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Focus Features releases Touch in select theaters on July 12th, 2024. NYC MOVIE GURU:In the editing room, how did you find the right balance between entertaining the audience and provoking them emotionally? Baltasar Kormákur: It's a very delicate and long process. It was really important to me, especially, with the present story because there's less going on, in some way, in his relationship with people, with what has happened and what he's searching for. So, I tried to not make it a sad trip. I gave it humor. I'm a big fan of Jacques Tati. Like when he's in his hotel room and has to kick up the blankets because they're so tightly stuck to the mattress. Also, when you're older, you're less capable of dealing with how people have changed and things have changed. So, that's why I wanted to entertain the audience and to allow the story and the relationship between Kristoffer and Miko to breathe and to have the time to fall in love with them falling in love. I just had to allow Krisopher and Miko to breathe and to fight and to get close to them so that the audience remember how it was like to fall in love in their 20s. It's a very different experience than when you're in your 50s. NYC MOVIE GURU: Do you think that Miko forgave herself for hurting Kristoffer? BK: No, I don't think so. I think that that's a part of it. She gets closer, too, and I think that that's part of her problem. Kristopher brings her closer to him by going to her, coming to terms with her and allowing her to tell her story. She's also the victim of society and tradition. I love that part of the film. If I see a meter man or someone else walking down the street, I know that behind that, there might be an incredible story that we never get to know. Even in Iceland, funny enough, one of the old buggers walking down the street was Bobby Fischer, a world champion of chess. He was just walking by my house and no one knew that it was him. So, there's so much richness inside people. I love this about people. It's a very singular view at the beginning, but then it expands and you learn a huge story through his journey. NYC MOVIE GURU: Francois Truffaut once observed that a truly great film has a perfect balance of Truth and Spectacle. As a filmmaker, is it more challenging to find the Truth in Spectacle or Spectacle in the Truth? BK: In Touch, it's more enjoyable to work from the Truth and then allow the Spectacle to come to you. If films are written as Spectacles first, it's more challenging, in a way, because it can be hard to find the Truth in the Spectacle. I always try. Sometimes I'm more successful than other times. We used to tell good stories like Mississippi Burning or Rain Man, but they've kind of got off the movie screens. Even Witness, I know nothing about Amish people, but I learned something new and I went on a journey. I love this about films because they could take you to places that you don't necessarily get to go to and to learn about things that you don't necessarily know about. At the same time, if these films can entertain you, which the films I've mentioned all did, then that's Hollywood. If you're respectable in making the movie more enjoyable, that's really why I added humor to the older Kristoffer's story. It's just me having fun because these are things that I've gone through myself in some way by being alone in a hotel or eating in an empty restaurant. I can't do that in sacrifice of the Truth. I wanted to give you more to understand his life and what happened to the love of his life. I really wanted to find the essence through what this story was about. I kind of enjoy doing that because it's like muddy water in the beginning, but then it begins to clear up and you start understanding, really, what you need to have to make this story worth watching. NYC MOVIE GURU: Touch deals with a wide range of emotions from sadness to joy. Which emotion is most difficult to capture? BK: I think that balancing those things together is the most challenging part. You can involve a drama or squeeze tears out of people by being contrived and manipulating the audience, but I don't want to do that. For me, it's about seducing the audience into the story. If you seduce, you don't have to manipulate them with the drama. The drama is played out naturally and quietly. I'd rather seduce them than manipulate them. Let's put it that way. In some way, using humor, charm and images that are seductive, that's seducing people and pulling them in rather than forcing them in. NYC MOVIE GURU: Between trusting the audience's intelligence, imagination, emotions and patience, which is the most challenging for you as a filmmaker? BK: It's definitely trusting the audience's intelligence, not to allow them to fill in the blanks and not giving away too much. It's always tricky, especially when you work with studios. There is always this need to gratify the larger public and it's hard to balance this sometimes. I do believe that people, in most cases, are more happy when they're not too spoon-fed. When it comes to pace, I want to give the space, but I don't want to overstay my welcome either. I really wanted to find the balance. Touch is probably my longest film. I usually have some kind of feeling about how long the film is going to be when I start shooting it, so I knew that it was going to be 2 hours. Touch has so much story and it needs that time. NYC MOVIE GURU: Which do you think is more powerful: the power of the imagination or the power of showing the horrors of something tragic like Hiroshima in Touch BK: What I really like and wanted to achieve was to take the audience by the hand gently and say, "Look at this one singular life and how it affected that life." I think that it's more powerful to just gently open somebody's eyes. Not to shout at them or finger-point. Let's just look at how an atom bomb can ruin people's lives for generations. I thought that that really drew me to the more dramatic aspects of the film. That's maybe why I kept the documentary in because I wanted younger people to know about it. I started realizing that there was a lack of knowledge about it with younger generations, so I thought that this was an opportunity to give them just enough and, hopefully, they'll go on the internet or the library and educate themselves a little bit more. So, it was a balance of that, but I do like more to say less and to allow people to just experience. That's why we showed the drawings which are a much more gentle way of showing something horrible rather than just pushing it into their face. NYC MOVIE GURU: How emotionally mature and introspective do you think Kristoffer is? BK: There's something that's stopped in him. Going into and staying in an unhappy marriage while trying to tell yourself not to deal with the past is not necessarily very mature emotionally, but he does take a huge step. This is something that I learned from my psychiatrist: you can always change it. Even when you're 80, you can go and fix your relationship with your children---and it's worth it. I think that Touch, in a way, is a coming of age story of a 75-year-old man because he's actually doing the right thing. He's looking it in the eye and looking for closure and to understand what this was. And there, he will mature. He wasn't a bad husband; he just wasn't there for his ex-wife. We are responsible for whatever happens to us and have to deal with it ourselves. For our children or whomever we're around, we have to take responsibility even if it wasn't our fault for what happened to us. NYC MOVIE GURU: Do you think that Kristoffer should've chosen to tell his son that he's actually his father? BK: I think that a son has the right to go to his father, but I'm not sure if a father has the right to go to his son. I say that because children are not responsible for how they came about. Coming into someone's life as their father because you need somebody to love you, I'm not sure that that would be a very charming situation. I also think that because older Miko has allowed him to not interfere and not to let him take responsibility for what happened to her, I think that, in some way, Kristoffer is not the kind of person who would overstep that. He's a gentle person. If his son finds out later that he's his father, that's possible. NYC MOVIE GURU: Do you think Touch would work in black-and-white? BK: I did think about filming in black-and-white. I didn't do it because I didn't feel like the modern scenes would've been better in black-and-white and because it would be like putting the art in front of the story. I do love the colors of the 70s are so beautiful and interesting as well, so I think that there would've been a bit of a miss there [if it were in black-and-white], but I do think that it would work and that the story would be as powerful. The relationships in black-and-white would be really beautiful. I really think that it's a choice that I made and I stand by it. NYC MOVIE GURU: Which film would you choose to pair with Touch in a double feature? BK: I really love Cold War, another love story. Main Page Interviews Menu Alphabetical Menu Chronological Menu ______________________________________________________ |
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