Bent Hamer: interview

‘O’ Horten’ is the fifth feature from Norwegian director Bent Hamer. It follows on from his 2004 mini-hit ‘Kitchen Stories’ and his Bukowski adaptation ‘Factotum’. With their deadpan style, his films are sometimes compared to those of Jacques Tati, Aki Kaurismäki, Roy Andersson and Jim Jarmusch.

Do you smoke a pipe?
‘I’m actually a cigar smoker, so no.’

Like ‘Kitchen Stories’, ‘O’ Horten’ is a film about a pipe smoker.
‘You rarely see it any more!’

Why do so many of your characters have pipes?
‘I’d have to go to a psychologist to find that out. I often deal with elderly people in my films. Maybe it’s an old memory.’

The pipe says a lot about your characters too.
‘It does. I asked Bård Owe, who plays Odd Horten, if he could smoke a pipe, and he said he used to. For me, there’s nothing worse than seeing someone pretend to be a pipe smoker in film. It’s worse than cigarettes. You see them biting and coughing. In fact, he had quit smoking many years before. It wasn’t great that he had to take it up again.’

Bård Owe is a stalwart of Danish cinema. Did you know him before this?
‘He’s Norwegian, but he moved to Denmark when young. When his name came up, I didn’t know his face, but then I recognised him from Lars Von Trier’s “The Kingdom” and also his role in Carl Dreyer’s “Gertrud” from 1964. I like something about his face. It’s a bit Buster Keaton. He’s got this mystic uncle look about him.’

Was he easy to direct?
‘Yes, he was very kind and playful, but I don’t leave much room for the actors. I don’t even feel like I’m directing them. I follow the script quite closely.’

Your films operate on nuances. Does that mean you have to do lots of takes to get things right?
‘Not really. Actually, I famously do very few takes. I don’t like to rehearse, so there is an element of flexibility and chance to it all. I like to shoot things, I don’t like to talk about them.’

The film is dedicated to your ‘mother and all other female ski jumpers’.
‘I’m into dedications. “Factotum” was dedicated to Katrin Cartlidge, who was going to be in the film. With this, I wrote the dedication, then became shy about it and wanted to get rid of it, but all my colleagues liked it. My mother died ten years ago and took me to all kinds of sports events. She was a ski jumper.’

Are there any other autobiographical elements in the film?
‘In the scene where Horten accidentally enters the small boy’s room, that boy is my son. I had to bribe him. I offered him a PlayStation and money, but he tried to renegotiate the deal with me as all he wanted was to eat chocolate footballs for breakfast. He must have a lousy agent.’

Do you think people now have a good idea of what ‘a Bent Hamer film’ is?
‘I remember talking to Hal Hartley once and he told me that during his life, he’d made one commercial. It was for underwear and it was shot in a desert. He didn’t know how to do it, and the producer said, “Just do it in a Hal Hartley way,” and he said, “What the fuck is a ‘Hal Hartley way’?” And I say the same about “the Bent Hamer way”. I have my view on things, and I hope you’d see them if I did scripts based on other people’s ideas. I like to see myself as a director who could do Harry Potter or James Bond.’

Would Harry Potter interest you?
‘You always like to think you can do anything, but I’m not sure I’d be the best person to tackle those projects.’

'O' Horten' opens in cinemas on 8 May 2009

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