09/09/2021 - VENICE 2021: The Italian director speaks about his second work, the film’s music and the production challenges associated with such a colossal project, which was a long time in the making

(© La Biennale di Venezia - Foto ASAC/Giorgio Zucchiatti)

Cineuropa met with Gabriele Mainetti, the director behind Freaks Out [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gabriele Mainetti
film profile] which was presented in competition at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. We discussed his casting choices, the film’s main themes, the lengthy production process and the work that went into the music.

Cineuropa: Why is it important to tell the story of Freaks Out today?
Gabriele Mainetti: My aim is to speak about the modern-day world through a story which can entertain people. It’s crucial to remind the entire world just how much diversity is at the centre of our human journey. Freaks Out tries to place difference and freakiness centre stage, and it recognises this difference in the protagonist, who’s the only one who doesn’t seem to be a freak. In my mind, it’s as if we’re all freaks; we all have a darker side to us, we’re all different. Our identity makes us unique. When we try to fit into a more “normal” social context we often deny our identity, and there’s a terrible stiffness which comes out of this. Freaks Out is a child of the historic Trump era, we’ve inscribed it into a time of “white power”. In the meantime, the Italian political world is still trying to annihilate the mere idea of diversity, as if there’s a right way to be, or one person who’s more deserving than others. That’s why we wanted to use this film to talk about our own freaky aspects, and the respect we need to have for all our identities.

Franz Rogowski plays the villain in this film. Why did you choose him for this part?
I’ve got a funny story which no-one knows about. At the beginning, I was introduced to a very well-known German actor, but I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to audition him. I spent a bit of time with this actor, wondering whether he was right for the part or not. Then I rebelled against this suggestion, and I travelled to Germany to hold auditions. The first person I saw was Franz Rogowski and I said to myself: “Now I’ve got to see all the others when I’ve already found my protagonist!” I chose him because we understood one another emotionally and physically... I’m a film director and I can’t not be mindful of form... Form, for me, must find some sort of balance with the content. Somehow, Franz managed to achieve this tricky ask. He’s an amazing actor and it felt right to portray a German as a freak who aspired, in vain, to become something else.

Productively speaking, it was incredibly complicated...
Yes, but at a certain point what matters is the result. It’s complicated making these films in Italy, it’s true. It sounds conceited, but [we succeeded] because I’m a producer, as is Occhipinti, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. I was in charge of the film’s executive production, I drove the production forwards with my people and said: “Let’s go!”, despite the various arguments and all the rest. Ultimately, we managed to make the film we wanted.

What was the greatest challenge in the writing phase?
I always say that it’s all been done before. The main difficulty Nicola Guaglianone and I faced was injecting the film with originality, with its own identity. [..] Being able to draw viewers in and take them on a journey. When you’re dealing with a polyphony of genres, if you can’t “get into” the film, you’ll only hear chaos, and you might not enjoy it. That was the hardest part: finding the glue to bring it all together.

What were your musical references when composing the film’s score?
We tend to look to the best, so Ennio Morricone, John Williams, Nino Rota, Hans Zimmer, Johann Johannsson, Gerry Goldsmith, the top man Alfred Newman, and I’ll stop there. I see these brilliant musicians and a whole series of branches and paths which emanate from these maestros. We [Mainetti and his fellow composer Michele Braga] tried to understand how these masters had previously commented on this type of film. After that, we jumped backwards and forwards in time, revisiting the great music which inspired these music-makers: Korngold, Šostakovič, Stravinskij… We tried to reproduce, to the best of our creative abilities, a solid and functional identity. There’s a combination of poorer instruments – the tenor mandolin, the mandocello, the mandolin, the balalaika – which dialogue with a more elevated musical group: the Prague Orchestra – strings, and wood and brass instruments.

(Translated from Italian)