The director also briefly mentioned “The Riders” when speaking about one of his earlier films, the Berlinale breakout “Jack.” Both films have seen Berger work with children, with “Jack” starring then 12-year-old Ivo Pietzcker and “The Riders” starring seven-year-old Coco Greenstone as Pitt’s on-screen daughter.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Reiner Bajo/Netflix
Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence in director Edward Berger’s Conclave, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
As for his follow-up, the also Oscar-winning “Conclave,” Berger said it took him “two, three months to wash off” “All Quiet.” “It was almost traumatic afterwards.”
“‘Conclave’ was very much inspired by 1970s films, Alan J. Pakula, political conspiracy thrillers like ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘Klute,’ ‘The Parallax View,’” he noted of his creative process. “Those three films were the example for it. They have great editing rhythm and framing [of] people within the architecture.”
Berger felt that precise rhythm was “fitting” for a story that started from the image of several older men sitting in a room for long stretches of time. “I was scared that people wouldn’t be interested in watching a bunch of people vote for one Catholic [laughs]. So how do I make that interesting, you know?”
The director said he would make new cuts of the film every week and show it to his friends during the edit. “And they’d tear it apart,” he said. “They just go like, ‘Yeah, this was boring, this was great. You gotta go faster through this.’ I don’t want to get that after the premiere. I try to get it as good as possible, and you just don’t know because you lose perspective.”
