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NOTicolas Winding Refn and his father, Anders, are the chalk and cheese of Danish cinema; bound by blood, separated by films. Here they are, sitting side by side in their little Zoom windows, each calling from their home in Copenhagen. “But we are not at all close”, explains Nicolas by way of introduction. “He’s in the suburbs and I’m in town.” Physically, spiritually, the two are poles apart.
I have known Refn Jr’s work for years. He is the talent behind Drive, The Neon Demon and the Pusher trilogy. It is attractive, infuriating, almost infinitely observable. But I’m less familiar with Anders, 76, who has led a quieter journey as a prolific director and film editor; the kind of safe pair of hands that cleans up messes caused by others. At one point, he explains that he shot his first feature film, Copper, in 1976. “My first film was about a policeman. Nicolas’ first film was about a criminal. He laughs at the comparison. “We are therefore like two sides of the same coin.”
Today, for once, the old guard seems to have gained the upper hand. Anders Refn’s latest film, Into the Darkness, is a meaty and richly textured period piece, a film that sees the Nazi occupation of Denmark through the prism of the collapse of a bourgeois family. It’s the first part of a story he has wanted to tell for years, an antidote to all the bogus and self-serving tales of the heroic resistance. Occupied Denmark, he explains, was known as the “Whipped Cream Front”. It was soft and laid back, a cushy assignment for German troops, the Nazi equivalent of a joyous job. “Collaboration has been a taboo subject in our country for so many years,” he says. “But I think the public is finally ready to face it.”
Nicolas, for his part, wants to support the film and defend his father. But he’s the world’s worst publicist, a movie critic in disguise. When I ask him what he thinks of Into the Darkness, he says it’s an accomplished film on an important subject. He says it’s a successful story. Of course, this is not the kind of movie he would dream of making himself. “Basically I think my dad and I disagree on the purpose of cinema,” he says. “It comes from a more classic tradition. For him, it’s a story, a story. For me, it’s more of an act of expression.
I just asked Refn Jr for his unfailing opinion of his father’s work. It is right that we reverse the roles. Take a movie like The Neon Demon, Nicholas’ dark fairy tale on the Los Angeles modeling stage. It’s elegant, frosted with sugar and poisonous to the core. But I wonder what Anders did with all of this.
Anders looks struck. “What did I think about it?” he says. “Uh …”
“My father thinks The Neon Demon is inconsistent,” Nicolas intervenes. “He thinks he’s missing a conventional narrative. He doesn’t like anything supernatural. He does not like anything that does not relay the dogmatic political attitude of the 1960s towards science.
“No,” Anders protests. “No.” But that’s all he can do to get a word out.
I think they love each other. I think they lock the antlers for fun or out of habit. The problem is, Anders is a child of postwar European arthouse cinema, while his son was raised on the diet of American horror and grindhouse films. Nicolas explains that his parents broke up when he was little. After that, he lived in New York with his mother and stepfather. He says, “My life changed when I saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I don’t think my dad ever saw this movie.
“Half,” says Anders.
“Yeah, half. Nicolas sniffs. “He thinks it’s just the most vile garbage.
I ask them if they can think of a happy memory from the shoot and Anders remembers the time it took teenager Nicolas to see Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika. “He was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to see that old black and white movie.’ He liked movies like Star Wars and Ghostbusters. And he sat with his head down while the movie was filming. And I felt bad because I thought I was pushing too hard. So I said: “OK, Nicolas, do you want to go?” And he looked at me with tears in his eyes because he was so touched by the movie.
Now it’s the young man’s turn to protest. “This, of course, is completely wrong. It’s all my father’s romanticization. Yeah, I saw Summer With Monika at Cinematek in Copenhagen. And, yes, it’s okay. It is a very successful film. But I certainly don’t remember it the way he does. I can’t imagine anyone – let alone me – crying in a Bergman movie. He pauses. “Maybe cry to get out.”
Anders points out that for a time the careers of him and his son followed a similar pattern. Both men scored success with their first film, did well with their second, and crashed and burned with their third. In Nicolas’ case, the film in question was Fear X, an American existential thriller that burst into the box office and left him $ 1 million in debt. As for Anders, he’s still stung by the collapse of his darling 1985 circus melodrama, The Flying Devils. He remembers Bergman had a copy of the film shipped to his home on the Baltic island of Fårö, watched it whole twice, and wrote a very nice letter.
“Bergman,” laughs Nicolas.
“Well, that was a good movie,” his father said. “He should have done better than she did.”
Looking back, Nicolas thinks Fear X may have created it. “You have to make a big mistake to understand the meaning of true creative success,” he says. “Complete failure, in my case, was the only way to free me from the prison of a more conventional career. It allowed me to know who I was and what I wanted to do.
Anders’ experience seems to have been slightly different. “It was very painful,” he says. “And that made me so difficult about the films I made afterwards. Because you have to do everything knowing that you may not be successful. He laughs without joy. “Plus, making a movie costs me a wedding every time.”
Nowadays, Anders is perhaps best known as Lars von Trier’s right-hand man. He edited Breaking the Waves and Antichrist. He was assistant director on Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. It was a collaboration, he says, that made him a more radical filmmaker. On the set of Into the Darkness, for example, he found himself relaxing – filming with two portable cameras and capturing the action on the run. Assuming the pandemic can be brought under control, he plans to start filming the second installment in May.
According to Nicolas, he and his father were simply born at different times and grew up in different places: Edenic Scandinavia; yellowed 80s in New York. In fact, he envies the innocence of Anders’ early years, at the dawn of the French New Wave. “I can totally understand the passion of that time. Because cinema was life. The innovative art form. The ultimate art form. Pure and moralistic. It could change the world. No one will ever experience a movie like this again.
Slowly, reluctantly, the two seem to be closing in on common ground. Nicolas sighs. “We come from very different backgrounds,” he says. “We have a fundamental difference in our approach to cinema. But, in the end, I probably learned more from my dad than from any other filmmaker. He taught me the subliminal power of the editing process. The importance of entering a scene late and leaving early. The importance of staying focused, of never letting an audience get bored. I stopped showing my work to my dad these days. But I still keep his advice deep inside me.
They clashed over Summer With Monika. They will always disagree on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I wonder if there’s a movie in the world that they both unequivocally love.
“Of course,” Nicolas said, without missing a beat. “The leopard, by Visconti.”
Anders intervenes, hard on his son’s heels. “The Seven Samurai, by Kurosawa. The Godfather, by Coppola. Anything from Buñuel.
Hostilities are over. Harmony is restored. As soon as theaters reopen, they might want to consider another father-son trip.
• Into the Darkness releases on demand on March 5
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