Marius Holst’s latest film KING OF DEVIL’S ISLAND (2011) has just had its DVD and Blu-ray release in the UK, and it’s been deservedly getting a load of positive reviews. The story follows the imprisonment of newcomer, Erling on the island of Bastøy – a notorious Norwegian reform centre for young boys famous for its harsh conditions (ironically Bastøy today boasts one of the most liberal prisons around).
Marius, whose other film credits include DRAGONFLIES (2001) and MIRUSH (2007), recently took the time to speak to THN about freezing film conditions, how to juggle professional and amateur actors, and the urban legend that is Bastøy island.
First of all Marius cleared up an internet rumour that the film had been shot in 54 days.
Actually that’s a false rumour! It was shot in 47 days. I don’t know when but it ended up on the net somewhere. We shot it in 47 days.
Wow. That must have been very intense and put you and the crew under a lot of pressure?
Yeah! I mean, the situation is that I developed the film and it was produced by company I run [4 ½ Production Company] so I was feeling the responsibility of getting the film on the screen. I had to keep the integrity of the story of these men. So it was a difficult balance.
And how was it working with a mixture of professional and untrained actors?
I feel always, in my experience at least, that when it works it can make each other better. Professional actors can help the first time actors make the scenes more believable. And it’s easier for them to forget the reality outside the situation. And for the trained actors, sometimes if the amateur is cast right, they will have something that’s very honest and pure, and not bothered by any technique – and they have to sort of top that and hide their own tools. The technique has to be seamless. In the ideal situation there’s a synergy there that makes them both better. That’s the theory – it’s not always like that.
But in this case you found they fed into each other and worked harmoniously.
Definitely.
You grew up in Oslow. Was Bastøy Island something your friends talked about?
Well, it was something like an urban legend. People knew the name, knew of the place, but not really knew much in detail or fact. But just as a place they would send you as a kid. So it’s really the island for bad kids. Of course as you get older you realise that, okay, there were rough kids being sent there; but what happened to them? Why were they there and what happened? Spending three or four years in this place got my attention. And I think the general public knew very little about how the place was run and the destiny of some of these kids. Certainly not anything about the riot or the involvement of the Norwegian army. So it was something that was familiar in any part of Norwegian history, but we would find these other facts in archives and in newspapers from that time.
You couldn’t actually shoot on Bastøy. Was that disappointing?
To start with the people there weren’t necessarily against it, but the logistics of bringing 150 kids to an island with 150 prisoners didn’t seem tempting! Also we had to make physical changes through time to the place, so in the end logistically and for getting it as visually close to how it was at that time, it was more sufficient to go elsewhere. So I mean, we had to go look for it. That presented quite a lot of work to find something that was our version of Bastøy that had some similarities. So it gave us a bit of a headache in the amount of work we had to do to go and find it
KING OF DEVIL’S ISLAND has some stunning cinematography. Can you tell us a little bit about your stylistic influences?
Early on we decided this was a film that was going to be shot in the old school classic way; our inspiration was as much older films of that tradition. I can’t pick one film in particular, but ones that have that old school classic sense of shots and how you bring in and present your characters in the environment. We wouldn’t go for an excessive use of close-up; always we chose to present the characters within the landscape and the environment they are trapped in. I mean I’m quite a big fan of a filmmaker like Jan Troell (THE EMIGRANTS, 1971). I don’t think stylistically it looks that much like it, but there’s something about using landscape and character that I find rewarding. Physically to make the island and the desolation on the island as a third character was important, to really physically make the audience feel the coldness.
You definitely get that sense of cold throughout. I thought the whaling sequences were quite fantastical.
Yeah, I mean it represents something in his past and something that goes on as the film progresses.
Despite painful subject matter a lot of the scenes are shot in quite a restrained way. A lot of the more horrible aspects are held back.
If you set it up in the right way I think hiding can be as powerful, and more powerful than presenting something very graphic and brutally. And to an audience it can actually take away the story, push an audience out of the story. It’s very easy to turn it into a horror show about shock value; shock effect rather than working with the audience to conjure up their own images. Because these were things that were done in the shadow out of people’s sights, you don’t really get to see it up close. You don’t see these things up close, the character in the film doesn’t witness it up close and neither should the audience. Instead you see the result of the assault. The audience can come up with something stronger.
I read somewhere that you said good documentaries always beat good fiction, and I know that in your last film MIRUSH you used a real-life story from Kosovo. Why did you decide to show the story of Bastøy in a fictionalised account rather than a documentary?
I think it’s true that if you see a really top-notch documentary it’s hard to beat. But for Bastøy it would be impossible to make a strong enough documentary because no one from that period is alive anymore. It would be very dry and difficult to stage. So how would you tell that story with no actors, or with no people who were present? It wouldn’t be very effective. But there is a Norwegian documentary which was made when this came out that also contained interviews with people who were there [BASTØY THE MOVIE, 2010). So there is actually a documentary companion to the film and the story of Bastøy. It’s actually one of the people that the Olav character is based on, who was interviewed and has since died. But he appears in the documentary and tells part of his story, But to show the story in a documentary form today would be very hard, so that’s why we went with a fictionalised account
Do you have any other future stories in mind for fictionalisation?
Actually I’m looking at a couple right now. I didn’t have any planned. But after Bastøy a few have been sent to me, so I’m sort of going along and looking at that at the moment. It’s not settled 100% but there are a couple of ones out there.
Are “coming of age” stories something that interest you personally?
I think the coming of age genre has choices and the way you’re shaped in that age is quite unique – it doesn’t happen to you in the same way later. There’s something that lends itself well to film. It’s quite cinematic – the way we experience the world fresh.
Are we seeing a rejuvenation of Norwegian cinema at the moment? Is it back on the map internationally?
I think the whole film industry since I came into it in Norway has slowly been professionalised with a variation of films from pure entertainment to more hardcore art-house cinema. I think the top level of the films are maybe the same, but there are fewer films that fall to the bottom. There has been a sort of surge in interest in Norwegian film but I’m quite wary of talking about a wave and a surge, It’s very much a case of individuals making certain types of films. They get better at it or they fall into the same kind of genre at the same time. I think it’s a bit of a coincidence. There was an attempt to increase the amount of films being made. It did do something. But you know, you’re only as good as your latest film.
THN would like to thank Marius for speaking to us. You can read about KING OF DEVIL’S ISLAND here and it’s available now on DVD and Blu-ray.
