As proven by your first feature, Heartstone, you are not afraid of working with very young actors. Why do you find it interesting?
I have always been interested in stories about kids and young adults, also when I started out making my short films including award–winning Whale Valley. My protagonists have always been young, they are kids or teenagers. I think it’s mainly because I had a very active and turbulent childhood myself.
At that time, you are basically in your own world – adults just can’t access it. They can look inside but they never see the full picture and, as a kid, you look from the outside into the world of the adults. You are in between these two very different realities, which is something I was very aware of. Grown–ups had very little understanding of what was going on in our lives. They would say: “You’re still a kid; it’s not so serious.” But to us, it was. Something draws me back to that time when I am writing, to the way I was thinking and speaking back then. It’s a lot of fun, actually. Later, during the shoot, I have to remind myself to stick to that point of view, to keep on seeing things like a teenager would. It’s such an important moment in your life – that’s when you are experiencing all these big emotions, often for the very first time. You are learning to face life, both the good and the bad.
How do you work with them once the shooting begins?
When I was making Heartstone, one of the boys approached the role like a method actor. He just became that person. It was a little bit scary, seeing that. We had to help him be himself again, so this time, I was really paying attention. I made sure they weren’t behaving like their characters when we weren’t shooting, that they weren’t playing cruel jokes on each other. We needed to keep these things separate.
When we first meet, kids always put on a show. They talk like they think you want them to talk. I want to encourage my actors to be themselves. I allow them to be teenagers, also in front of the camera. It’s an interesting experience because at the same time, you need to act like a principal and be able to say: “Hey, behave. Stop that.”
There is improvisation in the movement but not so much when it comes to the written word – it’s all in the script and every scene has its purpose. They had this freedom deciding how to react and use their bodies, move and have fun with the scene. This way, they could always do something new and surprise each other.
At that age, you are so vulnerable. And yet some of the characters here are very complex, including a bullied boy, struggling at school and at home.
We talked a lot about this character, me and the boy [Áskell Einar Pálmason]. In real life, he is actually quite talkative. He was worried at first, afraid of what people are going to think. “Everyone will say I am like that too” – he would say. Then we talked about kids like that, their situation and he realized the importance of this role.
When I am casting kids, it’s important to find the ones with good inner balance. Acting in a film like this one is such an extreme experience, there is so much pressure that comes with it and it just takes up all your energy. You need to be able to handle it and having a good support system is crucial.
How do you approach the scenes of sexual nature, especially given their age?
I was happy because we worked with an intimacy coordinator. Thanks to her technique, the actors don’t feel exposed and I think it’s brilliant. It’s a new thing but it feels like it should have always been there.
You approach these scenes like a choreographed dance. You go through it all, movement by movement, with actors explaining what they will do and what their reaction will be very mechanically. You talk about it, making sure nobody feels uncomfortable. There is no element of surprise. By the time you are actually shooting, they already know every step. And they are not forced to repeat the scene over and over again, which in itself can also be quite traumatic.
There is always a bit of cruelty in your stories: pain, disappointment. And the adults either seem completely indifferent to it or they aren’t able to help.
I just try to keep it true to how I experienced things. At the same time, I also experienced a lot of beauty and humor, and they are also featured in my films.
It’s important to point out that when you see these young boys or men, being aggressive or exhibiting the signs of “toxic masculinity”, you have to recognize there is a reason for their behavior. They are not born this way. They just had to deal with some issues they shouldn’t have to deal with and now they are acting out. When I was a young man, I was still afraid of running into those groups of 16–year–old boys. I remembered how we used to be at that age, how dangerous.
There is a supernatural element to Beautiful Beings, which is quite surprising. How did you want to introduce it?
In Iceland, it’s a part of our culture. We talk about dreams, especially with people closest to us, and many believe in fortune–telling. It’s considered to be normal. If you start talking about it with your friend, he or she will always know someone who can read coffee grounds, for example. It’s not considered as something “New Age” or hippie – you have CEOs of big companies doing the exact same thing, they are just keeping it more private.
I remember my parents were very much into it. They really believed in those things. As a teenager, I thought it was crazy. I came back to it only later, I started to pay attention to my dreams and listen to my intuition. Now, it’s a part of my life, too. Thanks to my dreams, I know things I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
For me, it was all about making it subtle enough. Subtle enough not to take over the whole story but still be an important element in the protagonists’lives. It was all about finding this balance. You see it in films sometimes, like in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful. For me, seeing how he approached it was just amazing – it was something I could really relate to. It was done in this very ordinary, natural way. Also, I have always been a fan of The Sopranos and when I look at this series now, I notice that he is often dreaming about things that are about to happen. The guy who wrote that, he must have experienced it himself. These things happen, more often than not – we just don’t like to talk about it because it’s considered weird. But it happens in every family – at least that’s my theory.
Do you think you will want to continue exploring childhood and teenage life later on? Or you might be done after this film?
There are still stories I would like to tell. I just like stories about kids or young adults so much – I don’t really know why. Maybe it will change when I grow older? What I do know, however, is that I would like to make a fairy tale next time around. With kids. I could just forget myself in them when I was younger and I really miss these kinds of films.
Audiences are used to seeing the large-scale majesty of Icelandic nature in films, but this time around we’re also very close to the characters, in the privacy of their homes. Was this a conscious decision?
If this story would happen in a small town, there would be no way to avoid nature: it’s big and just part of the surroundings. But Beautiful Beings takes place in a city, even if it probably doesn’t look like one – after all, even Reykjavík feels like a small town. So I wanted to keep it real for these kids and what it feels like to grow up there.
I am also interested in little details and showing the ever- changing, intimate dynamics between people. Moving the story along in a subtle way with the help of their looks and gestures, building up tension in a natural way.
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, the DOP on both my films is one of my most important collaborators and we work together on how to frame the characters, how to shoot the film so that the audience feels like they are right there with them. Sturla is a unique collaborator on many levels, and he’ll lend me his opinion on anything, be it the script, the kids, the acting.
But to answer the question maybe even more simply, what interests me is human behavior. There is not a single moment in the film when something important isn’t happening. Even when they just seem to be hanging out in a room, it’s always an important part of the story, leading us to something that will be revealed later on.
