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EVEN BECH NÆSHEIM: THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED NORWEGIAN DIRECTOR WHO IS TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM
Suddenly thrust into the global spotlight, Bech Næsheim talks about his journey with his sexuality and his mental health struggles, and how that has shaped him both as a person and as a filmmaker.
BY Chelsea Injani FOR The New York Times
PUBLISHED: 3rd December 2022
His apartment is located in a tiny area of Los Angeles I have never actually been to, a place which I can only describe as the perfect place for a recluse. The area somehow seems to suit Even Bech Næsheim, acclaimed director of three time Oscar winning film The Boy Who Couldn’t Hold His Breath Underwater , perfectly, with graffiti murals covering every blank space and tiny little bodegas in the place of commercial supermarket chains.
He’ll apologise for the state of the kitchen a few thousand times even before I get to see it myself, and immediately I know I am about to meet a man who is humble in the face of millions, because that is the sort of person he is at his core.
The Boy Who Couldn’t Hold His Breath Underwater, or Boy as it has been christened, is a three time Oscar award winning film after an unexpected and last minute entry to the 2022 Oscars. Incredibly so, it became a nominee for Best Picture and took out Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Director, becoming the first foreign language film to win the latter of the achievements.
I also discover how his anticipation for this interview has made him “scatterbrained”, which is how he describes himself, because after telling me that he stops me in his entrance to show me the vivid blue painting that hangs on the back wall. As far as I can tell it is a park bench, the lights of a city behind it. There are letters carved into the bench, and numbers which could be dates of significance to the man. At the bottom of the painting, written in gold lettering, is the title of the artwork. i’ve missed you.
“My friend Mikael painted that for me. It was kind of a reconciliation present.”
He swiftly moves further into his apartment after that, leaving no room for me to ask any questions. It’s not like there is any ambiguity to his statement either. Mikael Øverlie Boukhal, Bech Næsheim’s closest collaborator, script writer and director of photography for Boy , met his future directing-partner in high school in Elvebakken, one of the more prestigious schools in Oslo.
It was there where their friendship disintegrated, and then again two years later where they patched it up, all of the text message screenshots and Instagram posts being sprawled across the internet just three days after his Oscar win.
The official statement that came with those screenshots came with the official announcement of Bech Næsheim’s bipolar diagnosis, one that became evident after the reveal that he had not attempted to make a secret of.
He is very candid in his discussion of it now however, which he tells me is because he “needs to get his discussion and interpretation of his illness out, before it can be tainted with experts and talk show hosts telling him the best way to deal with it.” He also explains that his experience in life has made him comfortable with talking about it one-on-one frankly, but it is a new thing for him to broadcast it to the world. He’s had a lot of discussion about whether it is the right thing to do, but the overarching theme of these chats, as he tells me, is that he needs to set the tone of the global discussion on his personal life, and the only way he can see to do that is to start the discussion himself.
“Do you want to know something interesting? My bipolar is the smallest mental illness issue I suffer with. The thing about bipolar is that in the early days of my diagnosis I would be so carefully examining every mood to work out whether it was just a regular emotion or whether it was the beginnings of an episode. I don’t do that so much anymore, which I think is more a testament to how comfortable I am with the environment I am in and the people around me than it is to how comfortable I am with the actual illness.
“Now, the biggest problem I actually have is with the side effects of it, all the issues that I now have with my executive functions. I can never stay focused on a topic, I always get sidetracked, and I feel like that’s a good disclaimer to begin this interview with, and although all the people in my life are really good about it and help me a lot with staying on topic, it doesn’t make the battle in my head any less hard.”
It is an interesting point which Bech Næsheim raises about the battle in his head, and in his email to me requesting this interview, he asked that I be flexible about when it occurred, citing ‘the battle in his head’ as the reason. I quote the email here, which said: “If you don’t mind being flexible about this, I want to make sure I bring you on just a day. Not like a good day or a bad day. A day. Having you meet me on either of the other sorts of days will make you think of me as someone who I am not. I don’t want to pretend to be anything other than painfully human, and I don’t want you to get an interpretation of me as something other than that.”
It was that line that set the tone for this interview, which wasn’t really an interview at all. To me it was a casual conversation between friends about the heavier topics in life and how that shaped a person’s life and the art that that person created, because it would be a disservice to Boy and Bech Næsheim to call his film anything less than art.
Bech Næsheim’s debut film follows the story of a teenage girl named Else and her journey of discovering her sexuality and determining her place in the world after finishing high school. This film is an excellent critique of the common westernised school system, and the lack of structure in her life and her institutionalised self is expertly shown but subtly hidden through the clocks which appear in every scene, a constant reminder of her lack of cyclic motion in her life and the integration of the attempt of structure, the occasional coffee run which always happens at the same time, the absent space in her life which is represented in his apartment with its sparse decor and the way in which the scenes are framed, putting her as the smallest feature in the beginning of the film when she is most alone, and as her story progresses it is visible to the viewer her growth and her coming into herself, as she begins to do so. It is a highly effective way to keep track of where and when the story is, considering the non-linear narrative.
The non-linear narrative does this film credit also, something I have not been able to say about many films. This technique, which is most commonly used in thrillers such as Pulp Fiction and Mulholland Drive, is hard to apply to stories about real life, and even harder to get right. Somehow, the beginning of the film from a linear standpoint works perfectly in the middle of the film, a demonstration of how far she has already come and how far she has yet to go.
“With Boy, really I am just trying to capture the feeling of its predecessor, and of the difficult situation that is choosing between who is best for you and who you want.”
Currently, he is splitting his time between his home in Norway and this apartment in Los Angeles. Throughout our entire conversation he keeps his mouth firmly shut on his next project, only telling me what I already know: that his first movie is part of three, and that the second part is due for release mid 2023.
“Even now it was hard to secure funding for my movie, because like I’d never done a film before, and to jump straight in with my own script and to cover a lot of the subject matter that it covers, as well as in my personal life being open about my pansexuality – yeah, it was really difficult.
“And actually, I got the trilogy idea from Baz Luhrmann, who kind of created the first movies I actually fell in love with. I get a lot of my use of colour from him, the idea that I need to hide symbolism in every part of my frame. To all the kids who might read this, sometimes your teachers are right when they say everything is symbolic.”
He laughs when I suggest that the biggest similarity between him and Luhrmann is their lack of films that aren’t critically acclaimed. He brushes me off with a joke and brings me back to the film.
“I used that film to address my own life, to kind of talk about my own problems without having to go up to the individual people and say what I thought. It was a way for other people to understand my way of thinking when events were occurring. But at the same time it was a love letter to the people who got me through all of the hard times in my life, very specifically my husband.”
When I inquire more about his husband, Isak Valtersen, Even smiles, his smile becoming increasingly more genuine. We know almost nothing about Valtersen, and the little we do know has been gleaned from interviews with Even, the tidbits which he shares when he inevitably gets off topic and veers towards his husband.
“At the heart of it, Boy is a gift for Isak. The first movie I ever gave to him was called Boy as well, which is the predecessor I mentioned before. The title is a reference to one of our first ever conversations.” He grins wryly, an odd look for someone who seems to radiate happiness as much as Bech Næsheim does. “I promised him I’d make him a movie, and so the first movie I ever gave away was that.”
I enquire gently about his expression.
“I made Boy – the first Boy, not the ones in cinema – during one of the happiest periods of my life. And I’m not trying to say that I’m not happy now, because I am, and almost blissfully so, but there was something about that fresh-out-of-high-school, totally in love sort of thing, where we were just moving into our first apartment and I was stable in my mental health and everyone around me was around me for the sole purpose of supporting me. Maybe it’s the nostalgia talking, but I genuinely believe that that was the best time of my life. I think I knew it then too.”
Then why did you adapt it for the big screen, I ask, if it was so personal to you?
“I don’t want to assign such a big role to Isak without giving him any thought in the matter, but to me, Isak is easily the most important person in my life. And at the heart of it, Boy is and will remain a love letter to him, no matter if we stay together or not. I think that really shines through in the focus that Boy has on giving the characters time to grow, in the time that is allocated for them to just do nothing, and even though those scenes do have relevance later in the film, I think it’s better to have that in a film, because it’s more reflective of real life that way.”
Breaking up?
“Well– I’m definitely not suggesting that I want to break up with Isak. I’d never say that. But something I really value in my life is choice, the choice to be able to make my own choices, and the freedom to be accepted and supported no matter what choice I make, good or bad. And in saying that, I also need to give Isak room to make the choices that he wants to make, and if that includes breaking up, then that’s something I need to respect.
One of the things that drew me to Isak, especially because when I first met him I was already in a relationship, was the unfailing way that he stands by me instead in front of me, if that makes sense? He gives me room to make my own decisions instead of dictating what decisions I am allowed to make.”
Relating this back to Boy , I then ask him, the contrast between Connor and Myra and their way of handling Else’s choices is very different. Why did you choose to do this and how does this reflect your life outside of your film?
“Else did end up with Myra, even though Connor was also letting her make her own choices and standing by her when she made kind of shitty ones. I feel like although what Isak did for me in terms of letting me make my own choices was better for me, I also feel like you can’t discredit someone immediately if that is what they do. Toxic behaviours are bad, yes, but also you have to give people the chance to learn and grow and improve, or else it’s not fair on them. In terms of the film, and my own relationships, I guess the message there is that you have to be gentle with the ones you love, and that extends to when you have to let them down.”
How much of your first relationship went into the film?
“I learnt a lot from my first relationship, the one before Isak. We’re still friends too, and I know there’s going to be no animosity if I talk about it as well. I went through my whole diagnosis with her, all of the learning about what it means to be bipolar and the medications that I would have to take for the rest of my life, but also with my own acceptance of it and the situation that I was in.
In terms of the film, I think that shows through most with Else and Connor. Connor is definitely not supposed to be a representation of my first relationship, and I know as I was writing the script especially I was taking a lot more of the situation than I was the character. And the situation was that we just fell out of love. It was a natural progression for us to be on, and because I had been in that relationship for four years of my already short life, and so it was a very hard fact to confront and I actually didn’t, for a long time. It wasn’t until I met someone else that I knew I had to move on.”
When I inquire if the next person was his now-husband, Bech Næsheim refuses to comment.
“The thing about my first relationship–” he moves on to instead, “was those first few months kind of during and after my diagnosis. Diagnosis is a really long process, which I don’t think most people realise. Once you have a label, a lot more work needs to go on behind the scenes to make sure you are stable and that the meds you are on are going to work and what sort of therapy is going to be helpful to you or whether you need it at all.
It was partially the length of that process and the repercussions of my very first episode which ended up culminating in a major event in my life, which happened during my first relationship and which changed the way a lot of people saw me. It also had a major impact on how I interacted with the world too, because for a long time after that I felt like I had nothing to give the world, that my presence would offend people simply just by occupying the same spaces as they did.”
Even though I do not know the specifics of the event which Even is describing, from the haunted look in his eyes that he gets when he discusses it, I can tell that this event is something that completely changed the world of both him and all the people who surround him. His whole posture shows me a man who has seen and confronted his own demons and come out the other side bruised and battered, but ultimately alive and ready to fight for another day.
“It’s a very hard mentality to escape from. Depression is addictive, and thinking about yourself in any way that isn’t negative becomes full of guilt. And it is something that is borderline impossible to pull yourself out from alone. It was definitely the hardest thing that has happened in my life so far.”
“The first time I used the label bipolar to describe me was actually to Isak. For the first two years, I had totally disconnected myself from it, but I needed it to describe a situation that was happening right now and why it was happening and to really give a reason. It wasn’t that that that was a bad thing, forcing me to talk about myself with that label. In fact, I think it was the most defining moment of my life in terms of accepting myself.”
“Actually, can I bring this towards sexuality?” He will suddenly interject, eyes wide like he is scared I am going to be offended by his request. I laugh, and tell him to go ahead, that he is the one leading this discussion and I am really only here to guide him.
“I think that labels, while helpful in describing things, aren’t always necessary, and I say this in terms of sexuality for both myself and for people I know. Sexuality is a spectrum, and especially in my own experiences with sexuality, I have found that sometimes it just isn’t necessary to put a label on anything, because they can constrict the experience into something that it’s not.”
His openness in the aspects of his life that he chooses to share is commendable, and something that is not often seen in this capacity in Hollywood His generosity does not only extend to the issues he is passionate about however, a specific example being his directing skills creating one of the most visually stunning advertisements I’ve personally ever seen for the Fred Hollows Charity working to improve eyesight in Kenya. I have been unable to determine if these projects have any correlation to the work his husband does in biochemistry and molecular biology, as Valtersen works and publishes under a pseudonym which is unknown to anyone.
As I am beginning to wrap up my conversation with Bech Næsheim, Valtersen comes through the door, disheveled and flustered, but visibly brighter when he lays eyes on his husband. I immediately move to leave, but he shoots me down, grabbing a drink and coming over to sit with Even and I.
I feel suddenly like a movie goer, watching their evening routine. Even recounts his day, summarises all the aspects of our conversation which he believes to be important. Isak discusses his work, which for the sake of his own anonymity I will not be revealing any details about. The precautions that Isak takes to protect his work, such as the aforementioned pseudonym and also the careful selection process he implements when hiring new grad students.
When I ask Isak why he chose to do use a pseudonym all the way back at the beginning of his own career, he laughs. “I had complete and utter faith in Even that he would make it big one day. The name was just my way of protecting my work’s integrity. I didn’t want my projects to take funding away from others just because my work has a big name attached to it.”
I immediately pick up on Isak’s negative attitude towards his work, the way he views any funding for him as being taken away from others instead of gifted to him. Even immediately makes the same connection. “You do important work too Isak. It’s not taking funding away from others when you need the funding just as much.”
The following argument sounds completely rehearsed, like it is the basis of every night’s over dinner conversation. However, it would be wrong of me to call it an argument at all, because the conversation is at its heart supportive and warming. It is clear, to me at least, that their relationship is structured around the basis that it should always be the two of them against the problem, and not one against the other. It is a concept that there can never be enough representation of, and in spending the six hours I spent with Bech Næsheim and the two I spent with them both, it is very clear where Bech Næsheim gets his inspiration for his film and for his characters and their motivations.
The discussion goes on for a while longer, but in comparison to Even, Isak is constantly trying to shift the conversation off of him, even managing to get me to speak for longer than a minute about my own life. When I ask him why, he says it is because his lack of comfort in the public eye.
“Obviously I will support Even with everything I have, but also I want our private life to stay private. I feel like the acknowledgement that celebrities have private lives too is something that is underrepresented in today’s media culture, especially with the instantaneous access that people have to gossip. It just– my life is my life, and I guess I’m just not great at dealing with public scrutiny for all of my actions.”
At the end of my interview, the goodbye takes much longer than expected, and the informality of it is rather pleasant. Everything from his invitation into his apartment to actually making me feel at home offers a feeling I think is unique to Bech Næsheim, and every little gesture, from the cup of tea I was offered on the way in all the way to the assumption that I was allowed into all spaces no matter how private they were, and the pure domesticity that radiated from every crevice, Bech Næsheim has managed to achieve what is perhaps the epitome of the Hollywood Dream, all without sacrificing the core traits which build him as a person: generosity, power of spirit and being supported by a love which has formed from seeing the worst of people and still saying yes, I love you. I accept you.
This man has nowhere else to go but up, both as a person and as a creator, and it will give me great pleasure to follow him throughout the many successful years he has lined up in his future.
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Bech Næsheim and his husband live part time in both Los Angeles and Oslo. Injani is a reporter for the New York Times.
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