03/11/2009

The veteran German director takes on the 11th-century German magistra, mystic, composer and feminist avant la letter in her latest film Vision: From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. The film hit German screens late September and had its international premiere at the Rome Film Festival, where Cineuropa caught up with the director.

Cineuropa: Vision at times feels one of your films from the 1980s…
Margarethe von Trotta: In a way, that’s correct, because I first “met” Hildegard in the 1980s, at a time when the newly liberated women were looking for female role models in a history that had been largely written for and by men. I remember being in L.A. and seeing this huge display with CDs of her music at a megastore, so of course I bought one! The very first scene of the film, set at the turn of the first millennium, was already written in the 1980s, but at that time, the films had to be political and about the present, so this project was shelved.

So what made you go back to the project now?
It wasn’t really me so much as my producer. I wanted to make a film about Hannah Arendt, but according to him, the time wasn’t right for such a film now. Then he remembered I had talked about this Hildegard of Bingen project in the past, and asked me what had happened with that. Of course, I told him: “If you give me the money, I will gladly make that project my next film.”

In what ways does the fact you have made it now, rather than in the 1980s, influenced the film?
There are several things. First of all, the connection between the soul and the body that Hildegard focuses on, especially in the scene where she says “First the soul is healed, then the body follows.” I would have never been able to include such an insight in the ‘80s. Secondly, this idea that nature and the elements are somehow turning against us if we don’t use them in the right way, this sort of ecological message was not something we were very aware of twenty-five years ago.

And then there is the superficiality and greed of the character of Barbarossa, whom Hildegard meets and counsels. The way in which the film emphasises and warns against the emptiness in this man’s life is very much of this time. How many men – also women but especially men – have committed suicide in recent years just because they lost their riches, their material belongings?

Vision also marks your return to work with actress Barbara Sukowa…
Yes, this film is our fifth collaboration, and it feels completely natural. I don’t think it is unimaginable that, if Hildegard of Bingen had lived today, she would have been Rosa Luxemburg or Madame Curie. She was an excellent observer of everything that what went on around her. In a way, she is the predecessor of all the other von Trotta women.

The title suggests a lot of visual trickery, but the visions of Hildegard do not play a very big role in the film.
The title is not mine, but the producer’s. I mainly agreed with it because in the past we’ve had problems with titles once the films went abroad. We even had different English titles in different countries for some of my films, which was confusing. As for the actual visions, in the beginning I discussed translating them into images with my cinematographer, but in the end we decided against it, except for her first vision. We were afraid that visualising them or showing them in an anthropomorphic way would make the film too kitschy.