HEIMSUCHUNG (VISITATION) © STUDIOCANAL / Ziegler Film
Literature, history, and cinema: Interview with Volker Schlöndorff for Heimsuchung (Visitation)
In 1979, Volker Schlöndorff won the Palme d’or for Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), sharing the prize with Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. This year, Volker Schlöndorff presents his 28th film, Heimsuchung – Eine Jahrhundertgeschichte (Visitation), at Cannes Première, freely adapted from the novel of the same name by German author Jenny Erpenbeck. It tells the story of a house by a lake, where several lives and generations come and go, all connected by the place itself and by the fact that the course of history has uprooted them from it.
Almost 50 years ago, your film Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) won the Palme d’or along with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. What do you remember about it?
Well, a high point like that you never forget! Especially because you think it’s just a flash in the pan. At the same time, everything you do afterwards is compared to that high point. “It’s good, but it’s not The Tin Drum.” Then, at a later point, you think to yourself, it really is a huge break to have had an experience like that in your life.
In Visitation, you once again adapt a literary work. What interests you so much about moving from literature to film?
First of all, because I read a lot, and books spark my imagination. When I was younger, I was often more affected by what happened to characters in a novel than by what happened to people in real life — even to myself. I’ve always read a wide range of authors, and it’s always about falling in love with a novel. I’m not crazy about any one author in particular, I’m crazy about novels that resonate with me because they mirror something I’ve experienced.
What did you find moving in this novel by Jenny Erpenbeck? ?
I fell in love with the writing. The novel is written in a very fragmented style, constantly shifting back and forth in time. I found the ordinary nature of these lives deeply moving. Nothing extraordinary happens, yet, for all these people, over the course of seventy years, nothing turns out as anyone might have expected. Because history steps in and changes the course of their lives. And I believe that even today, it seems that our lives depend far more on forces that we cannot control. And yet, how do we maintain our zest for life? That is the film’s underlying theme.
The house is a character in its own right, so how did you design the sets?
The house you see in the film isn’t a set. It was actually Albert Einstein’s vacation home, which he was forced to flee from when the Nazis came to power. We were lucky enough to find documents with details about the house’s construction. He had commissioned it from a young Bauhaus architect, who was given carte blanche. But the problem was that the house wasn’t on the lake at all! The lake was actually 40 kilometers away. By using shot-reverse-shot and a little CGI, we were able to merge the two locations into one. I truly believe in the unity of the location.
“I was born in 1939. And the war, the Nazis, and the post-war period have stayed with me my entire life.”
How did you get the actors to interact with the place?
We had the opportunity to be able to come and go to the location for a year. The actors were able to grow accustomed to it, to feel at home there with the children. We even held a summer camp there two months before we started filming. It was important for them to form a connection with the place too, so they would feel at home and feel free to improvise.
As is often the case in your body of work, the subject — in this case, a house in Germany — is a pretext for talking about History with a capital “H”.
Yes… I can’t do anything about that. I was born in 1939. And the war, the Nazis, and the post-war period have stayed with me my entire life. I envy the generations that came after that have other stories to tell. When I came to France at fifteen, I started wondering about how all of that could have happened. I haven’t yet figured out the answer. Maybe that’s why I make films.
Can we talk about the gardener, the only constant character who remains unaffected by time or events?
He’s what gave me the freedom to treat this like a fable. A character who doesn’t age over the course of seventy years — because he’s old right from the start — means we’re not really in the realm of neorealism. We’re somewhere else. He never gives his opinion, except when grumbling, and the other characters treat him as though he’s not even human. There is zero interaction. It’s as if he were hovering. This allowed me to give the film a metaphysical feel, because from the outset, we see characters who are rather ghost-like.
