Norwegian critics who previewed the first episode have already given ‘thumbs up' to the 8x45' dramatic family saga, presold to a dozen territories.
Who first approached you to direct The Half Brother and what was your first thought then?
Per-Olav Sørensen: The producer Olav Øen is the one who first approached me, and my first thought was "yes!" My second thought was "how"? My third thought was "I have to read the novel again". My fourth thought was... "Who is doing the screen adaption?"
Did it feel like a daunting task to bring to the screen Lars Saasbye Christensen's 785 pages bestselling novel spanning over four generations?
POS: Yes and no. I knew the expectations would be huge, but then again, this is work. I knew that the story itself is fantastic, so if we could build a strong team both behind and in front of the camera, we would have the possibility of making something special.
How did you work with screenwriter Mette Marit Bølstad and how much was Lars Saasbye Christensen involved in the screen adaptation?
POS: Lars was involved in picking Mette to do the adaption, and he saw the first drafts before he left us alone. The dialogue with Mette was fantastic. I let her do the writing, but I let her know when I thought we were too slow, too general or over-explaining. But the most important dialogue we had focused around the storyteller Barnum. To get the series engine running we needed to give him more power. We needed to create the character as an investigator who would examine his own life, his past, trying to find his brother, or trying to at least find the answer to the question "Why did my half-brother disappear"? By doing this we could choose where in the past we could focus each episode, and we did not depend so much upon the usual expectations of chronology.
What artistic choices did you make to remain truthful to the spirit of the novel and yet bring in your own vision?
POA: In a novel, stories and characters live in the language. I had to translate this into a visual landscape. Pictures not words, colours not adjectives, moving camera not verbs, focus not options and so on. But Lars often uses "props" in his novels, "props" we could use as tracks, metaphors. That helped us. Much like how they used the spinning top in Inception. But the most important thing was getting the main-character Barnum to investigate his own life. So we brought a lot of new scenes into the story to strengthen that aspect. That also allowed us to be truthful to a lot of the most memorable scenes from the novel. As soon as we had the "engine running" we could take some poetic detours.
What were the biggest challenges during filming?
POS: Focus The Half Brother is the length of four feature films, and I had to call "action" around 10,000 times. It was important to focus on each take, no matter if it was the second day or day 99.
Tell us about the casting: was it a very long process to find the right actors for Barnum (Nicolai Cleve Broch) Fred (Frank Kjosås) and the main female leads including Agnes Kittelsen, Ghita Nørby, Marianne Nilsen and Mariann Hole?
POS: Yes, it took a full year. Some of the leads, especially the women, we found pretty fast, but it took us ten months to find Nicolai Cleve Broch. It was a good process and I enjoyed the fact that we had time to do the casting without stress.
Was it comforting to be working with some of Scandinavia's top crew members, from the Oscar-winning production designer Anna Asp, cinematographers John Christian Rosenlund and Lars Vestergaard, to Lars von Trier's music composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen?
POS: Yes, of course. These are world-class professionals. They are used to working on the level we needed. We knew that Anna Asp had the knowledge, talent and experience to lift this story to a much needed superb visual landscape. We also knew that Kristian's combination of being both a composer and an excellent sound mixer would help us in post-production, taking the story to yet another level.
One of the novel's most important lines is: "It's not what you see that counts first and foremost. It's what you think you see." What do you personally think of this saying?
POS: It is my favourite line and it was with us all the way. Everybody has secrets. We are trying to find the right answers. It really helped us in the work, having this line in mind.
Is it hard to promote The Half Brother in the middle of a controversy over the quality of NRK Drama's output?
POS: Yes and no. As The Half Brother is produced and made by Monster Film and not by NRK Drama, we are in a way outside the controversy. But because we are aired on NRK and the expectation is huge, we are always mentioned in the discussion. In the beginning it was a little annoying, but lately - after some journalists have seen the final result - people's opinion has changed. We are now an example of how successful one can be by producing drama outside of NRK.