Author Jaroslav Rudiš discusses Alois Nebel – graphic novel and film focussing on the fog of history and troubled European past
In this week’s Arts, I speak to Jaroslav Rudiš, the author of an influential graphic novel (trilogy, actually) that delves into the fog of history and troubled Central European past. The story of Alois Nebel – a slightly mad railwayman working in a remote border region – it has been made into a new film that premiered last week in the Czech Republic after being featured in festivals in Venice and Toronto.
My first question for Jaroslav Rudiš, currently touring the country, was how long Alois Nebel had now been a part of his life.
“That’s an interesting question – it has certainly been a long time! Illustrator Jaromír 99 and I must have started first talking about Alois Nebel back in the autumn 2002. So it has been nine years.”
How did you get the initial idea to come up with the character? He is a railway man who works at a small station in the area of Jeseník in what is known as the Sudetenland. How did the idea of him come about?
“My personal family history played a bit of a role because my grandfather’s name was Alois and he used to work on the railways in the borderland areas between Czechoslovakia and Germany before the Second World War and after. He was my inspiration at the time. I wanted to tell the story of a man working on the tracks, observing trains and train schedules but who would also see trains passing through his station with ‘baggage’ from the whole of the 20th century. And he suffers mental illness after that, because he can’t forget traumatic parts of history of Central Europe. Jaromír 99 said he liked the idea and suggested that we do it as a graphic novel.”
As you mentioned there, Nebel is someone who is ‘burdened’ by this heavy Central European history: on the one hand he is a fairly simple man just doing his job, on the other he is haunted with these visions of trains passing through which aren’t even there...
"It is also the story of a different part of the country, different from Prague or Bohemia. When you go there you feel that ‘something which we are missing’, part of the past because ethnic Germans lived there for ages. You constantly stumble over the past there and that is what makes the area really interesting.”
I imagine from what you are saying that turn-of-the-century architecture or the industrial heritage in parts of the Sudetenland, abandoned factories and buildings and old villas and so on, must also play a role in what you are describing. They too are remnants of the past.
“Definitely. These too are different than what you have in Bohemia. On the other hand, what they have in common, indeed what all of Central Europe has in common are original railways. In the area of Jeseník you have track and old stations that were laid and built during the time of the monarchy before World War I and they are still in use. The track and these sites too are a witness to the past and to past trauma, they are still there.”
It strikes me when the first book of your graphic novel trilogy, White Brook, came out and was successful, the comic book market here was very different. Since then has it changed?
“It has changed. When we were planning the first story and doing the first storyboards and meeting in the At the Shot-Out Eye Pub in Žižkov we really thought that we were just doing it for a few friends. We never imagined that it would be as successful as it was.
"But the project was picked up by Joachim Dvořák who runs the Labyrint publishing house and the first book sold 7,500 copies. As for the comic book market today: now almost every bookstore has a graphic novel section, whereas when White Brook came out I had trouble finding it at a major store on Wenceslas Square. I asked a clerk and it turned out they had one copy – in a section dedicated to transport, trains, and cars!”
Turning to Alois Nebel the film – I know that animation was something you considered for some time: in the end the rotoscoping technique was chosen: how does that method differ from other kinds of animation?
“When Pavel Strnad of Negativ film asked us if we would be interested in doing a film version we said we were but only if the film was not a traditional feature with regular actors. We wanted an animated film or something like that. It was director Tomáš Luňák came up with the idea of using rotoscoping.”
This is basically a technique where the film is first shot using live actors who are then traced over. This led to one interesting aspect which I read about in an interview with actor Karel Roden: he describes how the make-up during the shoot was much more specific to emphasise lines on the face, to make them easier to trace afterwards...
“Yeah, yeah. Actually I think it would be quite interesting to see the first version of the film before the animation was applied: the actors all look like they were in some German Expressionist movie by Fritz Lang! They all look like (un)dead monsters! But it helped the animators in their work. The books are in B&W and that is repeated in the film, although there are also shades of gray.”
“It’s hard for me to say and I have to admit I am really too close to it now – a need to see it in a year’s time to have a bit more distance. It has been nine years with Alois Nebel and five with the film, two alone that the rotoscoping was done. We wrote something like 20 versions of the draft screenplay so it was very tough at times. So I need a bit more distance.”
You are touring with the film currently...
“Yes, from cinema to cinema, around the country.”
Have you shown it to people where the story itself is set?
“The Czech premiere took place in Jeseník and that was really special for us, more important for me even than the film’s world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. There the film needed no special introduction and there was no question about understanding the story. Everybody there instantly gets the element of fog there, so important in the story, because they recognise it from the local landscape and mountains there firsthand. For us it was the ‘fog’ which envelops this hidden history. So that was really special and impressive.”
It must have been a very exciting year for you: both with the film being screened in Venice, also in Toronto’s festival and the film has also been chosen to vie for an Academy Award nomination. I want to wish you the best of luck with it in the future and we all have our fingers crossed.
