Interview by Geoffrey McNab. Illustration by Eric Dubois 

You issued a “Statement Of Revitality” earlier this year in which you said you planned to reschedule your professional activities in order to rediscover your original enthusiasm for film. Having made The Boss Of It All, are you now revitalised?

Von Trier: I just turned 50, you know. At that age you think of the things you dislike about your situation and you try to do something about it. I had this idea that I would have a longer time to prepare and to shoot my films. The idea was that I wouldn’t be forced to produce all the time, just because the company (Zentropa) needs the production, but in the end, The Boss Of It All was shot in five weeks. So you can scream  all you want and it won’t really help. But, you know, I like problems.  Rules are challenging. They are there to create problems for you. . I just read “The Statement Of Revitality” again and it seems it will be very difficult to change anything.

You say in your narration at the beginning of The Boss Of It All that this is a harmless comedy. Can a Lars Von Trier film ever be harmless?

Well, I felt like saying that. I had been criticised for being too political and maybe I criticized myself for that...for being too politicaly correct, actually. This is a film that was made very fast. This film is not political and I had fun doing it, but of course the good comedies are not harmless.

Did it feel good to be working in Danish again?

It was very liberating and it felt so good. I am better in Danish. I am not saying I will only make films in Danish in future, but it was wonderful to make a small film with a small crew. I was relaxing a lot.

You are opening the film at the Copenhagen Film festival. Did you miss being in Cannes?

It was a choice we made, not to apply for Cannes, and I was happy about it. I
have been very happy for my other films to be there in the past and Gilles Jacob
(at Cannes) has done a lot for me, but it’s so nice not to have to do a lot of
things you don’t like – like the journey, the pressure on you at the festival. I am
staying here in Denmark which is very nice, especially in May when I have my
vegetables to look after.

When did you come up with the idea of making a comedy?

I had the idea for a film about a company director who doesn’t really exist a
long, long time ago, but I thought at first I would give it to someone else. It’s an
old idea but it was written just before we filmed it.

What is the secret of making a successful comedy?

The only thing you can do is something you yourself find funny and that entertains you.

How would you define the Danish sense of humour?

It is quite characteristic that Danes love to hear that they are stupid. Maybe it’s that this is
a small country and the people are quite masochistic. They loved it in The Kingdom when people talked about the stupid Danes. Here, when the Icelandic people scream at them and say all these nasty things, they really love it.

In the film, there is a clear tension between the Danish company and the Icelandic company that wants to buy it. What is going on right now between Denmark and Iceland?

The fact is that we have a lot of Icelandic people who are buying most of Copenhagen
right now. For 400 years, Iceland was under the Danish Crown. All the Icelandic people
hate the Danes in that sense. They have freaked themselves out about the Danes. There is this scar from these 400 years that is rightfully there.

You’re the founder of Zentropa and you’re a filmmaker. Do you see yourself as the boss of it all?

Well, the good cop/bad cop idea is a very efficient way of solving problems. We have a good cop and a bad cop here with me and Peter Aalbaek Jensen (at Zentropa). If it is to do with actors and crew, then I’m the good cop, but there are some situations where I am the bad cop and Peter will be the good cop. It is very un-Danish to be a bad cop. Everyone in Denmark wants to be a good cop, but the bad cop is someone who is needed. As soon as you go to the UK or US, the bad cops are there because they are needed, but the Danish people are very, very afraid of conflict.

Can the film be read as an allegory about Zentropa?

That is what the actors said, but I hadn’t thought about it. With Zentropa, my idea was only that we could produce and control the things I directed. Peter Aalbaek Jensen and I are a little strange. We like to have a good time and do strange things. I think it can be entertaining to work at Zentropa. It is not just another production company. There is not a clear idea behind it. It is more intuitive. We are not brought up to say that the money coming in is the most important thing.

The film is very dialogue-based. Did you deliberately avoid visual gags?

When I was a kid, I saw a lot of screwball comedies. I used to like comedies
like Bringing Up Baby and The Odd Couple, with a lot of talking heads.

I love Philadelphia Story and The Shop Around The Corner. That was what I
tried to do, something like that. These screwball comedies need to have this
idea that some people know something that others don’t. On top of that, I
put a moral story about how someone could use this fictional company director
to treat his workers really poorly. That became another level.

When I came out on the stretcher I didn't know the towers were down. I thought it was car bombs that went off. When I got trapped I was in my own little world. So not only didn't I know the towers had come down, I had no idea of the magnitude of the event at that time. I only found that out months later. It obviously upset me because it was very personal to me. This wasn't just an event where nearly 3000 people died, but it had over 30 of my personal friends die. Plus I lost three men that I had personally brought into that building. So it was very personal.

I knew these officers, I worked with them, I was comfortable and confident that these were the type of men that with direction were going to do the job right. So I was comfortable that we would be able to handle whatever we came across. It was just circumstances turned out beyond any of our control and tragic things ended up happening.

"I think you would genuinely have a case to suggest that this wee film [On a Clear Day] is actually subversive, because it actually suggests that people can help one another as a group. There’s not a serial killer or paedophile or rapist or nymphomaniac amongst them; they’re just people trying to help one another. I’ll be honest, that’s what I really like about the film. Because from where we’re standing now, where we have a barrage of Hollywood movies telling us don’t trust anybody, don’t even trust your own kids because they’re all possessed, you know, it’s like Jesus Mother of God. The darker the film now, for me, that’s like the most pro-establishment type of film, that’s the ones that are banging the fascist drum, which is like, ‘Do not trust other human beings, they’re not to be trusted. They’re all out to get you.’ And that’s exactly what the establishment want you to believe. They’re desperate for us to believe that because then they can take away any fucking civil liberties that we happen to have left. They can justify shooting an unarmed man eight times in the back of the head.”

I said to myself, ‘Will I leave these people here? If they die, I will never go to my bed and sleep. I will never eat and feel satisfied. I will never have a drink and feel my thirst quenched. One day, all this will be over. I’ll have to face history and my own conscience. If it ends right now and I face my own conscience and history, what kind of man would I be?’