Adapted from Tove Jansson’s beloved novel, The Summer Book is a delicate and poignant film about growing up and growing old. The movie centers on young Sophia (Emily Matthews) as she spends the summer at her family’s secluded home on a Finnish island, exploring the natural world with her father and grandmother (played by Glenn Close). The quiet, meditative film beautifully captures the subtle interplay between the three generations.
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with acclaimed director Charlie McDowell to discuss his approach to adapting this cherished Nordic classic. McDowell reveals the challenges and triumphs of honoring Jansson’s world, from capturing the cultural nuances of a Finnish summer to working with his cast to bring the story to life on screen.
The Interview with director Charlie McDowell on The Summer Book
[Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.]
Aayush Sharma: Given that The Summer Book is deeply rooted in Nordic culture, many people wonder how an American director could capture the subtle beauty and cultural depth of the novel. How did you approach honoring the essence, nuances, and emotional landscape of Tove Jansson’s world while also bringing your own voice to the adaptation?
Charlie McDowell: I have to say I was very nervous about it. As you said, it’s a very important piece of Nordic fiction, and who am I to tell a very important piece of Nordic fiction? But I’m the one who raised my hand. I’m the one who had the passion and the drive and wanted to tell this story. For those reasons, I feel like I was the right person to bring it to life. I think the most important thing for me from the beginning was immersing myself in the culture and really understanding what the small details of this story were, what they meant, and why people connected so much to this book for so many years. I think the reasons for that are that, especially in the northern countries, you have such huge, drastic swings in weather. Because of that, you have this tiny little window, which is pretty much just July (sometimes you can have nice weather in August as well), to have nice weather, to disconnect, to be under the same roof as your family, and to really recharge and reset.
That’s not really a cultural thing we have in America, especially somewhere like Los Angeles, where every day feels the same, the weather’s always nice, and so on. I really experienced that big swing and difference with the weather over there. I could understand why they appreciated summer so much and how we sort of take it for granted. I think the biggest reason I really wanted to capture this story and put it out into the world is that I just felt like it was this very protected, beautiful little timepiece that doesn’t really exist anymore. We live in such a fast-paced culture and are so consumed by everything digital. I wanted to make something that felt very connected to the land and to nature. Part of the reason we shot on film is just the process of shooting on film and what that looks like and how it gives us memory and nostalgia. So, ultimately, I think it was to make something that slowed people down, transported them to a different place, and allowed them to make connections to their own experiences, their own relationships with their grandparents or their parents, or whatever it is. I think the movie does a good job of allowing the audience to bring themselves into the characters.
Aayush Sharma: There’s a quiet interplay between past and present, especially in moments where memories seem to surface through actions or glances rather than explicit flashbacks. How did you approach revealing Sophia and her grandmother’s histories without overt exposition?
Charlie McDowell: That’s a good question. I think I sort of viewed, certainly through the grandmother’s point of view, a lot of the visuals. I wanted them all to kind of feel like a memory because this is someone who’s lived many years, has so much wisdom, and has had so much experience in her life. She’s also someone who says through dialogue that her memories are gliding away; they’re slipping away from her. At a certain point, I think visually, my cinematographer, Sterla, and I liked the idea of shooting the grandmother in a way that made it feel like it was a memory and maybe not in the present, or maybe it wasn’t this particular summer. It was maybe a different summer. That idea opened it up to kind of find the poetry of the piece and to find this sort of meditative quality to it. It’s something that Miyazaki movies do really well, where, as an audience member, you’re just sort of floating with the movie. I liked that idea, of course, that’s a different medium, so they’re able to explore more sort of surreal ideas than we did. But I liked the idea that you’re sort of floating in observation. You’re witnessing these multi-generational people trying to all find each other.
They’re all at very different places. You have the grandmother, who’s nearing the end and is in a reflective place, passing along wisdom. Then you have her son, who has gone through this tragedy, losing his wife, so he’s very stuck and sort of stagnant where he is, and he doesn’t know how to move forward. And then you have this young girl who is all exploration, like the world can be whatever she imagines it to be. I love that you have those three different ways in, and I think depending on who you are as an audience member, you can sort of relate and connect. For me, I can relate and connect to this young childhood through memory, through my past. In the present, I can understand how life is hard in this sort of mid-part of your life and how it’s hard to figure out how to move forward. And then also, seeing parents and friends age is another thing. So I think there’s enough that everyone can find a way into the movie.
Aayush Sharma: Glenn Close’s portrayal of the grandmother is nuanced and full of quiet strength, while Emily Matthews’ Sophia brings childlike wonder without being forced. How did you work with both actors to create this delicate balance of innocence and wisdom? And what was the audition process like?
Charlie McDowell: A lot of that was very beautifully captured in the novel. We had this beautiful bible of source material, and so I would say that a lot of those ideas, the innocence of a child and the wisdom of a grandparent, are so much a part of the story. I would say that we stayed very true to those ideas in the movie as well. The two of them, I mean, we were just lucky in that you hope that you have actors who kind of find a connection with each other. This was a young girl, like two polar opposite sides of the spectrum, but they got so close. Emily and Glenn became very, very close. I think all of us kind of looked up to Glenn in many ways, and I think Glenn felt very connected to this young girl. So I would say that the scenes in the movie, of course, they’re acting—they’re professional actors—but in many moments, it is the most natural kind of relationship because it was real. They actually had that relationship.
In terms of the process, I saw a lot of young girls for this part because it’s such an important piece of fiction, and so many people knew we were making it there. Emily always caught my eye from the beginning because she felt very real and honest. A part of that had to do with the fact that she had never acted before, so she didn’t have this idea of how she was supposed to be or how she was supposed to act. She was connecting to the character and the themes, but she was very real and very honest in her performance. That was something that I felt was critical because if you had someone sort of acting the part and then that person’s opposite, Glenn, who’s very naturalistic and real, you’d have these two very opposing kinds of styles, and I knew that wasn’t going to work. So, yeah, they felt very fluid together. It worked with how connected the two of them were.
Aayush Sharma: The film touches on themes of aging, loss, and renewal without being preachy. Did you consciously avoid typical narrative arcs in favor of a more meditative experience, and how did that influence the script and editing process?
Charlie McDowell: That’s a really good question. It’s definitely a part of the source material. Tove Jansson’s words are very much like she presents information without telling you how you’re supposed to feel. That’s not a very Americanized way of storytelling. I think American storytellers, and this is a generalization, but a lot of times we tend to get as much sentimentality and emotion as we can in moments. That’s not really a part of the Nordic culture. I met with Sophia Jansson, who is Tove Jansson’s niece and is actually the young girl in the story, but now she’s an adult woman. I met with her many times. She gave a lot of notes on the script, not in a way that made me feel like, “Oh, I have to follow it a certain way,” but just very, very smart ideas. For example, “A Nordic man rarely says, ‘I love you.'” He’s not just going to. Whereas, you know, I have a seven-month-old daughter, and I tell her I love her all day long. It’s all I do. It’s different, especially at this particular time in Finland.
So, understanding the relationships and all of that was really important for me in the storytelling because I felt like that informed me to, again, like the book, sort of presenting the ideas and information and allowing people to bring themselves into it instead of saying, “Okay, you’re supposed to cry here, you’re supposed to feel sad here, you’re supposed to feel happy here.” That’s not really a part of the culture, but also this particular story. So I wanted to allow the audience to sort of bring themselves into the process.
Aayush Sharma: The color palette feels soft and soothing, almost as if nature itself is a living character. How did you decide on the color tones, wardrobe, and set design to reflect the relationship between nature and human growth?
Charlie: It took a long time to find the right location, and that sort of dictated a lot of the choices. We ended up finding the little cove and the area that we filmed in, but there was no house there. Our brilliant production designer, Lina Nordqvist, designed this house. We looked at Tove Jansson’s summer house and had ideas of what we wanted it to be, but Lena built this house on the island. My cinematographer, Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, and I spent about three weeks on the island before filming. That’s where we really discovered the visual language of the film. That’s where we made the decision that we definitely wanted to shoot on 16mm, because before that, we were planning on shooting digital. We did a lot of tests when we were there, and felt it was very important that we shoot it on film.
It just allowed us to have time to observe, much like the characters do in the story. Sturla and I would sit in front of the house for like two hours and say nothing to each other. We’d just be eating a sandwich and watching. You’d start to see the tide coming in and out. All of a sudden, one of us said, “Oh, it feels like the island is breathing.” It feels like this sort of breathing motion of the island. That visual became a sort of throughline part of the story, especially towards the end, as the grandmother is nearing the end of her life. This connection to the island is always there. We are all the same; we’re not separate from nature. We are nature. So I would say most of those visual ideas that you see of a character connected to a place really came from that time of just observing and being on the island.
The Summer Book is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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