I.I.: How did the idea to place the film's story in 1972 come to you?

D.T.: The script was written in 2011 and I was looking back at a nice, exact, space and time, of 40 years. I wanted to do something with the space programme and first a thought I wanted to make something with the first man on the Moon. Then I suddenlyrealised that the moment of the last man of the Moon is very dramatic. It was the end of an era of optimism and of thinking of progress. If you look at '68 and '69, there was very much optimism, with the first man on the Moon, Woodstock etc. And three years later, it's the beggining of punk and there's no future; an oil crisis. So, the last man on the Moon was the ending point and the beginning point of a new thing. It symbolises the desire and the mourning of the people from these apartments I put my story in.

Where do you see the connection between your story and the last man on the Moon?

The connection is that there is a longing in going to the Moon. So there is an object of desire, like the new neighbour who moves in the block. That's what the boy has. He can only look at the things he wants; the Moon and the neighbour and the fact that when you reach it you find out that nothing really changed and you're still the same you and you don't enter a new life.

But do you add another dimension with this Moon-thing...

Of course, because the story should have a symbolic meaning. And I think that human senses for symbolism have decayed very much in these times because symbolism is a tool for scarcity; you use symbols to represent things. Now we live in a time and age when there's everything in all sorts of images. So, it was very important to look at this space programme from a symbolic point of view, from what actualy meant. Of course, it was hijacked as a political race between the US and USSR, but in fact it was a very existentialistic and a very sexual freudian undertake. I mean, if you look at the rocket, it's like this huge phallus and there are at least three men dressed like spermatozoons going in the top of the phallus.

It's like the Woody Allen movie (Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask, 1972)?

It is, but the funny thing is that nobody at those times and afterwards ever dared to see that mission as a freudian sexual expression of a deep longing to see ourselves from the Moon and I thought it was very interesting to make a connection between sexual desire and space traffic.

You've made four feature films in the last 12 years. Why this long period per each movie?

I've made some more; 20 short films. And I'm also an artist and a writer. I do paintings and organise expositions, so I do all these things in between making films. I don't do television scenes or commercials. Not that I don't want to, but I'm not fit for that, I'm more like an artist.

I'm not referring to this as a negative thing. I think it's more than ok you are not making one movie every year.

You're correct. There should't be an urgency in making these films. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm writing my own scripts. In Holland, there are many books that are being filmed, this is not what I do, so I have to think for something from the start.

Where do you take your topics from?

This last film was very much from my life, from some experiences I had in the past. Some of my films have derived from drawings I made. I'm very interested in understanding the past.

How hard was it to recreate the 70s?

Actually very easy, because there is a recurrence of styles and fashion. Two or three years ago there was a revival of the 70s, with wallpapers, for example. So, a lot of things we could just get from the market and for the rest, we tried to be very econimical about it. We didn't want to be a nostalgic film in that sense, we just wanted to be very practical.

So, your selection of the time was based on the Moon-thing?

And also because back then there was a time in Holland when breaking up was still a bad thing and then the laws changed and suddenly, everybody started having divorces. But it was something still to be ashamed of; it was not very common. So these social restriction made drama much more interesting. When everything is alowed, there's no drama.

How hard was it to shot in a restrained place?

We built these apartments in the studio, because I wanted to have this special light. Every interior was filmed on a set. I really like to reconstruct reality. There's something weird in a studio, because nothing moves, in terms of clouds, for example. I like to work in my own studio, maybe because I'm an artist, too, and I like to create an image from nothing. So that was easy.

It is a plus and a minus situation, because in a studio you can film anytime, no matter what the weather and time is. It happened to be a very rainy summer, so we were glad to shoot inside. We did a lot for little money, actually.

I remarked this tendency to combine formalist and realist styles. You have some very pictural scenes. How do you see the balance between this two styles, realist and formalist?

Well, regarding these, that's very good that you remarked it, because I like very much that you can see how the film is made. Like the old films of Buñuel or Antonioni, the camera moves a lot. At the same time, this is realist, this is happening right now, without much editing, you go back and forwards with the camera, and at the same time, it is very formalist, because you can see that it is made, it is constructed. I think in the recent blockbuster movies, the main objective is to sit in the cinema, the room goes dark, you are hit in the head and after two hours you wake up and say 'wow!'. There's no intellectual perception of the film. I tend to like the idea that the film is constructed and it is made. This constant change between formal and realist style I find very interesting.

With this, you establish a dialogue between the public and your movie.

That's what I hope. It's the same as looking at a painting or at an art work; you know it's artificial, but sometimes it is so good that this aspect is irrelevant.

How do you see the film industry in the Netherlands?

Actually, this month we have premiered three 'Santa Claus movies', which are children oriented. Our basic film industry in Holland is making children's movies, which is great, but it is a commercial thing, because adults download movies but children want to go to the cinema and the parents have to go, too. So, instead of selling one ticket, you sell maybe ten tickets. I think the atmosphere in Holland regarding movies is very conservative. Everybody is very scared by things that are different from the mainstream. There is a huge pressure to attend as much people as possbile, regardless the quality of the film. So, the official sentiment is towards the mainstream, I'm afraid. It used to be very different...

How do you see the festival industry in the Netherlands?

There are few festival. Two main ones, Rotterdam Film Festival and the Dutch Film Festival (in Utrecht) and some smaller ones.

So, you can't say you have a real film industry in the Netherlands?

Well, there is, there is. We have a lot of television series and that's the irony, in the last 25 years, the film industry got hugely professionalised, it became much more of international standards. But, because filmmaking is very complex and you need a lot of money, there is a demand for getting the revenues back. So, they tend to seek for a financial succes.

So, you don't have many filmmakers who make festival movies?

There are a few, but I must say that traveling with this film, Farewell To The Moon, I was in Brussels and people said that they haven't seen an interesting Dutch film in the last 10-15 years. Maybe, it's exagerated, but maybe that is true. We are very big in television shows, like Voice of Holland or Golden Cages, but that has nothing to do with cinema, of course.

Is this lack of festival-cinema because of the geographical context? Because you are surrounded by many countries which have a major tradition in filmmaking.

Of course, capitalism is another major factor. We've always been a very pragmatic country.

Maybe you, as a country, don't have something different to say, like the Eastern Bloc has, or like the Nordics have.

I think size doesn't really mather. Denmark is geographically similar to Holland, but there is a much more earnest idea of what cinema should be. In Holland, we've been always very pragmatic, the politicians wanted to get the ship stable and no trouble and there is a certain nervousness about art and things that are exceptional, which is sad.

Maybe you never had a Dutch trademark in cinema, like the Danish with the Dogma, for example.

Yes, that's an interesting thing. We had that, maybe, in the 70s, when the Dutch were renowned for nudity and strong language, but now everybody does nudity and strong language, so they stole that from us (laughs). I don't know, you might have a point there. Maybe our trademark is to not have a trademark. (...) I think Farewell To The Moon is a very Dutch film because it has a certain irony in it which is difficult to understand for a foreigner; maybe that's also a part of me.

Ion Indolean
first published in:
http://www.filmsense.eu/farewell-to-the-moon-an-interview-with-dick-tuinder-comedy-cluj/