In 2023, Nicolas Winding Refn was clinically dead for twenty-five minutes. After being diagnosed with a ‘leaky heart’ he underwent emergency surgery that was meant to rectify it, but during the procedure, the organ simply stopped. For Refn, it came at a time when his creative spark had burned right out too, a period when he hadn’t made a movie in ten years and had dubbed himself ‘artistically dead’. But then he woke, and was consciously and creatively rebirthed in a way he couldn’t have imagined. ”Dying and coming back, I could reignite the flame,” he tells us. “That flame was as burning hot as it was when I was 24, when I made my first film.”

The result of this operatic resurrection is his latest film, Her Private Hell. Like Drive (2011) or The Neon Demon (2016), it’s a neon-soaked fever dream of hyper-saturated colour and synthwave aesthetics, filled with slow, mythic sequences punctured with explosive bursts of bloodshed, where an archetypal figure violently protects innocence. With nods to the Italian melodrama genre, Giallo, a language transformed and perfected by Dario Argento, Her Private Hell’s rapturous score is composed by Argento’s three-time collaborator, Pino Donaggio. The film’s misty-lit scenes and surrealist backdrops at times feature campy oversized quartz crystals and Roman busts, and yet a fairy-tale Grimm-ness lingers alongside the perfectly decadent costumes and witty non sequiturs. The result is a movie that fulfils Refn’s manifesto – one that’s hell-bent on defying the AI algorithm.

Opening in a hazy, high-rise city is Elle (Sophie Thatcher), an actor filming a schtick-y, sci-fi, overseen by her movie-mogul father, Johnny Thunders. But it’s the tensions with her former best friend, fellow actress and now stepmother, Dominique (Havana Rose Liu) that Elle is most consumed by, a relationship tinged with revenge and lust. Hijacking this storyline is Charles Melton’s American GI, the angular-jawed Private K, pursuing the foggy streets of Tokyo and the yakuza who inhabit it, in order to avenge the abduction of his young daughter who he believes has been taken by a devilish figure known as ‘The Leatherman’. It’s this mysterious villain that binds the two storylines together – a man whose daughter has been abducted, and a young woman who’s on the precipice of being in danger herself.

Marking the film’s release, Winding Refn talks to us about his resurrection, creating neon worlds, and embracing the ugly parts of humanity.

Shana Chandra: Hi, Nicolas. How are you? I can imagine you’re very busy at the moment with the big press tour for Her Private Hell.
Nicolas Winding Refn: I’m here to service.

SC: [laughs] What I loved so much about Her Private Hell is that it has this combination of contemporary humour, especially around the character Hunter, but it’s also sliced within this operatic fairy tale and surreal horror-thriller. There are references to Giallo, and for me, it’s reminiscent of Greek mythology, too.  I was wondering how these informed the film, and what inspired this project?
NWR: Thank you very much. I think all of the above is correct, so that’s spot on. I don’t know what inspires me. I don’t have an agenda. I don’t know why I make what I make, other than that it’s what I like to see. Creating on instinct is something I’ve found a lot of pleasure in. It’s almost a form of addiction. So as long as I can stay true to that, then I see a pathway. In this movie, I was very conscious of, in today’s world, making a movie that AI could not make. A movie that will be the enemy of the algorithm. Since I hadn’t made a movie in ten years, I thought there’s a whole generation [out there] that has been spoon-fed sanitised content, and that maybe it could be fun to show them another side of opportunities.

SC: I heard that you have this spontaneous way of working in that when you go on set, sometimes things can change on that day, depending on how you were feeling. I was wondering if you could tell me how the film changed in this way?
NWR: It’s not just one thing, it’s everything. [You might think] ‘Oh, that’s too deep’, or ‘I have another ending in mind, let’s do that.’ It can be something that evokes in the process of making it, a piece of music, it can be something specific, like relationships between the actors that I adjust or radically change. So you also need people that are fearless. I’ll give you an example. Since it’s so far away, it makes it clearer to give it as an example, but in The Neon Demon, Jena Malone’s character is supposed to die halfway through. But because she was such a good actor, I decided to keep her alive and change everything because of it. That’s how radical things can go.

“If people at the Cannes Film Festival can have a literal heart attack of hatred, and others can have a gasp of euphoria, you know, you’ve done something right.”

SC: And also, you film chronologically. In some ways, that’s technically harder. Tell me about that decision.
NWR: Well, I’ve always done that. I think it’s the ‘not knowing’ possibility that I find interesting. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it is we’re making, and I always say, “Don’t ask what it is, ask what it’s not.” If that’s the process, you have to go all [the way] around to get back to where you started. But that is when you really know that whatever your ending is, it’s the right ending. You just have to make sure you don’t run out of money before you get to the end. [laughs]

SC: I think that process helps with the interpretation of Her Private Hell, in terms of how many there could be. I was wondering if there was an interpretation that you’ve heard of that has either surprised or delighted you.
NWR: I mean, there have been so many, it’s hard to keep count. I’m more just happy if people love it or hate it. That’s what I’m more interested in. How people then read into it, is a very personal journey. That’s really nothing to do with me, it’s more about the person reading it. Creativity is a strange, strange liquid, because on one level, creativity is a completely nonexistent component of our lives. It doesn’t feed us. It doesn’t give us water. It doesn’t provide for us, necessarily. But on the other side, creativity is the spirit’s medicine. It’s medicine for the inner pathway between the higher powers and yourself. So when people say, “creativity is just a luxury” – I don’t agree. I think creativity is as important as water. We just forget sometimes, because technology and the powers of financial investment overshadow it, so we have to fight for creativity to stay pure and relevant.

SC: The movie stayed with me for so long afterwards, and one of the most memorable scenes is the fight scene between Elle and Dominique where they sling the most horrible things that they can say to each other. There are also these moments of revenge and lust. I’m interested in why you’re interested in depicting these emotions that some people would say are the uglier parts of ourselves, because for me, it was so exciting to see them on screen.
NWR: Well, the ugly parts are drama. The good side is the boring part. Who do you like the most, Luke Skywalker or Han Solo? The more extreme the characters are, the more exciting the drama is. We live in a time where we are supposed to fear what we consider the negative sides of humanity. We live in a time where we’re supposed to be not just equal [to one another], but basically the same person, but obviously that’s not how life really functions. It may function like that on social media, where you want to be liked, because you’re afraid of being ostracised from the herd. But human behaviour is so different, and so primal. But we forget because our entertainment is so sanitised by the algorithms which base themselves on avatars. So it’s important that we remember that the ugliness is as entertaining as, if not more so, than the so-called good sides of ourselves.

SC: I know you’ve opened up about your death experience in the past, and I was interested whether it informed the film visually?
NWR: No, I can’t say that it was one of those movies where I dreamt the whole thing as I was dying. I wish I could say that, because that would be an amazing story of, “Look how great I am.” [laughs] Unfortunately, my death was very banal. It just goes black. There’s nothing there.

SC: Maybe because your waking life is so full of beautiful images.
NWR: Or the fact is there’s just nothing there.

SC: How did that experience change you?
NWR: It changed me in the sense that when I was brought back, what I took back with me from the land of the dead was the creative fire that had gone out in me prior. I had already been kind of artistically dead for a number of years, or a year or so before I was diagnosed. I had nothing left in me. [The fire] kind of burned out at the very end. So, I was already going to be staring into the abyss for a long time, if nothing were to happen. Dying and coming back, I could reignite the flame. That flame was as burning hot as it was when I was 24, when I made my first film. Even though I’m 55, I’m artistically a teenager, and also just as naive and idealistic. And that’s a beautiful thing, to never let the child die in you, because if you do that you’re just a grown-up, and what’s fun about that?

SC: I totally agree.

Nicolas’s computer cuts out, and then he reconnects

NWR: I’m back from the dead. [laughs]

SC: So fitting [laughs]. Watching the film, I also love how you play with certain archetypes, and you’ve mentioned there’s a recurring figure in your films, that’s a protector of innocence. Why do you think that figure is so important for you to depict in these different contexts?
NWR: That I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that in the sense of a satisfying answer. I’m attracted to what attracts me, and I don’t think about it. I try to make all decisions with my gut, and just to sustain that purity is enough of a struggle, trying to understand it is way too much work. [laughs].

SC:  Neon is such a huge colour palette for you – in this movie and others. I know that you’re colourblind, but you’ve said that you feel colour. I was wondering what these neon hues make you feel.
NWR: I think neon was always an attraction to me, because I remember it from my early days in New York, obviously. There was something always organic about neon – it felt futuristic and yet at the same time, analogue – you could bend the bars and do cool designs with it. It just became a form of fetishisation that I really thought was cool.

SC: You’ve mentioned how movies or any creative text change as we age because we change and so our relationship with it changes. Is there a movie of yours that has changed in meaning for you as you’ve grown older?
NWR: No, I would say, it’s more that I made a film many years ago that was a complete failure, and I accept that much more now than back then, and understand why it was a complete failure, because I needed to fail to know what success really was. But Only God Forgives gave me a chance to fail young, rather than fail old. So I had the energy and the arrogance to not be too affected by it.

“Unfortunately, my death was very banal. It just goes black. There’s nothing there.”

SC: What drew you to Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton, apart from Charles Melton’s abs, which you’ve mentioned were a foundation of the film. [both laugh]
NWR: You have to love his abs. Sophie has this incredibly, almost angelic innocence to her and this porcelain skin, like a glass doll. A lot of the movie is, I guess, my own objectification of using people as dolls, moving them around and putting clothes on them that look fabulous. She’s a lovely person, and I really like her – she’s very smart. Charles is a similar thing. He looks like an old-time movie star, the kind of look you don’t really get anymore. Those are very precious moments. So they become like objects that I can move around to frame.

“Even though I’m 55, I’m artistically a teenager, and also just as naive and idealistic. And that’s a beautiful thing, to never let the child die in you, because if you do that you’re just a grown-up, and what’s fun about that?”

SC: The music of your films also becomes so embedded in people’s minds. With Her Private Hell, you had Pino Donaggio create the score, and what I found fascinating is that sometimes in his operatic score, the way I was feeling was in contrast to the way the music was trying to make you feel. It made me really aware of that instinct inside. How did you want that operatic music to register in this film?
NWR: That’s a really interesting observation, because a lot of film music is really there to just underscore what you’re supposed to feel by design, but not what the movie maybe is moving towards. So, if you’re just having pleasurable moments that underscore what you’re supposed to feel, at any given time, I believe we can lose singularity of it being an object that’s foreign to you, that you have to almost, at times, observe and yet be seduced by. So when the music is so extreme compared to what you expect, it gives you an ability to be more wondrous at what you’re looking at, rather than just having your emotions clarified. I believe those are the soundtracks that stay with you for much longer, rather than just music that underscores what you already anticipated.

SC: You mentioned that your movies are designed to defy the algorithm – what’s your recipe for successfully achieving this?
NWR: Well, if people at the Cannes Film Festival can have a literal heart attack of hatred, and others can have a gasp of euphoria, you know, you’ve done something right.

Her Private Hell will be out in cinemas throughout the UK and Ireland on September 25th.