A royal Affair
no
Amour
he didn’t limit himself to the safety of his computer screen. “I went to Burundi and met ex-child soldiers,” he says. “And in the Congo, where we eventually filmed, I saw things like houses built out of abandoned billboards. They’re used for survival, and it creates a whole new postmodern message. The film carries a lot of those symbols of reinvention.”
having felt intimated by the prospect. “I was terrified, actually,” he says. He didn’t even have the comforts of home to console him, for re-creating 18th-century Copenhagen proved impossible in 21st-century Denmark, and the Czech Republic had to substitute. What drove him forward were the progressive ideas at the heart of the film.
Many Americans might expect the Danish film A Royal Affair to unspool as a dry history lesson— though the movie is more like a political thriller with powdered wigs. But for Nikolaj Arcel, the film’s director and cowriter, the 18th-century story of Dr. Johann Friedrich Struensee, Queen Caroline Mathilde, and King Christian VII remains resoundingly contemporary. Though the forward-looking physician and the good-hearted if naïve royal couple tried and failed to bring reform to Denmark, they paved the way for the next generation to effect lasting change.
“I’m a little bit of a political nut,” the filmmaker says. “There are some movements in Denmark and also here in America that are moving away from the Age of Enlightenment. I have quite a liberal viewpoint. I truly believe that every man is equal and should have an equal chance in life. And that’s what Struensee fought and died for, and it’s something we have to keep fighting for—rationality rather than irrationality.”
“It’s almost impossible not to know this story if you’re from Denmark,” Arcel says. “Every school kid knows it. So it was more a question of getting to a point of where I was mature enough to do the film. I’d been thinking about it for some time. It was a bit of a daunting prospect. I spent a year writing the script and then about four years trying to finance it. So it wasn’t that easy. In fact, I did a whole other film while waiting for financing.” Germans and Britons had previously filmed the story, but apparently poorly. Yet no Dane had succeeded in getting it to the screen, despite repeated attempts. “A lot of great directors, even idols of mine, had been trying to make it,” Arcel says. “It was sort of like: Let me try and fail like the others. And we almost failed. There were times I felt we’re never going to make this. I was actually quite depressed for a while.” But Arcel did succeed. The film has done huge business in Denmark and fared extremely well in the U.K., Australia, and France. Arcel had never directed a period drama before, and he owns up to
It could be said that the opposite—irrationality over rationality—drives the figures at the center of Kon-Tiki, a re-creation of Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s epic trek across the Pacific, from Peru to Polynesia, which is codirected by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. Some older Americans might recall this incredible feat, which occurred in 1947, but many more know of it through Heyerdahl’s bestselling book, also titled Kon-Tiki, and the identically named documentary it inspired, which won an Oscar in 1951. But Rønning and Sandberg’s enthusiasm for this story goes far beyond that of an armchair explorer. Like Arcel and his film, these helmers—who have been making movies together since they were kids—feel a personal tie to the tale they tell. “Thor was extremely well known, maybe the biggest celebrity of all in our country,” Sandberg says. “But he was even more important to Joachim and I because he came from the neighboring town, even smaller than ours. And he made the life he wanted for himself. And in that sense he was a huge inspiration for us becoming directors. In Norway, you’re not really supposed to stick your nose out, so to have a man like that from almost the same place as ourselves was a great inspiration.”
Though Sandberg allows that Kon-Tiki didn’t necessarily have to be made by Norwegians, others had tried and failed, including Hollywood. “We’ve been working on it for four years,” he says. “We tried to get ahold of it earlier because we were so interested in it, but we were told to forget about it. As the saying goes, luck is where persistence meets opportunity. And this movie is bigger than the system here in Norway allows. There’s only 5 million of us—a number we hit just three months ago.” The shoot required four weeks on the open sea and another four in a tank, with the production based in Malta. The raft they used could hardly have been more real, as it was the same one, slightly modified, that Heyerdahl’s grandson used to re-create his grandfather’s famous voyage. As for the realisticlooking shark scenes, Sandberg owns up that “all the sharks are Scandinavian”—in other words, virtual, thanks to CGI technology.
‘‘ ’’ every movie by Anyone iS PolitiCAl beCAuSe it hAS A PerSPeCtive on humAn behAvior. it CoulD be A ComeDy or DrAmA, brilliAnt or not.
Regarding the division of labor, Sandberg jokes that he and Rønning alternate at the helm “every other day.” But seriously: “We grew up together in this small town and have made movies together since we were 10,” Sandberg says. “So the process evolved with Joachim taking care of visuals and me talking to the actors on set. But we talk about everything all the time. And because we’ve always done it this way, it’s completely natural.”