Danish director Niels Arden Oplev has previously delved into the fictional darkest recesses of the human psyche, having directed among others the original Swedish film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the pilot episode of Stephen King’s The Dome and the ISIS hostage biopic Daniel. Rose, about to be released in the UK, however, is a much more deeply personal story for Oplev. He spoke to Nordic Watchlist’s Glen Pearce about Rose and how he tackled a project so close to his heart.
“It is based on my two sisters, of course,” he explains from his office on the Paramount Lot in Los Angeles. “My oldest sister [Marin Elisabeth] has suffered from schizophrenia for more than four decades, I always thought sometime in my life I would start writing something about her and what it did to the family, but I never really started.”
Part of that reluctance to put pen to paper was finding a way to frame the story. “I didn’t want to write a typical sickness film, I didn’t want it to be like, oh, the schizophrenia film,” he explains.
It was a trip with an old friend that provided the catalyst for beginning work on the film. “We started talking about this bus trip that my older sister and her newlywed husband took with my schizophrenic sister on back in 97.” It was during that conversation the light bulb moment happened. “We were talking about how she went from being somebody that the other people on the bus were like, ‘oh, my God, are we going to travel with her?’, to her becoming the hero of the day when she reopened a museum in Normandy.
“Suddenly out of the blue, my friend says, why don’t you make a film about that?” It was a surprise moment for Oplev. “It’s so interesting that the material was right in front of my nose, but I never thought about it before the second he said it.” Once the idea was floated though the pieces fell into place. “I knew it was just a really great idea because I could take this story about a schizophrenic woman and put it on the bus and confine it into eight days and give it the setting of Paris, the city of poetry, love and art and lift it that way.”
The Paris backdrop is more than a dramatic device, however, and is based on real events. “My sister worked in France when she was young and then she became sick afterwards, and I just thought, it’s just a totally different setting that would make a unique film about a person who is very different than most of us.”
Inger is portrayed in Rose as painfully human, living with a debilitating mental illness that not only defines her but also reflects wider humanity. That complex view, that mental health isn’t black and white and just isolated to the patient,was something the director was keen to get across in this film. “That was very, very important” he explains, “And it became super important for Sofie Gråbøl, who plays Inger.”
That realistic portrayal of poor mental health on screen is also helping shape mental health law in Denmark. “Half the Danish Parliament saw the film because they were going to go and debate the next mental health law in Denmark and so they actually came to see the film as an inspiration.”
For Oplev though, he wants viewers to see beyond the illness. “When you are diagnosed with schizophrenia it becomes who you are, it becomes nearly all you are sometimes and reduces yourself to the sickness – you get reduced to being this schizophrenic patient.
“A lot of people are like, ‘oh, my God that’s so tragic’ and that’s all they see. So, I really wanted the film to help the audience travel through the sickness and reconnect with the beautiful human being that is behind the sickness.”
That connection is something both the politicians and the wider audience have risen to. “It was very interesting to see all these politicians because they really got that, and the audience gets it,” Oplev explains. “I’ve never gotten this many letters and emails from people on any of my other films – from people who have relatives that suffer from it or even people who have schizophrenia themselves.”
Much of the praise Oplev has received is not only for his writing but for the strong central performance in the role of Inger from actor Sofie Gråbøl, perhaps best known for her starring role in The Killing. It may surprise viewers that Oplev didn’t have Gråbøl in mind when he began work on the project.
“I haven’t lived in Scandinavia since I did The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo up in Sweden and that film propelled me over to America.” He continues: “Even though I’ve come back and shot Danish films in the intervening years, the image of all those people you work with kind of freezes, so I had this image of Sofie from all the way back when we worked on a TV series in Denmark.”
Much like the idea to write the script, it was the suggestion from a friend (Anders Berthelsen who plays Vagn in Rose) suggested Sofie Gråbøl for the role. “I called her and asked if she would come in. She thought she was going to come to audition, but I said, no, this is really a bit different, this is you and I working over two days.”
Once they started work, it was clear to Oplev that he had found his Inger. “The minute I started working with her, I just knew, wow, she is actually the one that can do this very, very difficult part!” For Oplev, the role is much more challenging than a standard role. “It’s such a demanding thing to act because it’s so different. You can’t approach it like a normal person, because you have all these conflicting emotions and thoughts.”
The deep personal connection running through the film shaped the rehearsal process, with Oplev taking the key cast to northern Denmark to meet Marin Elizabeth and the rest of his family portrayed in the film. Oplev renamed his sister’s character to Inger in the film, initially to keep some distance between the two worlds but, for Gråbøl, time with the real woman behind the story was pivotal to her preparation. “That was a very big thing for her, and she actually ended up going up there on her own and spending time with Marin Elizabethand, once she had that emotional input, we started working with what is Inger and what is my sister.”
For Gråbøl, despite her extensive experience, the role of Inger would turn out to be a challenging one. “Sofie said to me she feels this is the most difficult character she’s ever played and the most challenging. She said she never felt that she acted this big in her life, like she has done as in Rose.”
For Oplev, it was key to provide support to Gråbøl in the role. “I was there to give her courage,” he explains. “I was constantly saying to her you have all these emotions that keep passing over your face, even though you’re on a bus, but there are so many other things going on in your head and we have to see that, we have to see these emotions change, like the weather in Denmark changes from one minute to another.”
Gråbøl’s performance is a masterclass in emotion and how to draw the viewer in with a subtle but compelling intensity. That level of intensity is something Oplev is proud of. “It’s like clouds going over her face, all those thoughts of angst or fear and very disturbing thoughts to have that with you all the time as a different layer. It is quite intense for an actor, so that was the balance we were working with.”
For Oplev, that balance of telling his sister’s story, while also delivering a dramatic product, was a challenging time. “We were working with is this too much Marin Elizabeth or is it too little, and honestly it was very intense. In that way, this is probably one of the most stressful things I’ve done, because it’s difficult enough with the pressure to do a good movie, but to do a good movie about somebody who is as close to you as your two sisters and your brother-in-law is it’s just a whole different level.”
Rose isn’t a biopic, the character of Inger is closely modelled on Oplev’s sister, and the events portrayed happened in her life, but there are key differences. For Oplev, though, the lines between the two worlds are somewhat blurred.
“I think that in the end, we are very, very close to her, but that’s very difficult to say because I think that, in this process, there’s a symbiosis between Sofie, her character and my sister that has kind of melted into my head and it’s actually quite difficult for me to separate the two of them.”
Part of the movie’s development was to provide more dramatic scope for the lead character. “There are moments for Inger where she needs to be a little bit more strong, but I can’t even say that because the weird thing about my sister is that in some moments she’s suddenly very strong and quite normal,to the point where you actually forget she’s sick. And then suddenly, and I think that’s one of the most frustrating things about schizophrenia, then you wake up and the next day is terrible. There’s no reason. There’s no logical reason for why.”
While there is the portrayal of Oplev’s sisters and brother-in-law on screen in Rose, viewers may wonder where the onscreen version of the director is. Look closer, though, and the character of Christian, a 12-year-old boy full of innocence who befriends Inger and isn’t afraid to ask the questions adults fear to, has a closer connection.
“My sister and her husband had told me that there was this boy on the bus, and I started building out his character. Ofcourse, he is a great tool to ask the questions that you need to ask dramatically to understand what’s going on,” Oplev reveals. “But then in the middle of the second draft, as I’m working with this script consultant, he kind of said, I think that the boy [Christian] is you.”
That self-revelation really affected the writer and director. “It really hit me that, because I probably reached back into myself being a 15-year-old boy that’s trying to cope with my sister becoming mentally ill. I think that’s where Christian’s role is, but then there’s a saying in Denmark that from drunk people and children, you shall hear the truth.”
This may be Oplev’s most deeply personal film, but the personal connection is something that has shaped his work throughout his career. “When I was at film school many years ago, we had a fantastic dramatic writer and teacher from the UK called Cherry Potter and she always said every morning write what you know and care about, and my best success has been when I’ve stuck to that!”
While this may be a deeply personal project for Oplev, bringing it to the big screen opens up the story to a wide audience, and the director hopes it’s a life-changing experience. “I would like people to take away that if you have the courage to open up your mind and heart for people who are truly different, and sometimes exhibiting behaviour that makes you worried or disturbed, if you dare to open up your mind to it, you might in some ways, transform yourself and meet a richness that you would not have been able to meet, had you not dared to do that.”
Oplev also hopes Rose will open a conversation, as it did with the Danish Parliament, over the stigma that still surrounds mental health. “I hope people see the human behind the disease or behind the sickness. That’s really what I hope because I know there are a lot of people out there who have struggled with psychological problems and mental illness. I mean, some people call mental illness the hidden pandemicand there’s still a lot of stigma around it in our day and ageand I know that this film can lift some of that stigma off.”
Rose is in UK cinemas and on digital on demand from the 28th June – it is an absolute must watch!
