite being dead. I want to deal with a passion, a bond of hatred and love between a father and his daughter.
Was your working relationship with Coetzee different from the one that you had with Dominique Rollin, author of Le Lit ?
From the very first day, Dominique Rollin and I worked together with tenderness and trust. With Coetzee, this complicity didn’t exist. Everything was a struggle. First to obtain the rights, then to prove to him that he had been right to let me have them. He’s a secretive man who talks very little and explain even less. I live in Belgium, while he lives in South Africa. I only met him twice. He told me that my sincerity had convinced him. I spoke to him of my huge admiration for his novel, of my fear, of the precise and personal reasons behind my choice, of the film that I could already see in my mind. I did four drafts of the script. He was sent two of them and made comments that I respected. He was worried, since I am not South African, that I wouldn’t understand his country, that people wouldn’t perceive how the story was rooted in this world and the importance of the racial problems. He was hurt by the idea of a possible transposition that would have made it a universal story, in short a story set nowhere.
How do you see the character of Magda ?
Complex and hard to define. She’s an intelligent woman who analyses everything, thinks and doesn’t let her impulses sway her. She is full of passion but also ramparts and interdictions. She is unbalanced: she continually wavers between the real and imaginary worlds. I feel great tenderness and infinite pity for her. I want to take her by her shoulders and tell her to let herself go. Magda’s tragedy and suffering come from the fact that her father doesn’t "see" her, never looks at her. For him, she is transparent.
How does Jane Birkin see her ?
We talked a great deal, less about Magda and the film than about Jane herself. She described some very personal experiences and, by entering her private world and her sensitivity, I found Magda. I rewrote numerous scenes to give them the tone of what she had told me. After that, I no longer needed to tell her to walk or talk in any specific way since Magda had taken on her colours. She made her more jealous, more sensual, more perverse and frustrated at being unloved.
How did you direct the other actors ?
With Trevor Howard, the relationship was very simple. We hardly spoke to each other, we’d smile and drink. Once he accepted the part, he only asked me questions concerning his outer appearance: did I want him to have a beard or not, how was he supposed to walk? He took on a face, an outline and a costume. Once the appearance had been established, he inhabited it without ever talking about the how or why of the character, but by always being spot on. He is a great professional. John Matshikiza is a South African living in exile. For him the film and what it says were important and dangerous. Coetzee’s novel is ambiguous. It could have been made into a racist film. John didn’t know me and had no idea how I wanted to tackle it. After talking for three hours, he signed his contact as he would have signed a petition or a political act because he had understood that Dust could help the anti-racist struggle. I think he was the one who took the most risks.
What problems did Dust raise on a directing level ?
I easily adapted a difficult book. I didn’t need to bring in other screenwriters as I had done for Le Lit. Everything went very quickly and I knew what I wanted to get across: the heat, the dust, the colours, desire. I always shoot very few takes when I work. Often one is enough. Sometimes two. But I rehearse a great deal and my set-up is very precise. When I say "Action", the actors and technicians know exactly what they have to do. I’ve made a film with 14,000 metres of film stock, which isn’t much. Not with economy in mind or because I didn’t have enough but simply because my first take is the best. Perhaps the twentieth could be better but I don’t like pushing the actors to their limits, breaking them, or making them suffer. When I shoot, all the problems have been solved. I no longer have any doubts. I have a lot beforehand, during the breakdown of the scenes that I work on for a month or two with anguish and anxiety. I draw each shot and my storyboard contains all the camera movements. Axis, angle, lens, movements, everything is planned. I rarely alter these first choices. When I sense that they are not going to work, I spend the night altering them. The crew knows me, I give them all precise instructions, and I’ve always been lucky enough to work with highly professional actors, who can be genuine and powerful in the first take.
Talking of directing and the crew, how did you work with Walter Vanden Ende ?
With a great deal of complicity. This is our second film together. He reads the screenplay and asks me to provide him with all the data and documents that I have gathered. For Dust, it was mainly the colours in a painting by Brueghel, The Dance of Death. I wanted the film to have those greenish hues. In his book, Coetzee continually refers to the murky green of the interiors. Walter wanted me to show him as many examples of "my green" as possible because it’s a difficult colour to use on film. We viewed a lot of paintings, photos and films together. I wanted to avoid exoticism, with blue skies and so on, or conventional colours. For the exteriors, white interested me. You hardly ever see the sky. There are two shots, I think, in which you can just spot it. We framed the film on the horizon to underline the enclosed and crushing aspect. Magda lives in a wide, open space but not in a free space. Making a film that, for at least an hour of its running time, takes place outside without showing the sky was a wager but Walter likes such imperatives and constraints.
What about Henri Morelle ?
He was very pleased because although the screenplay contains very little dialogue, there is a great deal of sound. I noted as many indications of sound as descriptions of the shots. In the Reality/Fantasy relationship, I felt that sound had a vital role to play to underline the imbalance. He developed an imperceptible shift. This disruption and deception must unsettle the audience without being too obvious. He worked on breaks in the rhythm. For instance, when Magda goes off the rails, the chirping of the crickets alters. We recognize it but there’s a slight, insidious difference. Since there is hardly any music and the dialogue is laconic, his work and the invention and imagination that he applied to it are vital.
Do you take care of editing ?
I never leave the cutting room. But first of all I give the raw material the rushes to the editor who discovers the footage alone and for the first time. She doesn’t take part in shooting. She clears the ground, she prepares a first outline while remaining close to the screenplay. And then we see whether it works or not and we start breaking everything up. We rebuild the film like you build a house, from the foundations to the attic, without caring about the number of rooms in the plans. The important thing is to make a strong and beautiful building, whatever the initial plans were. Suzy Rossberg helps me a lot to leave behind the planned continuity. This process isn’t possible alone.
You’ve shot a South African story in Spain. Did that bother you ?
I wanted the setting to be totally isolated but, at the same time, to make the place South Africa for people who know the country and simply an unknown setting for those who don’t. I did scouting there and came back with hundreds of photos of locations, interiors and props. In Spain, I found a landscape and a farm that were similar. In the South African veldt, the farmers are of Dutch origin and remain attached to their roots, to the objects and customs of the old country. Since my grandfather and father were Dutch, I felt very close to that mind-set.
Do you see a link between your two films and what are you current projects ?
Le Lit and Dust are films in enclosed settings detailing the confrontation of characters who are kept there by a destiny that infuriates them and that they are eager to escape. In each film, there are three main actors and actor direction is very important for me, perhaps because I have worked as an actor myself. My camera movements, my choice of angles, my way of constructing an image are also very similar in these two films. But, in Dust, I’ve used more close-ups. I wanted to get into Magda’s mind, see the world through her eyes, transcribe her world. And so I frame her , her body and all the beings that she seems to observe though a magnifying glass. The subject of Le Lit required greater distance, more modesty and detachment. Now, while continuing to deal with important and serious subjects, I should like to try something else, go a little further. I’m looking for a great screenplay or a great novel. I read a lot but I cannot be satisfied with something that is merely anecdotal. I’d like to film a quest: a character looking for himself and an ideal. To find my Jeremiah Johnson.
Interview by Jacqueline Aubenas
It’s the story of a woman told by a man. That surprised and fascinated me because he describes her by standing back from her body and her feelings. Filming a neurotic and sick woman didn’t necessarily interest me. I was won over by Coetzee’s approach and writing, his way of viewing Magda. We’re in a seedy, perverse and painful world. That was the feeling that his book left me with and that is the atmosphere that I wished to recreate. My adaptation is faithful to the novel but, as always with a rich and magical text, one has to make choices, eliminate and cut. To be honest, it should have been a film fleuve. I got to the heart of the matter, continually respecting the chronology and the number of characters.
You’ve made two feature films. Both are adaptations. Is that a coincidence ?
Not really. Having a story in front of me reassures me. I’m a little scared of launching into a story whose end I don’t know. I’m not a writer. But when a novel touches me, I can analyse why and know if it will interest other people than me, an audience that goes to the cinema. I don’t pick a book at random. There are hundreds of excellent ones. I pick one that concerns me directly, that I can project myself onto and that I can enrich with my experience and my life. Here, the relationship with the father was the element that attracted me. I have never lived in Africa so this isn’t an exile’s nostalgia. I have never lived with other races either, black or Asian. The racial relationship didn’t attract me. However, my father is very important and present for me, despite being dead. I want to deal with a passion, a bond of hatred and love between a father and his daughter.
Was your working relationship with Coetzee different from the one that you had with Dominique Rollin, author of Le Lit ?
From the very first day, Dominique Rollin and I worked together with tenderness and trust. With Coetzee, this complicity didn’t exist. Everything was a struggle. First to obtain the rights, then to prove to him that he had been right to let me have them. He’s a secretive man who talks very little and explain even less. I live in Belgium, while he lives in South Africa. I only met him twice. He told me that my sincerity had convinced him. I spoke to him of my huge admiration for his novel, of my fear, of the precise and personal reasons behind my choice, of the film that I could already see in my mind. I did four drafts of the script. He was sent two of them and made comments that I respected. He was worried, since I am not South African, that I wouldn’t understand his country, that people wouldn’t perceive how the story was rooted in this world and the importance of the racial problems. He was hurt by the idea of a possible transposition that would have made it a universal story, in short a story set nowhere.
How do you see the character of Magda ?
Complex and hard to define. She’s an intelligent woman who analyses everything, thinks and doesn’t let her impulses sway her. She is full of passion but also ramparts and interdictions. She is unbalanced: she continually wavers between the real and imaginary worlds. I feel great tenderness and infinite pity for her. I want to take her by her shoulders and tell her to let herself go. Magda’s tragedy and suffering come from the fact that her father doesn’t "see" her, never looks at her. For him, she is transparent.
How does Jane Birkin see her ?
We talked a great deal, less about Magda and the film than about Jane herself. She described some very personal experiences and, by entering her private world and her sensitivity, I found Magda. I rewrote numerous scenes to give them the tone of what she had told me. After that, I no longer needed to tell her to walk or talk in any specific way since Magda had taken on her colours. She made her more jealous, more sensual, more perverse and frustrated at being unloved.
How did you direct the other actors ?
With Trevor Howard, the relationship was very simple. We hardly spoke to each other, we’d smile and drink. Once he accepted the part, he only asked me questions concerning his outer appearance: did I want him to have a beard or not, how was he supposed to walk? He took on a face, an outline and a costume. Once the appearance had been established, he inhabited it without ever talking about the how or why of the character, but by always being spot on. He is a great professional. John Matshikiza is a South African living in exile. For him the film and what it says were important and dangerous. Coetzee’s novel is ambiguous. It could have been made into a racist film. John didn’t know me and had no idea how I wanted to tackle it. After talking for three hours, he signed his contact as he would have signed a petition or a political act because he had understood that Dust could help the anti-racist struggle. I think he was the one who took the most risks.
What problems did Dust raise on a directing level ?
I easily adapted a difficult book. I didn’t need to bring in other screenwriters as I had done for Le Lit. Everything went very quickly and I knew what I wanted to get across: the heat, the dust, the colours, desire. I always shoot very few takes when I work. Often one is enough. Sometimes two. But I rehearse a great deal and my set-up is very precise. When I say "Action", the actors and technicians know exactly what they have to do. I’ve made a film with 14,000 metres of film stock, which isn’t much. Not with economy in mind or because I didn’t have enough but simply because my first take is the best. Perhaps the twentieth could be better but I don’t like pushing the actors to their limits, breaking them, or making them suffer. When I shoot, all the problems have been solved. I no longer have any doubts. I have a lot beforehand, during the breakdown of the scenes that I work on for a month or two with anguish and anxiety. I draw each shot and my storyboard contains all the camera movements. Axis, angle, lens, movements, everything is planned. I rarely alter these first choices. When I sense that they are not going to work, I spend the night altering them. The crew knows me, I give them all precise instructions, and I’ve always been lucky enough to work with highly professional actors, who can be genuine and powerful in the first take.
Talking of directing and the crew, how did you work with Walter Vanden Ende ?
With a great deal of complicity. This is our second film together. He reads the screenplay and asks me to provide him with all the data and documents that I have gathered. For Dust, it was mainly the colours in a painting by Brueghel, The Dance of Death. I wanted the film to have those greenish hues. In his book, Coetzee continually refers to the murky green of the interiors. Walter wanted me to show him as many examples of "my green" as possible because it’s a difficult colour to use on film. We viewed a lot of paintings, photos and films together. I wanted to avoid exoticism, with blue skies and so on, or conventional colours. For the exteriors, white interested me. You hardly ever see the sky. There are two shots, I think, in which you can just spot it. We framed the film on the horizon to underline the enclosed and crushing aspect. Magda lives in a wide, open space but not in a free space. Making a film that, for at least an hour of its running time, takes place outside without showing the sky was a wager but Walter likes such imperatives and constraints.
What about Henri Morelle ?
He was very pleased because although the screenplay contains very little dialogue, there is a great deal of sound. I noted as many indications of sound as descriptions of the shots. In the Reality/Fantasy relationship, I felt that sound had a vital role to play to underline the imbalance. He developed an imperceptible shift. This disruption and deception must unsettle the audience without being too obvious. He worked on breaks in the rhythm. For instance, when Magda goes off the rails, the chirping of the crickets alters. We recognize it but there’s a slight, insidious difference. Since there is hardly any music and the dialogue is laconic, his work and the invention and imagination that he applied to it are vital.
Do you take care of editing ?
I never leave the cutting room. But first of all I give the raw material the rushes to the editor who discovers the footage alone and for the first time. She doesn’t take part in shooting. She clears the ground, she prepares a first outline while remaining close to the screenplay. And then we see whether it works or not and we start breaking everything up. We rebuild the film like you build a house, from the foundations to the attic, without caring about the number of rooms in the plans. The important thing is to make a strong and beautiful building, whatever the initial plans were. Suzy Rossberg helps me a lot to leave behind the planned continuity. This process isn’t possible alone.
You’ve shot a South African story in Spain. Did that bother you ?
I wanted the setting to be totally isolated but, at the same time, to make the place South Africa for people who know the country and simply an unknown setting for those who don’t. I did scouting there and came back with hundreds of photos of locations, interiors and props. In Spain, I found a landscape and a farm that were similar. In the South African veldt, the farmers are of Dutch origin and remain attached to their roots, to the objects and customs of the old country. Since my grandfather and father were Dutch, I felt very close to that mind-set.
Do you see a link between your two films and what are you current projects ?
Le Lit and Dust are films in enclosed settings detailing the confrontation of characters who are kept there by a destiny that infuriates them and that they are eager to escape. In each film, there are three main actors and actor direction is very important for me, perhaps because I have worked as an actor myself. My camera movements, my choice of angles, my way of constructing an image are also very similar in these two films. But, in Dust, I’ve used more close-ups. I wanted to get into Magda’s mind, see the world through her eyes, transcribe her world. And so I frame her , her body and all the beings that she seems to observe though a magnifying glass. The subject of Le Lit required greater distance, more modesty and detachment. Now, while continuing to deal with important and serious subjects, I should like to try something else, go a little further. I’m looking for a great screenplay or a great novel. I read a lot but I cannot be satisfied with something that is merely anecdotal. I’d like to film a quest: a character looking for himself and an ideal. To find my Jeremiah Johnson.
Interview by Jacqueline Aubenas