Prize-winning Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter chronicles how the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the city of Vienna in his latest densely detailed, beautifully composed documentary. Shot over two years, The Standstill is a masterful multi-viewpoint overview of lockdowns and curfews, private tragedies and public protests. The Film Verdict spoke to Geyrhalter at DOK Leipzig festival, where this gripping non-fiction blockbuster is world premiering this week.
TFV: How soon into the pandemic did you start shooting footage for The Standstill?
NG: “Very soon. Everybody who is doing documentary films, I think, immediately felt there is something going on and it would be necessary to document it. When did we start filming? It was in the third week of the first lockdown. That’s when we really got going. The first two weeks, we needed to organise ourselves and the kit and everything, but the third week was the first day of shooting.”
Is this a disaster movie? A warning? A film about human resilience and solidarity?
“To be honest, I see it as a film for future archives. When the pandemic overwhelmed us we all wanted to know: what is it? We were trying to find some examples from history, and the only example is the Spanish Flu, and there was nearly no footage around from that. So the idea was really just to document in the purest sense of the world, what was going on. How does a town like Vienna try to deal with this? How do people try to deal with it? What does it change? How do we get over it? In the beginning, there was no other idea behind it than to really preserve it for future generations. And then, of course, it changed and grew and got funded and now it’s a cinema documentary. It wasn’t intended like this in the very beginning.”
The Standstill has recurring characters and plot lines, did you approach it like a drama?
“I don’t think it’s a drama movie, but of course there is a narrative. But this is the kind of narrative that happened by itself. And this was very unusual for me, because usually when you start the movie, you have some ideas about the dramaturgical aspects of how you want to tell the story and understand stuff. In this case, it was very different. We were basically open for whatever would happen every day, and what would change every day. And this is how the structure of the film evolved. And of course, we were meeting people again and understanding which were the points that we would go again. But in the very beginning, I was just surprised and curious, and whatever was different was interesting. It took a while for this film for me to learn who would be the protagonists of the movie, also to learn what kind of period it would be. Because in the beginning, nobody knew.”
Some people interviewed in the film express an idealistic hope that the pandemic will change society for the better. I assume you take a more pessimistic view?
“At least I’m trying to be a realist. We were all hoping to return to the world like it was before the pandemic, but nothing is getting better. Things were changing so much. To be honest, the pandemic was over in the moment Russia attacked Ukraine, because then all the media had a new topic, and then nobody was talking about Corona any more. The world that we are facing now is a very different world than we were facing before the pandemic.”
Did the pandemic change you personally? Will it change the way you make films?
“Not at all. When I started shooting the film I was reminded of so many other films I have made. Nobody was in the street and everybody was really afraid, this reminded me very much filming in Chernobyl, like I did over 20 years ago. Then again everything felt very much like a hostile environment, it felt the war situation in Bosnia, empty spaces. So when I was starting to work on this film I was just myself with a camera. I was doing a job as good as it could, using all my expertise and knowledge just to do my part during this pandemic. Like others were working in NGOs or working in ambulances or doing whatever they could, helping people, and I was doing what I could, which was taking the best images that I could. Especially during the first lockdown, it really felt like working in an emergency situation because there was nobody in the street except ambulances and police cars with very few people. This was very strange.”
The Standstill, like all your documentaries, has very strong visual style. Is film-making more an aesthetic or a journalistic process for you?
“The aesthetic is extremely important, especially in the cinema. And my background is photography, so I simply couldn’t do it in a different way. But I also think that you can sit in the cinema, or in front of television, and see things and try to understand them, or you can sit in the cinema and see things but also really explore location and feel them, because you have the time and the atmosphere. Also you have the surround sound, which is usually the original sound. So you really get into the locations and become part of this. And this, I think, is a much stronger experience. I think this can drive you to start the process of thinking, because you experienced something, you didn’t just see something.”
You were rejected from film school three times. Has that been a burden for your career, or was it ultimately a blessing?
“Good question. In the beginning it was a burden because when I was really sure that I wanted to make films, there was no other way than using film equipment. And that’s what they learned in the film school: how to use an Arriflex camera, how to change the film in the dark bag, all this kind of technical stuff. That is what I would have liked to learn, and then I managed to learn it anyway. I still know many people from that period because I was in a film school, but not as an official pupil, I was more semi-official. But I was really pissed, to be honest. The first time I was rejected, I understood it because they were looking for feature film students and that was not what I wanted to do. The second time was the same, but the third time I was really pissed because they could have changed a little bit and become more open. By now it was a little bit more clear that documentary film has its place in the cinema.”
“So it was a burden in the beginning because I really had to learn a lot of stuff myself. But my background from photography helped me understood how the chemicals react, how to develop it, how to expose it, all this kind of stuff. And people keep telling me I would never dare to make films in the way that I do if I would have learned how to do it properly! I guess that is right. What I do is really very far beyond how you would learn to create a film in a film school. So, in a way, I’m grateful that nobody told me to do it differently because I would probably have never found the way that I’m working now.”
You founded your own film production company when you were 22, which is impressively confident. What was your motivation?
“Just because I wanted to get the funding and I needed a company. I didn’t want to go to one of the existing companies because I did not understand, if I really want to make a film, why would the company own all the rights? In the end, it was just a plan B to found your own company to keep the rights to yourself. But it was not only about the rights, it was really also about being independent, I didn’t want to be bothered by a producer who wants to see a result every day. So that was my way to go. And I’m very happy about this because I’m sure I could not make the films that I made, even today, with another company than my own.”
You have said you don’t like humans as a species, just as individuals. Did making The Standstill movie change this bleak outlook?
“I don’t know. The human species as a total is very unpredictable. Talking to people, even if you don’t share the same political opinion, you can find a dialogue. But with a mass of people who are against you, you can not. This is what I also experienced when we were shooting all these anti-lockdown demonstrations. I don’t want to say it was dangerous, but I didn’t feel very comfortable amongst them because they were really so angry against the media and against the system and against basically everybody. So shooting these demonstrations was probably more dangerous than when I was shooting back in Bosnia because people really had a big, big aggression. And sometimes I’m shooting this wide-angle photo from a higher position and ideally, the frame has to be in the centre of the street. So we had a big ladder and scaffolding in the middle of the street where the demonstration was coming towards us. We were really target because we couldn’t hide other camera teams. Nothing really happened, but I did not feel comfortable. People, when they are more than one, become unpredictable. There are dynamics that usually you don’t have when you talk to individuals.”
Making documentaries about major issues inevitably has a political dimension. Do you have political intentions when you shoot films?
“Even having a close look at something is a political act. With this Corona pandemic, it was not so much political, to be honest. It was more really describing unpredictable, severe circumstances. And usually, of course, you do the films because you want to… I don’t want to say because you want to change the world, because this would be much too naive, but maybe you want to contribute a very little bit to some fundamental changes.”
What is your next project after The Standstill?
“I started to work on another project, and then the pandemic stopped everything. But the film I’m working on now is about snow and ice. We all know the ocean will be rising but nobody has had a close look at where the water comes from, and what other parts of the world will change.”
Is the Covid-19 pandemic really over? In a few years now could you be making Standstill 2: Electric Boogaloo?
“Who knows? I mean, parts of India are in a lockdown because of another new virus. Maybe we will have to get used to things like this. Maybe it was just very good luck that nothing like this occurred between the Spanish Flu and Corona. Maybe nobody knows. But now, basically, the virus is still there and there are still people in the hospital. We just don’t take it seriously any more. Probably it is not so serious, But anyway, it’s not as long over as it seems. At least for me, because it feels like this is a film about an historic event which is way back. But it’s not way back. It’s just one of two years but it feels retro in a way. There is a nostalgic view of this already, which I find very strange.”
