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.
And you're returning to nature, too, in a way. You're out of the city, you're out of the studio, making films on location in Scotland. Did you sense that impulse?
Yeah. I initially conceived Valhalla Rising the same way I conceived Pusher -- I'd just do it without an urban environment. Minimalistic, in-your-face, gritty realism, but just in the mountains of Scotland. I wanted limit any kind of production-design scenario, except for the cages where he was staying, which were anonymous. It was like a car would be in an urban environment. So it was just like swapping it. Also, the only way I could make the film interesting to me was to eliminate any historical feel. It felt more futuristic, maybe, like after a nuclear war. Is this movie past or present? That kind of sensibility.
How do your actors respond to that sensibility? I mean, here's Mads, jamming his face into mud.
Well, the Scottish actors who were in the movie were great. They were not the problem. They were there, man. And the weather was fine for them. For me and Mads it was like, "Oh, no, not another rainy day." It definitely affected their characters and the way they acted. But I think it was more the crew who were the problem. I don't think they expected it to be this extreme. Nothing was far enough away for me, or harsh enough. Forget that I couldn't afford any comfortable living or comfortable productions. It was like in the morning, we would drive up the mountain no matter how bad the weather was. We'd eat lunch in the rain on top of the Scottish mountains. Quite demanding.
How did you push yourself?
I'm not even a very sporty person! I don't like that kind of thing. But I just had to go with it. It was almost like, "How can I make this film as physically uncomfortable as possible?" But to get to those places, the visualization was such a great benefit. "How are we going to do that?" It was faith. You travel with faith.
But that's not unique for you. I've always really loved the chances your films take. Like you have these guys lost in red mist for 20 minutes! Where does that kind of thing come from?
I stole that cut from 2001.
How?
When the priest in telling One-Eye that he should travel with the men to the Holy Land, it's because it's not so much about the war, but about "the scars of your soul. That's where the pain lies." And One-Eye stares at him, and you cut to the general and the priest and the general's son staring at One-Eye, and he says, "Is he going to travel with us?" And the priest says, "If it's God's will." And so you dissolve from One-Eye's face into the fog, and they're already on their journey. I stole that from 2001, when they found that monolith on the moon that creates this signal sound. Then you cut to the Jupiter travel. Because you're already in the travel part of it. And the whole idea was to compare it to us traveling in outer space. That's how it would have been for them to travel where they were going.
When you're explaining this to your cast and crew, are they with you, or are they naturally lost in the fog along with you?
They were with me -- at least they said they were. To make this film, you really need kind of a team spirit. And Scotland has very good actors. They were into that whole mentality of imagination. There was no vanity. They weren't allowed to cut their hair or their nails or their beards or anything for like three months.
How much would you say your films are commentaries on contemporary dysfunction -- families, prisons, wars --
I don't set out to make political films, in that sense. It's not like I want to make a film on the penal system or anything like that. The Pusher films are very much about family and the destruction of family. I really just set out to make things I would like to see in a movie. It's how I conceive my stories: I don't have stories to begin with; I have scenes. "What would I like to see?" When I have X amount of scenes, I start to create a story around it. So I don't have any conscious answers to give you. I leave it up to people like you to find that -- and maybe you can tell me some of the things that are wrong with me. [Laughs]
That's interesting. The deeper you get into your career, do you think you're closer than ever or further than ever from making a full-blown mainstream film?
That's a good question. I think every time I make a film, I say to myself that I write, produce and control. That's all I've done so far. Now I say, "Oh, this is the one. Now I'm really going to show [Hollywood]!" You know? But at the same time, I've been very lucky with them. They get released, people watch them, and people have emotions about them, either good or bad. It truly doesn't matter to me as long as people have a reaction. I am going to Hollywood now to do a movie with Ryan Gosling called Drive, which is about a stuntman by day and a getaway driver by night. But the sensibility of the novella that it's based on [by James Sallis] very much speaks to me. So I feel very comfortable working within that. But I would love to make one of those Hollywood, $100 million extravaganzas. At the same time, I'm also very content in my situation. I get to make the films I want to make. I don't have the ego of world dominance.
What happened to your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation?
I was going to make a modern adaptation with Keanu Reeves, but because of my involvement with Only God Forgives -- which is my own production -- and Drive, it just didn't work with that. And I also had a film called The Dying of the Light, with Harrison Ford, that was meant to go. Everything was there, but over the course of a weekend it fell apart.
That's the business.
Classic Hollywood. I was a bit naive. I thought, "Wow, this was easy." But it turned out it wasn't.