It’s the end of Indiecast Week and in anticipation of tomorrow’s Oscars, Bernard and CJ share their picks for who should and will win! Also, two special guests join the show as director John Hillcoat and Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul talk about their new crime-thriller, Triple 9, out in theaters now. Bernard shares his impressions of the film and the boys offer two more Indie Picks of the Week. What more could you want? We hope you enjoyed Indiecast Week as much as we did!

Topics

• Indie Picks (3:17)
• Oscar Picks (15:42)
• John Hillcoat (37:57)
• Aaron Paul (47:47)
• Triple 9 Review (50:16)

Articles Referenced

• Triple 9 Review
• Tobias Lindholm Interview
• Aaron Paul Long Interview
• John Hillcoat Long Interview

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Out in theaters today is Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s (A Hijacking) latest film, A War, a humanistic exploration of the personal and psychological struggles of soldiers. Set in Denmark and Afghanistan, the film stars Pilou Asbæk as a company commander accused of committing a war crime under duress. The consequences of his actions in the field are felt not just by him, but by his wife and kids back home. War movie sensationalism is cast aside in favor of introspective complexity in this unique, exceptional take on a Hollywood genre that’s run cold as of late. Lindholm’s use of real veterans gives his film a layer of realism that heightens the drama in a powerful, sobering way.

I spoke to Lindholm about the film and his experience making it, which is out in theaters now.

There’s a lot of moral and emotional complexity to your movie. It’s a bit challenging in that way, and it’s also about war, which makes it even trickier to market to big audiences. That being said, how does it feel to be nominated for an Oscar? That recognition will obviously garner the film a considerable amount of attention and ensure an international audience.
I mean, we are enjoying every second of it. This movie started out with me writing the first word in a blank document, then reaching out and meeting all these Danish veterans that served in Afghanistan and meeting Afghan refugees. It was never the aim to have international success and actually be nominated for an Oscar and reach this large an audience. But nevertheless, we’re here now. For me to make those phone calls to the refugees, to the veterans, telling them, “You didn’t know whether I was going to do a good film or a bad film. You had no idea. But you all were loyal and shared bravely your experiences with me. To be able to share this with them is just amazing. A lot of the soldiers who were in the film are flying out here to party with me after the Oscars. That’s basically what I’m looking forward to. [laughs]

The film will be reaching a worldwide audience now with the Oscar recognition. But as you eluded to, the most important audience, perhaps, are the veterans who were brave enough to work with you on this movie and share their stories. What was it like screening the movie for them?
Oh, that’s always the most scary part, you know? I’ve made films now for ten years and I’m kind of getting used to the fact that it’s nerve-racking to know the critics are going to watch it and that the reviews are coming out and all that. But in this case it’s even harder because the witnesses are the men and women, the soldiers. To have them view it…I can’t describe how nervous [I was]. I was walking around for two hours not knowing where to go. Luckily, in this case, everybody was very pleased. We see now that the movie also translates well to the international veterans community. In that way, we feel great that we’ve been able to be loyal to the reality we’ve portrayed.

Most of the veterans I’ve met are very humble, almost shy to share their wartime stories. For you to find this group of soldiers who were so open about their experiences is incredible.
I never asked them any questions. I sat down and listened. When I start a conversation with one of these soldiers, I’d never ask, “How was it?” and so on. It’s technical questions, like “Why do you enter a compoound like that?” To get them speaking about it from a professional point of view. It’s their pride. They know this. They’ve rehearsed it so many times. By being loyal to that and wanting to understand I guess opened them up to understand that I was not there to be a parasite. I actually wanted to understand the reality. Slowly, when everybody starts to feel comfortable, they will start to share. Then it’s my job to be the editor and find the bits and pieces I can use. But I never sit down and ask emotional questions about the war. I know that if anyone came in and asked me about the most vulnerable place in me, I would shut down and not talk about it. If that’s where the conversation ends with them, that’s okay becasue I can use the technical stuff the film. How do you handle a gun? How do you talk to the locals? Understanding that will help me portray it.

I met the first soldier at a wedding and, as we know, magical things can happen when you’re a little drunk. Not too drunk, but just a little. At this wedding I had had a couple of drinks and I ended up at the bar with another man who had been in Iraq three times and once in Afghanistan. He just started to talk about how it was to be home and wanting to raise a family. He was the first generation of being a professional soldier in Denmark ever. That opened up a conversation we continued throughout the next few years. He invited in people he served with. Him giving approval to me helped the other guys open up as well.

I have a certain reverence and respect for soldiers when I’m around them. They’ve done things I can’t imagine. There must be a great pressure to tell their stories authentically but does that impede on the artistic process in any way? You are a storyteller with a vision at the end of the day.
The reason I do these stories, is because I want to show these stories we often see in the news from a human point of view. I don’t want to be political, I don’t want to be judgmental. I just want to understand what it is to be human in that situation. The film I did before this one is called A Hijacking, about Danish sailors being captured by Somali pirates. I don’t meet these people as me being a civilian and them being soldiers. Me being a civilian and them being heroes. I always just try to meet them as human beings and try to relate to what they’re going through. This is where we’re equal. I think this is the most important thing we can do as human beings. There are a lot of points where we’re different. All of us. But where we’re the same is the most important. That’s where the audience can relate to these guys. Even though it’s not comparable, I live a life as a filmmaker where I have to leave my kids and my wife for a long time sometimes to do my films. I know the feeling of not being able to connect with them on a proper phone line. Then I can chip in, and the soldiers will be able to relate to that. It’s not a consequence of being a soldier; it’s a consequence of being away from your family. My point of view as an artist is to make a film about human beings in a conflict instead of making a film about a conflict.

What’s unique about the Danish perspective on war?
The unique thing about our perspective on the war in Iraq and, in this case, Afghanistan, is that it’s the first war we’ve fought since the second World War. In the second World War, we fought for five hours and then gave up. As you can imagine, it has defined my generation in that we’re very new to this. In many ways, we are in a post-Vietnam phase in our country right now. We are not used to being a warfaring country yet. I guess that gives us a naive perspective of what’s going on. I still feel I need to confront stuff that a lot of other nations have accepted. I think the Danish perspective is that we’re new at this. We’re still learning. Therefore, we may be asking questions other nations have started to forget to ask.

There’s a pursuit of authentic truth in your productions. I like that you wanted to reference reality in your work, not other war movies. What are the benefits of this approach to storytelling?
There’s a contradiction here. I’m an educated screenwriter. I realized quite fast that I’m not amused by my own imagination. I find it boring. If I have to sit for two hours and make stuff up, I’m like, “I can’t do this.” But if I connect with the world, that’s interesting. I love to connect with these people. One of the big benefits is to share this and try to understand the world. It helps me on a personal level to constantly confront my perspective of the world. At the same time, you can say that, by sharing, this is not my project in the world but our project, all the people who have chipped in to make this film possible. I’m a team player. I’m a soccer player from childhood. I love to be on a team. I feel the most creative and most energized when I’m surrounded by people who want the same thing as me, whatever we’re doing.

This might be a little complex, but every human being in this world is trained from the day we are born and on to understand the world around us. We all enter new rooms every day. We all always spend a second when we meet a stranger to feel if this person is sad or angry or depressed or whatever. We don’t need any time to actually relate to other people. With moviemaking, it seems we think the audience has left that ability outside the cinema. We tell them all kinds of information to make them understand who we’re dealing with. I often get frustrated with being over-informed by all kinds of details about characters in films. I just want to watch a film where I can relate to people on a human level like I relate to people on a human level on the streets or in a restaurant. I remember watching the American documentary Restrepo and suddenly relating to these guys on a human level. I especially remember the scene where one of the soldiers has an anxiety attack because one of the other soldiers is shot and killed. In the middle of the firefight, he breaks down. For me, that’s proof of human life in war. I wanted to portray that and not just make references to other films. When I’m seeing explosions in war films, they’re always way too big. When I’m watching explosion

When I’m seeing explosions in war films, they’re always way too big. When I’m watching explosions from a helmet cam, I see a lot of dirt and sand in the air. And then silence. And then the screaming starts. The timing of reality is slightly different. I found it more interesting and more beneficial to try to approach the reality of it. I think our human ear and human eye is somehow educated to understand what is real and what is not real. I want to invite people into a natural portrayal of war instead of being another fascinated film about war.

The Best Foreign Language Film category, whether it’s at the Oscars or any other awards show, always poses a strange question: how can you whittle the entire non-English speaking world down to five titles? When you compare this to the eight English-language nominees for Best Picture, it seems like an unfair balance. Now, granted, the Best Picture category isn’t limited to just English-language productions, but you’d be crazy to suggest that foreign productions have the same shot at getting a Best Picture nod as something like The Revenant or Brooklyn (past foreign language nominees like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Amour are exceptions to the norm).

Even stranger is the method of selecting the nominees, which requires countries to submit only one film for consideration in the category. That means France, a country that consistently puts out some of the best cinema in the world every year, can only pick one film to represent their country in the category. But even then, the selected film needs to have a theatrical release within a specific time frame in their home country in order to truly qualify for the category. Those rules can get frustrating for some foreign language films, and the idea of contorting a release in one’s own home country just for the possibility of one award nomination thousands of miles away isn’t exactly an appealing one: in 2013, the French distributor of Blue is the Warmest Colour refused to change their release strategy, meaning one of the most buzzed about films of that year didn’t even qualify for the only category it had a shot of getting nominated in.

The point of all of this is that, like everything else at the Oscars, politics abound, and these nominees need to be taken with a big grain of salt. These five films are hardly representative of the best world cinema has to offer, but they’re far from being the worst either. This year, the Foreign Language category provided one big, welcome surprise: the nomination of Theeb, director Naji Abu Nowar’s film about a young member of a Bedouin tribe who gets caught up in the war taking place far from his community. I saw Theeb back at its New Directors/New Films screening and came away pleasantly surprised at its assuredness, especially coming from a first-time director. The fact that Theeb got a theatrical release in the US was great news on its own; its Oscar nomination should hopefully turn more people on to a great film that deserves to be seen (Theeb is currently out in limited theatrical release from Film Movement).

From the surprising to the not-so-surprising, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Hungary’s Son of Saul received a nomination in this category. It premiered at Cannes in 2015, where it scored the Grand Prix along with a nice distribution deal from Sony Pictures Classics. That, combined with the fact that it’s a Holocaust film, solidified Son of Saul’s appearance here, since at least one foreign language nominee must deal with the Holocaust in some way, shape or form. Critics and audiences have been over the moon for Son of Saul since its Cannes debut, but I came away disappointed after seeing it. Director Laszlo Nemes and cinematographer Matyas Erdely show off their formal skills with the film’s precise construction, using shallow focus and long takes to “immerse” viewers into the horrors of surviving Auschwitz, but it only calls attention to the film’s own technical achievements. And combining a form that’s all about showing itself off with one of mankind’s greatest tragedies makes for a pairing that’s ugly for all the wrong reasons. It’s disappointing to see that, in a year with so many strong films both nominated and eligible for the category, the award will wind up going to Son of Saul, whose bland, digestible form of “difficult” cinema makes its win more about people congratulating their own broadened cinematic horizons than celebrating the best nominee (Son of Saul is currently out in limited theatrical release from Sony Pictures Classics).

That brings me to Mustang, Deniz Gamze Erguven’s film which France submitted this year over Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan, a film most assumed would have been selected given its Palme d’Or win last year. It’s a choice only people who haven’t seen Mustang might find surprising, since those who have seen Mustang know it’s a legitimately great film through and through. Following five orphaned sisters living in a tiny Turkish village, the film portrays the girls’ struggles to fight back against old cultural, religious and patriarchal standards as they’re married off one-by-one in arranged ceremonies. The film may get a little too contrived as it goes along, but it’s impossible to deny that Erguven has crafted one powerful story of a fight for independence and freedom from the old, archaic ways of the past. Mustang has a small but fervent following since its US release in late 2015, and because of that, it might be the only film with a shot at taking the trophy away from Son of Saul (Mustang is currently out in limited theatrical release from Cohen Media Group).

For a nominee like Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent, it should just be happy that it got nominated in the first place, as it’s probably too “out there” for people to consider choosing as the winner. Taking place between two periods of time, Guerra shows a shaman living deep in the Amazon as he helps two different scientists try to find a rare plant within the jungle. Embrace has its fair share of gorgeous cinematography, but like last year’s winner Ida it’s hard to find much to enjoy beyond its aesthetics. Unlike Son of Saul, Guerra’s form feels sincere in its attempts to pay respect to the location and cultures he profiles, but other than its pointed look at the devastating effects of colonialism the film comes across as Herzog-lite (Embrace of the Serpent will come out in limited theatrical release on Friday, February 17^th from Oscilloscope Pictures).

Finally, Tobias Lindholm’s A War is a fine follow-up to A Hijacking, which suffered an unfortunate case of timing when it came out around the same time as Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips. Taking place in Afghanistan, Lindholm focuses on a Danish army commander who winds up getting accused of a war crime after making a rash decision during a firefight. Denmark is no stranger to impressive yet overly manipulated drama—see previous Oscar nominee The Hunt, which Lindholm co-wrote—and A War is more of the same, showcasing a complex and nuanced situation with the efficiency of a procedural. Fans of this form of storytelling will find plenty to like here, while those who bristle at the staidness should stay far away. Lindholm continues to show he’s an excellent dramatist, and no matter what A War’s chances of winning might be, it’s difficult to argue against its presence in this category.