Eskil Vogt
Blind, Eskil Vogt (2014)
Eskil Vogt is a Norwegian screenwriter, producer and film director. Vogt has collaborated on the scripts of fellow Norwegian film director Joachim Trier's films Procter, Reprise, Oslo, August 31st, Louder Than Bombs and the upcoming Thelma, having won the Best Screenplay Amanda Award, Norway's Oscar equivalent, for both Reprise and Louder Than Bombs. His feature film debut Blind premiered at CPH:PIX, Berlin; Sundance, where it won Best Screenplay; and Istanbul, where it won Best Film.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Eskil Vogt discusses arrogance, our inner lives, the tragedies in Oslo and Utøya and his next project.
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FILMATIQUE. One of the (many) remarkable aspects of your film Blind is the character of Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen). She doesn't conform to innumerous stereotypical blind female characters we have seen in films so often. Instead, Ingrid is complex and fascinating— she is intelligent, unpredictable, resilient, independent and in many ways the opposite of her husband, Morten (Henrik Rafaelsen). How did you form these two characters conceptually and how was the process of writing them?
ESKIL VOGT: For the character of the woman that has lost her sight it was important that she not be reduced to just a victim of her handicap. A key to achieving that was casting Ellen in the role. She has a dignity and intelligence that makes it impossible to reduce her to anything. With a lot of the other actresses I tried, you kept thinking "oh, poor blind girl!." And Ellen has some sort of mystery as well, there is something left for you to discover.
I even wanted Ingrid to be a little arrogant. She believes— and I think she might be right— that she's too smart for her husband. She wouldn't have been the easiest person to live with, even before she became blind. But this intelligence and arrogance is also her largest shortcoming. She is used to being fiercly independent, but now she has to accept receiving help to be able to move on. And she finds that really hard.
FLMTQ: Ingrid tells the stories of all the other characters in the film, and paradoxically, the visual aspects of these stories act as points of entry into her personality and psychology. The scene in which Morten and Einar (Marius Kolbenstvedt) meet in the movie theater and then talk in the café and bus is subtle, but extreme precise. How did you conceive of such interactions as windows into Ingrid's mind, feelings, and moods?
EV: This film is obviously about more than just blindness. It's about our inner lives. And they are— at least mine is— a very mixed bag of stupid thoughts, intelligent thoughts, bad jokes, and sexual impulses.
The things boiling inside of us are not always clean and elegant. The film is an expression of that. And Ingrid's thoughts and fantasies will often be about sight, the fear of becoming more and more isolated and alone etc. And she will often mix things up and make a mess of it— like she does in the scene you are referencing.
FLMTQ: Cinematographically, the use of natural sources of light and darkness are particularly important in communicating Ingrid’s feelings, as are close-up shots of everyday objects. Can you reflect on your collaboration with the cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis (The Lobster, Dogtooth)— was it something you had in mind early on?
EV: Thimios is so highly regarded mainly because of his eye for striking compositions—Dogtooth is a good example of that. But what made me think he might be right for my film was the way he uses light. He makes it so simple and natural and neutral and white. Even when the weirdest thing happens, as they tend to in the films he has shot, you are more likely to believe in it because of the natural feel of the lighting.
Almost everything in Blind was shot with natural light or practical light sources. One thing laid down the rules for a lot of the way we lit it: a blind person doesn't need electrical light, the apartment gets darker and darker and darker around her and she doesn't see it. And then her husband comes home and turns on the electric light. The ambiance changes completely. That contrast became key. Using natural light always gives you happy accidents as well— the light changes during a take.
One of the plusses of having a blind protagonist is that the spectator becomes much more aware of the sensuousness of everything. When the blind woman's fingers touch something you feel that touch because you know that that is her only way of experiencing that object. And when you see a change of light around her, a change you might not have noticed otherwise, it's almost touching because you know she is not seeing it.
Blind, Eskil Vogt (2014)