Northern Irish director who has directed psychological thrillers (2001's The Hole, starring Keira Knightley in her first major role), musical comedies (2011's Killing Bono) and films based on the famous DeLorean car ’s comedy-thriller (2018’s Driven) Nick Hamm ventures into completely different territory with his next film.
"Wilhelm Tell" is a historical action epic that goes back more than 600 years to delve into the folklore of the Swiss hero who is said to have helped free Switzerland from the brutal rule of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty. For those who know little about 14th Tyre is best known throughout centuries of European history as a crossbowman who managed to shoot an apple from his son's head (and, crucially, without hitting him).
Hamm's $40 million retelling of the story stars Claes Bang and a cast that includes Golshifteh Farahani, Connor Swindells, E. Ellie Bamber and Ben Kingsley (as an evil Austrian king wearing an eyepatch). Apple Shot, its precursor and aftermath, features plenty of bloody sword fights, crossbow shots to the head and flying limbs.
Altitude will release William Tell in UK cinemas on Friday, while Samuel Goldwyn is scheduled to release it in the US in March. As the film opens in the UK, Hamm discusses the difference between fact and fable, and why he chose Bang - recently known for playing a series of on-screen villains - as his hero.
"William Tell" feels very different considering the type of films you've made before. What attracted you to this?
This is something I've thought about for a long time. I worked as a theater director for a long time in my 20s, and I always knew the story of Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell." He was the German equivalent of Shakespeare, a contemporary of Goethe in the nineteenth century. And the play is almost unperformable compared to a normal play because it's like an opera libretto. But I kept wondering: Why hasn’t anyone done it? All the European legends have been taken over by Hollywood. Everything we have has been redone by Americans and is actually our story. These stories outlast us all.
So in this case, it's set in the early 14th century, written as a play by a man in the 1800s, and released in the 21st century. When I started adapting the story, I realized it was very prescient because Schiller was writing about the whole concept of political freedom, how you define it, how you retain it, what happens when you lose it, and achieving it cost. As I write this, the war in Ukraine has just begun. And then when I finished it, Gaza exploded. It's amazing to think that the problems they were dealing with hundreds of years ago are the same ones we still face today.
Apple's story is obviously well-known. But how much of this do we know actually happened? Has the entire story of William Tell gone through rounds of creative embellishment over the centuries?
I don't think anyone knows the actual historical accuracy of whether anything like this happened. This is a legend. Has anything similar happened in history? really. There is actually a story that says he was a Danish character. Essentially, Switzerland was on the trade route from northern Scandinavia to Italy and Milan, which were the main thoroughfares across Europe. So they all travel and tell stories. They would all end up getting drunk and telling stories in Swiss valley bars. So did he really do it? Literally no one knows, and when you talk to the Swiss about it, they don't know either. But the Habsburgs did begin their 500-year rule during this time, and the Austrians were a dictatorship trying to dominate the rest of Europe.
What made you choose Claes Bang to play Thiel?
I couldn't write about young Tire for this part. I don't want a 27-year-old hanging around like Robin Hood. I needed someone who could play a wounded character but also be silent on screen and be brutal at the same time. He needs to sit in a scene where he doesn't dominate the actual action of the scene, but he is put in front of it and then has to act. There are very few actors who can do that. And from Klaas's perspective, he wanted to play a good guy after "Bad Sister" and "Northerners." He told me that he'd played so many bad guys that when he walked down the streets in England, women hated him when they saw him, and that was largely down to Sharon Horgan.
Did you always want things to be so bloody and brutal?
I think when you do a prince, princess, castle, sword and sandals type of thing, the audience's expectations get ahead of you. I just want my imagined situation to come true. I can't sugarcoat it. But I also wanted to juxtapose reality with pastoral beauty. So my relationship with the photographer was very violent in The Sound of Music.