INTERVIEW WITH PETER MISSOTTEN AND BRAM SMEYERS

Multiple meanings as the heart of ‘The Cutting’?
Sure, for several reasons. First, there was the preparation that was very simular to the way of producing in theatre: a long rehearsel period and create the whole thing at the première. For us, this première was the shooting, that happened very condense. By dividing working with the actors during the rehearsels and during the shooting between the two of us, we also gave life to a multiplicity in interpretation.

By working together, you create a fixer unity?
Yes. You don’t make movies alone; because of the complexity of the medium, it is always teamwork. In this movie, it is impossible to play just one layer. There is one from the screenwriter Paul Pourveur, two from the rehearsels and directing during the shooting, another from the interpretations by the actors, and the mixing by Nico Leunen. By working with several people and giving them responsability, you get much more colours.

The actors also have their own point of view.
Yes, not only because of the different characters, but certainly also by their different approach to acting. Joost Wijnant is an actor who doens’t know beforehand what he will do physically, who can’t repeat the same thing, but at the same time knows to move within extreme limits. Geert Vaes carefully prepares every move, but as he had to play with someone like Joost, he continuingly had to reconsider everything. Benjamin Verdonck plays very intuitive and impulsive. The captivating is that their way of acting is opposite to the way of thinking from the characters they play... Last but not least, everything plays on nearly one, non-evident, place, i.e. a dark wood. And it works!

Much praise also for the screenwriter and the mixage.
What was nice of working with as well Paul Pourveur as Nico Leunen, is that they didn’t do what was asked, but the results they made were astonishing. The idea was f.e. three guys of about twenty, and Paul Pourveur thought of man in their fourties, or wanted three women, and that causes a consant friction in the movie; as if reality gets sick by the strained relations. The situation works in several ways, so you get a constant shift between comic, filosofical and captivating; the movie constantly jumps from the one layer to the other. At the end, you also get a different movie, when they are dying together en saying goodbye in a nearly buddhistic way. This change was wellcome, because we couldn’t see any wood no more...

Sickness and wounds also take a central place...
An open wound opens another reality, that has nothing to do with the outside. So you get the link with quantummechanics, that the position from where you’re looking determines what you will see. The other reality that is opened, is negated; man wants to sew the outside as soon as possible to get rid of this confrontation.

The title also refers to al the lines that cut through everything.
No only the landscape is cut in two by the cutting, but also the wounds, the active montage and the TGV are ways of cutting, dividing things. This refers also to the myth of the possibility to repair everything. The cars are not only a point of orientation, but by their technicity maintain their capability of being repaired. In exremis, this can also be said about the hunt for the kick of young people, who think everything (even a severe wound) can be repaired.

The digital effects add another layer to all this.
The digital effects are not meant to create special affects, but to sew constant doubt among the spectator about what he sees, about which reality he perceives. A lot more has been shot virtually than most people think, like the garden in the beginning, the inside of the train or the car trips. That makes is extra captivating, because you feel something is wrong, but you cannot explain what goes wrong.