When it came to telling the story of a family disrupted by divorce, Hlynur Pálmason thought about how he could upend his own methodology as well. Although the director would appear to be an exacting filmmaker from his features “A White, White Day” and “Godland” where the tension could be cut with a knife, whether it involved a husband unnerved by his wife’s death or a solemn search for faith, respectively, he sought a more free flowing creative process in line with his other pursuits as a visual artist where he didn’t need to start out with a plan and collecting footage over the years in between his other films, having easy access to at least half his cast when they were his own children and filming in and around his home in Iceland, he could give himself the time to let the story come to him.
In “The Love That Remains,” Pálmason’s interest in process extends to Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and Magnus (Sverrir Gudnason), who each turn their attention back to their work after separating some time ago, still fresh enough to feel uneasy around one another but with enough time passed to let any anger they had precipitating their breakup go. They have three children (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Þorgils Hlynsson and Grímur Hlynsson) that take full advantage of having one less adult around to watch over them, taking up archery and running wild around the mountains, but the parents return to their routines – in Anna’s case, as a painter, and in Magnus, as a fisherman – subtly and inevitably changed with the knowledge they no longer have a partner to consider. The feeling isn’t sorrow so much to see an empty place at the table as it is just strange and Pálmason playfully throws off the rhythm and gives the two bizarre dreams to reflect how they’ve entered a surreal period of their lives simply going about them as they always have without adjusting to a new normal.
The family may fear the feeling that everything is unraveling, but it becomes quite enthralling as the writer/director sees the potential in something new, both for his characters and for himself as a filmmaker when he experiments with a master’s touch. After the director’s tests with timelapse photography over the course of years led to one of “Godland”’s most remarkable scenes, he harnesses the power of actually shooting across seasons with the kids building — and destroying a scarecrow dressed like a knight (an even longer cut of this exists on the Criterion Channel as the transfixing medium-length “Joan of Arc”) — and the film’s loopy sense of humor, built around the awkwardness of a couple that spent so much time together and now feel like strangers, is effortlessly expressed in frisky and abrupt cuts. One of the major delights at Cannes this past year, “The Love That Remains” may be the culmination of nearly a decade of hard work yet comes across now as an airy pleasure and with the film now rolling out in theaters across the U.S., Pálmason graciously took the time to talk about how he shook things up for himself, working with his family and how thinking about how the film will enter the world via its marketing materials has become a rewarding extension of his creative process.
How did this all start? Not necessarily the film, but the way you put it together?
It started because I was having problems with the distance between getting an idea and wanting to shoot something. That distance is just so, so long, sometimes years where you have to finance and write everything and finish it all. I really just wanted to shoot every week and write in parallel and do it for a long time, almost like an artist in a studio, just working every day. So we bought an old film camera from America actually and a box of old lenses and I just started filming all of the things that I was drawn to. I started using short ends from the films before. I had them in the freezer and that’s how it started and it just grew and grew. The earliest scene you see with the roof being pulled up, that’s back in 2017 before “Godland.”
That opening sets up everything in terms of the gently surreal quality the film has. Did you know from the time you filmed it that you’d use that footage in that way?
That’s very funny because I shot it in 2017 and basically what was happening is the commune was tearing down my old painting studio that I had for a couple of years. I tried to get them to stop, so I tried fighting back and told them that I would fix it up but they tore it down. And in my protest, I took a camera and I went into the building while they were tearing it apart and I filmed it. But I didn’t know what to do with it. When I saw the footage [later], I felt like it was really an interesting opening of this family portrait that I was working on at that time when it was about a fractured family. When I saw this image, it just connected completely with the idea or the feeling of the project, so it became the opening of the film.
I wondered how much footage you’re collecting without necessarily where it will go — obviously, with the timelapse footage, there has to be some premeditation, so do you start to assemble fragments and it leads to more filming or is it all pretty intuitive?
I’ve never filmed something for a long time and then not used it in a project, but sometimes I start out thinking of a video installation or something, and then there’s a narrative that grows, and it becomes a short film or a feature or something that connects to another project that I’m working on. For example, when I filmed my father’s horse rotting in “Godland,” I didn’t know that it was going to be part of the project. It was just a video installation, then it started connecting to the film, so that does happen.
At what point did a story start to take shape with “The Love That Remains”?
It’s been going on for so long, but I remember a couple of triggers. During COVID, I was at home with the kids making this short film called “Nest,” a 20-minute film about three siblings building a treehouse shot over two years. I was spending so much time in this small camera shed that I built, just recording sound and filming, hiding away from the animals so they wouldn’t see me, so I could record them. I spent so much time there observing the kids that I started thinking about their parents, so I wrote these narrative or small narratives or dialogues between them. I was trying to figure out what they were doing and I always thought “The Love That Remains” would be a blend of “Nest” and the scenes with the the parents and I would use “Nest’ as the linear narrative throughout the film. But then, many years passed and we made “Godland,” so it didn’t fit anymore. We had to create a new linear thread that became the [timelapse] figure that they built and shoot arrows at.
The parents both have such interesting professions and I know you don’t like to define roles too much before the actors inhabit them and make them their own. How did you find the foundation for them?
I knew I wanted to have my kids play the kids because they’re always there and we’ve been having fun filming. They’re quite natural, and they’re getting really good at acting in scenes that I write for them. We have this thing that I write a scene, and then my oldest daughter Ida teaches the boys and they work the scene out and then they perform it for me and I comment on it, so it’s a nice way of working. Then I spent some time trying to figure out who were their parents — at first, I thought I would find like an artist to play the mother, so I looked at a lot of artists in Iceland and I thought I would use the real artist and use her work in the film. But I couldn’t find one where I connected with both the person and the work. I did find an actress that I felt fit completely, who was Saga [Garðarsdóttir]. And then later on, Sverrir [Gudnason] came into the picture. He’s actually lives in Sweden, but hasn’t really acted that much in Icelandic cinema, but he fit in really well too and I think they created a nice, believable [yet] fractured family. That was crucial for me that you felt that there was an authenticity because I knew that I wanted to kind of push this film a little bit into magical realism, so I had to have the fundament really strong. When you’re there spending time with the family, you have to believe that it’s real and that these feelings are authentic.
Did the idea of the fractured family actually inform how you edited this and getting a slightly off-kilter rhythm?
Yeah, we worked a lot on the rhythm and composing the film, like when is it still and when does it move quickly? When are we loud and when are we quite silent? All of these contrasts often create the drama in our films. I work on it a lot while I’m writing and when I’m putting together the script, I often end up printing out [the scenes] and putting it physically on the wall and I walk through it, just imagining the film from cut to cut to just see the rhythm and see if it’s if it’s static somewhere or if it falls to the ground and doesn’t work or if it’s too repetitive or too slow. I just put like warning notes on it and then I try to work on it until it flows better, like water or music, but in a very simple way [where] we didn’t want it to be quick, but always be alive. Of course, there was a lot of work in that and in the edit with Julius, who has edited basically everything we’ve made, so he’s a very important collaborator. We always have the same setup. He comes to our home and stays with us for six months and we work the film from beginning to end again and again until it’s ready.
From what I understand, the Harry Hunt track “Playing Piano for Dad” was in your head for some time before putting it into the film. Did that give it a certain rhythm as well?
Yeah, I think it happened because every time I received the footage from Stockholm, the first footage I get is never synced with sound, so it’s always silent. It’s one of my favorite moments of the movie, getting the footage. It’s very exciting and I always put it on my computer, and then I put music on and react to the material and write down ideas and scenes [based on] how it stimulates me. I remember every time I heard “Playing Piano for Dad,” it was almost like the the music and the room tone in the film was the same and almost like the music was already part of the film. I didn’t feel that with any of the other music I was listening to. So I contacted Harry through e-mail, and just told him that I loved his music and I asked if we could maybe collaborate. He had just seen “Godland”, which he liked, so we became friends very, very quickly. It was also really a good collaboration between my editor Julius and Harry because my editor also music edits everything.
At the risk of getting too far into the weeds, your films all have extraordinary title design that you’ve extended into the marketing materials — “The Love That Remains” has a wonderful trailer that perfectly conveys the playful tone of the film with a voiceover made specifically for it. How much are you thinking about that part of the process as you’re making it?
I’ve always loved it actually. I don’t like the dialogue when you start marketing the film, the meetings and all that, but what I do like is that while we’re editing a film, I always start working with my graphic designer, making the credits and three posters for the film. He’s my old childhood friend, so it’s very natural and I always love that process, just trying out ideas and get the right tone of the film and seeing what footage we have and what stills I have been in that I took during the filming. Then my editor and I make a trailer while we’re editing the film, just trying to figure out a way to express the playfulness of the film and make it a little bit fresh and warm and a bit crazy. I’m always looking forward to try out some new things each time we make a film to see how it resonates in the world and we do feel that it’s fun when you can make a whole package. It’s like what kind of experience is this film and how can you put that out there because when other people do it for you, it’s never going to be the same. it’s always going to be made for a preconceived market. Our films are just a little bit different, so we try to make it our own and really try to make it work for us before we show anybody.
When this is 10 years of your life on screen, what’s it been like putting this film out so far?
I really love it. I’ve only seen it once after the premiere and usually I don’t see them afterwards, but I’ll probably see it in a couple of years. But I really enjoyed the dialogue around it. As an artist, I’ve always really had this want or need to capture certain things because it feels like time is moving faster and faster every day and there’s this need to capture some of its beauty or some of the things that are surrounding me. I think we really did that with this film. It was actually a a film that almost wasn’t made because there was more of a focus on another project, a bigger one and everybody was pushing that and I was holding on to this one and said, “No, we have to make this one. It’s really important.” We didn’t have that much money, so it was quite difficult. but I’m really happy that we really worked hard and the whole crew found a way to make it work. It feels like a small gem for me.
“The Love That Remains” is now open in New York at the IFC Center and the Film at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Theater and opens on February 6th in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal and Laemmle Glendale, San Francisco at the Opera Plaza Cinema, San Rafael at the San Rafael Film Center and Pleasantville, New York at the Jacob Burns Film Center before expanding on February 11th. A full list of theaters and dates is here.