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" Digital Spy was fortunate enough to score a sizeable amount of time in the company of acclaimed filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn in support of the DVD release of Only God Forgives. A thematically audacious and visually stunning movie, this twisted tale of Ryan Gosling&amp;#039;s taciturn drugs dealer becoming embroiled with a vengeance-fuelled policeman called Chang has polarised audiences. But what is it really about? We probed its maker, before delving further into his career to explore the likes of Pusher and Bronson. As for the future, Bond, Beckham and Barbarella are all on the agenda... Since its release, Only God Forgives has inspired many different interpretations. What&amp;#039;s the weirdest one you&amp;#039;ve encountered so far? &amp;quot;My favourite one is when a German woman at Cannes came up to me and said, &amp;#039;I think this movie takes place in the vagina, yes?&amp;#039; I was like, &amp;#039;Yeah, that&amp;#039;s pretty spot on, I would say&amp;#039;.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s so intricately structured and full of mystery. I felt it played out like a computer game at times, as Chang has to defeat a baddie at the end of each level in order to progress and face a bigger baddie on the next level. Is there a definitive interpretation for the movie? &amp;quot;I doubt it. But of course there are patterns that are true. You can say that the Chang character has a God complex. He appears in Ryan&amp;#039;s story both as a metaphysical ghost/spirit through a sexual, dysfunctional or arousing moment, yet he also appears as a real person. Those two worlds coexist. They get more and more entangled into one.&amp;quot; Given the eye-gouging scene and quite explicit mother-son sexual issues, was it designed to be a modern retelling of the Oedipus Rex tragedy? &amp;quot;Not consciously, but it became more about that.&amp;quot; How relevant are the lyrics of Chang&amp;#039;s karaoke song at the end, especially the line &amp;#039;You were like a dream&amp;#039;? &amp;quot;They become relevant with the way that I put the film together. But also because the first song&amp;#039;s about revenge and the second song&amp;#039;s about coming home. But then I deleted a lot of the sounds for that because it became about Ryan and him finally meeting in a kind of metaphysical presence.&amp;quot;  Video: Watch Nicolas Winding Refn direct a scene for Only God Forgives Did the idea first come to you while directing the Miss Marple episode &amp;#039;Nemesis&amp;#039; for ITV in 2007? At the end she says the line &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s God who forgives...&amp;#039; &amp;quot;No, I think it came later. It really all started because I could get a two-picture deal out of France, so I needed to quickly come up with a story for the first one and I came up with this. I said I&amp;#039;d do a fight movie in Asia because that would work financially.&amp;quot; Is it tough to get funding given the lack of dialogue in your films - and presumably the scripts you have to show potential investors? &amp;quot;Well, they have a little more dialogue when you show them. Then you slowly just strip it away...&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s interesting. Secure the funding and then do it your way... &amp;quot;Well, it&amp;#039;s because film is a visual medium essentially. People maybe need to be helped understanding things that they can&amp;#039;t get out of your head visually yet because you haven&amp;#039;t done it. So there&amp;#039;s some respect to that. It&amp;#039;s also having financiers that you trust and they trust you. It&amp;#039;s very much about trust.&amp;quot; The film is full of striking imagery, but is it all conjured up in your head and visualised before you start filming? &amp;quot;No. No storyboards. We lived [in Thailand] for about three months before we started prep and found the locations. I had very little money so it all had to be shot on location. There was not a lot we could do except change the wallpaper mostly. Change the lamps. I also don&amp;#039;t have time to add a technical device that&amp;#039;s going to take a lot of time for me to set up one shot, for example.&amp;quot;  Going back to this &amp;#039;vaginal&amp;#039; interpretation of Only God Forgives, it&amp;#039;s interesting because you&amp;#039;ve referred to yourself as a &amp;#039;pornographer&amp;#039; - yet there&amp;#039;s very little actual sex in your films. At the start of Pusher 2, for example, Mads Mikkelsen fails to have sex because he can&amp;#039;t get aroused, while in Only God Forgives Ryan Gosling is very tentative about intimacy and his only &amp;#039;penetration&amp;#039; involves his hands and his mother&amp;#039;s stomach. So is it violence that functions as a sexual metaphor throughout your films? &amp;quot;Well I think that violence is always more interesting when it comes to fantasising it. Or fantasy that&amp;#039;s sexuality, because sexuality is essentially something that we all do. Hopefully. Violence is something that we all suppress.&amp;quot; Someone like Charles Bronson didn&amp;#039;t suppress his violence, but seemed to use it as a form of catharsis or an attempt to gain fame... &amp;quot;Yeah. My version of Bronson is about a man who wants to be famous and he will sacrifice anything of his natural instincts to achieve that. That&amp;#039;s how determined he is.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t know if you were misquoted, but I read that you saw a lot of yourself in that filmic interpretation of Charles Bronson&amp;#039;s character... &amp;quot;Bronson became very much a biography of my own life. It was the right time to do that. There were certain parallel things in his universe that I found very amusing. I felt that was the way to make the story. Also, they&amp;#039;ve been trying to make that movie for many years before I did it, so I took what I liked but I was interested in something very different.&amp;quot; In terms of those parallels, Bronson found his fame and status through his violence before turning to art - and it could be said that your way is through simulated violence in your films... &amp;quot;Well, yeah. It&amp;#039;s like he took the destructive route and I took the non-destructive route. In my version of Bronson when he meets his art teacher, the art teacher basically says to him that your art can be your act of violence. I had a teacher in New York, because I&amp;#039;m dyslexic I went to special schools, who introduced me to reading books. To the enjoyment of storytelling. So in a way, she showed me a pattern to infuse what I had within me. You can tell stories with that. Then I had to figure out what medium I can tell stories in. And like Charlie says, &amp;#039;Can&amp;#039;t write, can&amp;#039;t act... doesn&amp;#039;t leave me a lot of options&amp;#039;. &amp;quot;I mean, I never wanted to be a filmmaker even though I&amp;#039;m from a family of filmmaking people. I didn&amp;#039;t want to be a director, but storytelling was what I found most interesting. And I liked film. And then it just kind of converged into, well, if I can control it then I can do it. Then I had to figure out how to control it.&amp;quot;  I don&amp;#039;t know how familiar you are with football... &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never seen a football game.&amp;quot; Ah, okay. Well, some football managers want to be the ones out on the pitch. In their heads, they&amp;#039;re kicking every ball while watching. Do you imagine yourself being the protagonists in your films? &amp;quot;Of course. You have to.&amp;quot; Is it frustrating for you, as a filmmaker with a distinctive vision, to be frequently compared to other filmmakers like Lynch and Kubrick? &amp;quot;No, because I think that it&amp;#039;s a natural evolution of people inspiring each other. There&amp;#039;s not a painter in the world that you can&amp;#039;t draw a line, going back and going back. So for me, sometimes it&amp;#039;s probably even true. Sometimes it&amp;#039;s not. But people sometimes have opinions out of the frustration of not being able to understand it.&amp;quot; Which particular filmmakers inspired you? &amp;quot;All of them. I like everyone. Anything from Vincente Minnelli to Carol Reed to Gaspar No\u00C3\u00A9 to Garry Marshall - I love Pretty Woman. David Lynch, of course, is great. Jodorowsky is great. All those surreal filmmakers. I like Spielberg.&amp;quot; A lot of your films have very ambiguous endings that aren&amp;#039;t really endings at all in terms of the narrative. They often remind me of the final shot of Truffaut&amp;#039;s Les 400 Coups (The 400 Blows). That haunting freeze frame of the boy&amp;#039;s face. You don&amp;#039;t know where he&amp;#039;s going next\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 &amp;quot;My mother forced me to sit through that movie when I was like, 11 in New York. That ending would have been influential. I remember that scene and the scene where he steals the photographs in the cinema. I still remember those images. That ending was great.&amp;quot; It reminds me of that final shot in Pusher 3 with Milo looking out over the empty swimming pool. Then there are the open endings to Pusher, Drive and Only God Forgives. That sense that the characters are frozen in time. You&amp;#039;re not sure where they&amp;#039;re going... &amp;quot;I like that. I like something to really travel with you. You can&amp;#039;t stop. Art has its best effect if it&amp;#039;s an interactive experience. If it inspires images within you seeing it and you put images into it watching it that may or may not be there. But it doesn&amp;#039;t matter because it&amp;#039;s gone beyond a conventional viewing experience. The journey is almost like a metaphysical world and a spiritual world colliding. If there ever was a physical ending, it would take away the metaphysical experience that travels with you for the rest of your life. You will think about these moments until you die, because there is no resolution.&amp;quot; Are you tempted to revisit the characters from your Pusher trilogy? &amp;quot;Not me. But if other people want to do\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6&amp;quot;  Looking ahead, you&amp;#039;re moving into TV with the Barbarella series. What kind of tone are you going for? &amp;quot;Oh, I can&amp;#039;t tell you that. Come on. I&amp;#039;ll have to kill you.&amp;quot; But are the story and characters from the 1968 film being drastically changed? Some modern viewers might wonder why you&amp;#039;ve named Dr Durand Durand after a pop group, not knowing they took their name from the film... &amp;quot;Yeah. Well, they were a great pop band.&amp;quot; Agreed. Maybe get Duran Duran to do the theme tune. That would be very metatextual! &amp;quot;Haha. That would be almost like... yeah. What&amp;#039;s great about Barbarella is that essentially she&amp;#039;s a counter-culture character, so she will represent whatever you put into her.&amp;quot; From what I recall, quite a few things were put into her during the film. Literally. &amp;quot;Well, that was at a time when she very much represented a sexual revolution. But you can&amp;#039;t do that now.&amp;quot;  Things seem to have regressed recently. Look at what Miley Cyrus and Rihanna get up to in their videos. It&amp;#039;s back to sexual objectification of women. &amp;quot;Oh yeah - and I have daughters. It&amp;#039;s something my wife is very aware of and concerned about.&amp;quot; Are you tempted to do something wildly different from your past movies, in a similar vein to Martin Scorsese making Hugo and Robert Rodriguez doing Spy Kids? &amp;quot;Oh yeah. I would love to do a Miyazaki film. I love his films. He&amp;#039;s unique.&amp;quot; You were reportedly in the running to direct a James Bond movie. If you were given that franchise, where would you like to see it go? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a Bond guy. I really like them and I liked the last one. I very much like Daniel Craig and I like [producers] Barbara (Broccoli) and Michael (Wilson). You know, I have an idea. One day...&amp;quot; Milo from Pusher would be a great Bond villain. He could try to poison 007 with his cooking... &amp;quot;Haha, yeah. [puts on Milo&amp;#039;s voice] &amp;#039;Ahh, Bond...&amp;quot;  How concerned would you be about giving up creative control for a big budget project? &amp;quot;I think in the end I&amp;#039;ve been fortunate to be around other projects that size and been offered opportunities. But I feel maybe in the end... giving up your creative freedom is a wonderful luxury. Swapping that for a larger canvas has to be really worth it. Why would you want to spend two years of your life being miserable?&amp;quot; And then the cut that&amp;#039;s released in cinemas might not be your vision... &amp;quot;Well, you know, certain people in Hollywood and the entertainment industry who have been involved in various stages of big movies say, &amp;#039;First you&amp;#039;ve got to make it. Then you&amp;#039;ve got to promote it. Then you&amp;#039;ve got to live with it&amp;#039;. Of course they bring great financial opportunities, but I would still rather spend my own money making sure that I can make the film I want to make. I always say no amount of money outweighs a creative high. You can&amp;#039;t buy it. Not for a trillion dollars. You can&amp;#039;t value it like that.&amp;quot; Imagine how Ridley Scott felt when Blade Runner came out with that original ending using footage he didn&amp;#039;t even shoot. It must have been heartbreaking. &amp;quot;Well, at least he got back and made what, four versions afterwards?&amp;quot; Haha, there&amp;#039;ll be a few more\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 &amp;quot;Yeah. The theory is that that&amp;#039;s what killed Sergio Leone - when they recut Once Upon a Time in the West for the American market. They changed the whole movie around from this extremely beautiful, poetic story of epic proportions and made it into a 90-minute movie. The story is that that&amp;#039;s what gave him his heart attack.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve been described as having some kind of telekinetic relationship with Ryan Gosling. How does that work on set? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just about trusting each other and saying, &amp;#039;What about this?&amp;#039; or, &amp;#039;What about that?&amp;#039; But you see, when you shoot in chronological order it&amp;#039;s always very open.&amp;quot;  I heard he came up with some lines during Only God Forgives like the &amp;#039;cum dumpster&amp;#039; insult\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 &amp;quot;Oh yeah. English is my second language, so I would say, &amp;#039;Ryan, can you come up with a list of the worst things you can call a woman in America?&amp;#039; He was like, &amp;#039;Sure!&amp;#039; That was top of the list.&amp;quot; Are you planning to work with him again? Is there a project you have planned? &amp;quot;Oh yeah... No... I mean, we do talk about a comedy.&amp;quot; Before Ryan Gosling came along, you&amp;#039;d worked with Mads Mikkelsen a few times before\u00E2\u20AC\u00A6 &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been very lucky. I&amp;#039;ve worked with the three best actors: Mads Mikkelsen, Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling.&amp;quot; Would you say Gosling is your current &amp;#039;muse&amp;#039;, if that&amp;#039;s the right word? &amp;quot;I think we&amp;#039;re very similar in many ways. So it&amp;#039;s been very easy to work together.&amp;quot; Does Mads Mikkelsen feel like a jilted ex-lover now? &amp;quot;Well, the thing is me and Mads started out together. [Pusher] was my first movie, his first movie. He&amp;#039;s fantastic. He&amp;#039;s just a magnificent, magnificent actor. He&amp;#039;s a real, real star. He has the magnetism of David Beckham...&amp;quot; Who you directed on a commercial recently... &amp;quot;Yeah, I just worked with him. He was absolutely terrific. Absolutely terrific. I&amp;#039;m not a football guy and couldn&amp;#039;t care less about it. But as a performer, he was terrific. And Tom was great. What he did in Bronson was magnificent. It was a tour de force of every possible thing you could do with one character. I&amp;#039;ve been very lucky to have this opportunity of working with Mads, Tom and Ryan.&amp;quot; Finally, going back to 1996 and making your debut feature Pusher as a very young guy - what was the most important lesson you learnt from the experience? &amp;quot;It took me a few years to learn, but don&amp;#039;t think you can walk on water...&amp;quot; Only God Forgives is out now to buy on DVD and Blu-ray. Hollywood and movie violence debate: Where do the filmmakers stand? &amp;quot;Ryan Gosling is the one&amp;quot; - Nicolas Winding Refn on Only God Forgives Nicolas Winding Refn rules out &amp;#039;Drive&amp;#039; movie sequel Gallery - Only God Forgives in pictures:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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