After I made The Celebration, I felt that I had finalized a way of

making films to such a degree that I couldn’t go further, that it

would be pathetic to repeat it. So I took the rules of Dogme 95
and burned them. Which was a stupid thing to do. I betrayed
myself by looking at my next film as a formalistic game. It
would’ve been the right approach for someone like Lars von
Trier, but I’m not him. I am someone else. It was fully 10 years
later when I realized that I have to start from inside, from a
human place. By turning my back on the purity of the character
work that was embedded in Dogme — which is very much what
I stand for — I was left in an incredibly vulnerable and confused
situation. I had to float and try to find new parameters for my
work.

The five years between The Celebration and its follow-up, It’s
All About Love (which I consider possibly my richest film) were
a very difficult time. I did not know my artistic identity at all, and
success offered me a great many temptations and
opportunities. It’s not great to have too many opportunities.
Dogme was about limiting yourself, which, ironically, is
liberating. We set rules that were very straight and sharp and
focused. But after The Celebration, things became blurry and
unfocused, full of possibilities and choices that I couldn’t make.
There was also my vanity. I was used to people having their
hands in the air, all the way back from my graduate film [Last
Round, which was nominated for an Academy Award].
Suddenly, it wasn’t like that anymore. I was rejected by
Cannes, and the actors’ numbers I had in my phone were
changed. It was very painful and humiliating.

I was having issues with my script for It’s All About Love, so I
called Ingmar Bergman and we ended up talking about
everything but the script. He said, “Well, Festen is a
masterpiece, so what are you going to do now?” At that point, I
had not decided if I was going to make It’s All About Love, so I
answered, “Hmmm, I don’t know. Maybe this, maybe that.”
There was just a long pause, and then he said, “You’re fucked.”
I said, “Well, how can you know?” “Well, Thomas, you always
have to decide your next movie before the movie you’re doing
presently opens.” And I said, “Why is that?” “Well, two things
can happen. One thing is that you fail, and then you’ll feel
scared and humiliated. It’ll get into your head. Second, and
even worse, you have success, and then you’ll want more of it,
or you’ll want to maintain it. But if you decide on your next film
while you’re in the middle of editing, it becomes a very
nonchalant choice. And then it’s shorter from the heart to the
hand.”

The negative reception of It’s All About Love was a shock to

me, and the response to Dear Wendy was paralyzing. With my
next film, When a Man Comes Home, I think I was too fearful,
too strategic. Moviemaking has to start from your heart or your
genitals, and only then can you be clever. At the time I was
making those films, I was in a company receiving a monthly
paycheck, and I was becoming more and more frightened of
making movies. I burned myself more and more, and fewer and
fewer people were coming to my movies.
My career fell apart, to some degree. But out of the ashes of that ruin, I found the
desire to make movies again.

After When A Man Comes Home, I said, “No more.” Then, my

marriage fell apart, I left my company, my financial situation fell
apart. My career fell apart, to some degree. But out of the
ashes of that ruin, I found the desire to make movies again. I
found my way back to where I am, and what I am, by
doing Submarino, which is very dark, very pure, very honest. It
was so uncorrupted, because I had lost everything, and that’s a
great starting point.

From that moment on, I had to make money. A theater director

came up from Vienna and said, “Do you want to make theater?”
I said, “No, I’m clueless. I don’t know how to do it.” Then he
came back a second time and said, “Do you know what I’m
going to pay you?” When he told me, I said, “Yes, I’m going to
do it… So, what’s the deal?” He said, “Why don’t you test your
dramatic material for the screen on my stage?” It’s a fantastic
theater, the Burgtheater, with some of the most amazing actors.
The first thing I did was try to do a continuation of The
Celebration, which had always been on my mind. I wrote The
Funeral with Mogens Rukov, my co-writer on The Celebration,
and directed it also. It received standing ovations and played
for two years, but it’s dark to a degree that killed me and I
decided on the opening night that I was never going to make a
film out of it.

On the flip-side, I also did The Commune, which was a raw

improvisation with the Burgtheater’s actors about events from
my childhood, my divorce, my dad’s divorce, the actors’
divorces — a story about the pain of people replacing one
another. The audience was laughing and crying at the same
time; I immediately felt, “I’ve got to make this movie.”

For me, a film comes from a spark, the moment when I’m
moved by something, when the characters step out of the page
and become real and vulnerable. I want to convey that on the
screen. I’m looking for that inner life every time. Reading the
script for Far From the Madding Crowd,when Troy swims out to
sea to commit suicide, there was a grandness to it which I
thought was so moving. Reading that, it was like an explosion
to me. I was heartbroken. Maybe there’s a parallel between that
kind of recklessness and the slightly suicidal courage it takes to
give all of yourself to a movie. I’ve dived in when there was
actually water in the pool, and I’ve done the opposite, when I’ve
crashed into hard rock.

Since Submarino, I’ve been involved with production after

production, both movies and theater. Far From the Madding
Crowd is out in the world,and I’m now in postproduction on The
Commune. Though that film is very personal, and has a fragility
built into it because of that, I feel like I’ve been in a safer place
for a while. I think maybe it’s time for me to challenge myself
again, to put myself in a dangerous place. I have no idea what
I’ll do next, but I have a while before The Commune opens, so I
can still stick to my Bergman rule. Right now, I’m tired, but in a
great way. I feel fulfilled.