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The Last Journey has become the highest grossing documentary in Swedish history and while they were recently touring Australia, I had the chance to sit down with directors Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson about their wonderful project…
Matt: Have you guys been to Australia before?
Fredrik: Once in the late 1990s, but I was recuperating from a week of heavy partying in Thailand, so it wasn't the best experience. It was a semi joyful experience back then, but now it's, uh, I enjoy it even more.
Matt: This is such a beautiful film. I’d describe it as one that’s almost impossible to dislike.
Filip: Wow that should be on the poster. Can we use it as a blurb?
Matt: You’re more than welcome to! It’s been a big success in Sweden. Was there a moment when you realized this was going to connect with audiences and become as popular as it did?
Filip: At first, we were truly petrified. You invest so much time and so many feelings in trying to create something that will hopefully resonate with an audience, but you never know. We’ve done movies and TV shows before, but this is by far the best response we've ever had.
Fredrik: At the premiere there was so much love in the room. Now of course you have family and friends there so it's going to be a little tainted, but we've had premieres before where you can almost feel like you're in the “spin zone” and people are telling you what they expect you to want to hear. For this film, the applause at the end when we reached the microphone to say thank you, it was a really special atmosphere.
Matt: The way we approach old age – it’s such an interesting subject matter for a film and there’s a lot to reflect on watching a movie like this. Did you learn a lot yourselves as part of the filmmaking process?
Filip: Yes, because this started out as just me wanting to do a trip with my dad to cheer him up. I wouldn't I was naive, but I wanted my old dad back and I was thinking that could happen. It later dawned on me that even though he's another guy now, this is the version of him I should enjoy because it’s also an interesting chapter of his life and my life and there’s a lot of beauty to that. I think we all fear getting old as well, right?
Matt: The old home movies from Lars’s retirement are a nice touch – as they show him as more zestful with a desire to travel. It feels like the perfect material to open the film with but I’m guessing you had no idea how useful it would be when you shot it back in 2008?
Fredrik: Filip told me his dad was going to retire and asked to borrow a camera. I can't remember the details, but he just wanted to, save that for later in life, I guess. When we started planning this trip and I asked “didn't you film the day he went into retirement?” and then we looked at the footage and it was heartbreaking because he's so optimistic about what this third age in his life will bring and the contrast to what actually happened when he lost his context of being a teacher every day is just staggering.
Filip: It was so obvious. Fredrik looked at that material before me. He said brace yourself before you look at it. I think that's something people can resonate with as well. You see someone on the day of retirement talking about the “troisième âge” which is a French expression for the third age where they go “I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. I'm really gonna enjoy not having to go to my job every day.” When you cut to who he is now, it's very sad and devastating but I also think it's quite common.
Matt: I have to ask an obvious question to Filip – what was your dad’s reaction when he saw it for the first time?
Filip: I'm going to leave that to Fredrik.
Fredrik: I called Phillip two weeks before the premiere and asked “you have shown the film to your parents, right?” because that's very important. He put his life in our hands, and I know Filip well enough to know when he starts formulating a lie. It's like a word salad comes out of his mouth and he's mumbling, but it amounted to him saying, “well, you know, I tried to show the film to my parents, but my mother kept talking, so I had to abort the whole thing.”
So I, Fredrik, had to call his mother and say “did Filip really try to show the film to you?” and they were “oh, that's nonsense, we have seen nothing!” I then showed it to them and Filip’s dad watched it intently for 90 minutes and then he turned to me and said “this movie has class.” He was very happy.
Filip: I think it was surprised by the “bigness” of the film because he's treated as someone who had this prominent career and who was famous and successful. In the end, he's just a regular guy and that was also something we did intentionally.
Fredrik: Even though it's a documentary, it plays like a feature biopic about a person who nobody knows but it's worth telling the story of.
Matt: It’s an important father-son road trip but at the same time, you’re also trying to make something which can work as a movie. How much of the “script”, if we can call it that, was planned in advance as opposed to just letting things happen?
Filip: We’ve done some scripted stuff as well but this what we love doing. We had this idea of a road trip but then asked questions like should Fredrik be on camera as well? Now, it comes off as a very reasonable decision because he's great and comes off as a very good friend. Change is not something we embrace that often in life, especially when it's about something so sad and complicated as getting older. Fredrik has seen me in denial for many years when I talk about my dad.
Fredrik: When you're planning a documentary film, it's like being a mad professor in a laboratory. You throw a lot of ingredients in and hope something will happen. This was “okay, can we bring Lars’ zest for life back by going on this trip down to the south of France to a place he used to love and remind him of what makes life worth living and then played by ear?”
We then wanted to stage a few things that were near and dear to him. He loves when French people argue in traffic so Filip asked me, can we make that happen somehow? I immediately said we can do that with actors but only if we let the audience in on it because it needs to be honest.
Filip: We also knew we wanted to make an original film. It’s devastating and funny, but it was important for us also to not to gravitate towards clichés. Fredrik sometimes calls this film Eat Pray Love for smart people. If we went down the cliché path, we could have gone to different vineyards for example. When I remember my dad at his happiest, it was when he experienced the French temper, or when he was standing on that balcony in the small apartment we rented telling stories about Harry Belafonte… stores that are not even that good. Those scenes add a much-needed originality to the film.
I think we all have our own family lore where you have the romanticised stories your dad or mom told you every year, and when you see your parents, you're like, “okay here we go again…. now he's going tell that story.”
Matt: An important theme in the film is getting out of your comfort zone and exploring other countries and other cultures. There’s somewhat of a push against that at the moment and I’ve read about some locals in European countries complaining about overtourism. Did you encounter any of that as part of your travels?
Fredrik: Not really. The fun part is if you travel in an old vintage Renault 4 from 1971, everybody is happy to see you and people are waving.
Filip: It's almost like an animated Pixar film. It's a Pixar friendly car!
Fredrik: I think people realize that you're going to the south of France to show that area was paradise to him. That was an advantage for us and it’s not like we were doing investigative journalism.
Filip: It’s not only us, but people in general give too much to the French. The French don't oppose tourism. They're already self-confident and so they're like “of course he wants to come to France.” With that debate in Europe, I think it's more the Brits coming to Ibiza and just getting smashed for 3 months and people going “get them out of here.”
Matt: I felt for sure the Renault would break down, but it actually held up really well?
Fredrik: Well, it didn't really. In so many films, like Little Miss Sunshine, where there is a fun old car, it always breaks down. So, we said it needs to break down in a completely original way for us to show it on camera otherwise it would have been predictable. There were a few small mishaps, but we cut them out because that's what people expect.
Matt: Filip, how is your dad doing right now? Does he have any more plans to travel?
Filip: I hope so but in the end I make the bigger journey in this film than he does. He truly enjoyed this trip, and he left the recliner that became a symbol for a life that had stopped in some ways. We took him out of that chair, and I think he wants to do things again, but at the same time, you can't reverse time. I can't sit here and say “oh, he's a completely different person.” He's not.
I ask him “are you happy now… look at the success of this film?” He then says “you always ask me to look so happy… maybe I'm happy on the inside” and you know, I think that's probably the truth. I think he's very proud. It's not like he's having a lot of fun and doing crazy things, but I do believe this meant a lot for him, and he is happier.