“I am unable to improvise.”
How did the screenplay come about? In which mould do you see yourself as a writer?
I’d previously made two short films [BECAUSE and EPILOG], which, like DEADLY MARIA, concerned the impossibility, the contrariness of love, but they were far more autobiographical. The parallels with my private life constricted me to a certain extent. I identified so closely with and felt so duty-bound toward the characters that I didn’t push the envelope to the limits, formally or in terms of character portrayal.
However, I was also interested in developing my own cinematic language. Which is why this time I developed the characters not so intimately connected with me, and for which there were no previous specific constructs. That gave me more freedom in terms of the methods I was able to use. Nevertheless, it’s still a very personal film – that’s a basic thing with me. Just not so private.
What interested you in the story of a woman or a character like Maria?
I developed the basic framework of the story together with a woman (Christiane Voss), that’s where half the influence lies. Apart from that, I like female leads. I believe them capable of doing much more. We rapidly agreed on the idea of the Maria-father-Heinz triangle, and that a new love should be the trigger for a chain reaction.
DEADLY MARIA seems to stand halfway between a realistic study of an underworld, a particular milieu, and a surreal kind of fairy story. Was that your approach?
The milieu isn’t precisely defined, nor the exact period in which the film takes place. This in-between world has something general about it, since I haven’t placed the film in a specific period of German history. However, a feeling of old-worldliness seems to permeate it and that has to do with my search for a particular atmosphere in a film, for a particular ‘aura’.
In which tradition do you see yourself belonging?
Actually there are two contradictory elements – the films that have inspired me are like that too – and that expresses itself in this film. On the one hand I admire radical realists such as Rivette and Cassavetes, and on the other hand Scorsese’s films and the early films by Lynch and Fellini, which excited me because they were so visionary. I wanted to bring both these elements together into a kind of abstract realism, if I can put it like that. DEADLY MARIA is a bastard born of this contradictory approach and that, I think, lends it a certain inner tension.
What is your method of working?
I’m unable to improvise. What I like best is to have everything sorted out before shooting starts, from the production design to the size of the frame. I try to decide on most things like that in discussions with my colleagues at the storyboard stage, so I have more time for the actors during shooting. Unfortunately there’s little time to rehearse beforehand.
You might say I develop a film in five stages. First of all comes the screenplay, which is the most demanding phase for me, I find writing pure torture. Then comes the storyboard, which takes a similar amount of time because I have to ‘rewrite’ the whole film, only this time in scrawly pictures. That takes place parallel to the preparations for the actual shooting.
Shooting itself is stage three, and in this case it took just on eight weeks. Then comes the editing, and the last stage is laying down the sound and the music. With each stage you remake the film anew and take it in a new direction.
You’ve worked with some of the same people since your first short film. Is there a reason for that?
Absolutely. After all there are some things that can’t be communicated unless you’re on the same aesthetic wavelength and have the same preferences. If, for example, I were to work with a different cameraman, it would be more difficult to make our concepts compatible with one another. With Frank it’s easy, as I’ve discussed these things with him from the very beginning.
What sort of criteria did you use to choose your actors?
The only person I really had in mind from the very beginning, was Bierbichler for the role of the father. He has so much physically presence, so manly and with a slight animalistic quality. That he of all people should be bedridden, makes him all the more threatening, so much is pent up in him. On seeing Uwe Sehrader’s MAU MAU once more, I found Peter Franke great all over again, so reserved and indecisive yet with such a macho kind of presence.
For me, Nina Petri is a true discovery. A woman that makes you look twice. Charismatic, and yet not your typical model type. She took lots of risks during filming and I think she’s really ideal for this difficult role.
I cast Król right at the last moment, because the film by Buck wasn’t yet finished and it was only a couple of days before we began shooting that I saw a rough-cut video. He is exactly the right contrasting character vis-a-vis the other two men – eccentric, endearing and not at all brutish.
What was the most difficult thing during shooting?
The hardest thing for me is directing the actors. That's where the most vagaries lie. It's something that's difficult to put your finger on – and not conducive to forward planning. That’s why it demands the most concentration. When it works it’s all the more exciting. The stunt of course also had us all biting our nails. A woman throws herself onto some piled up cardboard boxes from a height of thirteen meters. I can’t imagine getting used to something like that.
How did you become a film fan, and in fact get involved in film?
I’m a film nerd. At some point when I was eight I saw KING KONG and since then I’ve been utterly addicted to cinema. The character of Dieter in DEADLY MARIA really has a lot to do with me. For years I was occupied only with film. It was a kind of mania, I collected material and memorized names like a madman, and was always running off to the cinema.
When I was thirteen I got my first job in a cinema, first as a ticket-taker, then as a projectionist. Now I’m earning money programming films and analyzing screenplays for film production and distribution companies. A somewhat one-dimensional existence you might say, but for some amazing reason ‘normal’ people took me on and bestowed on me a socially acceptable existence. So maybe I wasn't quite as behaviourally disturbed as my career seemed to indicate.
What are your sources of inspiration?
The dynamic in my romantic relationship is central. That’s extremely taxing because we come from completely different backgrounds and seldom agree on anything. So there’s a constant source of friction, which stimulates the imagination. What else? The cinema, as always. And music.
In your films there’s a lot of repetition. What is it about this process that interests you so much?
I like it when a film is just as entangled story-wise as able to mirror its own constructs and materials back on itself. Playing around with the timeframe or pushing it into the realm of the absurd, above all in short films, is a process of refraction that produces a tension between form and story. In DEADLY MARIA it’s more the mechanics of the way the sequence of events unfold that interested me.
What do you like best about DEADLY MARIA?
The inherent contradictions. That the film is so vehemently formal and yet still relates such a quiet story. I wanted to bring out the subjective aspects, in other words to emphasize the extreme perceptions this woman has. What takes place may look banal and unspectacular from the outside, but for Maria it is a radical experience.
What subject are you working on at the moment?
Love, as always. And how difficult it is.
