Fans of the singular fraternal filmmaking duo Ramon and Silvan Zürcher have known for some time that “The Sparrow in the Chimney” would offer some type of closure on the work they began together in 2013 with “The Strange Little Cat,” a film that didn’t disappoint from its title when it could slide into the subconscious like a kitten as it captured the chaotic preparations for a family dinner in small apartment, observing a harried housewife seemingly racing against time only for the realization to dawn that you’re bearing witness to a far longer stretch in her life as it’s passed her by as she’s been stuck forever in her routine. Its follow-up “The Girl and the Spider” summoned a similar whirlwind, only in the service of capturing the inevitability of change as a parting of ways between roommates was made to feel like a tear in the world, letting all matter of other elements in. The brothers hadn’t set out to make a trilogy, but when Ramon had already drafted a third film that seemed complementary to the other two, it was dubbed “The Animal Trilogy” and fittingly, as much as “The Sparrow in the Chimney” dives headlong into the complexities of a very specific moment in a person’s life, it also keeps one eye out for what’s beyond it.
Notably written and directed by Ramon alone, with Silvan serving as a producer after the two were credited as co-directors on “The Girl and the Spider,” the film tracks the awakening of Karen (Maren Eggert), who could be seen in parallel with Jenny Schily’s Mutter from “The Strange Little Cat,” introduced readying the house on the morning of a family get-together with her sister Jule (Britta Hammelstein) and her husband Konrad (Milian Zerzawy). The lakeside enclave initially belonged to their parents, with whom neither Karen or Jule had an easy relationship, but while Karen stayed to take care of them as they got older, Jule gave herself a fresh start. That chain of events seems to have led to history repeating itself when the resentment that Karen has held towards her sister for leaving her such responsibility alone has contaminated her relationships to her immediate family to the point that her husband Markus (Andreas Döhler) sneaks around with their neighbor Liv (Luise Heyer) and their children all showing various levels of rebellion, from their young son Leon (Ilia Bultmann), seemingly the most obedient as he does his best Jacques Pepin impression as he cooks up a storm is holding an even greater fire inside, to their teenage daughter Johanna (Lea Zoë Voss) who shows her rebellious side by attempting to seduce Konrad right in front of Jule. Their eldest Christina has had the good sense to remove herself from the unhealthy environment by attending a college far away, but has no choice but to return for this particular event.
Chaos ensues, as it always does in the Zürcher films, which touch on all the senses in inventive ways when as much is invested in bringing scenes to life with sound as much as images and the theatricality of each scene, almost always presented at first with a static camera and the action unfolding inside of it is no less busy than a beehive, illustrate how overwhelming life can be. However, “The Sparrow in the Chimney” observes what’s stirring inside Karen even when she’s feeling utterly stuck and as she’s allowed to step outside herself to imagine what another life could look like, the film drifts into the night where the increasingly surreal occurs, made up of both dreams and nightmares, and it not only seems like the possibilities are endless for the character, but also for the form itself that the Zürchers work in. After premiering around this time last year at Locarno, “The Sparrow in the Chimney” is finally arriving stateside this week where it can be celebrated as both the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one for the brothers and Ramon graciously took the time to talk about how the film mirrored his own experience of being more forthright when making a drama that lived less in inference, not making it easy for his brother Silvan as a producer with an ambitious production and how important it is to always give his cast something to do in a practical sense.
How did this all come about?
It really started before “The Girl and the Spider.” I already had not only a treatment for “The Sparrow and the Chimney,” but it was good that after the festival circuit for “The Girl and the Spider” that there was not only a white paper or a blank page, but I really had characters and storyline and half-of-a-year to finish it and just continue the story and character design and then it was really quick with the financing.
Should I actually read anything from the fact that your brother Silvan was a producer on it, rather than a co-director?
It’s really that I wrote it, directed it, edited it. Silvan was very, very close in every part of the process, but here it was his like his producing debut because he was a co-producer on “The Girl and the Spider,” with his production company, Zürcher Film, and it was a very, very complex debut because [it involved] so many actors, actresses, animals, and it is low budget film shooting in Switzerland, which is a very, very expensive country and all the actresses came from Germany, so it was quite a risky project. Also we had to have so much artificial light, which was expensive, but at the end, everything worked very well and it was a very nice journey making this film.
Was the location actually in mind from the start?
During the script [stage], I knew that the house would be a main protagonist and also that the grandmother, who is not present, was always there because they speak about her, so there’s a unity and that background is important for the whole story. We knew that we have to find that house in the region of Bern, the capital of Switzerland and Switzerland is small, but that region is even smaller. So it was difficult to find a house which has a visible past, which has a patina [when] in Switzerland, many buildings are restored and it’s difficult to find the soul of the house or something from the past.
When we found this house with that wonderful garden and also that forest [alongside it], it was a little bit like a gift. It really has a character and a presence. The problem was that there was a street directly in front of the house and with the person who [recorded] the sound had to find possibilities to block the street or how to put up walls. We had to close the windows, which was very problematic because we shot during a hot summer and sometimes it was a little bit like a sauna. There were so many actors and actresses in the house and the crew was big, so that was also challenging.
It was well worth it, both for the location and the sound, which is always such an intricate part of the experience of your films. Is that ever a starting place for a scene rather than an image?
There was never a moment that a certain sound or music came first and then the images or the story came, but I always thought of the sound and wrote in the script those sentences in green where it’s mostly the sound, whether it’s the lovely singing of birds or a little bit aggressive and uncanny like the cormorants during the night and I knew that I’d like to work with contrasts, not only visually, but also with the music or the sounds. Sometimes it’s very nice music and sometimes rather monstrous or dark to go with that concept of light and shadow to have both sides of existence and the grayish things between.
A lot of times the drama has been inferred in your films and there’s more direct confrontations here. Was it liberating in that respect?
Yes, it was liberating that the conflicts and other elements were more outspoken because “The Strange Little Cat” and “The Girl and the Spider,” it was more passive aggressive or a little bit like keeping the fire burning, but never too big. But here the idea was really to design the conflicts and to make them grow bigger and bigger until it explodes and I was designing conflicts in a quite [overt] way to have those eight family members, like Karen’s family and her sister’s Ula’s family get together and then having different conflicts. Most are with Karen, when she’s like the queen on the throne and they have to overthrow her so that everybody can be a little bit more liberated. But that was liberating [for me] and I liked to design really that conflict. It’s dark and aggressive in the film, but writing it, it was also funny to look at where do I want to go over that border? It felt very fresh and I liked it. For example, Karen is the only character who is a little bit of passive because all the others have way more outspoken conflicts and for Maren Eggert, who [plays] Karen, it was very, very difficult to [hold it in] while the others could always express the emotions, but it was a very nice new experience.
You always give your characters an activity that’s pretty telling, like for instance Karen gets to cook. Do you find that helps the actors find the character?
Those small actions, like the actions in the kitchen, are like the small reasons why the characters walk or have choreographies, so they are very, very important for the actors. Also, when there’s a real-time storytelling situation in a chamber piece with a static camera, you want to have certain movements and characters walking and it’s always very good to know what the different characters do in that situation. Do they cook? Do they draw something? Because as cinema, it’s just very interesting and important to work with static and movement and to know in which moment the character is there and when the gaze is close to the camera. That’s the art of those moving images — those small motivations of choreography, like cooking.
Do you ideas change about the characters or the relationships to one another after you’ve cast the actors?
It’s mostly when we’re casting and the actors and actresses speak of their vision. Sometimes they also feel that they have stories which they don’t want to share, but it’s like their secrets or they speak to each other about their roles. I like very much when they are independent and they want to make the journey with those roles, and I do not have to know everything. Sometimes I find something new, which I haven’t thought of or I didn’t write, but it’s something interesting and filmmaking is really collaboration. I like when actresses and actors are self-confident and they have so much courage to take the role, that they are also like authors. But the dialogue really has to be as you wrote it because changing it would also change the aesthetic and [in my films, it’s] a difficult degree between artificiality and naturalistic.
The character of Christina was particularly moving when she’s somebody who’s removed herself from the situation and knows she can’t be a part of this house. It’s an unusual character in your films where everyone is generally forced to engage with one another. What it was like figuring out that you even wanted that kind of character in the movie?
This really was an important character because she moved out and then comes back as a visitor and [her sister] Johanna stays there and chooses to fight against her mother [Karen] and Christina chooses the non-conflict situation because she thinks it hurts, so she goes away to study and comes back and [it mirrors] Karen, who stayed at the parents’ house, and [her sister] Jule, who went away and now she comes back. So those two concepts of how to behave in toxic or dysfunctional situations were very, very important for me and I also liked that Christina is quite different to Johanna, not only visually as one is blonde and the other black-haired, but also a different type of femininity. Christina is very, very warm, and the actress [playing her was as well], just very sensitive and very, very talented. She’s a natural. It was her first film role and she’s really a very, very cool person.
This is being advertised as the end of a trilogy. Does it feel like there is a completion of a particular professional chapter with this film?
Yes, these films for me really were siblings and the second and third film, we really thought as a package. Now I can put those three films [behind me] and of course, I won’t reinvent myself fully because I have certain interests in formal language and certain topics and characters, which I’m still interested. But maybe there is that liberating feeling of now it’s not labelled anymore as part one, part two, part three. They are very independent. We don’t have to watch [these three films] together because they work very independently, but I’m happy those three films are finished. Each film takes so much energy and time and there are many emotional elements in it, so it’s just wonderful that they exist now and can be shared and I’m very happy and proud that those three strange films now are there and can be watched.
“The Sparrow in the Chimney” opens on August 1st in New York at the BamCinematek and August 8th in Cleveland at the Cleveland Cinematheque and in Los Angeles at the Monica Film Center. It will also open on August 15th at the Wilmette Theater in Wilmette, Illinois and September 18th in Huntington, New York at the Cinema Arts Centre.