Revolver 54: Dag Johan Haugerud on his work

Im letzten Jahr gewann Dag Johan Haugerud mit seinem Film Drømmer (aka Oslo Stories: Träume) den „Goldenen Bären“ der Berlinale. Drømmer/Träume ist nach Sex (Verleihtitel Sehnsucht, 2024 bei der Berlinale gezeigt) und Kjærlighet (Liebe, 2024 beim Filmfestival in Venedig uraufgeführt) der dritte veröffentliche Teil der „Sex, Dreams, Love“-Trilogie.

Die Filme waren in Gesprächen zwischen mir und Stephan Schoenholtz, Drehbuchautor und ebenfalls Filmemacher, im letzten Jahr viel Thema, unter anderem wegen der markanten Weise, auf die Dag Johan Haugerud mit Dialog erzählt und dass er, in diesen drei Filmen, aber auch darüber hinaus, ganz oft viele Dinge nicht macht, die man in Lehrbüchern und Seminaren zum Drehbuchschreiben immer vorgebetet bekommt. Der „Goldene Bär“ war eine wunderbare Wertschätzung für diese Art von unspektakulärem, persönlichem und nicht (wie bei der Berlinale oft der Fall) demonstrativ politischem Kino und Erzählen, dem sonst oft die Anerkennung verwehrt bleibt. Und Drømmer war auch einer der klar besten Filme des letztem Jahres, letztlich ein beeindruckender Höhepunkt in der künstlerischen Laufbahn des 60 Jahre alten norwegischen Filmemachers und Romanautors, der außerhalb Norwegens bis dahin kaum jemandem bekannt war.

Stephan schlug also vor, gemeinsam nach Oslo zu fahren und Dag Johan Haugerud für REVOLVER, die seit 28 Jahren von deutschen Filmschaffenden geführte „Zeitschrift für Film“, zum Gespräch zu treffen, um über sein gesamtes filmisches Werk und seine Arbeitsweise zu sprechen. Unsere Begegnung, also das Gespräch fand im Dezember im Literaturhaus in Oslo statt, und es dauerte tatsächlich bis jetzt, bis unsere von gut drei Stunden Talk auf 30.000 Zeichen ins Deutsche übersetzte Verdichtung gedruckt erscheint.

Das neue REVOLVER-Heft Nr. 54 erscheint offiziell am 30. Juni und ist per ISBN in jedem Buchhandel oder über die Revolver-Webseite erhältlich, als 160-seitiges Buch im Format DIN-A6.

Natürlich mussten wir beim Verdichten vieles weglassen, also teile ich hier einen längeren Auszug des Gesprächs, den wir in der deutschen, gedruckten Fassung nicht dringelassen haben. Da geht es weniger spezifisch ums Erzählen und die Drehbucharbeit und die Regie-/Autoren-Themen als im Revolver-Text, sondern speziell um die Musik.

ijb: In your film Kjærlighet (Oslo Stories: Love), I felt there’s a very specific way of using music. How did you discuss music and decide where to place music with the composer? How much did you know when you wrote and shot the film?

Haugerud: Let’s take Barn (Beware of Children) as an example, because there the plan was [for it to be] almost like a musical. It was supposed to have music all the time.

ijb: All the time?

Haugerud: Yes.

ijb: 2.5 hours?

Haugerud: Yes. And there was a composer who tried to do that. And of course, it was impossible. It didn’t turn out well at all. The music didn’t work, and it wasn’t possible.

ijb: When did you have that idea?

Haugerud: I just felt it – „wouldn’t it be great if it felt like a musical without being a musical?“ It was like a crazy [idea]. That was in the directing note. So that was what we were [starting with].

ijb: Is there a lot of music in the film now?

Haugerud: No, there is not. […] Obviously it didn’t work. So then we had to reconsider how we should use the music there. I really like to listen to music when I watch a film, but when the music is there, I want to have time to go into it and listen to it. And I don’t really like [film] music when it’s trying to seduce me into feeling something; if it’s manipulative. I don’t know what you think about that, but when you start editing, you kind of want the film to work on its own, without music. You don’t want to need the music [for] it to work. But I really like music in films, so then you have to use it in a different way. Not as a kind of just a soundtrack… and since [cinematographer] Cecilie and me are interested to try to „pull the world into the film“, we can use it in those elements. In Sex (deutscher Titel: Sehnsucht / Oslo Stories: Sex) I think it’s [very much] used in that way. But it’s used in that way in both I belong (Som du ser meg) and in Barn as well I think. And also in Love.

sts: Yes, in I belong, the music characterizes each of the three episodes.

Haugerud: Yes.

sts: I found that quite … courageous. Or interesting, experimental how you introduced all of the three musical themes at the beginning.

Haugerud: At the beginning, we are putting them on top of each other. That was the composer who wanted to do that. And I think it was a great move, because it becomes almost cacophonic.

sts: Yes, exactly.

ijb: And then each of the stories has a very different way of using music.

Haugerud: Yes, because we wanted to have different instrumentation for each person. 

ijb: And the music is also following a different approach in each of the episodes. And I have a feeling in the „Oslo trilogy“, too. In Dreams (Drømmer), when did the composer, Anna Berg, come in into the process, and what did you tell her? How did you know when you wanted to have music? Sometimes it’s quite surprising, I think, to hear music in some sections.

Haugerud: First of all, I have to say that she was supposed to make the music for Love, but she didn’t manage to do it time-wise. Then we decided that she should make the music for Dreams instead. She comes with a lot of ideas. I wanted her ideas because she’s a contemporary composer; I wasn’t so interested in melody as I usually am. I wanted her to use and develop some compositional elements she has been working with before – before she started to work on this project. She hadn’t done anything for cinema before. She’s quite a young composer.

ijb: Did she start working on the music when the edit was finished or before?

Haugerud: A bit before, but then she gave me different tracks to listen to, different ideas, and we discussed them. I think it’s always hard to talk about music, because we tend to not talk about the same things, even if we try to describe it as well as possible. I had to understand her way of thinking. She’s very technical about composing. It’s almost like a formula.

ijb: Would you say the music is analytical in this film?

Haugerud: Yes, very much so. Peder Kjellsby, who composed the music for the other two films, is more like an emotional composer.

ijb: That was my feeling, too. That’s why I think it’s so special. Sometimes the music appears and it seems to comment on the story, but not in the way that you expect it to comment. It’s more like it’s opening up a different storyline at the same time, like a parallel story. And sometimes it’s going away from the characters. You were talking about the camera sometimes going away from characters, like when in Kjærlighet they’re on the terrace and the geologist is talking and then you are doing that one long camera pan. 

Haugerud: Yes. And then you hear the sound from the earth. 

ijb: So sometimes I feel the music is doing the same thing, like moving into a direction that is going away from the characters.

Haugerud: Yes.

ijb: Sometimes I can’t be sure what it is that it’s telling me. […] There’s one shot of Oslofjord at night, from the ferry, later in the film, like three, four minutes or something and only music to the city at night, slowly moving, on the ferry ride. The music is quite strong there. How did you decide to make this long shot there; how do you decide it’s going to be that long with nothing else happening? 

Haugerud: That’s just I was talking about [earlier]: In order to start looking at the traffic or the choreography in the streets or the buildings, it needs to have a certain duration. Otherwise, it’s just transportation. It’s not supposed to be that. It’s supposed to make you look at the city hall and the city behind it. There’s a lot of traffic going on in there. That’s the image I like the best of the whole film, because that’s what I love to see.

ijb: So did the music come afterwards?

Haugerud: We had shot it [first, a] very long [take], for ten minutes.

ijb: So he composed music and then you decided how long the shot would be in the film?

Haugerud: He composed the music that was supposed to be „night on the boat“. When we are talking about music, we always try to capture, you know, how we feel. „What is the music of these streets?“, in a way. How do we feel when we are walking down the street? We know Oslo very well, both of us. And there are a lot of things that make music. There are a lot of memories and thoughts of what has been before, what kind of music has been going on in our lives. If you have some memories from walking down the street, these [will] come into the music. Of course we don’t have the same memories, but we are about the same age, so we have the same references in a way. So we come up with some music that to us feels quite true to the different locations. That’s the soundtrack to this part of the city. But for other people, it might be totally different. [There are] a lot of elements from jazz, because he’s a jazz musician. So it’s a lot of elements from Norwegian jazz throughout.

ijb: That’s why it ends with the jazz quintet on the city hall.

Haugerud: Yes. [Regarding] Sex, in Norway, there was a kind of yacht jazz-rock band called „Lava“ in the 80s, and we both feel that a lot of the locations in Oslo are very connected to that kind of music. Sidsel Endresen was also singing in that band. It is some kind of jazz-rock style. And we wanted to bring that back into those locations. Strangely, it works very well for us, and strangely, it works for other people as well because they think, „oh yeah!“ It’s not even a theory. It’s just what kind of music you relate to different places can be very different, of course. You just have to use yourself, your own memories and your own nostalgia.