IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE: An interview with Kitchen Stories director Bent Hamer. By Warren Curry 2/19/04

Director Bent Hamer

(Read the review of Kitchen Stories)

If filmmakers are supposed to be excited about the possibility of their work receiving much revered Oscar nominations, Norwegian director Bent Hamer apparently hasn't yet read the memo. "I was sleeping, more or less," answers Hamer, whose latest film Kitchen Stories was Norway's official entry for the Academy Awards, when asked what he was doing when the nominations were announced. "It would be pathetic to be disappointed if you don't get a nomination for the Oscars," he remarks with a laugh.

Kitchen Stories, Hamer's quiet yet affecting deadpan comedy, finds its basis in real-life scientific research conducted in Scandinavia in the 1950s. The idea sparked in the director's mind when he first saw a diagram of the day-to-day travels of Swedish housewives in their home kitchens in a book from the '50s. "I've been quite amused by it for 25 years. One day I just figured out that it could be a background for a whole feature."

Set in 1950's Norway, the film follows a group of researchers from Sweden's Home Research Institute who are given the assignment of studying the kitchen habits of single Norwegian men. Hamer's story isolates the friendship which blossoms between one particular researcher, Folke (Tomas Norstrom), and his at first resistant subject, Isak (Joachim Calmeyer) -- a friendship that the Research Institute strictly forbids. Isak's daily life is depicted as almost absurdly simple; highlights of his day include setting mousetraps and eating chocolates. Watching over all of this from the corner of the kitchen, perched in an elevated seat reminiscent of a tennis umpire's chair, is the taciturn Folke. And somehow Hamer manages to keep the lack of activity amusing and even quite charming.

"In one way it's humoristic, in another way it's touching. And behind that there is some meaning," comments the director. "It's quite an odd story, and we didn't know if people would sit and watch this film for 90 minutes." Hamer explains that he intentionally tried to play down the film's comic aspects in, ironically enough, an effort to maximize the humor. "(We didn't) try to make it funny, because then it would not be funny," he says plainly. As might be expected, one of the movie's most endearing qualities is just how effortlessly it plays.

A very specific aspect of the film's humor lies in its taking some good-natured shots at the arrogance of Sweden during the 1950s. So is there/was there really that much of cultural divide separating Norway and Sweden? "No, not really," states Hamer. "I don't think the Home Research Institute could have been Norwegian, but a guy like Isak could've been living in Sweden, absolutely." But the director elaborates, lest anyone come away with the notion that the target of a large segment of the film's jokes was chosen at random. "If you look back in history, Sweden was a powerful country," offers Hamer. "Norway was quite undeveloped compared to Sweden, and was a very poor country in the beginning of the 1900s. We always looked to the East -- Sweden was kind of Big Brother. I was born later, but still I grew up with television and radio from Sweden. In turn, they looked to the U.S., I think."

Speaking of looking to the U.S., that's exactly what Hamer did to find the source material for his next project, Factotum, based on the novel by notorious American writer Charles Bukowski. However, even though it will be an English language film made with American actors (yet to be cast), the movie's financing will still come from foreign sources. "No money from America. From Norway, Germany, Italy and France. It's more or less the same kind of people I used to work with. It's not a studio film, so I don't see any big difference." Certainly the process of funding and producing the movie may not be dissimilar from past projects, but it's difficult to imagine that the same words used to describe a film like Kitchen Stories could be applied to anything authored by a legendary practitioner of debauchery along the lines of Bukowski. The results should be intriguing.

Kitchen Stories has played at a number of film festivals around the world, and in November of last year screened at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. While the festival exposure and reactions have been positive, Hamer's feelings about the film's possible success in the U.S. exposes the tough reality for many foreign movies in this country. "It's hard for small foreign films in the U.S. People here are not too different from people in other places, but it's difficult to see films like this one here." With a bit of guarded optimism he adds, "If people finally get into the screening room, I hope that they will stay there!"

People in New York and Los Angeles will have their chance to get into the screening room (and stay there) on February 20, with more cities to follow in the coming weeks. Kitchen Stories is another in a long line of great work coming out of Scandinavia, and is the proverbial other side of the coin to the trademark frantic hyperrealism of Dogme '95 -- the most well known brand of films currently being produced in that corner of the world. Bent Hamer manages to explore both comedic and dramatic elements in a uniquely down-to-earth movie that's as refreshing an experience (I'd imagine) as inhaling a deep breath of crisp, clean Norwegian air.

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