First of all, how to bring Björk out of acting retirement? For Robert Eggers, it was developing a relationship of trust, working with people who both he and Björk knew were people of quality. In an interview with IndieWire, Eggers said:
“You are never in a position to convince Björk. She is either not involved at all. It helped that she and Sjon had such a long relationship, as they have known each other since they were teenagers. Our songwriter Carolan has a friendship with Björk and she introduced me and my wife to her and then we developed a relationship.”
Having a close-knit circle of compatriots always creates a better environment for everyone, no matter what the job is. Björk even brought her daughter Donates along to be in the film as well. Eggers refers to it as “a family atmosphere.”
As for the seer’s crafting, that kindred-spirited nature found its way into her collaboration on the character’s appearance. Eggers came up with the idea for her to wear a cowrie shell headdress, something they discovered women would wear at the time in what would now be Ukraine. If you’ve seen any Robert Eggers movies, you know that he dives into the research of the time, whether it’s design, customs, language, or whatever. It’s what gives his films a sense of dirty reality that period images rarely embody.
On Björk’s side, Eggers said, “She contributed to the idea that she would have a third eye and her real eyes would be covered.” To marry the two visual conceptions of her, they designed the headdress where cowrie shells would hang down and cover her eyes. Because this character appears only briefly, and almost only from one camera angle, images of Björk’s seer should immediately sink into your mind. There is absolutely no pleasure in spending time with her. You cannot develop the interiority of it. The external is vital, and if you’ve ever seen a Björk performance or music video, you know how important visual representations of her are to her.
Fortunately, the minds of Björk and Eggers are seamlessly connected here, and the seer remains lodged in my brain, despite little screen time. Now, let’s hope Eggers tries the next time it’s more than a cameo. I want to see how their minds merge when they have a huge canvas on which to create a character.
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