'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

it‟s showing, again, what happened to her. And that she did not cry while she was raped,
that she did not cry, that she did not protest, that she did not try to free herself. That is
now coming back.
R.R.: So, in a way, through showing Lene‟s face, you are showing her story. Are you
also in a way criticizing that passivity, that stoicism of women of that generation?
H.S.-B.: That‟s a good question. I‟m not criticizing. I‟m not a critic. I‟m a storyteller. I
don‟t criticize the people of my film, my characters. I‟m not criticizing them. I think I
try to understand. You see, in the Arabian Nights there is a wonderful thing. The rule of
the game is that people have to tell their stories and when they have told their stories,
they‟re free. They could have committed murders and many other atrocious things, but
when they tell their stories, or Scheherazade tells their stories for them, they are free.
And this is somehow what happens when a film really works. By telling and by showing
how something happened, you set your nightmares free. You open the door and you
open the window. This is what is happening in the fairy tale; it‟s what is happening in
the film. This is quite different from what happens when people tell their life stories in
an interview. This is not the same thing. This kind of storytelling of the Arabian Nights
or of, let‟s say, James Joyce, or Dostoyevsky, of Virginia Wolf, is setting the people free
in the end because they have understood what happened to them and why they react in
their way. And this is wonderful.
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