Nicolas Winding Refn returns to the cinema – and from the dead – with aneon-hued fable about the father-daughter relationship from hell. To enter any of the worlds Refn has created, from Drive and The Neon Demon to Pusher and Valhalla Rising, is to experience something truly unique. It may sound odd, considering the filmmaker’s penchant for wearing his influences on his sleeve and often being criticised for his indulgence in imagery, but there’s little like it. Drenched in blue and pink lighting, with characters precisely blocked in exquisite backdrops, and accompanied by dreamlike scores and scenarios, Refn’s work is never short of entrancing.
His latest, Her Private Hell, not only serves as areturn to feature filmmaking, but also as something of aclimax – seemingly everything he adores shoved into amotion picture that is simultaneously grandiose and minimalist. Where his characters descend into an unknown realm, wandering aimlessly in hopes of finding the thing that will fulfil them or remedy the past, Refn himself is aman who is interested in moving forward. And while those figures sometimes barely seem to know how to express themselves, Refn’s self-reflection and willingness to discuss his art and that of others, as well as his past and future, is endless. Our conversation begis in the present, where he has found anew desire to make art after dying and being revived after 25minutes, but takes us through his entire career and musings on all the art he loves to share with theworld.
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LWLies: Where did Her Private Hell initially spawnfrom?
Refn: Well, everything starts with an idea. I’m not the first one to claim that and it’s avery classical answer, but Ijust knew Iwanted to make afilm. Ididn’t quite know what Iwanted to do, but Iknew it was going to be amovie. Afew years ago, Iwas dead for 25minutes and, prior to that, Ifelt like I’d kind of run my creative course. I’d come to the end of what Iwanted to make and had nothing left in me. I’d gone from cinema to streaming and then fell into fine arts, so even though Iwas on adifferent path, Ihad nothing left in me. When Idied, it was kind of ablessing in disguise and Irealised I’d been given agift to start over again with anew sense of desire.
It served as anew lease on life foryou.
Yeah, and when Tom Quinn at NEON asked what Iwas planning, Isaid, “It’s akaleidoscope of everything.” And he said yes. So Ihad the money in the bank but still didn’t know what it was Iwanted to make because Iwas suddenly looking at everything from anew perspective of having been brought back from the other side. Istarted thinking about what my introduction to the audiovisual medium was, and the idea of using cinema as acanvas of expression, and it brought me back to my first understanding of what it meant to express and experience emotions, which was television. You know, Icame from Copenhagen to New York to live. Iwas eight, didn’t know aword of English and was dyslexic, so television became my obsession.
I have friends who primarily spoke Spanish who used television as ameans of learning to speak English. I’m guessing it was the same foryou?
Of course it’s an incredible tool, but what Iactually loved most about it was clicking and flipping through channels, because it was almost like akaleidoscope. Things were analogue back then, so you could just click-click-click on the machine and see all kinds of experiences. So, Ithought, what if Imade amovie that felt like when Ifirst experienced television, like adream machine?
The machine that has dreams in it was the foundation, but then Ibuilt two main ideas – one was ayoung girl coming to acity that doesn’t exist and the other was Private Kgoing to hell. They are these opposite spectrums and, to combine them, Ineeded asimilar antagonist to connect them in this triangle. Ihad the Leatherman in my idea bank, pulled him out of the files and there he was in his black leather gloves with crystals on them, like aglam monster.
He’s very Kenneth Angercoded.
Oh yeah, very Scorpio Rising as amonster, and he gave us the perfect triangle to build within. Ihired awonderful writer who I’d worked with before, Esti [Giordani, trans writer for shows like ILove Dick and Vida], and we began to craft anarrative more specifically around that of father and daughter. That was the framework of the triangle and it was hard work filling that until there was ascript Iwas happy with. The casting was very impactful and, while shooting, it continued evolving like acrystal that kept changing lights until it became what it was. And the essence of what it was was that Irealised I’d had the opportunity to make an opera. I’m not astage person, because Ilove the audiovisual image too much, but if Icould make an opera on film, this would be my version ofit.
And it often feels like one – the music, the visuals, the performances – but especially in how much its tragic arc and themes are very operatic.
It’s also all very grandiose and has some of the same fetishistic perversions as Only God Forgives. That was about mother-son, but here it is another side of myself, and Iam adding an extra layer of “camp” by having this father marrying his daughter’s lover and her becoming astepmother. We’re putting everyone on these pedestals, including Private K, who becomes both her alter ego and the kind of father she never had, but she also needs to cleanse herself by cutting off the hands of Leatherman.
Hands and eyes feature prominently in your work, and are so often tied to power and the loss of it, whether in Only God Forgives or Her Private Hell, so what draws you to that imagery?
Hands are touch, eyes are what we see, and those two things are my craft. I’ve always been obsessed with my hands in general. When Iwas little, Iforced my mother to put Vaseline on my hands and socks so that when I’d wake up, they were as soft as an infant’s. There’s something about touching and softness that’s almost like being pricked by the senses and, you know, the act of seeing comes in that Iam essentially avoyeur. These are senses based purely on emotions.
And people have criticised your films for not being emotional enough or for being ‘cold’, but Ithink that comes through in the way you stage and direct these performers. What kind of direction do you give them to strike that balance between the doll-like distance and the operatic emotion?
Well, it depends on the movie. Istarted my life with the Pusher trilogy, where it was all about capturing authenticity, so the emotions were very much on the sleeves of the performers. It was about connecting with what [the characters] were going through, usually coming from desperation or fear, something that is dramatic. Iuse genre and fairy tales as afoundation now, but in the beginning, it was more about trying to balance reality and fiction, and Irealised at acertain point that Iwould never really capture reality because it doesn’t exist to be captured.
I then became interested in “un-reality” and Bronson and Valhalla Rising were two opposite approaches made in the same six-month period. One has Tom Hardy non-stop talking and the other has Mads Mikkelsen saying nothing. One was theatrical and dealt with the stage while the other was about being in this alien landscape that was very “real”.
So your interest became in balancing the natural and unnatural?
Yes, and those two combined with Drive, which was my version of alove story, but set in akind of noir world, which always adds an extra layer, in my opinion. Great love stories are more interesting in genre films! Look at Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which is set against such atheatrical backdrop and everyone sings their emotions, so it becomes something that isn’t just a “kitchen sink” type of realism. I’ve always been intrigued by this notion of one idea becoming another idea and the transformative aspects of creativity. After Drive you go into Only God Forgives, which is even more heightened, because once you go down apath, you can’t go back. You can’t reverse any more, you have to go forward.
That all speaks to how willing you are to evolve as you make morefilms.
And as you go with age, you change. After those films, it felt like it was time for the women to shine, and that was The Neon Demon. Ireally enjoyed working with Elle [Fanning], Bella [Heathcote], Abbey [Lee] and Jena [Malone] – Iloved that world and those performances and the spiciness to it. It was so much more fun than working with guys. But then the television and streaming landscape became the place to go and, like any seeker, Iwanted to see what that canvas could offer. And Imade Too Old to Die Young and Irealised that these services have adifferent metric for what theywant.
Phenomenal show, but I’m guessing they wanted something easily digestible?
Thank you very much, but yes, it’s adifferent machine. It was alesson that made me realise you don’t have to make things that are “great”, that “good” is fine enough for some. The pandemic then changed alot of things in our lives – HBO passed on Maniac Cop because the material was too “extreme” for them and we were stuck in Copenhagen – so Ikept questioning what Icould make in the streaming era, and then came Copenhagen Cowboy, which was kind of revisiting my first films but set in aHans Christian Andersen world of fairy tales, myths, superstition and symbolism. Ienjoyed making it in the same way as Too Old but kept questioning the meaning of creativity and what it was supposed to do. From there, Ibegan to work with Prada, which was awhole new realm, like the final summit of the mountain of what someone could do and what obligations theyhad.
Did that allow you asense of freedom to play around more than with your shows and features?
Yeah, because Ididn’t have the burden of afinancial investment that had to return aprofit. Of course it’s abusiness, but what Iwas doing with Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons was acollaboration that would lead to me making ahalf-hour movie that had no reason to exist other than me wanting to makeit.
And Ican imagine it was refreshing to work with your wife and daughters on Touch of Crude.
They were all Ihad around me – the three most important women in my life – so Irealised it was not going to get better than this. And then the situation of my death brought me full circle – dying became ablessing in disguise because Icould return to the beginning and try to climb the mountain again. Not as arepetition, but to discover where Iwas goingnext.
It’s no longer aSisyphus situation for you, but nowis—
It’s George Bailey in It’s aWonderful Life. He hits the bottom of his desperation and wants to commit suicide, but sees what life would be like without him and what he contributed and comes back areformed person. He will continue to be the idealist he was, but he comes with anew perspective. And Ithink God had ameaningful plan for me, Ijust didn’t know ityet.
How has it felt navigating the world after that revival? Are you discovering new things about yourself and others?
I, like everyone else in asituation like this, put alot of value in time now – time has become incredibly relevant to me. Ialso found that good and bad doesn’t exist in aworld where your heart creates, because how can you define that? You can say you like it or not, that’s adifference of opinion, but the polarisation and obsession Ihave cultivated from people is exciting because I’m doing something that they will remember for ever, and that’s aform of penetration. All great art provokes. It is its purpose.
We’re living in aworld where everything is algorithm based and about consumption – shiny objects designed to take our attention away from more relevant things, like human connection and inequality. What’s interesting to me now is that people are afraid or almost violently angered by the two foundations of faith, which are stillness and silence.
That idea of faith and self-exploration as connective tissue makes sense with your work too. Have you always felt like there was aspiritual aspect toit?
All religion is based on being still and silent in order to fully, through your own internal experiences, connect with higher powers, and that’s what creativity is to me. It is there for you to heighten your senses and then, through that, either extract or re-evaluate moral codes, or look at another perspective, or understand other emotions. The most provocative act of aggression lies in this stillness and silence, not in violence or mayhem or sexuality or perversion or politics. And Ithink the act of creativity itself is aspiritual release. It is aform of exorcism and acleansing that repeats itself because that desire to cleanse doesn’t stop, so you keep going back again andagain.
It’s the ultimate confession.
On repeat. And, Iwill tell you this, when you face death directly in its eyes, you ask whatever god you believe in for just five more minutes. What you do with that is really anew world.