LWLies: How would you describe your style in your own words?
Andersson: I usually try to explain it… My philosophy is to create pictures that are very, very clean, purified and condensed, and easy to see. They are very clear also. Almost close to cartoons. And why? Yes. I think, I would say like Matisse, the French painter, I take away everything that’s not necessary for the picture.
LWLies: At the risk of stereotyping, that’s a very Swedish philosophy. Clean and pure lines, for instance, are the hallmarks of Swedish design. Is there something particularly Swedish about your work?
Andersson: No I don’t hope so because I want to be universal. For me, it’s very similar to all the other countries in Europe, especially the northern countries. Maybe Germany is the closest. You know, we have Swedish houses – not villas but other houses – and a lot of them are from an architectural style called ???. It was developed in Austria and Germany but we have a lot of that in Sweden, and in my pictures there is a lot of that also.
LWLies: Because You, The Living has a very specific sense of place – the blocks of flats and even the quality of the light, etc. A gloominess. Is there something in the character of the country or the people around you that influences your work?
Andersson: I want to have a so-called monochrome colour scape. Monochrome; not too strong colours and not too strong a contrast because that is irritating to me. There is more intensity, in my opinion, when you create a picture with not too much contrast concerning colours and even contrasts. I want light that has not much shadow because I want light where people can’t hide in – light without mercy.
LWLies: You sound like a gloomy guy, but with all the commercials work you’ve done you must have a sense of playfulness. How do you think your feature film work relates to your commercials in that sense?
Andersson: I work with the same patience and the same carefulness with commercials as with features so I think the commercials helped to develop this. I’m a very serious commercial maker. I don’t do that with the left hand, so to say.
LWLies: Why have you resisted the lure of the feature film?
Andersson: But you see my second feature… My first feature was a fabulous success, and my second was a fabulous flop.
LWLies: This is Giliap?
Andersson: Yes. And I also passed budget, so it was a lot of money – more than budget. I was a scapegoat for that and I was out in the cold for many years in Sweden, among the producers.
LWLies: So it was not so much that you didn’t want to make features as you weren’t able to?
Andersson: I couldn’t work, yeah, I couldn’t work. It was a very hard period, and the only people that called me were advertising people and I started to make commercials and it was a very big success. Other people called and these movies were also successes. But my period in commercials was much longer than I had thought.
LWLies: Do you hold grudges against the people who stopped you from making features? Does it make you angry?
Andersson: Nowadays I am not angry. Now I almost feel pity for them. But there was a period when I was very, very angry of course because I had a hard time economically also. I mean, I had two small children and no salary so it was a hard time, yes.
LWLies: What skills do you think you need to be a good commercials director?
Andersson: Seriousness and patience, and above all you should not try to fit what people are waiting for, or what they are expecting. You should be very genuine to yourself.
LWLies: But as a commercials director, aren’t you fulfilling the brief of another company, so don’t you have to do what they expect?
Andersson: Yeah but I’ve been in a very good situation because I’ve always worked where people have called me and asked for my work. The clients know what they will get. I’ve made hundreds of commercials – I think it’s something between three and four hundred – and only twice the clients have been not satisfied.
LWLies: What happens when a client isn’t satisfied?
Andersson: I always say if you are not happy or satisfied, you will get the money back or we will make a new one. That’s my philosophy.
LWLies: Do you think that the commercial is, in itself, an under appreciated art form?
Andersson: My commercials are short movies with a pack shot at the end. I make them as carefully and well as I can, so there’s no difference for me. Nowadays I don’t like the situation because people don’t work hard and good with commercials, it’s not well respected nowadays. They are so afraid of the client that they are slaves. They are slaves because they are afraid to lose money, so it’s more business than art.
LWLies: Do you think you’ve developed as much as a director making commercials as you would have done if you’d been making features?
Andersson: I must say, I am happy with my way. After my first feature, I was very, very actually sad and depressed because I saw the bottom… I couldn’t see how to go further so I waited a few years and then made Giliap in a completely different style, and after that I also changed styles and tried to find something new. That wouldn’t have been possible with only making features. It was by help of the commercials that I found my style eventually.
LWLies: If you were to start over again tomorrow, what would you do differently?
Andersson: No, I… I would say I’d like to have the same situation and the same developments.
LWLies: I wanted to ask you briefly about Ingmar Bergman. Were you affected by his death?
Andersson: Of course in my opinion he’s – it’s hard to say – but in my opinion he’s a little overrated. He made in the beginning of the ’60s I think there were four movies that are excellent, brilliant, good art and cinematography, but there are so many bad movies he made. And he was also very right wing politically. He was almost a fascist, he was a Nazi sympathiser, and when he grew up he was very coloured by fascistic values. He never left that himself, and it also coloured his person. He was not a nice person. He was a so-called inspector of the film school that I attended, and each term we were called and we had to go to his office and he gave some advice, or even some threats, and he said, ‘If you don’t stop making left wing movie…’ because a lot of the students were left wing at the time, Vietnam and so on… “if you continue with that you will never have the possibility to make features. I will influence the board to stop you.”
LWLies: So do you think Swedish cinema is still healthy without him?
Andersson: At the same time there are no others that can take over his status. Even if I don’t like him and he’s overrated, in spite of that he’s actually still on the top in Swedish movies.
LWLies: Will you now try and carry on making features?
Andersson: Yeah, yeah. I’m already planning a new one. I see the two last movies as drafts for a third one, you know? A third enormous, deep and fantastic, humourous and tragic, philosophical, Dostoyevsky film.
LWLies: Your setting expectations very high.
Andersson: Yes. Okay, that’s good.
