Film “Das Licht” – Tom Tykwer: “We are sitting in the trouble”

How does it feel for you to return to “Babylon Berlin” now?

I felt the right pressure and a need to do that. If you stay in the 1920s and in the early 1930s for almost twelve years, a longing arises to deal with it again today. Especially since the story grew towards us during work on »Babylon Berlin« and have gotten the timelines on a very bizarre and sometimes worrying way.

To what extent?

When Henk, Achim and I started to write “Babylon Berlin”, there was no Brexit yet, I hadn’t had any idea that Donald Trump would become a US president and Europe could be unstable in any way. The situation in which we are now was so unimaginably far away and then – while we moved towards the end of the Weimar Republic for the fifth season, the direction of power to the Nazis – has become more specific. We also have a lot to shoulder, have to endure a lot, and many topics, one of which might overwhelm us, demand positioning. I never experienced it so intensely and never felt. And I’m not that young anymore either.

Interview

dpa/apa/Hans Klaus Techt

Tom TykwerBorn in Wuppertal in 1965, made his first Super 8 films at the age of eleven and worked as a film leader at 13. He is now one of the most successful directors in Germany. His best -known works are “Lola Renn”, “Heaven”, “The Perfum” and the “Babylon Berlin” series. His new feature film “Das Licht” opened this year’s 75th Berlinale.

Above all, I have the feeling that we often stand up to things and that the problem is also part of the problem …

Yes, that’s a bit of what the film deals with. Milena and Tim, the two main characters who come from my generation, are both totally well -meaning people who want the good, but at the same time no longer really empathize with the contexts in which they move. Tim in particular is captured by industry, which ultimately exploits his progressive figures of thought, which he provides as a goods. Of course, this is a total contradiction in which he got tangled, which I find so interesting primarily because I know that we almost all, even if we make art, have to serve the market.

And so does art follow the rules of the market?

All art generates a market – the market has its own rules; And suddenly you put in a rules of the market, and that can compromise your art production because you are already thinking about the market while you do the art. Of course this is something, whereas I stem. The film is a document of this gesture. Film is also the most complicated art in this topic because it is the most expensive. Making films just costs a lot of money, even a low-budget film is more expensive these days than anything you can ever save. This automatically means that you have to have a certain relationship with capital. The capital itself is something that I am not intimidated by. It does not burden me, but of course it is a burden itself to live under this tension that you know that there is always an economic pressure in almost all work processes that goes hand in hand with every creative decision.

Your new film extends beyond the two and a half hours. How did you write down into the book and what was important to you?

When it comes to making art that searches for truthfulness and an honest examination of the complexity of the present, then you have to drop the blinkers. You have to leave the censorship pen in the drawer and simply give yourself as immediately and as sincerely as possible. In his gesture and also in its form, this must be a film that also gives the viewer both hands and really opens the heart. I had to open the heart, everyone had to open the heart that worked on the film, and wanted it so that this type of intensity can arise and what could change from art.

The housekeeper, first the Polish, then the Syrian (Farrah) is “a foreign body” in relation to the family?

The foreign body is the prerequisite that is also a social norm, so to speak. The standard fell completely by the fact that this person acts against any expectation. It bears a knowledge and a wisdom, a different way of thinking, in this ultimately alienated microcosm, which allows everyone to look at again, to show themselves again and to open up – not only to the world, above all.

Farrah exposes the problems of a well -off family: the son (Julius Gause) barricades himself at home, the daughter (Elke Biesendorfer) dipped into clubs, and her parents (Milena and Tim) have marriage problems. Where is Farrah in this context?

Farrah is a normal worker who is looking for a job at the employment office that she wants and who serves her. But of course she no longer embodies the debate that we always claimed so much about the need for integration. For me, it embodies the fact that integration has long since taken place that it is so outrageous to speak of the expected concepts, while we have been living together for at least one decade, with many others – with a seven -digit number of Syrian people – together, which are shaped our community whole and of great benefit. They do not want to or have forgotten a thousand professions that we all can no longer do anymore. I also wanted to show this type of normality so that we finally acknowledge that this separation, which is often operated in many media, that there are still any others who only cause trouble – that these so -called others have long been.

Nd.Diewoche – Our weekly newsletter

With our weekly newsletter . We’re Doing Look at the most important topics of the week and read them Highlights our Saturday edition on Friday. Get the free subscription here.

How difficult was it for you to empathize with Farrah or in Milena, who would like to build a cultural center in Africa? You have a film school in Nairobi?

I only went to where I really know my way around. I have been in East Africa regularly for almost two decades and also know the living conditions, really many people and have had very close contact with all layers and with all forms of life. That also taught me a lot and also beat me a lot of humility in view of our abstruse, disproportionate wealthy status quo, which we have here. The discrepancy can never actually be endured.

The constant rain in the film has something apocalyptic.

It was about capturing the mood in which we are. Of course, it is due to a world situation that cannot be abolished tomorrow morning, but which is also showing its creepiest faces again. We sit in the trouble. We don’t have to fool ourselves. The film is still easy. I also laugh a lot with and over the characters. I also love them, even though they despair. But they also love each other, they just have to learn that again. The film also carries a lot of hope. Only when we really hold together, find each other again, open again, open for each other and listen to each other again when we climb out of our caves, in which we fabulous our monologues before us, we have another chance of opposing the rolling commands of technology and globalization and ecological disaster.