‘William Tell’ Is the Action Movie “Studios Would Have Made 20 Years Ago”

Nick Hamm, Ellie Bamber, and Claes Bang interview for William Tell at TIFF 2024.

Witness the legendary tale of William Tell like never before. Fresh off the Toronto International Film Festival 2024, this visually dazzling adaption brings the timeless Swiss folk hero to the big screen, all while staying true to his legacy. While many debated the existence of William Tell himself, his story has left a huge mark on Swiss culture and has been immortalized through countless Western adaptations.

NICK HAMM: In a sense, what we've done is we’ve almost gone back in time and made a traditional action film. But with, if you like, a purpose — in the sense that it's talking about the idea of individual liberty, and it's talking about stuff which, politically and morally, is applicable now. The William Tell story is about a man defending his country against an invasion from an autocratic power. That's the central premise of the story. He doesn't want to go to war.

HAMM: Because the female characters in the movie are very important. I rewrote all of them because, traditionally, in the story, they're badly written. Then I thought, not just a character, but I thought the script was really, really good because it really allows for a lot of storytelling for a lot of characters. You can't take out one piece without the story falling apart, and I thought that was really, really clever. We have quite a huge narrative together, and that whole thing, so it just seemed very appealing to dive into this whole thing and find out it wasn't just a guy shooting an apple off his son's head just to show off.

BANG: I love the schedule. When it comes out, I'm like,"Oh, fucking hell, I don't need to shoot the whole movie in one day. Oh, nice." It's actually—it's actually...BANG: But it's still like that every time. I'm like,"Fucking hell! How are we ever gonna...? Oh, I see. Oh, we just do that one scene. Oh, good.” But there's a scene on a boat in the rain in very rough weather that we shot for, like, three days. We were just drenched for hours and hours.

HAMM: If you make films — and you know how this works, Steve — you know it's a very particular trade. It's a very focused, forensic operation. There's 400-odd people all working to achieve one little moment, and all you can do each day is get those moments right. As Claes says, you don't make the whole movie in one day. You don't do that. You focus on that brick, in that piece of the wall, at that moment.

HAMM: They do know it, but they don't, Steve. The apple scene is one of the greatest scenes ever written down by any dramatist in any context. It was written down by Schiller in 1807. He crafted that scene. That scene is about the public execution of a young boy in front of a crowd of people by his own father. That scene is about autocracy taking over a simple village, a simple way of life. It's the decimation of one life as opposed to another.

'William Tell' Is the Action Movie We'd See in Theaters 20 Years Ago "Cinema is — let's not beat around the bush — in a slight crisis." Often you'll have people saying,"If we can get this to 1:40, it's even better." But it's those 30 minutes from 1:40 to 2:10 that make the movie. It's interesting because you would think with all the streamers that more would find distribution. And in actuality, so many are struggling.

HAMM: You don't care if they jump off a bloody train and fall off. Who cares? You're just watching it and eating. There's a laziness.

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