Company commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk, star of the upcoming sixth season of Game of Thrones) and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. Back in Denmark, Claus’ wife, Maria (Tuva Novotny), is trying to hold everyday life together with a husband at war and three children who are missing their father. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that has grave consequences for not only him, but also his family back home. As acclaimed writer/director Tobias Lindholm did with his gripping hostage drama, A Hijacking, he once again employs those who have been closest to the conflict to achieve realism. In A War, he uses actual Danish soldiers and Taliban warriors, relatives, and refugees. I sat down with Lindholm and actor Pilou Asbæk to discuss this riveting film, one of the five nominees for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Danny Miller: Please excuse my ignorance, but I knew nothing about Denmark’s involvement in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Did that start right at the beginning?
Tobias Lindholm: Yeah. In a way, 9-11 kind of defined our generation. We were the first country to jump into that conflict right after the U.S. and the UK. Sending guys off to war was a huge deal for us. Finding a story in that became the whole reason for us to do this film.
Has Denmark’s participation in the war been very controversial in your country?
Yes, but I don’t think it’s spoken about enough. Now we’re in a situation that’s kind of like the post-Vietnam period where we’re trying to understand what happened and to learn from it.
What I love about all of your films is that you revel in the complexity — nothing is black and white. I see a lot of parallels between your lead character in this film and the one Pilou also played in A Hijacking. Pilou, I’m guessing that as an actor those kinds of roles are much more interesting to play?
Pilou Asbæk: It’s such a gift for an actor to be part of Tobias’s films precisely because the characters are complex. The process of working with him is fascinating and rewarding. We have the script from the beginning, but we keep on discussing the character up until the moment we shoot a scene.
Was there ever a chance that there could have been a different resolution to this film and Claus’s story?
Oh, Tobias loves to play these little tricks on me! When we did A Hijacking, he only gave me the pages of the script that I was a part of. I was completely unaware of what was going on in the story with the CEO. I knew that a guy called me, but I didn’t know all the behind-the-scenes negotiations he was going through. So I was completely isolated, not only my character, but me, as an actor! He did kind of the same thing with A War. This time I had the whole script except for the last five pages. Would Claus be found guilty or not guilty? I really had no idea.
Wow. So nobody in the film knew how it was going to end?
Tobias: We are celebrating complexity in our film. I think we’re caught in this situation these days where everyone is trying to simplify everything with their tweets or Facebook updates. I think it’s impossible to tell the truth that way. I insisted on the ending that the film has now but I also shot the opposite ending. The judge in the film is a real judge so I asked her to write arguments for both outcomes since this was a very difficult case. So, for the first take, Pilou was sitting there very nervous because he didn’t know what would happen and I sent her into the courtroom and shot the other ending.
Pilou: I’ve never in my life been on a set with that much tension — not only among the actors but also the crew — because we had no idea what was about to happen. We could barely breathe!
The woman playing your wife must have been so tense.
She broke down! Tuva completely broke down that day!
Tobias: If you look at the film, we used some of the footage from that first take even though we used a different ending, because the reactions were so honest and real I just had to use them.
Pilou: Tobias is so smart. If I knew how that trial was going to end it would have totally colored my performance. But I was isolated that whole day and I went in and just sat there in my chair, looking at my wife, not knowing what was going to happen.
Tobias: Which, in a way, is what we’re all struggling with now. The war is over but we need to find a way to live with what happened over there.
Did any groups in Denmark express any political objections to how the events were depicted in the film?
We have a coalition government of nine parties in the Danish parliament and six of them have invited me to lunch. It’s the craziest thing — but I love the fact that the film is so complex that the nationalists on the right think that it represents what they think while at the same time the parties on the far left also think it represents their thinking. They all feel like their stories have been told and for me that is the greatest achievement of this film.
Pilou: Because the film hits you on a human level — it’s not about coming up with these simple answers even though that’s what so many politicians try to do.
Tobias: This film is not about “pro” or “con” anything, it’s just about what happened.
Parts of it are so agonizing to watch. Like why didn’t Claus just let that Afghan family stay in their military compound that one night as they were begging to do?
I know. From a human level, we’re all thinking, “Yes, let’s get them to safety inside!” But from this military guy’s point of view, how does he know for sure that the guy wasn’t part of the Taliban? Does he really want him to know all the ins and outs of the camp? These are the kinds of decisions that happened every day. The horrible truth is that sometimes there would be these women with kids approaching so you wanted to help them and then the women would blow themselves up. In this film, it’s a real family that truly needs help but the circumstances prevent Claus from helping them. It’s a real tragedy.
For me, one of the most powerful moments in the film was watching the reaction of the woman playing the translator to Claus’s decision not to let the family stay there.
Pilou: You know, that’s my favorite moment in the film.
Tobias: Mine, too! Remember, that woman was not an actor, she was a real Danish translator in Afghanistan and she knew many families like that, she’d been in that exact situation. I never told Pilou what the family members were actually saying so when she translated for them in the film, she was really translating and doing her job. Her frustration that you see was completely honest, because it reminded her of all the other times when she was just powerless to help the people she was translating for. That’s why I love that moment when she turns her back and just can’t cope in that moment.
She makes such a huge impact even though she’s a minor character in the film.
That day was hard for everyone. That was a real Afghan family from the Helmand province that was driven out of their house by the Taliban. They were witnesses of the war, they knew everything. So when I asked the man to approach the camp in the film and ask for help he said, “They won’t help me, why should I?” It was also hard for them to relive all that.
Did you use a lot of actual soldiers? Those men were so compelling, I was so moved by all of them, especially the one called “the butcher.”
Yes, almost all of them, except for Pilou, were real soldiers.
Pilou: When we showed A War in Venice to 2,000 people, we were able to invite some of the soldiers. When the screening was finished, everyone applauded, it was just incredible. Afterwards, we were sitting with them and this French critic we knew came up and said, “Pilou! The film was spectacular, I enjoyed it so much! But this actor who played “the butcher” stole the movie!” And you know what? I’ve never been more proud. We wanted to tell this story with these people who were part of it.
Tobias, I remember when I talked to you about A Hijacking, you mentioned how you practically tortured those men on that boat so they’d know what it was like to live under those conditions. Did the same thing happen on this film?
Tobias: I’m always trying to find the logic of a situation. I don’t want Pilou to “act” that he’s feeling cold in a room, it just needs to be cold in the room. In this case, what we really needed was a believable environment for the soldiers to walk and talk in. We were shooting in this village in Turkey so we populated the entire village with Afghan refugees from Helmand who were speaking their language. This gave the soldiers and translators the ability to walk freely around and feel like they’re in the right environment. And that is the key to getting these guys to perform in a way that makes sense — they’re not acting, they’re just being there.
I really want your next film to be about the Syrian refugee crisis. I think your style of filmmaking would be so perfect for addressing that issue.
Pilou: Oh, he already has a story for that, how did you know?