“Men define their masculinity by how much trauma they can endure. Why?”: Director Ethan Berger on intense fraternity drama ‘The Line’
Fraternities are a uniquely American institution, but director Ethan Berger’s feature-length directorial debut, The Line, uses the trials and tribulations of college life in the United States to shine a light on social and societal issues that are recognisable the world over.
Alex Woff stars as Tom Backster, a brother of the fictional Kappa Nu Alpha, who becomes so enamoured by the promise of status and connections the fraternity offers that he starts to lose his sense of self, with his own mother calling him out over dinner for adopting an accent and mannerisms she doesn’t recognise.
However, when he drifts outside of his close-knit circle and begins spending time with Halle Bailey’s Annabelle, Tom’s unwavering devotion to KNA starts to waver. At the same time, a new batch of prospective recruits prepares for their scheduled hazing, leading to a harrowing moment that shakes Tom’s entire life to its very foundations.
Berger began working on the story over a decade ago, The Line was officially announced in early 2019 and held its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023. Now, with the film set for release on October 18, 2024, how does it feel knowing the finish line is finally in sight?
“It’s been a really long road, and I feel really grateful to be here and lucky to have had so many people step up and get this thing finished, so it feels good.” In fact, it’s been such a lengthy process that Berger inadvertently developed a keen eye for a rising star.
Since The Line was announced, Hereditary star Wolff has reinforced his credentials as one of the brightest young talents in the business by sharing the screen with Nicolas Cage in Pig, working with M Night Shyamalan on Old, and playing Luis Walter Alvarez in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Best Picture’ winner Oppenheimer.
Beyond that, Lewis Pullman lent support in Top Gun: Maverick and will make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Thunderbolts, Bailey played the title character in Disney’s half-billion box office smash The Little Mermaid, Austin Abrams held his own opposite George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Wolfs, while The Line also marks the final release for late Euphoria alum Angus McCloud.
“I think in this case, all the actors that were involved are incredible and had the potential to continue to do big things, and I appreciate that,” Berger said of his innate star-picking ability. “I had my own instincts, and I don’t know whether it was luck or what.”
As mentioned, fraternities aren’t institutions that exist too much outside of the States, but everyone knows what they are. Berger used a combination of his love for international cinema and the inbuilt awareness audiences have of frat flicks to use a distinctly American way of life as the jumping-off point to explore themes everyone can either identify with or relate to.
“I’m very much influenced by European directors,” he began. “Whether it’s [Pedro] Almodóvar or Louis Malle or the Dardenne brothers, I love Ruben Östlund and Céline Sciamma. I love those sorts of movies, and so that’s always a stylistic influence for me as it pertains to the themes. I figured this would be a good way for other people to be exposed to fraternities who haven’t lived in the US. I knew that movies like American Pie, for instance, is one that did well, or Spring Breakers, or movies that give people insight into youth culture.”
“The other thing is I realised when we showed the movie in Zurich, and so many people approached me to tell me that the movie reminded them of their time in mandatory military service,” Berger continued. “Because I feel there’s this universal principle that exists in hazing, but also it exists in different forms, which is this idea that men define their masculinity by how much trauma they can endure. Why? Why is that the norm? And I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to and have experienced.”
All of the main characters associated with the fraternity are putting on a performance so they can gain acceptance to KNA. In a way, they’re all archetypal, but as The Line progresses, it becomes clear that’s the point. It was a balance between screenplay, filmmaker, and actors that was integral to the process and one that Berger and his ensemble worked hard to achieve.
“That was very much part of the script and something they knew they were doing,” Berger explained. “I think, for one, these are 18/19/20-year-old kids, and they understood they were the characters making certain moral compromises to fit in. Lewis, for instance, and I talked a lot about how he was kind of playing a politician whose goal is to protect the frat by any means necessary, even if he feels one way to have this public-facing persona to protect the frat.”
“Or Alex, his mother calls him ‘Forrest Gump’ at the beginning, so you know that he’s putting on a part and then by the end of the movie, he doesn’t have the accent that he’s had when we jump forward when there’s that ellipsis,” he elaborated. “It was very much something that they were aware of and trying to integrate into their performances.”
There’s one scene in particular that captures the essence of The Line. Tom and Annabelle have just spent a night together socialising over wine and cheese, and she wants to visit the KNA house. For reasons that are obvious to the viewer, it’s not going to happen, but it speaks to the duality that’s at the heart of the brothers that there’s no way he can verbalise why it’s not going to happen without causing offence.
“The short pseudo-romance ends right there,” Berger agreed. “Because why would she want to see somebody embarrassed of where he lives? What does that say? Why is he living there? I think right there, Halle’s character is really important because she does what he’s incapable of doing, which is removing herself. He has all these opportunities to not go to the event, and yet he doesn’t realise that he has agency.”
When people think of frat movies, their mind tends to wander towards raucous comedies, which is the polar opposite of The Line. It’s a tense, atmospheric, dramatic thriller that uses performance, shot composition, cinematography, and music to create an unsettling, uneasy, isolated, and foreboding aesthetic, which is something Berger had envisioned from the very start.
“I have to give a lot of credit to Daniel Rossen and Stefan Weinberger,” he praised. “Daniel did the score, Stefan is the cinematographer, and I have great collaborative relationships with both of those people. Daniel has been a hero of mine forever. He was in this band, Grizzly Bear, and in Department of Eagles, which were two of my favourite bands growing up.”
“Grizzly Bear had done the score for Blue Valentine, and he had just scored Past Lives, but he hadn’t done many other movies. I just feel like his score ties you to Tom in a way; it adds this emotional underbelly that helps us, tonally, put the audience where we want them two, and he’s just such a talented musician.”
“As for the cinematography, Stefan and I had talked about a bunch of movies and staging and how we could use lighting to make the thing foreboding,” the filmmaker outlined. “Just this idea of fraternity houses being grandiose and inviting but then kind of decaying on the inside, that juxtaposition and having the fraternity go from being a place that seems like a step up for Tom to having the walls close in on him.”
Berger, Rossen, and Weinberger worked closely to “create an arc in the score and the cinematography that reflects the tone of the movie,” but there were some more specific cinematic touchstones the first-time feature director used as influences and inspirations, none of which are set in a frat house for obvious reasons given the nature of The Line.
“We were using Full Metal Jacket, Mean Streets, The Last Detail,” he offered. “There’s this Italian movie called The Best of Youth that was made in 2003. It’s about these two brothers and the staging in that movie is really incredible, and that was an inspiration. Rumble Fish, just a lot of different things.”
At times, The Line can be a very uncomfortable movie to watch, but it’s all done in service of the wider message at the heart of the narrative. That said, Berger revealed that there were certain moments when things were getting a little too dark, even for his liking, especially when the cast members were laying themselves bare in the film’s most intense exchanges.
“Definitely, and particularly on set, because we had to try things, and the characters do some pretty unlikeable things and say some bad things,” he acknowledged. “But these are actors, and in order to get what we wanted, they trusted me to make sure the story was conveying the message we wanted to convey. Ultimately, you have to do that in the edit, but there were moments where the actors got upset or emotional because they were having to become these people that were unsavoury.”
Fraternities are steeped in what’s essentially trickle-down trauma; ‘This is what happened to us, so it needs to happen to you, too’. Skirting around spoilers, it’s equal parts telling and damning that Abrams’ Gettys O’Brien is the only one who challenges the status quo of KNA and asks why, even if he still wants to do the stereotypical ‘frat bro’ activities like getting laid and be popular.
“I don’t know if he’s the most important, but he’s important,” Berger suggested. “I mean, everything you said is true. And I feel like, in certain ways, Gettys and [Bo Mitchell’s] Mitch remind me of the cop or the sheriff and the villain in a western, in that they’re two sides of the same coin. Gettys is complicated because he’s both challenging the status quo and he’s still there, as Tom points out. Why not just leave?”
Continuing, “Both Gettys and Tom are making certain compromises to be popular in college. And I think that in terms of trickle-down trauma, this is another thing that isn’t just limited to fraternities; this idea that your trauma makes it OK for you to put that on someone else when it doesn’t. Just because you were traumatised, it doesn’t give you the right to put that on somebody. And that’s something I think is important. Another thing is, I’d like people who don’t live in the US to see how many of our politicians and big business executives were in fraternities. That’s something I’d like for people to look into.”
One of the major oxymorons of fraternity life is that these guys will do anything to be part of one, but it’s often something they come to regret years down the line. That’s mirrored in a late scene in The Line when Tom and Mitch reencounter each other after their college days are over, with a literal barrier placed between them.
“First of all, the majority of people are not proud of their fraternity a decade later,” Berger acknowledged. “I know that this is a shorter timeframe and they’ve endured this traumatic thing, but I think by that scene Tom has taken accountability and realises he takes responsibility and also says no to Mitch and isn’t lured by the same sort of things he was before.”
Adding, “I mean, at the beginning of the movie, he’s talking with his mother about how he worked at a pizza restaurant, and then when [John Malkovich’s] Beach Miller asks him what he did over the summer, he responds and says that he’d worked for a realtor, and he’s lying to impress these people. I feel like he’s changed at the end, but their silence as it pertains to this trauma they endured is what I want people to take from that scene.”
With his feature debut in the rear-view mirror, next up for Berger is an adaptation of Andrew Martin’s novel Early Work. Looking even further ahead, Berger has more modest aspirations in mind: “There are a couple of documentaries that I’ve been shooting that I want to finish, and I just want to finish what I start. The Line, as you pointed out in the beginning, was a really long process. I wrote the first draft in 2012, and there were years when I thought I might never finish it. And so now, I just want to finish things.”
