When setting up a scene, the visual aspect is the film crew’s priority. The fact that the result is close to the reality of its university setting is a bonus. | Photo: Michel Gilgen

For their film ‘The Reformer’, the Zurich director Stefan Haupt and the scriptwriter Simone Schmid consulted more than a dozen experts: theologians, historians, art and religion specialists. It was released in 2019 and traces the later life of Ulrich Zwingli, from when he settled in Zurich in 1519 to his death at the Battle of Kappel in 1531. “I wanted to create a portrait that was as close as possible to the historical sources, while at the same time portraying the spirit of the time and the tensions that ran through it”, says Haupt. “I also met pastors and visited monuments. This work was essential for me, because I felt a responsibility to produce a film that took current knowledge into account”.

As for Schmid, she did a lot of reading, from recent studies to Zwingli’s own correspondence. In particular, she did a lot of work on the character of Anna Reinhart, Zwingli’s wife: “I had to reconstruct her character from hardly any sources. To do this, I consulted specialists on women during the Reformation. Thanks to their knowledge, we were able to reconstruct a plausible character. That is, a woman who did not actively participate in her husband’s theological debates, but who was able to form an opinion and express it”. The readings and the exchanges with scholars fed her inspiration as scriptwriter. “You then go through a kind of distillation process to make it into a script. This involves giving up many elements, simplifying facts and sometimes adjusting them to the constraints of the dramaturgy, the production, the budget...”. Haupt says he gave up the idea of reconstructing a cemetery around Zurich’s Grossmünster, because the logistics involved would have been beyond his financial means. “Instead, I went to great lengths to remove the pews from the church so that I could film the standing mass crowd, as was the case at the time”.

Alien, a monster science-fiction masterpiece

It’s about a space crew attacked by an arachnid creature that penetrates human bodies to reproduce. The mythical monster in Ridley Scott’s film ‘Alien’ was created by Swiss visual artist Hans Ruedi Giger in 1979 without him claiming any scientific consistency. Yet, according to Jean-Sébastien Steyer, a palaeontologist at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and co-author of the book ‘L’art et la science dans Alien’ (‘Art and Science in “Alien”’), the monster is quite realistic, from a scientific point of view: “This organism is biologically functional, both in terms of its mode of development and its various types of locomotion and behaviour”. And what about its complex mode of reproduction, which begins with an egg, from which the Facehugger emerges and clings to the host’s face, then penetrates its body to develop? “It is present in many insects, for example, some wasps”.

And the yellow, acidic blood of the alien, is that plausible? “The colour of this vital fluid evokes the haemolymph of insects. As for its acidity, even though such acidic fluids really do exist, it still leaves a question: is this blood acidic in its vascular system, which must then be particularly resistant, or does it become acidic on contact with the air?”. As to whether this alien would find its place in the tree of life, Steyer still answers in the affirmative: “With such a mosaic of both arthropod (its insect development) and tetrapod (its arms, legs and vertebrae), I would classify Giger’s alien at the base of the large clade comprising arthropods and vertebrates”. In Steyer’s eyes, the creature represents a masterpiece of science fiction: “Alien concentrates the most repulsive features of current and fossil biodiversity. This makes it an original and powerful monster, because it is hyper-realistic”.

The Lord of the Rings, realistic weather in a fantasy world
The British climatologist Dan Lunt published his first study on the climate of Middle-earth in 2013, just before the release of ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’, the second film in the ‘Hobbit’ trilogy, based on the novel by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Lunt is a specialist in the Earth’s ancient climates, and he fed a meteorological simulator with data from detailed maps of Middle-earth: physical data, e.g., the position of the continents and the average altitude, were used to obtain the amount of precipitation, solar incidence, CO2 concentration and the types of wind. The result is that “Tolkien’s world was meteorologically credible. The simulated climates correspond to certain regions of the world. The hot and arid areas of Los Angeles and West Texas, for example, are climatically close to Mordor. The regions where the Hobbits live, with a lot of rainfall, have a climate similar to that of Lincolnshire in Great Britain, or the city of Dunedin, on the South Island of New Zealand.

But apart from proving the physical accuracy of the world created by Tolkien, what was Lunt’s aim with these simulations? “From a scientific point of view, it’s always interesting to test our models, even with data from fiction. But my main aim was to interest the general public in my work. And it worked out quite well, we’ve had articles all over the world”. Following this success, Lunt set about modelling the climate of the different kingdoms in ‘Game of Thrones’. “This was a more interesting challenge, scientifically speaking. Given that, to simulate permanent winter, we had to change the axis of the Earth”.

Arrival: first Contact, an example of complexity
In Denis Villeneuve’s film ‘Arrival’ (2016), twelve alien ships land in different parts of the world. The purpose of their occupants eludes the US military, who recruit the linguistic expert Louise Banks to make contact with these heptapods, who communicate in writing by expelling liquid from their hands to form complex rings. In a key passage, Banks writes on a large board the phrase “What is your purpose on Earth?”. She then dissects the sentence and shows its complexity. According to Frédéric Landragin: “It’s composed of words with no obvious meanings – the interrogative pronoun ‘what’, the preposition ‘on’ – and is characterised by grammatical relations between words and by references: one to Earth, the other to the extraterrestrials themselves through the possessive ‘your’”. Landragin is the director of research at the CNRS, where he specialises in linguistics and automatic language processing, and the author of ‘Comment parler à un alien?’ (‘How do you talk to an alien?’).

For Landragin, Banks’s character is credible, as are her explanations. “We are far from the caricatures where the aliens speak fluent English or bring with them a universal automatic translator that allows immediate dialogue. Here we see the expert’s reservations about the possibility of a rapid method of communication. What’s more, we see her team at work, we observe their trials and their progress. The film seems to me to be exemplary from this point of view”. However, Landragin does harbour a reservation about the film not focussing on learning words for objects not present in the spacecraft: “All the exchanges take place in a dark and empty room. Banks refers to herself, the reference to an individual, and we also see Ian Donnelly, her physicist sidekick, miming a walking action, the reference to an action. But we don’t see how to explain the word ‘goal’, it’s a reference to an abstract concept. Obviously, it’s much trickier…”.

Open-mindedness essential

In the end, the film is the result of a collective effort involving various professions, limited by their own constraints. It’s a world far removed from that of researchers. Rebecca Giselbrecht, a theologian at the University of Bern and a pastor, was particularly interested in the figure of Anna Reinhart. She was interviewed by Schmid and was delighted to have been contacted: “[Schmid] wanted to know in great detail what was going on in the minds of Zwingli and his wife, including details of their sexuality. I found her questions interesting and inspiring. We don’t come from the same world and I was willing to share my knowledge without knowing exactly what she would do with it. I had to let go”.

Meanwhile, Reinhard Bodenmann, a historian specialising in the 16th century, was somewhat hesitant when Haupt reached out: “Mainly because I was quite busy. Then there were some colleagues who’d told me the film might not be any good. But, anyway, I started reading the script, and I thought it had potential. That’s why I accepted the challenge”. He then spent more than 75 hours re-reading and annotating the script: “There were anachronisms, such as the scene where Anna’s son is upset by the death of a bird. At that time, the death of an animal wouldn’t have provoked the same reactions as it does today”. Bodenmann says that he wanted to pass on to the film team a certain working methodology and sought to introduce them to how people thought in the 16th century, so that they would not project their sensitivities onto the characters and dialogue of the past.

“There needs to be a certain open-mindedness and an attempt to understand how films are made”.Simone Schmid

“I must admit that I was anxious before I saw the film in the cinema”, says Bodenmann. “I didn’t know whether the director and the scriptwriter had taken my comments into account. I knew that a historical film would emerge from the novel and that it was not a historical documentary. But I was afraid that my name would appear in the credits of a film full of mistakes”. At the end of the two-and-a-quarter hour screening, Bodenmann was relieved: “The filmmakers did a magnificent job, the result is coherent and they found excellent compromises. I give them a 5.9 out of six, because there are certainly small details that could have been improved, such as the ‘Hallo!’ (Ed., an expression that only appeared in the 19th century), which could easily have been replaced by a ‘Gruezi’! Haupt has succeeded in the difficult tasks of taking the audience back 500 years, of not speaking out for or against the Reformation, and of not turning Zwingli into a hagiographic figure”. Giselbrecht also has high praise for the film: “It gives a wide audience an insight into the Reformation. It has been appreciated by most of my colleagues, both scholars and priests”.

Haupt and Schmid were awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Zurich for the excellence of their work and were delighted with the reception their film received from specialists, even if some voices were critical of the costumes or the language. Schmid has come to accept that it is not easy for an academic to collaborate with a filmmaker: “There needs to be a certain open-mindedness and an attempt to understand how films are made. Above all, it doesn’t work unless you really aspire to a team effort”.

Scientific accuracy in a rather crazy fiction

Schmid won’t be contradicted by Andreas Steiner, a researcher specialising in artificial intelligence. He is currently working with the Zurich-based director Simon Jaquemet on the film ‘Electric Child’, which is due for release at the end of 2023. This sci-fi saga delves into the world of a computer professor who makes a pact with an artificial intelligence character to save his sick son. “I’m thrilled to be able to help the film grow in quality. I would like it to be enjoyable to watch, even for scientists”. Steiner has been talking to the director regularly for several weeks now. “These discussions are pleasant because he has excellent computer skills and his script is good. He is open and understands quickly. My role is really that of an advisor”.

“A film can quickly look stupid when there are too many scientific errors”

The German psychiatrist Pablo Hagemeyer founded The Dox in 1999 with two neuroscientists. It’s a consultancy firm working with the film industry to write scripts and to help filming scenes.

Pablo Hagemeyer, why is The Dox necessary?

Film and TV production teams call on our network of scientists to ensure that their scripts, dialogues, but also settings and actors’ gestures do not contain anything inconsistent or incorrect. Because a film can quickly look stupid or naive when there are too many mistakes. This is particularly the case in the medical field, where we have the most requests.

How do you intervene during filming?

When portraying a hospital environment, you have to be accurate to be credible. The surgeon’s gestures and instruments must be exact. Symbolic elements such as stethoscopes and medical documents must be placed in plausible locations. And a casualty department must be set up in such a way that the whole production team can fit in. This cannot be improvised.

What motivates scientists to become involved in filming?

Well, it’s certainly not the money! I would say it’s about sharing their knowledge. And the pleasure, even the excitement of participating in a joint creative process like a film. It enriches their lives as scientists.

For Jaquemet, having a scientific advisor is crucial: “I may be a geek and have a good level of computer knowledge, but I’m still an amateur... And I want my film to be as realistic as possible, because that’s what the audience expects”. In addition to Steiner, Jaquemet also worked with a doctor to describe the symptoms of the disease afflicting the character of the son. “We have to incorporate as much knowledge as possible before shooting. Afterwards there’s no time for anything”. We asked Jaquemet if he seeks scientific precision for educational purposes. “That’s not the primary objective of the film, which is more about relatively outlandish fiction. But if I manage to avoid any glaring or embarrassing mistakes, so much the better. Secondly, some of the artificial intelligence developments described may become realistic in the future. So if it provokes discussions among scientists or the public about the issues around the development of artificial intelligence I’d be happy”.

The ambition described here is naturally modest compared to productions like the 2014 release ‘Interstellar’ by the British-American director Christopher Nolan. It saw entire teams of scientists working to create the most precise images of a rotating black hole ever produced. “When teams like this work on a subject, it is not surprising that their results can influence other scientists”, says Steiner.

As far as Zwingli’s life is concerned, although the film ‘The Reformer’ has not directly influenced the work of specialists, it has provoked debate within the scholarly community. The film’s success in cinemas, particularly in German-speaking Switzerland, has enabled the general public to learn more about events in Zurich in the 16th century.

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Feature: Cinema, fact and fiction