Stellan Skarsgard could possibly be a factor in the awards season next year. He’s got a big role in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which got rave reviews in Cannes and ended up winning the Grand Prix. Trier is a film-festival favorite and a critical darling. It would not surprise me at all if Stellan ended up getting some nominations, just because he’s been around so long and doing such varied work. Anyway, Stellan was recently honored at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where he ended up talking about Ingmar Bergman and how Bergman was a Nazi. Damn.
On his relationship to Ingmar Bergman: “My complicated relationship with Bergman has to do with him not being a very nice guy. He was a nice director, but you can still denounce a person as an a–hole. Caravaggio was probably an a–hole as well, but he did great paintings. Bergman was manipulative. He was a Nazi during the war and the only person I know who cried when Hitler died. We kept excusing him, but I have a feeling he had a very weird outlook on other people. [He thought] some people were not worthy. You felt it, when he was manipulating others. He wasn’t nice.”
His director character in “Sentimental Value”: “This is a director who’s not a very good father. I started to think about other directors I knew and then thought: ‘Don’t go there – you don’t have to. Look at yourself instead.’ I’m an artist, and sometimes I’m a good father, and sometimes not so good. We are all flawed. You can be a good parent but not a perfect one, and you will be accused of something by your kids anyway. I know this business; I know how short-lived that f–king fame is. But it’s fun to be surprised by yourself. I am surprised – by me – and that’s fun. I’ll be dead soon, so I have to take care of the moments that are left.”
Working with his son Alexander: “I already worked with him when he was 7 years old, and with my other son Gustav. People want us to do something together – well, show me something! They don’t come up with anything good except for a marketing idea”
Working on Mamma Mia: “We were the only three men and we were the bimbos. No background, no anything. We were cute and stupid. I finally understood what they meant when they talk about what women usually experience.”
I actually had to look up some dates for this story, because for some reason, I thought Bergman died in the 1970s and I was like “wait, how did Stellan work with Bergman in the first place?” They did work together on a 1983 film called Hustruskolan, which Stellan would have filmed when he was in his early 30s (he’s 74 years old now). And Bergman died in 2007 at the age of 89. Bergman was born in 1918, so that means he was in his 20s during WWII, so the Nazi thing checks out from a purely chronological standpoint. I honestly didn’t know that Bergman was *that* kind of terrible, but hey, I’m glad that Stellan spilled the tea and I’m glad I’ve never bothered to watch one single Bergman film. As for Mamma Mia… the stories from that set are always incredible. Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan had the time of their lives.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, kpa Publicity/Avalon/Avalon.
