The puppetmaster

Birthe Neumann as Karen Blixen with Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) in The Pact, Bille August’s elegant take on creation and destruction.

Karen Blixen herself, if you take her word for it, had made a deal with the devil in exchange for the power to tell tales. In Bille August’s The Pact (Pagten), co-written with Christian Torpe and based on the memoir by Thorkild Bjørnvig, starring Birthe Neumann as Blixen, opposite Simon Bennebjerg as Bjørnvig, she tests her own devilishness, and yet remains always very human. Blixen’s Seven Gothic Tales and Out Of Africa, plus Sydney Pollack’s film version of the latter with Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, and Klaus Maria Brandauer may float in and out of our memory while watching the machinations of mutual manipulation unfold.

Bille August with Anne-Katrin Titze on Karen Blixen: “Doing this film I was trying to understand how she worked as a storyteller, as a creative person.”

In my conversation on The Pact with two-time Palme d'Or winner (for The Best Intentions and Pelle The Conqueror) Bille August, we discuss his work with production designer Jette Lehmann (Silent Heart, A Fortunate Man, Christian Tafdrup’s Parents, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia), costume designer Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen, his upcoming films, an adaptation of Karen Blixen’s novel Ehrengard (co-written with Anders Frithiof August and Jacob Jørgensen) with Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II as costume and production designer, The Kiss adapted from Stefan Zweig’s novel, and The Emperor Of Dreams - Gianni Versace (co-written with Marco Colli, Giancarlo Germino, Angelo Pasquini, Salvo Piredi, and Kate Wood).

Karen Blixen (or Isak Dinesen, Baroness Tania Blixen, Tanne - she was known under different names for different circumstances) was at the height of her literary fame in the middle of the last century in Denmark and abroad. Her farm in Kenya on top of the Ngong Hills was a thing of the past, she had been for years residing at the family-owned estate Rungstedlund, where she was writing and collecting interesting personalities to keep her company. Her great love Denys Finch Hatton had died when she left Africa and the syphilis she had contracted kept her from forming new physical relationships.

Bille August on Birthe Neumann as Karen Blixen: “I really wanted to have a first class splendid actress, but also a woman at her age having a sexuality, having a sensuality.”

The Pact sets in in 1948 to tell about Blixen’s pact with the young writer Thorkild Bjørnvig, whose memoir the film is based on. Thorkild, who lived not far away from the legendary author with his wife Grete (Nanna Skaarup Voss) and infant son Bo (Mikkel Kjærsgaard Stubkjær), catches her attention. She summons him. She will make him a better writer, in return, he will abandon his free will and obey her instructions, which include moving into her house to write undisturbed.

Bille August’s elegant take on this pact of creation and destruction shows a game of wills, a seduction that comes as much from the beautiful house, filled with artefacts from her travels and the exquisite flower arrangements, as from the mind games she is playing with her guests. On an arranged research trip to Bonn, Blixen sends temptation to Thorkild in the shape of Benedicte (Asta Kamma August), the wife of another member of her literary circle.

From Denmark, not far away from Karen Blixen’s house, Bille August joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on The Pact.

Anne-Katrin Titze: Lovely to meet you! I very much like that you begin your film with the quote about masks: “Not by your face but by your mask shall I know you.” This theme leads us through the entire film and actually comes back in a very powerful way in the end. Tell me about the decision to use the mask!

Grete (Nanna Skaarup Voss) and Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) with their son Bo (Mikkel Kjærsgaard Stubkjær)

Bille August: Because it has a lot to do of course with Karen Blixen. You know, she keeps saying that we all play a part in history and you had to wear the mask that the history demands. It’s very much the way Karen Blixen sees the world. Doing this film I was trying to understand how she worked as a storyteller, as a creative person.

I think it had a lot to do that at the end of her stay in Africa she got syphilis and at that point she made a pact with the devil where she said she had to give up her own person and in return the devil would promise her that everything hereafter she experienced would be part of her stories. She lived in that area of where reality is an inspiring source to what could be used in her stories. And sometimes she makes up reality with fiction, which is interesting.

AKT: She does that in her writing and she does it in this pact. She does feel that this is a Faustian bargain, and she is Mephisto.

BA: Yes and it’s also that she starts to orchestrate the reality around her, the people she invites. Trying to make combinations in order to create some stories that can be inspiration for her. And also, because there’s no question she was in love with Thorkild, the young man. Because she could not have any kind of physical relationship to anybody because of her syphilis disease.

The Life And Destiny Of Isak Dinesen, collected and edited by Frans Lasson, text by Clara Svendsen Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Then she thought she could maybe arrange, which is also in the film, some kind of affair between this young man and this young woman. In order for him to tell her about this relationship. It could be kind of satisfying for her or part of the story or whatever. The only problem was that she never could foresee the consequences of what happened. That’s why it all ended up like a big mess and she lost everybody.

AKT: It’s a great warning because she is really trying to manipulate on so many levels. Tale telling is always a big part of it. For example when she has him live at her estate and doesn’t eat with him but arranges to meet with him at a certain time, that is straight out of Beauty and the Beast.

BA: It is!

AKT: Having him isolated and eating in a different corner! The trip to Bonn with Benedicte to follow him, that she is setting up - she is treating them as if they were already characters in her fiction.

BA: She’s a puppetmaster, isn’t she? Very interesting.

AKT: Very much.

BA: What’s also important for me to say is she wasn’t evil. She wasn’t a mean person, just somebody who was playing around. Again she could never foresee the consequences. But what was important for me to say was that when all the guests had left her, when the spotlight was turned off, she was a lonely woman. She was alone with her demons and her stories. That was important for me also to tell in the film. And she actually saw that Thorkild Bjørnvig had a big talent and she made him a better writer. That was really the main goal for her.

Benedicte Jensen (Asta Kamma August) with Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) outside Bonn

AKT: Then there is the question of balance. When everything else has turned into total chaos in your life, where does the balance go? It’s a very interesting subject matter. I loved the visuals of your film. Karen Blixen famously had great style which we know from many photographs. Tell me a bit about your work with the costume designer [Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen]! And also the production design [Jette Lehmann]. I love the flowers everywhere, I love the china.

BA: Karen Blixen was self-staging. She was very aware of how she looked and her makeup and all that. Most of the costumes we actually could see from all the films and photos of her. Also the house she lived in. We couldn’t shoot in the real house because it’s a museum now. But the colours of the walls and all the paintings and all the flowers - you know, she was amazing with flowers. She even made a book about flowers.

AKT: They look great in your film.

BA: It was such a big part of her life, that beauty. Also in contrast to Thorkild Bjørnvig’s more primitive home. You understand why he was so amazed coming to her.

AKT: I saw that you are not done with Karen Blixen at all. You are working on a film on Ehrengard, one of her books, that you are preparing? Is that right?

Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen with Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford) in Sydney Pollack’s Out Of Africa

BA: That’s correct. It’s interesting. The Danish Queen is the production designer and costume designer of the film. It’s a project that has been going on for a while. Now Netflix has picked it up. We are shooting the film this summer, July and August, when the Queen has holidays, because she wants to be present on the shoot, which is nice. It’s not exactly a fairy tale but it’s a very nice story.

AKT: The story was called Karen Blixen’s version of Kierkegaard’s Diary Of A Seducer.

BA: Maybe. It’s about manipulation. Of course!

AKT: Of course! That’s her theme, isn’t it?

BA: In this story the one who manipulates, it ends up that he was manipulated himself. But it’s very charming.

AKT: When Karen Blixen was interviewed for The Paris Review by George Plimpton in Rome he asked her how she starts writing. And she responded that she starts with a flavor. Then come the characters and she leaves them alone and sees what they do. Do you start your films with a flavor?

BA: No, not really. Films always start with the promise of financing.

Bille August on Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann): “You know, she keeps saying that we all play a part in history and you had to wear the mask that the history demands.”

AKT: Very down to earth.

BA: It comes down to the financing, it’s always a nightmare. And it has always been, just ask Orson Welles. He said he spent 90% on financing and 10% on making movies.

AKT: In the same interview Blixen was asked why she was so interested in the time period of the century before. She says this wonderful thing about the generation of our grandparents and calls it that just-out-of-reach time that influenced us more than we know. Looking at The Pact and your upcoming projects, you have Stefan Zweig [The Kiss], Thomas Wolfe [Desire], Gianni Versace [The Emperor of Dreams - Gianni Versace]. The 20th century is very present.

BA: It’s more coincidence actually, there’s no pattern. About Stefan Zweig, we just finished editing the film. It’s called The Kiss. It will be opening this summer. Speaking of the time period, I’m thinking of The Pact and Thorkild Bjørnvig. People kept wondering why he was so fascinated by Blixen. The story takes place around 1950. Before that because of the war young people were not able to travel. So for a young writer to meet someone like Karen Blixen who was so well-travelled and world-famous, it was like meeting the Queen. I think that was also a big part of why he was so, not easy to manipulate, but why he was so fascinated by her.

AKT: I like how you show us the various arrivals at her house, the clip on his trousers for the bike ride and each arrival, when she sends her driver, when she doesn’t send her car.

Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann) hosting Benedicte Jensen (Asta Kamma August), Knud W. Jensen (Anders Heinrichsen), and Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg)

BA: In a way everything in a film has to make sense. We were very careful about how he is the first time coming there, as you said, on a bicycle, and then it kept changing. It had to play a part each moment if the story and also the relationships are developing in a certain way.

AKT: Of course, most people will know Karen Blixen from Out Of Africa.

BA: Yes, Meryl Streep.

AKT: Meryl Streep. And whenever Denys Finch Hatton is mentioned, you can’t escape thinking of Robert Redford. And Klaus Maria Brandauer as Baron Blixen. They are looming large. Did that ever come up during filming? That there are these figures you didn’t even have to cast, but who are looming from the older film?

BA: No, the Out Of Africa is 20 years ago, even earlier than our story, so it wasn’t a big part of that. And also from reading about it, I know that she changed a lot over the years, of course because of the bitterness of what happened to the coffee farm in Africa but also because of her disease. She turned out to be a different person and my focus was more about her being an artist, a writer. In Out Of Africa she did not know yet that she was.

AKT: A word about the casting. Birthe Neumann is wonderful as Karen Blixen.

Bille August on Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann) with Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg): “She was in love with Thorkild, the young man.”

BA: Yes, I really wanted to have a first class splendid actress, but also a woman at her age having a sexuality, having a sensuality. Because in the story it’s important to understand that sexuality between them. I wanted the audience to somehow hope that something could happen between this young man and this older woman. And also fear that it should not happen, that it would be a catastrophe if it happened because of the family, not because of the age. So the sensuality in the actress, in Birthe Neumann’s character was important. She’s an amazing actress. You should look her up, she looks completely different. We had to change a lot, her nose.

AKT: For Blixen the way she presented herself, her persona was always so important and impressive.

BA: Yes, and we also wanted an actress who had this charisma. Some actors as a character when they enter a room they own the room. Birthe Neumann also has this quality. You’re focusing on her, she would own the room.

AKT: Thorkild wrote the book about their pact 25 years after their relationship was over. How did you discover the book?

BA: I’ve read a lot about Karen Blixen, and her novels obviously, but I did not know so much about Thorkild Bjørnvig’s novel. Somebody recommended it to me and I was just stunned and amazed by this peculiar relationship between these people. And I also found out later that she had other men coming to the house after the pact. She was around.

The Pact poster

AKT: I read somewhere that she compared the relationship of the pact to Hansel and Gretel. When he first showed her his writing she said something along the lines of: You tricked me! You were sticking out a bone instead of a finger, meaning you produced good writing. The tale telling is always in there.

BA: It’s so Karen Blixen, isn’t it? It’s her way to seduce using all these amazing words.

AKT: A beautiful film, thank you so much.

BA: Thank you so much, it was nice to talk to you. Are you based in New York?

AKT: Yes, where are you at the moment?

BA: In Denmark, not far away from Karen Blixen’s house.

AKT: Say hello to the house from me!

The Pact opens at the Quad Cinema in New York on Friday, February 11.