The name William Tell will probably bring one of two things to mind: the famous opera overture that got recontextualized by The Lone Ranger and Mickey Mouse, and the image of a man shooting an apple off someone else’s head with a bow and arrow.
Nick Hamm, director of the new film starring Claes Bang as William Tell, wants you to know this: the 14th century Swiss folk hero was forced to shoot that arrow by a Habsburg tyrant named Albrecht Gessler, and the apple was on the head of his son.
“It’s the scene that everybody knows, but nobody knows the reason why it happened. It was an exercise in power,” Hamm told TheWrap’s Joe McGovern at TheWrap’s 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Moët & Chandon and Boss Design.
“It’s a public execution of a young boy, but it has been romanticized,” he added. “But take that romantic element away and see what it is: a powerful man saying, ‘I want you to execute your son in front of every single person in this village, and that will show everyone that you obey me.’”
Of course, William Tell wouldn’t have been a legend if he hadn’t been successful in hitting that apple with one shot, inspiring a Swiss rebellion against the Habsburg Empire. But some versions of the story say that Tell took out two arrows when performing the shot. The second one was intended to kill Gessler if he had missed the apple.
Bang told TheWrap’s Joe McGovern that like most people, he wasn’t aware of the details of the story of William Tell, and he sheepishly admitted that he thought the apple shot was part of some sort of traveling roadshow trick.
“But then I started reading and found out about the actual legend, and I got interested,” Bang said. “What I can contribute is obviously the guy doing this, because the whole drama of someone trying to take over your life and your country…it is all pushed into one man making a choice.”
“William Tell” is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Watch the interview in the clip above.
