An interview with actor Ewan Bremnar

THC: What attracted you to the role of Julien?

EB: It's a very beautiful role, and the script was quite impressionistic and very touching. The part was a beautiful part for any actor to play, of my generation definitely. I didn't think I had much of a chance because I'm not American and I'm not on anybody's list. Nobody but Harmony would have cast me.

THC: Were you daunted by the fact that most of the dialogue would be improvised?

EB: The script had a reasonable structure, but working without dialogue is daunting, a real challenge. It was frightening and exciting at the same time. You don't know if you can come up with the goods, but you have to come up with the goods. It galvanizes you to be at your peak.

THC: How did you prepare?

EB: The most difficult and time consuming part was becoming American--I'm not gifted with accents or dialects, and I had to spend a lot of time trying to lose my Scottish accent. I also worked for six weeks in a psychiatric hospital. To begin with it was scary because I was working with people who had committed atrocious crimes-it was a high security place--but by the end of it I was fairly sad to leave.

THC: Like your character, the movie itself is schizophrenic. Is there any unifying principle to hold the film together?

EB: Harmony intended the film to be an artifact, something which presents all kinds of questions that you have to ask in order to understand its value. The film stands on its own as an artifact--but it's not a conventional narrative.

THC: What would you tell people to prepare them for this movie?

EB: That it is a film like no other. It is a very rich movie, and you'll see things that you'll have seen nowhere else, representations that you will not come across in any other movie. That is something that Harmony and the Dogme movement strive for. They attempt to make something genuinely new.

THC: Are you pleased with the critical response?

EB: I've read some reviews that are good, some that are terrible. There's a nervousness because it's unconventional. But I think overall people take the film seriously. In my opinion, Harmony is the premier artist of our time.