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Moritz
Bleibtreu |
AboutFilm: Welcome. Do you know the
U.S. well? Is this your first time in Los Angeles?
Bleibtreu: Thank you. No, this is
not my first time in L.A. This is--I don't know; I haven't counted. I
think this is my fifth or sixth time. I did parts of my acting studies
in New York City.
AboutFilm: Where in New York?
Bleibtreu: I did them privately.
I worked [odd jobs] at The
Actors Studio and took some classes at the HB
Studio, but I was always trying to find teachers. I believe that you
can only learn from people that you like and that you look up to. I don't
believe in acting being a craft that everybody can learn from everybody,
like, you know, cooking.
AboutFilm: It takes talent.
Bleibtreu: Yeah, and it takes also
a personal relationship between two people. Otherwise, I think it's not
going to work. So I tried to find private teachers that I can relate to.
AboutFilm: Did you have bad experiences
in large classroom settings?
Bleibtreu: Not particularly. I just
had this one experience I remember. I went to the Lee
Strasberg Theater Institute--by this time I was 19 years old. They
have this full time program that costs, I don't know, fourteen hundred
dollars a month. I said, "How am I ever supposed to be able to pay this?
There's no way for me," and then I said, "Listen, can I observe the class
just once?" And they said, "No!"…"What do you mean, no? I can't pay fourteen
hundred dollars not knowing what to expect." That was the first day. They
said, "Okay, go in that room and Lee is going to talk to you." I'll never
forget that. "Lee is going to talk to me? I thought Lee is dead." So then
they put me in this room. There was a VCR and a TV in the room and they
put a VCR tape inside, and then on the screen came Lee Strasberg. He says,
"Dear future student, I'd like to address these words to you." I said,
"Wow, this is kind of strange." So I said, no.
AboutFilm: Too strange for you?
Bleibtreu: Yeah, that was too strange
for me. So I tried to find people that I respect as actors. And then I
just went up to them and said, "Listen, are you giving classes?"
AboutFilm: For example?
Bleibtreu: For example, people like,
ah…who did I ask? I think I asked Burt Young once, but he didn't want
to do it. And other actors that were not so known. And I found someone.
One of the teachers I worked with for a long time, her name was Susan
Benson. She's also a member of the Actors Studio, and I did a lot of private
classes with her.
AboutFilm: You're well known in Germany,
but American audiences haven't known you as well, or at least not until
Run Lola Run. What has the success of that movie here meant for
your career?
Bleibtreu: It's so strange because
I always kept just hearing about the success in the United States, but
I could never believe. I was like, [dismissively] "Yeah, it's a
success," but I couldn't believe. So I went over here and I saw it, and
that was of course fascinating for me. I mean, it hasn't done anything
for me except the fact that people here now somehow are interested in
who I am. But, for me, the thing that is so beautiful is that we intended
this movie to be a small, independent feature for some crazy people who
might want to watch it, and it turned out to be this huge world box office
hit.
AboutFilm: It exploded.
Bleibtreu: Absolutely. It's just
fascinating. And now, I've got representation here in the United States,
and let's see. Maybe there will be some strange European part for me to
play, which would be great, which I would love to do, because Hollywood
is the place where the best people in the world get together and do movies.
AboutFilm: Well, certainly your English
is good enough to play in movies here.
Bleibtreu: Yes, but still-- I believe
that, especially when it comes to parts that I could be playing--I'm young,
so it's usually the leading parts.… Cinema has a lot to do with identification,
and even if my English is good, I will never feel like an American.
So I think the parts that I could be playing will always be parts that
either are not American or the character--it's just not important where
they're from. I will never play the big Brad Pitt parts. That's fine with
me. A dream for me would be, I don't know, every couple of months, to
come over here and play a nice decent part, and have fun with it. But
I know that the center of my career will always be Germany, because I
believe that mother tongue is a very important thing for an actor. So
Germany is always going to be my center, but if anybody in this country
would like to work with me, I would be there if it's a good part and a
good script.
AboutFilm: So, Das Experiment--why
this particular script?
Bleibtreu: When I said that I wanted
to do the movie, Oliver had just sent me the novel. I just read the back
cover and said, "I want to do it." I was sure that this was going to be
a great script and a great story to tell. This is one of those parts where
it's not so much the part that I thought was interesting, it's more the
story itself. It's just one of those stories that I think needs to be
told. It's a story about human nature--a very universal thing, and an
important issue in this world and in the life of everybody. If people
would take more responsibilities for their own actions, I think this whole
world would look different. So I just thought that this is a story that
needs to be told. That's also one of the reasons for the success of the
movie, it's such a universal story.
AboutFilm: What do you hope audiences
will take away from this film?
Bleibtreu: Well, what I really hope
is that, well… If I speak to people, most people come up to me and they
say, "Listen, toward the end, I had the feeling I just wanted to scream,
'Kill the guy! Kill the guy! Kill the guy!'" That, of course, is something
that we intended, but what we hope is that if you get this feeling of
saying, 'Kill the guy,' then I hope that something is going to snap your
brain [snaps fingers], and you're going to say, "Wait a second,
but... if that guy had been the guardian, and the other guy had been the
prisoner, I would be yelling at the other one now." This is the thing
that we intended in this movie. We wanted people to understand that it's
not about these people. It's about the roles that you put them in, and
it's about how these roles create their own energy, and an energy that
cannot be stopped at a certain point. We wanted to get people very emotional,
but then hopefully make them think about what happens. If you get aggressions
towards the guardians, this is exactly what's not good. What would be
good is to understand that this is a man-made conflict.
AboutFilm: So, you could have switched
the people around, or taken a completely different group of people, and
in your view, the outcome would have been the same.
Bleibtreu: Of course. If you have
somebody like Tarek in this group-- and that's a very important point
that a lot of people keep forgetting. This gets out of control because
this guy deliberately pushes this situation. He does things in order to
get this whole thing out of control.
AboutFilm: In order to get a good
story.
Bleibtreu: Absolutely. Maybe if Tarek
would have not done it, and he had been just like everybody else, easy
and trying to get these two weeks over, then nothing would have happened.
On the other hand, in every school class there is one guy that cannot
keep his mouth shut, and that's Tarek.
AboutFilm: Group dynamics can cast
somebody in that role even though that person might not be there at first.
Bleibtreu: Absolutely. In this kind
of situation, maybe if you don't have a guy like Tarek, it would have
not gotten as far, but still... some conflicts are not avoidable. Some
bullshit is going to happen in a situation like this, because if you put
a person that never had any power in his life--maybe not even the power
to control his own life--if you put him in a situation where he has power
for the first time, it's just a question of time when he's going to start
to misuse this power. That's plain logic. It's sure that some bullshit
is going to happen, if you play these games. That's also why I think that
doing those kinds of experiments in real life is something that is just
not necessary.
AboutFilm: Of course, this is based
on a real experiment.
Bleibtreu: Yes, although we have
always to underline that what we do in this movie has nothing to do with
the Stanford Prison
Experiment. The idea is the same, but the way we've been playing around
with the story has nothing to do with the real events of the Stanford
Prison Experiment. But, if you want to get information about the Stanford
Prison Experiment, you can do that on the internet. You will see that
stuff did not go as far as in our movie, but yet... people did not have
a nice time in this original experiment. A lot of bad things happened
there, too.
AboutFilm: This is a bit of a delicate
topic, but, in the movie, one of the prisoners finally accuses Berus of
being a Nazi. Does it bother you that, this being a German film, foreign
audiences may see Nazism as a subtext of this movie? Do you think that
gets in the way of the film, do you think that enhances the film--how
do you see it?
Bleibtreu: From my point of view,
I'm very happy about that. It's think it's great, especially that this
movie comes particularly out of Germany. It might make people understand
that people in Germany evolved enough after those terrible events fifty
years ago to be able to think about this, and also to be able to tell
a story. I think that, as we are a completely different country now, people
also learned a lot from what happened fifty years ago. It is something
that influences all our lives in Germany. It's something that is like
a big weight that we carry on our shoulders everywhere we go in the world.
So I think the only way to deal with it is to deal with it. And to make
movies about it and let the world know that we--my generation of people--know
that what happened back then is the most horrible nightmare that could
ever happen to mankind. So I think it's good that particularly this movie
comes out of Germany.
AboutFilm: Do you think that this
topic has not been dealt with enough in the past in Germany?
Bleibtreu: Let's say not that it
has not been dealt with enough--it has not been dealt with right, I think.
This is the biggest problem. What happened in the generation of our moms
and dads is a big denial of what happened, because people still had something
to do with it. They were still directly connected to it, because their
parents and grandparents were still some Nazi guys. So, what first happened
was denial. And now my generation of people, the younger people, they
have a different approach to it. I think the approach now is much more
intelligent, because we are not just trying to deny it. We are saying,
"Yes, this is something that infects our life, and we need to do something
about it, and we need to show the world that we are a different country
now, that has reflected, and has also learned something from these incredible,
horrible events." That's why I think these kind of movies help a lot.
They help a lot in dealing with this bad history. We need to make the
world understand that the people living now in Germany, my generation
of people, has nothing with this stuff anymore. We are different now.
AboutFilm: Obviously the movie suggests
that we are all not too removed from our savage, animal selves.
Is this something that you've felt in your life at any time? And if so,
in what way?
Bleibtreu: For me… I just think about
jealousy. Just think about you having a girlfriend and another guy comes
in and touches her, or even looks at her. It makes you sometimes be like
an animal. It can be such a small thing that can make this animal, as
you say, come out of you. So, yeah, I think in everyday situations people
become crazy. Driving a car in Los Angeles, you find people that literally
would kill somebody over a stop sign. So, it's just something that's deep
inside our nature. Everybody wants to live, and everybody wants to survive.
And you wanna keep your stuff! If anybody wants to take your stuff away
or threatens your life, you want to defend yourself. And, if necessary,
you're going to become an animal. If necessary, you might even be ready
to kill…
I don't know how I would react. This is
one of those questions that is always being asked. How would you react,
if in real life you were in this kind of situation? I always answer, "I
don't know." People are very quick with the answer and say, "Oh, this
could never happen to me! I would stay human, and I would never do this
kind of stuff!" I think it's very arrogant and dumb. I always say, "You're
the first one to react like that." Because you don't know. If somebody
puts a gun to your head, you don't know what you're going to do. You just
don't know. There are certain situations in life that you will never know
what you are going to do unless and until you are in that situation.
AboutFilm: What was the most difficult
thing about this role?
Bleibtreu: Well, the most difficult
thing, I think, was the development--to have a character that, in fact,
does very bad things in the beginning, but yet not…transporting the feeling
of a bad guy. We wanted to start with a guy that's of course not the hero.
You know how it is, sometimes you have to be very careful with what the
character has to do in order to make him believable, not a hero, but yet
not the crazy devil, or the guy that nobody likes. So I think the biggest
work was to find a good development. When does the bell start ringing
in Tarek's head, and when is he going to understand that what he did was
just going too far? A lot of times in movies you have a guy who's a certain
way, and something happens, and the next morning he wakes up and he's
a different person. We tried to create a development that's very slight
and subtle, so you don't have this hard break, and to give the audience
the possibility to go through this movie with him, and work as a mirror
for the emotions that the audience goes through. That was, I think, the
most difficult thing.
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Oliver
Hirschbiegel |
AboutFilm: Let's begin at the beginning.
Why make this particular story into a movie?
Hirschbiegel: Well, I read the novel--it
was given to me to read--I was asked whether I'd like to turn it into
a movie. I had read a lot of scripts that I did not really like, and this
one was like… [snaps fingers]. It's like a Shakespearean play,
in a way, and it has believable characters in a believable situation,
even though it's all a setup. That was a very fascinating thing. I was
actually looking for something to collaborate on with Moritz [Bleibtreu],
and I knew immediately that this would be it. So I sent it to him.
AboutFilm: He says he had only to
read the back cover of the novel to know that he wanted to do it.
Hirschbiegel: [laughs] Yeah,
but he read the whole novel, too. I know that, because I asked him questions.
AboutFilm: You quizzed him.
Hirschbiegel: [laughs] Yes,
I quizzed him! No, it was fun, because I knew I wanted to do this, and
two days later I got this phone call, and he told me, "Right. You are
right. We do this."
AboutFilm: How did you cast the movie,
apart from Moritz?
Hirschbiegel: It was very important
for me not to put any other star or known face in the film. I wanted unknown
actors. Most of them come from the theater, or have just started, or came
from film school or something like that. It took quite awhile until we
had a set of, let's say, twenty-five actors for all these parts. Then
we did a couple casting sessions in groups.
AboutFilm: Like in the movie? You
divided up and tested the actors like they divide up the participants
in the experiment?
Hirschbiegel: Right. Of course, I
gave them parts to prepare, but then, after they had done that, we switched
parts. I had everyone playing everything, just to see how these groups
were together. I think we did three sessions, and then I had my cast--which
actually is pretty fast. The most difficult thing is, like in a war movie,
you have just guys and they're all basically wearing the same thing. In
a war movie they wear uniforms and helmets, so you have to be sure that
the faces are as different and recognizable as possible. The same challenge
here. We have two groups and they each wear the same outfits, so that
was a big concern. Then, of course, you have to find not just different
faces, but people who are good actors, too.
AboutFilm: The movie suggests that
we are not too far removed from our savage, our animal, our darker selves.
What keeps us from total anarchy?
Hirschbiegel: Well, it's certain
rules and values we are trained to follow, for a couple of hundred years
now. The newest sociological research shows us that it's basically just
rules. It's laws and rules and certain values that we are taught over
and over again by the church, by our parents, by schools, that we go by.
That basically is it. What it shows is--this research--that we are basically
the same kind of human beings we probably used to be five thousand years
ago, which is rather shocking, I think.
AboutFilm: Do you think that such
an experiment would have spun out of control with any group of men, or
is there something about this particular situation that was unusual?
Hirschbiegel: I did a lot of research,
and it showed me that what you see in that is basically what happens in
any prison situation, in the States, China, Russia, or Germany. The rules
and the system seem to be the same all over the world. I think it would
have happened kind of like this in any country, with any group imaginable.
AboutFilm: As you must be aware,
this being a German film, foreign audiences, at least here in the United
States, may perceive a subtext of Nazism in the movie. One of the characters
actually accuses Berus of being one. Do you think that gets in the way
of a broader, more universal interpretation of the film, or do you that
enhances the movie--or is it something you intended all along?
Hirschbiegel: As a Germany storyteller
or German filmmaker, of course there is this awareness and that responsibility
that our history gives us. Then again, this whole thing is not about concentration
camps; it's not about fascism; it's about prisons, basically, as I just
said. I think it can help to understand how these barbaric things could
happen--how this barbaric system, the Third Reich, got people to behave
in this way. But it's not really reflecting on fascism and Nazi Germany.
That guy calling the other one a Nazi might be a bit strange or unusual
here, but in Germany, it's a common thing to tell a cop, for instance.
"You Nazi!"
AboutFilm: Why is Dr. Grimm the first
to realize that things are going too far, while Dr. Thon wants to keep
pushing?
Hirschbiegel: Well, I think he realizes
too that something is going on there, and he's betting on it. He wants
to push things further, while she realizes that, as a scientist, she has
a responsibility, and has to stop it. But then again, they are human beings.
I think in general it's naïve to think that science and thinking and intellectual
work is not influenced by emotions and by the individual working on a
certain subject. Of course they want to have a career. Of course they
are as vain as anyone else, and of course they can get carried away in
what they do. I think there is good reason for finding means to control
what happens in science.
AboutFilm: Tarek become the catalyst
on the prisoners' side because he wants to push the experiment to get
a good story. Why does Berus become the catalyst on the guards' side?
What is it about his person, his background--the story has him as a member
of an airline's ground crew. Why him?
Hirschbiegel: Well, Berus as a character
was in the novel, and we made him a ground crew operator because our feeling
about that person was that he was limited his whole life long, still living
with his mother--you always create these images, you know--never ever
getting a chance in life to show what he can really do. Always being repressed
in a way, and finally made it to an airline, but then, you know, it's
the shittiest job you can have in an airline--being ground crew.
AboutFilm: You always have to be
polite to the most horrible people.
Hirschbiegel: Yes. People are nasty
and yell at you because they didn't catch a flight, or the planes are
overbooked. But still, he could wear a uniform, right? So a rather calm,
friendly character who for the first time in his life gets a chance to
rule, to do something, to act! That's what drives this man. The more he
realizes how well this works, the better he gets. I think that is a universal
law. Power creates power. Success creates success. And vice versa. These
are strange mechanisms at work. That's how this guy gets to where he ends
up.
AboutFilm: What about Dora? How would
you describe her role in the film? With this being a virtually all male
cast, she almost seems to represent all women.
Hirschbiegel: Not just all women,
but for me, she, in that situation they have together, is rather an example
of a model for a completely different way of communication among human
beings, which would be listening. Silence. Sensing things. Feeling an
energy. Reading between the lines. All that. Which does not happen in
the prison, obviously. Which does not happen often in everyday life, like
with your boss, in your job and all that. I think the audience needed
an element like that--to breathe through, to forget the prison, to relax
for a moment and then get back into that tense situation. The same happens
for Tarek. That's something I learned doing research--that prisoners entering
these terrible situations, even torture, created a certain image for themselves
to get away from that. Something to hold onto, often a former love, or
the children they have, or something like that. That's how we put Dora
in.
AboutFilm: You made a choice not
to include too much background information in this movie. You just inserted
the characters immediately. Can you talk about that decision?
Hirschbiegel: Especially in the beginning
we tried a lot with introducing Berus, for instance, and the Steinhoff
character, but very quickly we saw this was really about a mix of men,
average guys being in that situation. I decided to keep it in that situation,
and use the situation to tell more about the characters, and leave it
with their acting, and through action and talking, showing us what kind
of characters they were. Otherwise, I think, there would have been the
danger of becoming too educational, and I do not like those movies.
AboutFilm: It seems not including
too much exposition emphasizes their universal qualities as human beings.
Hirschbiegel: Yeah. It's not really
a German story at all. The characters are universal. But then the tiny
little bits, the way they act in certain situations--that's German again.
There are these tiny little differences.
AboutFilm: Can you give an example?
Hirschbiegel: Well, the Germans are
rather an earnest people. They do not talk so much, and when they talk
they do not use their hands like Italians do [waves hands around]. And
the Americans in comparison, they are very polite people. They are very
careful, whenever they brush someone or touch someone, they go, "Excuse
me, and pardon me." Things like that. A German would never do that. These
tiny little things in human behavior make differences in people. So in
that I think it is a German movie. Because there's a great potential for
aggression, too, in Germans.
AboutFilm: You said that Fight
Club was an inspiration for this movie. How does that come out
in this film?
Hirschbiegel: David Fincher is a
great director, visually as well as when it comes to dealing with the
actors. What I love so much about Fight Club is that he never ever
denounces his characters the way he shows them. They do the most silly
things, and he gets it across in a believable way, and you follow the
characters. That was a brave task, and he mastered it brilliantly. That
was something I went by. That could have easily happened in my film, too--to
denounce the characters, especially the guards. I tried to not comment,
and just tell the story straightforwardly without any tricks and without
using speculative elements.
AboutFilm: Do you fear that your
film might be as misunderstood as Fight Club was in many quarters?
Hirschbiegel: Well, I feared that,
I must say, I feared that when we had the first screenings in the States,
but to my amazement it didn't happen. The people responded to this film
the same way they responded in Germany. And Fight Club did very
well in Germany, you know. I think the acceptance was higher in Germany
than it was here. So I've got high hopes for here.
AboutFilm: So, bottom line: what
do you hope audiences will take away from your movie?
Hirschbiegel: That's always hard
to tell, because as a filmmaker I do not plan on getting any message across
or something like that. I'm a storyteller. That's my attitude. I'm a storyteller.
I want to entertain people. The thing I can say is that it would be great
if people learned that one basic thing--that no matter in what weird situation
they are, they'll never be not responsible for what they do--no matter
whether they're working for an institution that tells them to do certain
things, or in an army, or whatever. It's always you, as the individual,
that is responsible for your actions. It sounds simple, but it's very
true.
Christian
Berkel keeps Moritz
Bleibtreu quiet in Das Experiment.
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n
just a few millennia, humanity has gone from living in caves and hunting animals
with makeshift spears to splitting the atom and exploring deep space. But has
humanity itself changed? Take maximum security prisons, for example--dens of
violence and abuse. Of course, these are institutions that attract hardened
criminals and authority hungry disciplinarians. What can they tell us of the
basic nature of the average guy? 
Talk
about Das Experiment on the boards