Despite its setting in 1870s Wisconsin, Dara Van Dusen’s feature debut, “A Prayer for the Dying,” is an eerily timely story touching on deadly epidemics and wildfires. The film bows in Berlin’s Perspectives section.
“I’ve been working on this film for over a decade and it’s based on a book [by Stewart O’Nan] published in 1999. Then the pandemic happened. I was stuck at home with a 2-year-old and my husband, and suddenly everything felt just too real,” she recalls.
As time went by, she managed to process her emotions — only for the California wildfires to dominate the headlines during post-production. Now, in a town called Friendship, its sheriff and preacher Jacob Hansen (Johnny Flynn), and Doc (John C. Reilly), must confront both.
“Hopefully, it doesn’t feel too in-your-face. But history repeats itself. These things happened quite frequently in the 1800s, and they’re happening again. It’s part of the cycle,” she says.
In “A Prayer for the Dying,” produced by Dyveke Bjørkly Graver for Eye Eye Pictures and sold by New Europe Film Sales and Anton, her protagonists disagree on how to handle the crisis.
“When confronted with all these disasters, Jacob starts questioning his faith. Then there’s the doctor, who’s a man of logic and doesn’t even take faith into consideration. I loved having these two viewpoints,” she says. “Everything has become so black and white these days, so right or wrong. It’s never that way. People make mistakes, and maybe the right answer reveals itself later on.”
Van Dusen ended up filming in Slovakia, building Friendship from scratch with the help of production designer Hubert Pouille. “I wanted to create a universe that was rooted in reality, but existed in something much more surreal,” she says.
She also surrounded herself with an international cast and crew, including Norwegian actor Kristine Kujath Thorp, playing Jacob’s wife Martha, and Sweden’s Gustav Lindh.
“Our country was built by immigrants. It’s a fascinating part of the U.S. and hopefully it will continue to be,” she says. “Wisconsin had a large Norwegian and Scandinavian community that received land in exchange for fighting in the Civil War.”
Just like Jacob, a veteran unable to shake off the horrors he has experienced.
“Suddenly, he’s faced with all these issues as the leader of this town and the father of a young family. As his mind starts to unravel, he becomes an unreliable narrator. We’re not sure if everything he’s showing us, and telling us, is real.”
Van Dusen adds: “He has a mask that goes on and off, and it’s quite disorienting when reading the novel. You don’t know if he’s good or bad. But if you take any ‘good’ person and put them in an extreme situation, they will do things that feel wrong.”
Van Dusen was born in the U.S. and now resides in Norway. She met her longtime friend and director of photography, Kate McCullough, while studying at the Polish National Film School in Łódź.
“I saw Kieślowski’s ‘Dekalog’ and thought: ‘Oh God, I want to be him’,” she laughs.
“Having someone like Kate by my side gave me the confidence to stick to the visual language we had developed. I’m fascinated by visual storytelling – I just saw ‘Sirât’ for the second time. That kind of cinematic experience touches your soul. Now, I only want to go crazier and bigger, and experiment with other genres.”
She wanted to capture the “biblical, surreal” world of O’Nan’s novel.
“It’s difficult to talk about things like ego, faith and morality. But once you step out of reality and move into a hellish space, there’s more freedom to communicate these complex issues,” she notes.
“I never wanted it to be full-on horror, but there are elements that felt like doomsday. With Kate, we used to talk about ‘faith camera’. It sounds pretentious, but the idea was to show that something else might be at play, dictating what’s happening. It was a godlike point-of-view because that’s what these characters believed in.” Despite living in “primarily atheist” Norway, she’s still “fascinated by religion.”
“Humans have a need to believe in something bigger. I think it’s more relevant now, as we’re living through such chaotic times,” she says. “People desperately want answers, rules and hope, but we don’t really have that anymore.”
