http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/02/arts/02FLIC.html

New York Times  2001-02-02

By Rick Lyman


"At the Movies: Bjork Goes Back to Her Music"


HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 1 - Bjork, the Icelandic pop singer whose performance in 
Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" earned her a Golden Globe 
nomination, was quietly working her way through a frothy cappuccino on 
the outdoor patio at the Chateau Marmont Hotel, above the Sunset Strip.

"For so long I had been working as a composer and a singer and, even 
though it was all very collaborative, basically it was me who was at the 
center, whose vision was the focus of the project," she said. "I wanted 
to make the movie, I think, because I began wondering if it was time for 
me to go on a trip that wasn't led by me."

The awards season is a frantic time in Hollywood, especially in a year 
like this in which so many movies and performances are still in the 
running for the biggest prize, Academy Award nominations, to be 
announced Feb. 13 in Beverly Hills. The diminutive Bjork was in town for 
the Golden Globe ceremonies. ("I am so happy, because my father is with 
me," she said. "And he has never been here before. I think we will go to 
the beach.") She lost to Julia Roberts but still got to make the 
network-televised red carpet scene and keep alive the outside chance of
an Oscar nomination.

Initially she had agreed only to write the musical score for Mr. von 
Trier's somber semimusical, but after some prodding and a leap of faith 
she agreed to take the central role of a young American factory worker 
who is slowly losing her sight. She still seems a little surprised that 
she agreed to do it. "I am very intuitive and impulsive in the way I 
work," she said.

She studied classical music as a young girl in Iceland, she said, before 
rebelling and becoming a full-blown punk rocker with a singing career. 
Only in recent years, she said, has she felt drawn to reacquaint herself 
with her classical past, to find a way to blend it with the pop composer 
she became. Writing for the movie, to serve Mr. von Trier's story rather 
than to express some personal emotion of her own, liberated her to go 
back to those classical roots, she said. "I really found myself getting 
into orchestrated things," she said. Indeed, it has bled over into her 
next album, which she is currently recording in London and which, she 
thinks, will mark an end to her classical-meets-pop period.

Working on the film has given her no taste for acting, she said, and she 
doubts she will take another role. (She'd had a tiny cameo in Robert 
Altman's "Prêt à Porter" in 1994 and starred in an Icelandic film, 
"Juniper Tree," in 1987.) Nor did it make her want to step behind the 
camera and direct her own films. No, Bjork said, it made her realize 
that she needed to be true to her own creative bent. Music will be her 
future, she said: "It is important to place the heart in the right 
place."

And the truth is, she said, there is only so much time and creative 
energy she has to give. "One of the things I felt, although I loved 
working on the film, was that in a way I was wasting time," Bjork said. 
"I was born to do music. This time, in this movie, I was innocent, and 
it was fine. But you cannot be innocent the second time around."