Before the Nazis invaded in May of 1940, Belgium had publicly declared its neutrality in the event of another World War. In those fragile days leading up to the invasion, tensions were bubbling, with antisemitism and anti-refugee sentiments on the rise.
“The Soundman,” written and directed by Belgian filmmaker Frank Van Passel, tracks those days just before the invasion, but from a point of view you might not expect. The film follows Berre (Jef Hellemans), a young sound engineer for Belgium’s national radio, and his budding romance with Elza (Femke Vanhove), a Jewish refugee and on-air performer at the radio station. The film is playing at this year’s Atlanta Jewish Film Festival on Feb. 19, and again on March 1.
As would seem evident by its name, “The Soundman” features a heavy focus on its auditory world, conceptualizing not just how sound can affect our emotions, but also what sound looks like. Ahead of the screening, Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Van Passel about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I know that these characters are all sort of based on real people, and you apparently knew the grandson of the guy who inspired the main character – could you talk a little bit about where the idea for this film came from and those historical connections?
Frank Van Passel: I think 10 years ago, I was preparing a television series about the first days of national television in Belgium. And basically, the building where “The Soundman” is shot was the same building where later on television started. So, in doing the research for the television series, I realized, first of all, that radio in Belgium started in that same building.
Now that was just a sprinkle of an idea. But I think something like eight, nine years ago in Europe – and also in America, I think, with Donald Trump coming to power the first time – I think in all the Western countries, it was clear that there was a shift towards a different kind of politics, being much more polarized, much more aggressive, much more rough. It changed a lot. Suddenly, the middle of the road became something which was not so okay anymore, and the extreme feelings in Europe to the left and to the right became more and more middle of the road, which was frightening. At a certain moment, it made me think – and a lot of people were thinking – about the 30s in Europe, because we kind of had the same moment, our grandparents or our parents. On a political level, things were changing in Europe, of course, very explicitly with facism in Italy and Spain, and in Germany. But I was really wondering, what had happened in Europe at that moment?
All the pieces of the puzzle I [had been] putting together the last years, about the story of radio in Belgium and the political situation just on the eve of the Second World War in Belgium, and the mirroring of these happenings to today and what’s happening today in Europe and also in America – it laid it out in front of me. It was like things came together a little bit in a frightening way. So there was a certain urgency, suddenly, for this story, which showed itself to me, and which gave my love for radio and for sound another reason that was much more urgent – much more than just the poetic side of it, which I love a lot, of course.
I’ve heard you say in a couple of interviews that you have always had an interest in sound. Where did that interest come from?
Van Passel: First of all – and I don’t know where this came from – but I have a lot of tinnitus. Both ears are beeping all the time. And as that started, I think something like 15 years ago, I started being more and more interested in sounds, because I started realizing that sound – which we take for granted, which is there all the time – that it was something much more special than I realized. Just the idea that your brain is making up some sounds which are not there, which is basically tinnitus made me really start thinking about sound, and about what it really is.
As a fetus, you start hearing, but you don’t see yet. It’s one of the first senses that is really part of a fetus, part of a human being. And in cinema and in moving making, we did turn it around – there were the moving images first. Then later on, there was sound connected to it … So the love for sound, it was a realization, thanks to tinnitus. So, every negative thing also has a positive part.
There’s a quote from the movie, and when you were talking it reminded me – I think Berre says, “Sound should not be taken lightly,” or something along those lines. Obviously, this is a movie about sound, but the actual sound design of this movie also takes center stage. I wondered if you could talk about the creative process with you and the sound designer of finding the aural design of this movie.
Van Passel: It was a huge work we had to do, because normally, when you start making a movie, you think about the image and sound follows the image. But we wanted to turn it around. We wanted to turn it around, just to try to find a way to give sound a platform, and also to give people a reason to go to the cinema theaters to watch the movie. Because there’s no better place to hear a movie than in the cinema.
But that meant that we had to find a way to create sounds – how to say this? It was much more than post-production. We started in pre-production, and while I was writing the script, I already started working with the sound designer and with the foley artist to see what specific sounds can we try to make? A simple example – when I make films, of course, there’s a lot of foley in post-production. For example, the feet of people walking on the street. As I was talking to the foley artist, she explained to me that, in exactly the same rhythm of feet on the ground, she was able to [evoke] totally different emotions, just by the energy and the way he puts the heel or the front of the foot on the ground. Same actor, same scene, same way of moving. But the sound changed all the emotions.
It was so different, what she was able to do. It made me realize that we would be able to create sound layers in the movie which were extremely emotional, just by putting time into it. We did recreate all the sounds. Except for the dialogue, there’s not one sound in the film which we did not make with this. And this was just to have the possibilities in the mixing and in the sound design, to play with it and to put our finger on the right emotions.
Yeah, you’re able to play with it and do whatever you want.
Van Passel: It was, of course, trial and error. Because … sound design is really connected with music and with score, and there’s an overlap between the two. So with my composer and with the sound designer, we would sit together before they started working at different times to talk about, where is this? Where are we going to work together? Where are we going to work as an individual? It was not easy, because it’s, most of the time, different jobs. But there is a point where music becomes sound, and where sound becomes music, and that’s the frontier that you have to search for and to try to find. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
When you talk about changing the emotion of something just with the sound, and this is more based on the music, but the dance sequence between Berre and Elza does just that. You’ve got a 30s/40s exciting, fun thing that they’re dancing to, and then it becomes very melancholy.
Van Passel: It’s a good example, I think. I wrote it in the script, the dance sequence, and I wanted the certain kind of feeling that these two young people, they demand the right to be happy – even in a time where happiness is really difficult. But at the same time, they’re not naive, especially Elza. She knows what might happen. So in this dance sequence, we want to make the switch between the brutality of young people who deserve happiness, but also their realization that there’s something in front of them which is so frightening, and that maybe it’s never going to be. This switch is a sound switch. And yes, of course, it’s a music switch in this case … It seems so simple, that scene, and we had been working so long on that music, because it did not work at all. [Laughs] So we became desperate at a certain moment, and then suddenly at a certain moment in the mix, I think we found it.
We’ve talked a lot about creating sounds, but I’m curious – at the end, there’s a moment with Berre and Elza, and it conceptualizes what sound looks like, with a green light. Could you talk about conceptualizing the visuals of sound, and figuring out what that liminal space looks like?
Van Passel: It was difficult, because we had no example. We were thinking, of course, sound is energy, and it’s a frequency. So, if you combine energy and frequency, and then you think about the old radios, you had this green, what they called in Europe “cat eyes.” It’s a little green light that becomes brighter or less bright, connected with the signal coming into the radio. So this green color made us think also about the polar lights. Because it was a kind of magnetic energy which we could maybe connect to the energy of sound. So that was one thing.
But then we were thinking, how do we create the green? Technically, we went to a water studio, and we made this huge water wall with water sprinkling down. We projected the polar lights on that huge wall. It was 20 meters high, 30 meters wide. So we wanted to have these structures, which were basically some kind of almost water mist – we projected the polar lights on it. And then in post-production, we took some elements of it, we turned them around to create this kind of – how do you call it? – visualization of sound frequencies.
We have a lot of interior shots in the film, not a lot of exteriors. But for the exteriors, I deliberately chose to show the world through the eyes of Berre, who communicates through sound. So what we see is much more sound frequencies than reality. The approach was basically – it was almost simple. I talked to one of the best graphic novelists I know to draw me the city in a way where there’s some roughness. It’s more movements than really fine lines, detailed lines. It’s a graphic novel, but at the same time, it’s the emotion of Berre.
This is an interpretation of these historical figures and their lives. But I’m curious, when you’re making a film based on a historical event, what sort of research goes into that for you?
Van Passel: First of all, a lot of research. I’ve been visiting all the archives where I could enter which tell something about this moment. These were the archives of national radio, because what happened really happened at the national radio. But also, I worked together with a few historians just to check everything. Because, of course, you always make an interpretation of history. It’s a very sensitive story, because it’s connected with refugees who came to Belgium looking for shelter and for help … Because it’s about mostly Jewish people, there’s a huge connection with antisemitism. Although, I do realize that, at that moment through the Belgian government, antisemitism was not their main thing. It was distrusting refugees. They did not trust refugees, because they were coming into Belgium with some ideas that might not be the ideas of the Belgium political middle class at that moment.
Now, the frightening thing is that what happened – and we know what happened in the Second World War, what a human disaster it was, what the Nazis did – this small happening, just on the eve of the Second World War, was totally forgotten. Because, of course, when you see what happened to Jewish people – the huge, human disaster was so unthinkable, that these 10,000, 15,000 refugees in Belgium that disappeared on the eve of the Second World War were almost forgotten. Nobody thought about them, because in light of the six million murdered people afterwards, it’s almost nothing. But on a human level, it’s as important, of course, and it shows something that still plays today, which is so important. What are we doing with all these people who are looking for help, and who are being chased by what’s happening in America, what’s happening in Europe today?
So in the research, I really had to take care how to show this, how to phrase this, because these are historical facts, but not all the facts are very well-documented. Because with the panic and the chaos of the beginning of the Second World War in Belgium, a lot of these things were really not well-documented and forgotten a little bit.
What struck me was that there seemed to be a focus on the fear of espionage, of spies coming in. It was really striking at the end of the film when they round up everyone as the Nazis invade, because they’re almost equating people who are registered fascists with refugees. And it’s just paranoia.
Van Passel: So this is history. It really happened. When I started showing the movie in Belgium, some people told me, yes, but it’s impossible, what you say. No! This is a fact. People just can’t imagine that it happened. I really, strongly believe that we have to take care of our political system, and also our politicians. We have to treat them well, because you see what happens when we don’t treat them well. It’s so frightening if a political system starts to attack its own people because [politicians and the system] don’t know how to cope with certain problems. And maybe sometimes they do it for totally different reasons, but the results are always the same. Vulnerable people are always the ones who lose.