Brand new Thomas Vinterberg interview just before the IAAL premiere from the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende December the 25th

“It is a very fragile project. I am exposing myself with this movie, and I might get a lot of beating because of it. It is a fragile big movie and I am sure it will be tempting to kick it on the shinbone.”
In that case it will be a new experience for Thomas Vinterberg, whose boyish face with the boxer nose and tousled hair has been in the media since his Dogme movie “Festen” won the Jury’s special price at the Film Festival in Cannes in 1998.
Now the young director who became so famous back again. Not with a secure Hollywood production that would be safe with the audience, like some of the offers he received after “Festen”, but with a dreamy and deeply personal fable about the conditions of love in a cold and not so far future where inner and outer disruptions bring the earth and the people out of balance.
“It's All About Love” Thomas Vinterberg's new movie is called. And with the spectacular visual style and names such as Sean Penn, Joaquin Phoenix og Claire Danes as the cast, the 85 million expensive production is as far away from the vow of chastity as it could be !
“Today I can say without a doubt that IAAL is the best movie I have ever made” he says and so far he has received nothing but standing ovations for the movies he has made since he left The Danish Film School in 1993.
The role as Danish movies Golden Boy has been a cliché, but not the less did Vinterberg’s Dogme movie with the small budget on 7,5 million Danish Kroner make 90 Million Danish kroner around the world.
The movie which Steven Spielberg has announced to be the best movie he has ever seen, has been made into a theatre play in 36 countries, and the success was suppose to continue with “It is all about love.”
But it did not. The Film Festival in Cannes rejected it. “ It was a slap in the face” Thomas Vinterberg admits. But he is over it and sees it as an tough but instructive experience. The rejection meant that they had more time to finish the movie and give it some new music by Kieslowski’s composer Zbigniew Preisner.
“ During 3 days after the rejection – maybe a week, everything was a mess for me, the whole success picture I had of myself. I did not have to use my body and head to maintain a signal to the world that I was a success. I did not give a shit about that at all. I was suddenly present in my own life, and that was amazing. I did something to me physical to be rejected, I could smell things again, play with my kids and settle down. I was a great guy during that week and my wife was in love with me in a different way. It was fascinating but unfortunately it ended very fast” he says and smiles.
"I had excited myself very much and got excited by my surroundings that I was most certainly would come to Cannes, and not only that, I would win as well. Like we say in Denmark “ I am used to it.” That is how my life is. I am – in a not that healthy way used to people not getting their arms down. There has been success and cheering the whole way. I had to realise that it is more bad for the self-esteem to try to maintain success than it is to fight one’s way up from a defeat. There is something unhealthy in being celebrated. You care way too much about other peoples opinion. My friend the movie director Per Fly normally says that we have to stick what other people think about us up a certain place. But we have to tell each other that all the time like a mantra, because we will never be totally careless about what other people think about us. But a fact is that even though it is extremely banal, the yesman does not mean shit. It means nothing to be “friends” with the right people” Thomas Vinterberg says who spend half a year to travel around with “Festen” to get celebrated” as he puts it himself .
He took some time off to think about what he should do next, but that was a really bad idea. I was tempted by the American and English offers but could not decide. I was speculating all the time, and I was nearly going mad and could not sleep at night. I could have agreed to make and action movie with some Hollywood actors and a secure plot. Instead it ended up with my own project, which is a very personal and vulnerable movie. It is the most foolhardy, artistic and challenging choice I could make” he says. The work with "IAAL" that he wrote together with the manuscript guru Mogens Rukov, was not easy at all. “ It was very painful to write the story. In periods we could not figure out what exactly we were trying to tell, but we were so into this story and it was so important for us to tell, that we did it anyway. At one point I called Bergman, yeah Ingmar believe it or not, to ask him if he could help us. He laughed like mad and told me that I had to be crazy, and that there was nothing he wanted less. Then he said that I was an idiot that I had not figured out much faster what I wanted to do after “ Festen” which he by the way called a masterpiece. It was a very funny conversation.It was important for me to take a risk after “Festen.” Just like with Dogme, which was devil-may-care and not sensible at all when we began. The problem with the movie industry is that it is so damn business minded and sensible. I love it when somebody does something crazy. But I am so damn wise and careful myself, “ Thomas Vinterberg moans and he looks tired

Where does the carefulness come from ?

It comes from Denmark. Denmark is starting to become one great anorak. I am most highly a product of that. A big terrible Dane is living inside me, and that is very sad” Thomas Vinterberg says from his base with Nimbus Film which in neighbour to Zentropa in the Film city in Avedøre. “This place is an exile for lunatics, I love being here.” Thomas Vinterberg has his office in an old gunpowder house in the end of what used to be military barracks. Just next to him, his Dogme big brother Lars von Trier has his office. There is no doubt that there are the two most powerful directors in the Danish movie industry. But there is clearly an order of precedence when it comes to them. Lars von Trier has a woodburning stove and a toilet in his office, while Vinterberg several times during the interview has to go “to the bushes” as he so lyrical puts it. “ I have been watering these trees” he proudly yells in the cold December sun.
It seems like Vinterberg, who grew up in a collective in north Zealand as a shy child of two happy 68’ers, simply cannot stop being funny, charming and friendly. Several times he thoughtfully says “ this is not something I have told other journalists”, and he tries the best to give the journalist something extra to play with. He makes a big deal out of this.
“The man people know, is the ambassador for Thomas Vinterberg. I have to be like that. But I can also be aggressive like hell. There are many things that can irritate you during a workday, and sometimes I can go over and kick some pillows” he says and gesticulate with his arms in the office where two sofas invites to a pillow fight, manuscripts reading or watching a video, depending on the mood.
Generally us Danes are very friendly and obliging,so afraid of conflicts, but still aggressive under the surface. It has probably something with anxiety to do. Being afraid to be present in our lives” Thomas Vinterberg says and with this explains the theme of “It's all about love.”
The movie takes place in s surreal, strangely recognisable future, where the characters are in constant move, on a journey or on the run. In the big cities people are dying on the streets, because of the lack of love and nearness. The heart simply breaks.
“ My life after “Festen” was full of journeys and fame and a marriage that I was very very fond of, but I was challenged” Thomas Vinterberg says who is married to the theatre director Maria Wallbom, who he has two daughters a two and a 7 year old together with. “ I was very often a way from home, I flew from one part of the world to another. I was in a stratum of air above the ground, where I felt I could intercept cosmic disturbances.”

It is the planets disturbances that makes the alarming background set piece for the story Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov have ended up telling in “It’s all about love.”
The Polish litterateur John, played by Joaquin Phoenix goes to see the world famous skating princess Elena, played by Claire Danes, to get divorced. Instead they realise that they still love each other and together they try to escape from Elena’s manager and his skating organisation.
At the same time they are reporting in the television about changes in the climate that will wrap the planet up in one long and freezing polar night. It starts to snow in New York in July. Meanwhile John’s chain smoking brother, played by Sean Penn is on a plane above the skies and is philosophising about the development without being able to land somewhere because of the weather.
The spectacular movie has been shot in 7 different countries from Nairobi , New York, Rome to Kiruna and for Thomas Vinterberg it has been a magical experience.
“There was something big about this, which I think can be seen in the movie. A mystery that you cannot get to the bottom of. It was like reality was throwing shadows over the movie, while we were shooting the September 11th tragedy happened last year, there was a snowstorm in Greece, floods in central Europe, and I read that some ice had fallen down in Sahara. Meanwhile this film is an exposure of Mogens Rukov and I. Because in one way it is big with these Hollywood actors and huge technical challenges but on the other side it is totally hesitation. I am sure that there are some stories that will not melt together, dramaturgicly I guess it is not completely delivered.”

“ Yes it is, the adventure is build around that. Because I experienced the longing on my travels and at home. When you get celebrated by the world like I have been, then you rise. You experience a cosmopolitan life and get sucked up in a feeling of greatness and you feel very important when you run down the aisles in the airport or get into a car and somebody drives you to a meeting. But I very often sat on the airplane and got hit by loneliness, that was very interesting. Mogens and I realised that this is how modern people lives. We get rid of our kids ,they are looked after by babysitters or in daycare and we fly around to different places. You are not one place but in constant movement. Half of the people my age does not live together. They might be dating but they travel to each other. Friends meet, not at home but at a cafe. You don’t work one place but you bring your computer without you and work different places. Physical we are in movement all the time. I claim in my movie that you will die of that. You can die in different ways, many living dead people are walking around among us. “

“That you are not present in your own life. Do you know how it is to be so busy that you cannot remember what you have been doing ? And if you don’t have any memory about your life, then you have not lived. If you not are present in your life is it then anything worth ? It is just an illusion. That is how big parts of my own life is.
I began to make movies when I was 16. I panicked beause of anxiety that I would not succeed all the time. I was very shy and thought that I had to manifest myself with something. If I was famous I thought I could go into a room and people would know who I was and I would get rid of my shyness . It meant that I went on a train of work and busyness and cut out a big part of my life. It is very sad I admit that now “ 33 year old Vinterberg says. He was 4 year to carry out his first movie “Sneblind” but it also became really bad as he has put it. “Danmarks Radio” who sponsored “Sneblind” refused to show it, but Vinterberg showed it in a edited version to get into the Film School where he was accepted when he was 19 as the youngest person ever. With his final movies at the school, “Sidste Omgang “ and “Drengen der gik baglæns” Vinterberg very fast began his career.
“Today I try to fight the “not present.” I fight it with sport or when I play with my kids. Otherwise I disappear in busyness. That is my biggest enemy, that is why my movie is about that.”