Nicolas Winding Refn on Valhalla Rising, Extreme Filmmaking and Going Hollywood

A few months shy of his 40th birthday, Nicolas Winding Refn has already directed a trilogy (the Pusher series), a biopic of England's most violent criminal (Bronson), and has flirted with Hollywood projects featuring A-listers including Harrison Ford and Keanu Reeves. He is preparing to shoot the mainstream thriller Drive with Ryan Gosling, and he famously wants to make a megabudget adaptation of Wonder Woman. So with all this going for him, what is it about his gritty, nasty, surreal new Viking film Valhalla Rising that makes it the prolific Refn's personal favorite?

"Because it's the one where I gave it everything I got," he told me during a recent chat in New York. "It's pure imagination. I said, 'I'm not even going to try to think about this or that or be worried. I'm just going to make what I would like to see."

That model yields results both stunning and stupefying alike, a grim, gray mountain cosmos from which mute slave One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) makes his violent escape. Trailed by worshipful young Are (Maarten Stevenson), One-Eye joins a group of Viking crusaders en route to the Holy Land -- wherever that is. Part bloody spiritualized quest, part desaturated acid trip, Valhalla yanks the existential underpinnings of 2001 down to Earth by a chain looped around its neck. And would you believe it has a happy ending -- if happy endings can be drawn from suicide, that is, which might be oversimplifying. I'll just let Refn explain below. (Meanwhile, Valhalla Rising is currently playing theatrically in New York and is available on demand through IFC.)

How are you?

[Sighs] I'm good.

Are you sure?

Well... Actually there have been good journalists today, and when that happens, it makes you think of what you're doing in new ways.

What's an example?

There are a lot of them writing about my two cycles. The first cycle -- Pusher, Bleeder and Fear X -- is its own kind of artistic combustion, and you listen. The you start again with Pusher II and III and Bronson and Valhalla, and it's like the same cycle again. The films very much mirror each other. I thought that was interesting.

Is that cycle of nihilism -- or that theme, anyhow -- something you want to break away form? Or is that something you're not done exploring?

I think on the first three movies it was very apparent it was a combination of nihilism, complete narcissism and how it wasn't about the journey. It was about the result -- which is probably the most unhealthy way you can make a movie. Going through that process kind of ended in a real nothingness. It couldn't have been more bleak. I ended up owing a lot of money and stuff. Then, having to go back -- starting with Pusher II and III and then Bronson and Valhalla Rising_ -- they're certainly much more optimistic in the sense that they're about the process of making the films. I'm not as interested in the results. I'm interested in the process. So the films are much more enjoyable for me.

What specifically interests you when you're making a movie? Is it the story? A specific character? An individual scenario?

I think it's just beforehand, in my first cycle, I was more interested in my own persona. It wasn't so much about what I did, it was about me. Unfortunately that's not very healthy. But after my second cycle, it was no longer about me as much. It became about what I was making. So it became much more enjoyable. And the reason for that, primarily, is that I was headed in the wrong direction with what I was doing. I would just end up as an obscure filmmaker somewhere with nothing to show. And then I had my first child, which such an experience for my psyche that I realized I was no longer important in my life. I was able to eliminate that part of my work.

So you'd call Valhalla Rising a film with optimistic tendencies?

[Laughs] Yeah, more optimistic in the sense that One-Eye becomes man -- becomes human. All through the movie The Boy is longing for his affection, and he doesn't show it until the end with the greatest gift God gave him, which is sacrifice. When you do something for your children, it's a great pleasure for yourself. In the movie, where One-Eye is like a monolith -- like an enigma, like an animal -- in the beginning, like a monolith he has mythology around him. Nobody knows where he comes from, nobody knows how long he's been around, who he is... He doesn't even talk. His eye is like Greek or Egyptian; is he from the Middle East? Is he from Asia? And he becomes a warrior when he escapes by taking control of his life. He uses tools. And then he becomes a god because people perceive him with powers. That's how they mirror him. And then he becomes man with his emotions. I always thought that was a happy ending in a way. And then he returns to his origins, which is nature. When the natives kill him, they just want him. It's like they know where he comes from and how to get him back to it.

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