“What are you doing to your kids?” – Berlinale 64 interview with Anna and Dietrich Brüggemann, the creators of Stations of the Cross
The German director Dietrich Brüggemann created his film about a young girl’s religious self-sacrifice together with his sister and script-writer Anna Brüggemann. The uniquely structured Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg) – with episodic storytelling making a parallel between the steps of Jesus carrying the Cross to his crucifixion and the states of the young girl’s suffering – was awarded the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for Best Script.
Why were you interested in this subject? How did you start?
D.B.: The idea just popped up in my mind and there was the film. It sounds like a joke, but it really was like that. We have been exposed to religion like everyday Germans, in an average way. We took short visits to these fundamentalists, to the St Pius group, when we were kids. Our father took us there a couple of times. We were never really members of this community, but we have seen it.
Religion is everywhere. In the end of the 90’s people could have thought, ‘Oh, religion is over, worldwide.’ But then what happens? Everyone talks about Islam. What’s going on in America? In the big cities, everyone is just a crazy fundamentalist Christian. I thought to myself: ‘Is there anything similar going on in my country? Yes there is.’ We have all kinds of little groups and these radical Catholics are just one of them, but still, it was an interesting story to tell.
A.B.: Last year there was a huge discussion about the Catholic church and them abusing children sexually. But they have never talked about the psychological abuse that is very fundamental in the religious upbringing.
D.B.: This sexual abuse is a tabloid headline. It is not written down in the system that you should sexually assault kids. Catholic faith does not tell you that. But what does Catholic faith do? That was the more fundamental question we wanted to ask.
Why did you choose to make this movie about Catholics? Is it a real problem in Germany or in Austria? We have seen Ulrich Seidl’s film about Catholics. Why did you choose to make a movie about fundamentalists?
D.B.: There are lots of them here, in every colour, shape and size. The interesting thing with this specific Catholic group is that they are not really a cult. What they tell you is not so much different from what the mainland Catholic church tells you. They do what the Catholic church has always been doing, they just reject some reforms that were made over the last century. That makes them interesting. Phenomenologically, the way they act, the way they interact or don’t interact with the outside world, it is like a cult. They have this detached status, they think that everyone outside is an enemy and they are the only ones who know the truth. However, what they teach to their kids is not different from normal everyday Catholicism. That is what I thought was interesting.
A.B.: It is not like scientology. You do not have to pay money to stay in and you can leave them any time, but what they do with you is quite restrictive.
Why did you choose not to use the real name of the group?
D.B.: That was a little bit of fun we did with the name. The legal advisor of the production company said that we should not use the real name of the society, because they could sue you. So we chose very similar names. That was a joke that we kept doing throughout the movie.
A.B.: I liked it that we did not name them, because it lifts the movie up into fiction. You can watch this film in 50 years and this church might not exist anymore, but the film does. It is not a documentary.
D.B.: Of course we wanted to find the universal stuff in there. We did not only want to make a film about this tiny group. Of course some of them are even nice people. It would be very unfair to only pigeonhole them on this subject. The question we really wanted to ask the viewer is: ‘What are you doing to your kids?’ What kind of ideology are you taking and slamming into the heads of 14 year olds who ask about the way of life? Catholic faith is a brilliant object to use as a hammer on someone’s head, but every ideology, you name it, socialism, feminism, healthy nutrition... all of them can be used to torture young people.
A.B.: The horrible thing is that her religion demands that she is the victim. She has to be the victim and that is horrible for her, because psychologically she can’t stand it. But she has to.
Where did the idea of the episodic structure, the parallel between the ‘Stations of the cross’ come from?
D.B.: It came with the subject. I could not detach those two from one another. The subject has to be told in that form, and this form can only contain this subject matter. It would not make sense otherwise, at least in my theory.
The image of the first picture, when the children are sitting next to the table, is like a painting. It reminds the viewer very much of The Last Supper. Were classical paintings an inspiration for the visuals in the film?
D.B.: I love the idea of cinema being not enclosed in itself. I want to make films about other films, although too many people are doing that already. I love the idea of cinema being formed by other arts and the history of art. We are on the tail end of a very long stream: centuries of people are telling stories, painting pictures, thinking about life. And I love this, just going to museums and looking at paintings. I want to raise emotions and I want to get into other people’s heads. That is why I want to have a beautiful landscape, not just some landscape. Cinematically I like the idea that there is a picture that you can just watch. I do not want to treat the viewer like a kid, telling them ‘Look, I cut here, I cut to my face and then I cut to your face.’ No. You can just look where you want to look. I take care of it that there is something interesting going on everywhere, but you can decide where you look. I show you the whole system.
How did you shoot that very long scene in the car?
D.B.: That was the one scene that was actually technically difficult. When you do these long, long, steady takes, the one great thing is that you really do not have to worry about the technical gear, dollies or cranes. It is a huge liberation just to work with the actors. It is different when you put the camera on a trailer, and you get in a car to drive through town. It is different, because a lot of things can go wrong. It was technically hard. However, artistically it was surprisingly easy. Naturally, the actors have to learn their lines, but that’s their profession, they do this for a living. In the theatre they do this for two hours in a row. So they do it. You rehearse for one day, then you just go in there and let them do it. I don’t know how many takes we did, because you rarely have to stop a take half way through. Sometimes somebody forgets their line, but mostly they do not. So when you stop a take, it is usually right at the beginning, because you realize at the beginning that something is going wrong. This makes counting the takes difficult. The largest number we had was like 20, but that was unusually high. Normally we had maybe 10-15 takes.
How did you choose Franziska Weisz for the role of the mother? In real life she is much younger than the part.
D.B.: That is a very funny story. I have never thought about casting her. She is a friend of mine. At the casting for Lea (van Acken), we needed another actress to play the part of the mother. The casting theme was this car scene, so you need a good actress to play the mother. And I thought: ‘Alright, among my numerous actress friends who could do it?’ We needed someone who is too young to really play the part, because if she is at that actual age (mid-to-late thirties), then she would be angry, and say, ‘Why did you not cast me for the real part, asshole?’ And I did not want this. Franziska is cool, she is a great actress, she is a friend of mine, she is also too young for the part, so I thought I would ask her. She did it and she was brilliant. Then we did a lot of casting for the real mother part, and every time we thought, ‘Well... Franziska was better.’
Why was it important that there is a miracle in the story?
D.B.: The ending was pretty obvious, you could make it out, but there had to be one surprise in the film. You don’t want her sacrifice to be in vain. The film is like a set of objects in space: you walk around them and for one side you see ‘Oh this is an awful strict Catholic family’. Then you go one step further and I want to encourage the perspective that you can actually see the legend of the saint. These mechanisms lead to people being beatified in the end. Then you go a few more steps further and take a different angle to look at these objects you are arranging, and then you see a comedy. We didn’t really aim for a comedy, but there were remarkably many laughs in there. It really surprised me, but in a good way, because none of these laughs were against me.
They even laughed at the end, when she could not swallow the wafer for the Holy Communion in the hospital.
A.B.: I thought when finally at the end, somebody reasonable steps in with the nurse, and just says: ‘What’s happening? This is insane.’ Then you laugh, because you are relieved. You switch perspective and you think, ‘Yes this is absurd.’ That is why they laughed.
D.B.: It is about the clash of systems. By scene twelve you are already one and a half hours into the movie, so you are familiar with the world these Catholics are living in. It is totally rational for them to give her the Holy Communion, because she is ill, she needs contact with god and she is asking for it. But when someone with a completely different perspective comes in and she is a nurse and says: ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ That clash of perspectives is of course funny.
What do you think about the reaction of the audience to the film?
A.B.: It is fantastic, because they do understand what we wanted to say. It was: ‘Be careful, do not put an ideology above a person.’ Of course there are religious people, who have not seen the film and say, ‘Please don’t release it.’ And of course there are religious people, who approach us and I have no problem talking to them at all, because I am so sure in what we wanted to tell. If someone says that their religious feelings are deeply hurt, perhaps they should think over their religion, because you should not take ideas too seriously.
D.B. (jokingly): It was kind of a test. If you are offended by this film, then you are a fundamentalist.
Originally published in Hungarian at: http://filmtekercs.hu/interju/mit-csinaltok-a-gyerekeitekkel-interju-anna-es-dietrich-bruggemann-nal
Stations of the Cross (2014)
Kreuzweg (original title)
107 min - Drama - 20 March 2014 (Germany)
Director: Dietrich Brüggemann
Writers: Anna Brüggemann, Dietrich Brüggemann
Cinematography: Alexander SassProducers: Leif Alexis, Fabian Maubach
Editing: Vincent AssmannStars: Lea van Acken (Maria), Franziska Weisz (mother), Michael Kamp (father), Lucie Aron (Bernadette), Ramin Yazdani (doctor), Moritz Knapp (Christian), Florian Stetter (Pater Weber)