Jack the pioneer – Berlinale 64 interview with Edward Berger, the director of Jack
Several films debuting this year at the Berlinale showed us the world through the eyes of a child. Despite the American name, Jack is the story of how a German boy has to become an adult at a very early age. It is clear from Edward Berger’s realist drama that being a child can be difficult even in the welfare states.
Your film is about a neglecting mother and her children. Why was this topic interesting for you?
It had a very clear beginning. There was a very specific first moment, when the idea of the film was perceived in my head. It happened around four years ago. I was playing soccer with my son in the garden. It was summer, during the weekend on a sunny day and I saw a child walking down the street with a schoolbag on his back. He waved to my son, my son waved back, so they knew each other. A boy with a schoolbag on Sunday, it was strange. I was curious, so I asked my son about it. He said that he was a friend, who goes to his class. On Friday he sleeps at his Mum’s and on Sundays he returns home to the children’s home, where he lives. So I have found out that we have a children’s home at the end of our street. In our minds, we always picture this as something very sad: a child living in a children’s home. But the way this boy walked: he had power, energy, an inner force in him. He seemed to have a very positive outlook in life, and he seemed to express a belief in life. I was really impressed with it and thought that I wanted to put this in a film. I wanted the audience to watch this film and feel inspired from it. I wanted them to walk out of the theatre thinking, ‘Wow, what a great kid.’
The rest came later. This boy in the film always has a goal. And the goal is: where is Mum? But this image of the boy walking down the street with the schoolbag had enough force in it to create this movie.
Did you do research with these children?
We went a lot to that home at the end of our street for example. We saw group sessions with the children. Their sessions are kind of cute; at 7 p.m. they all wear pyjamas, they sit around the sofas and they talk about their problems, like someone watched the TV too loud or something. They are sitting there to sort it out. So we sat through a lot of these sessions with them and we also went to after school programs. Considering the dialogue – we took a lot from these children.
We are always very close to Jack. We always see him in a close up throughout the whole film. How did you come up with this concept?
We wanted to have the audience as close to Jack’s emotional world as possible. We did not want the audience to be able to escape from this. We wanted them to spend time with him in an unmanipulated way, so we did not cut. We had these long-long takes, 2-3 minutes where we follow the child everywhere. This was the main thing: to get him as close to the viewer as possible, in the most unmanipulated way possible. That was our goal.
We also did not change lenses. We used a 1.32 mm lens and we did not change the focus. It’s always the POV of this boy, it’s always his eye level. So that was our concept: not to let the audience escape. There is no other possibility; you have to watch this boy. There is no wide shot where you can sit back and relax and think from a distance, ‘Oh that’s interesting.’ You only have Jack’s face to watch.
Was it difficult to shoot this with a child?
Oh yeah. It was a challenge. But an exciting challenge. He is untrained and we did not want someone who is trained at all. We wanted someone who comes to the set innocently and who does not prepare in a scene, like an actor, who thinks “OK, I’m gonna come in, I’m gonna play like that because my character feels this way.” He does not care about these things and that’s different and that is also the challenge. It might take a while. You might do these long takes 15-20 times, but eventually you get it right.
How did you find him?
Oh, we looked forever. We could not find him anywhere. Someone always knew somebody, there was always a glimmer of hope, but then they were never perfect. After 6 months or so we kind of got disillusioned. We looked everywhere in Berlin, and at the last casting we were done. I said, if we do not find him now, then we will never find him and we have to postpone the film... and then he came in during the last casting, almost as the last person. It was like in Steven Kloves’ The Fabulous Baker Boys, when Michelle Pfeiffer stumbles into a casting and starts to sing and really convinces Jeff Bridges that she is the best singer in the world. And that was the way with Ivo (Ivo Pietzcker), he stumbled into this last casting and blew us away with an improvisation. My co-writer Nele (Nele Mueller-Stöfen) played a teacher and she said ‘do your homework’, while his task was that he wanted to play football. He started screaming, like the vein popped out in his neck and we were so impressed that me and Nele finally woke up. We stood up and looked at each other saying: ‘Oh wow, this is him!’ He was also wearing a red Ferrari shirt. And he was wet from the rain outside, so it was just perfect.
Why did you choose the name Jack?
I liked the name. It felt to be the precise name for him. Jack. It seemed to contain the power that he has. Maybe there is also this American pioneer thing in it. The Americans are pioneers, they went from the east to the west to discover a new land for themselves, just like Jack. The guy is like a pioneer.
There is a shocking, quite violent scene in the movie, when the bully boy pushes Jack under the water for a very long time. How did you shoot that scene?
That’s a secret. He was holding his breath for a very long time (jokingly)… He almost got killed when we shot it (still jokingly.)I can’t tell you this; then I would destroy the magic of movies.
Is it important that it was shot in Berlin?
It is important that it is a big city. It is vast and people can get lost. Children can get lost. The anonymity of the city is important: everyone is busy in Berlin, they have their own agenda, they forget about or they just overlook their children. Someone walks this way and another person walks that way, and they don’t even see them. It is important from this aspect, but it could take place anywhere, in Warsaw or Paris or even in New York. The main thing is that the big city is like a jungle.
We also tried to make these places very specific. The ways that they walk are always very realistic. They are walking from A to B and it is really the way from A to B, so we are not jumping around the city. We did not try to marginalize it, we did not want things to take place in a high-rise building in the edge of the city. We wanted to place it where your mum lives, where your friends live, where we live. A lot of the locations could be right in front of your door. We tried to make the locations feel like everyday places that we know from where we go shopping.
Usually when films are about this topic there is a big emphasis on the children’s poor environment, but here they have a very normal home. Was this important?
Very. The idea was not to push it away from us. To bring it close. It could be your neighbour. We wanted something very normal. We wanted a loving mother. A mother that really loves her children, but is simply too young to carry that responsibility. So we wanted to put it in the middle of society instead of the edge of society. It was very important that the mother is not a drunkard or a porn actress or something like that, just a girl, who wants to have fun.
How did you come up with the ending?
For us in the story it was always clear that the boy needed a real goal. He needed to look for his mother. In the end, it felt nice to satisfy that goal and he finds his mother, so that was important. Then again the mum is so happy to see her kids, but this is also the scene where he realises, ‘Oh my God, she is not good for us. If I stay here, I’m always gonna be the father. I do not have a father, so I will always play this role. I always have to be the father.’ These are his thoughts in that moment.
In the end when he leaves, he decides that he becomes a child. He leaves the role of the father behind and chooses childhood. For me, the ending is also an image of hope for the future. He goes away, because he finds this incredible power within himself to leave his mum, and decides for an unknown future. He believes that this future is going to be OK. He believes in life. For me the perfect ending was ‘Jack’ and the last word in the movie was ‘Jack’. He arrives within himself.
The person talking at the doorbell asks for the name again, because she did not catch it. But it is supposed to be a hopeful ‘Who?’ ‘Did I hear it right?’ That is supposed to be the ending. ‘Is it really Jack?’
What do you think will happen to them afterwards?
That is for you to decide, but I think they will have a good life in the children’s home. They will see their mother and they will love her. There will be a tearful encounter where she says, ‘but why did you go away?’And the child will say: ‘I have to stay here, but I love you.’
Are you maybe planning to bring the film to Hungary?
Hopefully. We are selling it here at the market, so it would be great if it sells to Hungary.
originally published in Hungarian at: http://filmtekercs.hu/interju/jack-a-pionir-interju-edward-bergerrel
Jack (2014)
103 min - Drama - 7 February 2014 (Germany)
Director: Edward Berger
Writers: Edward Berger, Nele Mueller-Stöfen
Music: Christoph M. Kaiser, Julian Maas
Cinematography: Jens Harant
Producers: Jan Krüger, René Römert
Editing: Janina Herhoffer
Stars: Ivo Pietzcker (Jack), Georg Arms (Manuel), Luise Heyer (Sanna), Odine Johne (Kati), Jacob Matschenz (Philipp), Vincent Redetzki (Jonas)