THE NAME OF THIS BOOK IS DOGME 95

Richard Kelley / The Name of this Book is Dogme 95 / April 2001

The following is an article that originally appeared in the book The Name of this Book is Dogme 95 (Faber and Faber, 2001) by Richard Kelley.

Forensic/391, New York City: Monday, 24 January 2000

Harmony Korine has been rooting around his production offices for a can of soda. Now he steps into the room and pulls the door behind him. "We's got a lot of fuckers spying round here," he says in mock-conspiratorial sotto voce, and then casts an eye over the Minerva set-up. Paula is back on boom duties, and Braden King has taken over the second-camera chore from Jack. "I like my name that big," Harmony remarks of the clapper-board; and perhaps for the last blessed time, Saul explains the ripping conceit of a caption-free documentary, and our lazy approximation of a half-attempt at abiding by Dogme Rules. "So, you broke a few," remarks Harmony, chewing contemplatively on the butt of his cigarette. "That's good..." The misconceptions over his own chastity, he hints, are taxing his patience.

Saul Metzstein: So the idea of doing a film under the Vow of Chastity was suggested to you by Thomas Vinterberg?

Harmony Korine: Right. I had read the Manifesto right after they put it out. I liked it, it seemed fitting. And it didn't seem to me like shooting julien under that guise would be a real departure from how I was going to shoot it anyway.

Braden King: I was surprised when I heard that julien would be a Dogme movie; surprised that it held any interest for you, in a way. Because I'd have guessed you'd hated it.

Korine: I think a lot of people thought that. I think it was for that very reason that I was attracted to it; that kind of traitor's desire. At the same time, just the concept of the group - the union, this brotherhood - is what's shocking, or foreign. But the actual Dogme rhetoric itself is very appealing, I find. I just liked the idea of giving myself to this holy endeavour.

Metzstein: Once you decided to do it Dogme, did your script change?

Korine: Not at all. I had kind of lost faith, and I still have very little faith, in a formal screenplay structure. It's just really boring to me. I don't like the idea of imposing these dead words or abstract notions on something that's alive, on the actors. In a way, I added a Rule to the Manifesto just for myself: I wouldn't allow any kind of a plot to seep through. I don't like plot-oriented movies. I like things that kind of evolve, or just begin and end - like life does. So I basically wrote a list of scenes and images that were almost like looking at photographs. Common things, almost random ideas. Somebody eats a hamburger. Or climbs a tree. Or wrestles a garbage can. We would take those, and then whatever happened in filming would happen, and then in the editing I would make it into some kind of 'drama.'

Metzstein:Though presumably the scenes with Julien and the dead baby were always intended to be the end?

Korine: Oh, yeah. And there were things that I knew had to be seen at the beginning, to support the character throughout the film. But I was less interested in making a movie, like 'This is a film,' than I was in making some kind of artefact that documented some kind of action. It was important to me just to present the images rather than offer one overall viewpoint, because I wasn't trying to say any one thing. I just wanted to make something to watch.

Metzstein: Why did you pick Anthony Dod Mantle as your DP?

Korine: I was in pre-production, we were going to start within a month, and I was planning to work with the cinematographer we had on Gummo and Kids, Jean-Yves Escoffier. But then he got another movie, and I couldn't wait. And I had liked how Festen was shot, so I contacted Anthony. I identified with what he was doing visually, what he was trying to communicate. I noticed he had a really exceptional understanding of camera movement and foreground, and of working in the absence of lighting. It wasn't a desire to make uniformity, of using the same people for all Dogme films. Though that idea is appealing as well...

Metzstein: You use the same editor too? Valdis Oskarsdottir?

Korine: Sure. She wears mittens. And I like her fingers.

Metzstein: Why did you cast Ewen Bremner?

Korine: I just liked the way he walks, really. He's very bow-legged; he can shoot an arrow with his knees. But we had to cut that scene.

Metzstein: Werner Herzog has made films that have the same feeling as yours of mixing documentary and drama. Is his presence in the film a sort of homage?

Korine: Not really a conscious homage, because I don't really like homages. I dislike any kind of reverence. But Werner's always been a hero of mine, on of my favourite film-makers, since I was a kid. For me, he's the best of the German 'new wave,' because he never seemed like he was in fashion, or that he had an egenda. I was friends with Werner anyway; after I made Gummo he contacted me. So it was more from knowing him personally, and knowing that he wanted to act, and that he was suited to the character or this maniacal German father. I guess we have a similar belief in this idea that there's a fallacy of truth in cinema, and that realism or cinema verite fall short. I've never believed in an ultimate truth in films. I think it's impossible to be completely honest because there's always a point of view involved in film-making. But in terms of truth in its purest form, there's something much more important, something that almost hovers above, and that documentary fails to achieve. I think it can only be achieved through a kind of manipulation, of making things seem as real as possible, but lying about them. So what you have hovering above is like a poetic truth.

Metzstein: How seriously then do you subscribe to the idea that Dogme is more truthful cinema?

Korine: I have subscribed to that point of view, really. But I think if you follow these ten Rules, without question, they force some kind of issue of truth, or reflection of truth, from the actors, from the characters and the story - which ultimately you have to reckon is something more truthful than had you not worked that way. That's not to say that this is the most truthful way to make a film. It's to say that you have to reckon with some kind of semblance of honesty.

Metzstein: How seriously did you attempt to engineer Chloe Sevigny's pregnancy for the film?

Korine: God... That's definitely a very serious matter. I'm very serious in anything dealing with potency.

Metzstein: But you ended up absolutely against the Rules?

Korine: Well, that was one of my Confessions. The try was definitely part of the Dogme. But my failure in it was... I wouldn't call it 'a sin' because I tried. It was just me shooting blanks.

Metzstein: How many cameras did you use?

Korine: About twenty in the end. Originally I'd had this idea of blanketing a huge wall with small camcorders, each one just a little bit skewed from the next in its point of view. So you'd have a set of views, maybe One through Fifty, all trained on the same subject. And I was interested in the idea of having to edit that footage, because you could approach it almost in a mathematical way. You could say, without looking, 'Camera Fourteen to Camera Sixty-five to Camera Thirty-three.' It would be completely random. So I'd originally wanted to do that. But I just didn't. (Laughs.)

Metzstein: Lars von Trier is doing something similar, though.

Korine: Yeah, I heard he's using a hundred cameras.

Metzstein: Why all the hidden cameras, the spy-cameras?

Korine: The reason I was attracted to video wasn't really to do with the aesthetics of that image. It was more about the immediacy of video, and I liked the idea of changing the psychology behind not just the director-actor relationship but the whole film-making process. Some of my favourite scens in Gummo were the ones where there was no crew around. I'd go and whisper something to the actors between takes. It was like a 'mistakeist' art form. Or some kind of chemical reaction; like putting chemicals into a bottle and skaing them up, and documenting them, seeing what the explosion would look like. I wanted to remove myself. So I imagined what it would be like having two actors at a table, in conversation, each one wearing a teeny spy-camera on their shoulder. I would give them some direction, and then I would leave the house for a few hours, and let them go through their scene. And what I'd get would be these two matching one-shots that I could cut between. And that way, there would be no cinematographer, no sound-recordist, no director. So I was interested in the idea of making a movie without anyone, including myself, except for the actors, and seeing what would happen.

Metzstein: Presumably that idea reached its peak in the bus scene.

Korine: Yeah, that was pretty scary - one of the scarier scenes in the movie. I had wanted to use a real dead baby, a cadaver. And I didn't want to hire actors for the bus, I wanted to see what would happen if people on a bus saw this little infant corpse, and this boy crying over his dead nephew, or whatever it is. Just the reaction to that. So it was hard to deal with the lawyers, because they were scared that somebody on the bus would have a heart attack, or maybe shoot Ewen. We had to do it outside New York. And I was too nervous to get on the bus, to be honest with you.

Metzstein: So where were you?

Korine: I was in the van, reading.

Metzstein: Did you have a video relay?

Korine: No, I didn't really want to see what would happen.

Metzstein: And what kind of things did happen?

Korine: Oh, just your basic reactions. What you would expect, for that kind of thing. I think people are used to it on the bus these days.

Metzstein: Did you find yourself with a very high shotting ratio?

Korine: I'd really wanted to just shoot and shoot and shoot without really thinking of the consequences; not only of shooting too much film. But if you're shooting 35 mm, you can only shoot maybe four minutes at a time, and I wanted to be able to shoot two-hour takes if need be. Anyway, we ended up with almost 100 hours of footage.

Metzstein: So were you forced to be very compressed in the editing?

Korine: Well, the first cut was about six hours long - which I wanted to put out, in that form. I wanted people to take a tent to the movie theatre, and sleep over. I'm not one of those people who take the stance that editing is where the film is really made. But the film comes together there, and you want to make the strongest film you can make. Or - maybe you want to make the weakest film, I don't know. Sometimes my favourite parts are considered the weakest, the bit cut out are the ones I find most interesting.

Metzstein: Ewen said he was a bit shocked at first by the final length.

Korine: At how short it is? Well, that's the thing. I would love to make a movie that's three months long. Before he died, Andy Warhol was talking about wanting to make a biblical epic. He was going to photograph each page of the Bible, estimate how long it took to read, and then project the Bible. So, ultimately, he'd make the greatest biblical epic ever. I'd love to make a movie where the view spends three or four months in the theatre, but I don't think anyone has that commitment any more. I mean, I do. I would - I'd try to live there. But I don't think there are many people who have that kind of zest.

Metzstein: Can you describe your encounter with the Dogme police after you'd finished the film?

Korine: The final act, the receiving of the Dogme stamp: what happened is that when you're finished with the movie, you fly to Denmakr, and you present the Brothers with your film. I confessed my sins against the Vow of Chastity beforehand. Which weren't very many. And then they watch it and go over it with a fine-tooth comb, scene by scene. Or at least they try. And then they tell you if you've done it properly or not. And if you have, everybody goes out to eat, and drink a lot.

Metzstein: Thomas [Vinterberg] told us he found julien a rather aesthetic film.

Korine: I don't see what kind of movie isn't aesthetic. I mean, either the aesthetics are appealing or they're not. But there was no conscientious decision to make 'an aesthetic film.'

Metzstein: He also admitted that Rule is impossible. He said with Festen that they didn't pre-plan how anything would be shot.

Korine: Neither did we. Our approach was always to watch the actors do it first, without imposing any kind of direction on them; and then to think about the best way the scene should evolve. And then, lastly, to think about the best way to film the scene - whether to do the whole scene in Polaroids, or to film it from half a mile away with really long lenses, or with spy-cameras, or at different speeds. The question being, 'What would complement the action, the drama?' I mean, it would be very silly to say, 'OK, I'm going to shoot a scene in black-and-white now,' without thinking of what the scene is. Sometimes you realize that the scene is just an action that only needs documentartion, some cinema verite, without any help from the camera.

Metzstein: Did the Brotherhood ask you to make any changes to the film, as was put to Jean-Marc Barr?

Korine: Oh yes, I heard about that. No, they didn't ask.

Metzstein: What would you have said if they had?

Korine: Well, if it was something valid that I felt could be changed, then I'd have acquiesced. But the whole idea is that you make a film under these Rules not wanting to cheat. There's really no reason to make a film this way if you have this notion of leniency. So, for me and everybody else involved, it was about putting these Rules on a wall and saying, 'We can do anything we want within the confines of the Vow of Chastity.' There were some things that we did that weren't traditional Dogme, such as voice-over, which we had to do manually. The actor would speak into the camera while we were on location for the scene, or we would pre-record on a micro-cassette recorder and then play it into the camera as we shot. And there's superimposition of images, but they were done in-camera, not in post-production.

Metzstein: What surprised me when I went to speak to the Danish Dogme guys is that I thought they'd be much more heavily ironic.

Korine: Well, the thing is that there's no irony to this, and there shouldn't be. A lot of people think it's a kind of joke, or there's some kind of levity involved. But I know that I wouldn't be interested in Dogme if there was any irony attached to the Vow of Chastity. It's a very serious thing.

Metzstein: But you must believe there's some marketing attached to it?

Korine: Oh, I don't know about that. (Smiles, holds up his hands.)

Metzstein: Haven't people accused you of jumping on the Dogme bandwagon, or them of jumping on yours?

Korine: No, no. That's a horrible accusation...

Metzstein: How would you respond to it?

Korine: Well, I would say that it didn't really help the box-office sales. That accusation has no bearing. I mean, in America the idea of doing a Dogme film for the money, it's like... if anything, it would hinder you.

Metzstein: Whereas in the UK, people only seem to discuss Dogme in terms of budgets.

Korine: Which is a disgusting thing as well. I mean, I'd like to make a movie like Titanic according to the Vow of Chastity. The economics of it were never a factor, at least not in my thinkings. And I don't even think making a Dogme film is necessarily all that cheaper than doing it regular. It probably would have cost me less money to do julien in a different way than this.

Metzstein: Ewen Bremner told us he thought there was a problem with the reception of julien in that people were seeing it as a Dogme film first and foremost, rather than looking at it for what it is.

Korine: It's not something I'm really concerned about. For me at least, the Vow of Chastity was something very personal: more for the director, but also for the actors and crew; and very technically oriented, about how you make the films. There was ideology involved. There was a religious element to it, you were asked to follow the Vow of Chastity blindly, much like the Ten Commandments. But all of a sudden it seemed like you had this minority of cinephiles or supposed 'experts' interested in the Dogme 95 idea. I wasn't making a film like The Idiots, or like Festen. I was concerned with making things I hadn't seen before, and having to do them in this different way. A lot of people misinterpreted that as sinning or breaking the Rules, which was a really boring argument to me. Ultimately you want people to watch the film for what it is, not with this kind of mathematical analysis, and without any real knowledge of what was done.

Metzstein: But you could argue that all film-makers privately make rules for themselves before they start a film; and the Dogme brotherhood just happened to publish theirs.

Korine: I don't know that all film-makers do. I think most don't even consider it, or even care. But the good thing about the Dogme Rules is that they were written obtusely enough that they weren't so restricting that I couldn't do what I wanted. I just had to go about it in another way, do things more manually a lot of the time.

Metzstein: Would you concede that at a certain point, if you spend so much effort trying to bypass the Rules, then why bother?

Korine: Oh, it was never about bypassing. That would be a heathen thing to do. (Laughs.) And I feel very much ingratiated with my fellow brethren.

Metzstein: The manifesto draws parallels with the French new wave, and makes certain criticisms of it. How seriously do you take that?

Korine: In my opinion, with the exception of Godard, the French new wave failed - because in a lot of ways they became what they hated. There was this elitist bourgeois romanticism. That's not to say I don't love a lot the movies that came from that time. They're some of my favourite films.

Metzstein: What do you think will be the legacy of Dogme?

Korine: Oh. (Chuckles.) I just hope it can breathe under water.

Metzstein: Can you see more invention in people using these Rules?

Korine: I definitely hope so. And I hope it becomes more and more militant. But I think it probably won't. In a weird way, I don't think Dogme is extreme enough. So I'd say, 'Step up to the plate. And be extremely militant.'

Metzstein: Dogme is much discussed in the context of European cinema, but how do you feel it's perceived in America?

Korine: From what I've noticed, people don't really care. This idea of a 'movement' or 'wave' has very little bearing or effect. What I was in Europe with the film, it seemed much more prevalent: people knew about Dogme and were concerned about it. Here, of the people who saw julien, I'd guess maybe ten percent of them had heard of Dogme. And out of that group, maybe one percent knew anything about it beyond the name.

Metzstein: And probably they were the bastards that wrote about it.

Korine: Right. It's always the one percent. (Raises a fist.)

Metzstein: Is that kind of film-making much harder here than in Europe?

Korine: No. I don't think it has much to do with the geography. I think it has more to do with an individual acceptance of the Rules, and an individual desire to do a film in abidance by them.

Metzstein: Do you think Hollywood has paid any attention to Dogme?

Korine: No. I don't think they ever will. And I don't think it should. I don't think Hollywood should ever pay attention. I think it's good where it is (smiles), it's just great.

Metzstein: But it gives you some focus: being un-Hollywood?

Korine: No, I think I'm very Hollywood and commercial, I do. What's julien grossed, about a hundred million? (Laughs.) It's like Toy Story 2.

Metzstein: Would you make another Dogme film?

Korine: Lars talks about religion, and the Vow of Chastity being almost like a church. And a church is a nice place to go if you feel you need to repent. I couldn't make all my films that way, and I don't think I need to. I'm sure the next movie I make will probably use a completely different method. And I'll go against a lot of what I have previously hailed in the Vow of Chastity. But it's nice to know the Vow exists, so that after I've sinned I can always repent.

Metzstein: Can you talk about the ways in which you feel that beauty and perversity are intertwined?

Korine: For me at least, you can never look at something and find it wholly beautiful, or wholly disturbing. When people accuse me of being interested in things that are 'grotesque,' there are so arguments in there that I don't understand. I mean, I'm attracted to girls with scars on their faces. I like girls with missing limbs. I always have. I'm sexually attracted to that. So a lot of times, what people consider to be grotesque, I'm really aroused by. But I also like the idea of making things a bit more confusing. I think what's gross about a lot of movies is that things have become so simplistic and so one-way. They exist on a very even plane. if you're making a film about life, based in some kind of truth, it's much more complex. And you can take something that's supposedly grotesque, an ugly image, and you can beautify it, shooting it in a certain way or adding some lovely music to it, making the image much more emotionally complex.

Metzstein: Thomas said that, paradoxically, all their Danish Dogme films have been very personal films. Do you think julien is any more personal than Gummo?

Korine: No. It's maybe more adamant. It deals with fewer characters in a much more cloistered environment. But I really only know how to make one kind of movie, you know? I don't know what that movie is, exactly. But if I could describe them in words, then I wouldn't feel the need to make them, or project them. The reason I make movies is so that I can decipher these things on a personal level, learn things about myself.


The tape is running down. Paula has a last request: can Harmony offer a 'one-liner' on julien? 'One-liner? You mean like Milton Berle?' he asks. ' I'll do a song-and-dance, if that's what you want?' 'No, just a descripton of the film will do.' A long pause. 'OK. It's about someone that hears voices. And gets really close to his sister, on a real personal levels. And is drawn to the Third Reich.' A longer pause. 'Well, I's go see it,' offers Paula.

As for me, of course, I'm watching all of this post facto on VHS. I like the idea of Harmony making Titanic: it reminds me of Godard's contention that Hollywood should be forced to work in 16 mm and 8 mm, and the 'underground' in 70 mm. And what now seems precious to me is that Korine and the Brotherhood recognized kindred spirits in each other, and so, sumbolically, joined hands across the ocean, making a small but significant transatlantic avant-garde. Doesn't this at least offer the prospect of an international solidarity among young film-makers, demanding the impossible, eager to assault the mainstream, rushing on to the street to tell their stories from down there?