For those countless Michael Haneke fans who have been putting off attending screenings of his films at the Harvard Film Archive and the Museum of Fine Arts, don’t wait any longer. There are a couple more shows scheduled at the MFA this weekend.  Dismayed by the poor turnout for the series. one programmer who chose to remain anonymous said he despaired of the current audience for serious cinema in Boston, let alone the United States. Well, what of the success of "Saw IV?" Isn’t that serious enough? Anyway, here’s more of Haneke trying to explain himself.

PK: Do you watch TV?

MH:  Not so much. I see the weather, and the news, and from time to time a movie, or when somebody I know has an event. No, I’m not really looking a lot. We have it in one room. We have to go in this room to watch it. It’s too boring. The programming gets worse everyday- not as bad as in America but nearly.

PK: Commercials are kind of entertaining. That Aflac duck…

MH: Takes too much time.

PK: Do you think the world would be a better place without TV?

MH; No, I mean I don’t want to appear here as an opponent of progress. And it’s also not worth thinking about it because television exists and you can’t do anything about that. I mean you could also argue the world would be healthier without automobiles.

PK: The nuclear bomb must have seemed like a good idea at the time, too. But what can you do?

MH: I mean, maybe the only part one can play is to dampen the trust that people put in this  and tell them to start thinking about it a little bit. The fact that people already believe they are informed even though they are not is also politically dangerous.

PK: So by coming out to Hollywood to make a movie criticizing Hollywood subverts Hollywood.

MH: Yeah, I hope.

PK:  So what’s their motive?

MH: Well I would think it’s the classic motive that they make money on it.

PK: But you don’t have a conspiracy theory that they brought you out to Hollywood to corrupt you?

MH: I am not famous enough for this.

PK: Well, when this movie comes out…

MH: We’ll see. We’ll see.

PK: The argument made by these movies is that the images and media somehow affect behavior. Can’t that be an argument to people who want to censor art and media? People that say that if it has this kind of effect it should be censored?

MH: Yeah I don’t know if you know [garbled]. He’s German. He writes songs. He writes that what is forbidden is what makes us hot, you know. So I don’t think it’s a good idea.

PK: Like pornography. It’s a much bigger industry than Hollywood itself. One aspect of this retrospective that I found very rewarding was the earlier films that you made. Going back to “Lemmings” which I found very engrossing and disturbing. It takes place in the 50s in the town that you grew up in, right?

MH: Yes.

PK: Is it somewhat autobiographical?

MH: Yeah I mean, it’s certainly not in the sense that the main actor is me, and his friend used to be my friend. Not in that literal sense. But of course there is a lot of my own experiences from my youth that I used in that film. Life was like this in a little town.

PK: So everybody was committing suicide back then?

MH: There were some.

PK:  The historical circumstances would certainly lead to it.

MH:In the 50’s everything that happened ten years before was suppressed. Both in the schools and in society and in people’s conversations it was treated as though it never happened. Nobody talked about the past. We were all busy with our own problems, or with school. It was the same generation that spawned the fifties. Later on in ‘68 with the protests and so on as students we discovered what had really gone on. In the 50’s, German history stopped at World War I.

PK: There also is a theme that goes through most of your films about generational  conflict, between children and parents and between siblings.

MH:  Well it’s part of life for everybody. I mean I always try to tell stories that have as high of an identification as possible for people. So that’s why it’s always the same because those are the people who buy the tickets and go to the movie. Besides it’s the only thing that I do know first hand: the small family.

PK: It’s the microcosm of society.

MH:Yes.

PK:  Your earlier  films came out at the end of the German New Wave in filmmaking. Were you influence by that?

MH:  No, not at all. I was not really interested in the German cinema. I was much more influenced and interested in the French and Italian cinema.

PK: Many of your films are focused on violence. Have you ever seen any actual violence or experienced an act of violence?

MH:  Not violence to the degree that I show it in my films, no. No, thank God. But the day is not over. I mean I am a little bit of a fearful person. For example if I see a bunch of young people hitting each other over the head, I leave.

PK:  So you haven’t actually been the victim of violence or seen a victim of violence except for maybe on TV.

MH: I experienced a little bit of violence in the 60s when the police would batter the students. I was one of them.

PK: Hit with a nightstick? But you did change the world, right?

MH: From time to time, we are all a little bit naïve.

PK: Everyone was disillusioned about the outcome of the 60’s protest. How did it affect you?

MH: Yes, of course, you know, one is disappointed by how far back we were pushed. It’s a shock to see the society in which we live nowadays; we all try to eat each other, so to speak. And when you see how the 60’s generation tried to construct a world, it is quite a disillusionment how it turned out, yes.

PK:Do you think you can make change through movies?

MH: I think it’s a basic question to what degree you can change society with art. I mean, I doubt very much you can. You know, whether one book or one film might serve the purpose of changing the world. But I believe very strongly that without art the world would be poorer.

PK: Your films often make people change their way of perceiving things. Like the last scene of Caché; people spent the whole end of the film watching that almost seemingly uninteresting image to see what was going on. At least that film succeeds in getting people to watch the movies instead of just reacting.

MH: If someone becomes a bit more retentive as a result of watching a film I think you have already achieved quite a bit.

PK: Is Ron Howard really remaking that film for Hollywood?

MH: He announced his interest in doing the film. But it’ll become a different film, for sure. They asked me too if I wanted to do it, but I said, “No, it doesn’t interest me at all.”You would have to adapt it much more to U.S. conditions; you would have to find a comparable case and a historical precedent. I’m unable to do that; I’m not familiar enough with American society. Besides, there’s no reason to remake Caché; it was never meant for an American audience; it was meant for a European audience. Whereas, with "Funny Games," it was remade for the reason I told you before.

PK: Because it was an American film that was first made in Austria?

MH: Yes [laughs.]

PK: Do you think there would be another American director who would be better suited to make that remake?

MH: I have no interest in who’s going to remake it. It hasn’t been bought yet, we just have an option on it. Who may, or may not, ultimately buy it, I have no opinion on it, because it won’t be my film. It might be quite amusing, though; you know, you have the original then and you can compare it to whoever makes the remake.

PK: Maybe it’ll have a happy ending.

MH: Could be.

PK: But it already has a happy ending.

MH: At least they don’t get murdered.

PK: Not yet, anyway. You’re making a film in Austria now?

MH: Yeah, well, in Germany. It’s a co-production with French, Austrian Italian and even a little American money as well. But it is made and it plays in Germany.

PK: So it’s for a German audience?

MH: No, I hope for an international audience. It’s not a movie for the big audience; it’s about the education of the Nazi generaton and so I don’t think that it’s a big movie for the big public.

PK: I was reading a New York Times Magazine story in which you said that the reason why Hollywood is still telling stories in their movies is because they didn’t live through WWII. European directors are suspicious of stories because Nazis used stories to regiment people. Is that what you’re going to show in this film?

MH: No, it’s going to be on how children were raised and the psychological environment. For example, I was always fascinated by observing or knowing that Italian fascism was so different from the nazi mentality and why that may be. I’m interested at this point how to create mentalities and create children to be such adults. 

PK: Your parents were probably part of that generation.

MH: Yeah. The film obviously plays before the first World War in 1913 or 1914 in a little village.

PK: Before World War I?

MH: Well, yes, because that’s when they were children.  The main figures in the film are children and they later, in their 20’s and 30’s, will become adults. But the film is just their childhood.

PK: There was a book by Norman Mailer that was about the childhood of Hitler. Have you read that? I

MH: Yes, yes, I’ve heard about that.

PK: It’s actually quite good. Mailer’s in the hospital right now, I hope he’ll going to be alright. I just saw the publicist come in so it’s time for three unrelated questions. So, that was your wife in the boat?

MH: Yes, in both films.

PK: Oh, really?

MH: Yes.

PK: How many times did you throw Naomi Watts off the boat?

MH: We were all a little bit nervous, and it was the first take. I mean, to fall back, it’s not so funny.

PK: This was her and not a double?

MH: Yes.

PK: How did you make sure she didn’t drown?

MH: There were safety boats around.

PK: Did she swallow a lot of water?

MH: You’ll have to ask her. [laughs] Well, she seemed happy afterwards. She saw the first film, so she knew what she had to do.

PK: So are these the only two films where your wife appears?

MH: No, she’s in many of my films. I always joke that she’s my Hitchcock. When I was young I did a TV film and because some extra didn’t work, I played the extra and the film wasn’t really good. So, from this moment I swore to never appear in the picture myself, so I always send my wife.

PK: It’s a little superstitious. Is it true that Wim Wenders walked out of “Funny Games,” or was it “Benny’s Video?”

MH: Yes, “Funny Games.”  At Cannes, yeah.

PK: Did you ever speak to him about that?

MH: He said in an interview that he just can’t stand that kind of violence.

PK: Was he morally offended?

MH: Well, I have no idea, maybe it was because it was the same year he did "The End of Violence"  and for maybe for him it was a little difficult because in his film there’s only talking about violence. That was his idea to handle this thing [violence] and so it was different..I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to him about it.

PK: I interviewed him around that time when "The End of Violence" was made and I think he had experienced a violent act; he and his wife were held at gunpoint or something.  So he must have been a little sensitive. I think I saw “The American Friend,” Wim Wenders film, on a marquee in “Who Was Edgar Allan?”

MH: Oh yes. Well, that’s because he has a lot of American friends. It was sort of a joke.

PK:Yeah, you’ve got to watch out for those American friends. Which leads me to another question: who is Edgar Allan?

MH: I don’t know. [laughs some more]

PK: Somehow, I expected that answer.

MH: Well, the question is the answer.

 

 

 

 

10/31/2007 2:30:45 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

 

Many of those who meet Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke in person are surprised at how jolly and gracious he is given the cold-blooded brutality and perversity of his films. Myself, I was surprised to see how much he resembled Lloyd Schwartz, Pulitzer Prize winning Phoenix classical music critic and a jolly and gracious fellow himself. So impressed was I by this resemblance that I  suggested that Lloyd interview Haneke when he was in town (Lloyd’s interview with Jerry Seinfeld will appear as the “Backtalk” in the 11/2 Phoenix). Or maybe have Haneke interview Lloyd. This was dismissed as yet another of my too often repeated jokes.

At any rate, I ended up interviewing Haneke myself (through an interpreter, a highly competent woman who works at the U.N. and didn’t respond to my references to Sidney Pollack’s “The Interpreter” or its star Nicole Kidman), even though Haneke seemed to speak English pretty well with a slight accent (then again, it could have been Lloyd having one on me). He (Haneke, not Lloyd, was in town as part of the ongoing retrospective of his films at the Harvard Film Archive and the Museum of Fine Arts and in particular was promoting his shot-for-shot remake of his own “Funny Games,” starring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt. It's screening here in a sneak preview but not opening theatrically until February (a situaton he seems very unhappy with). Here’s how things started out.

PK: It must be gratifying to come to the United States and be celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art and here at Harvard.

MH:  Yes, it is always a pleasure to have recognition. It’s not my first retrospective, but my first on in America.

PK: It’s the heart of the beast, isn’t it, America?

MH:  (laughs) Yes.

Peter- But it was less gratifying working with the Hollywood studio system on your new movie?

MH: It was of course no problem at all working with the actors. But as far as the team was concerned, and the blown up apparatus on to you, that was less pleasant to work with. You know, for each job you have five people. If I want a glass of water, I tell the assistant, the assistant tells it to the procure man, and they in turn tell someone else, and it takes ten minutes to get a glass of water. I hate that.

PK: Is it like a union thing?

MH: Yeah. That was not so pleasant.

PK: And in dealing with the actual producers, and the people who finance the movie and distribute it?

MH:  They are pretty much thinking that they are it, you know? They are pretty arrogant. They ask what I want to be done and turn around and do whatever they want. However in shooting, I had a contract that no one can interfere, and they were forced to let me do whatever I wanted.

PK: When I heard that you were remaking the film shot by shot, first I thought of George Sluizer’s “The Vanishing,” who made his very successful European movie into a Hollywood movie and it wasn’t so successful. I also thought of Gus Van Sant’s remake of “Psycho,”  which didn’t do so well, either. With those prior examples, weren’t you a little daunted doing this?

MH:  Yeah, I mean you’re always a bit worried. Gus Van Sant was a little bit different because it was a study. He didn’t do his own film as a remake -- he made someone else’s film. For me the first “Funny Games,” the one in Europe, was meant for consumers of violence, and it was a slap in the face for these people. … So when I had the possibility to do it in English, I took the opportunity. And now the film has arrived at the audience that it was meant to be at. It was meant for the United States to begin with, because “Funny Games” has an English title. There was a house in the German version that no house in Austria is like that. It was a set. And, you know, we tried to imitate a classic American colonial house, you know, with the center staircase. And so there was a reason for doing the remake, so when I was offered to make the remake I said sure, I’d love to do it, but only if Naomi Watts is going to play the lead role.

PK: Did she approach you, or did you just see her in a movie and say…

MH:  No, I approached Naomi.

PK:  What was it about her performance or what drew you to her as an actor?

MH: “Mulholland Drive”and “21 Grams.”She was really great in both, I think.

PK: “21 Grams”  is  50 grams short of your “71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance.”

MH: It was successful, no? I know that the director likes my films. He wrote a very enthusiastic review of “Code Unknown” in some US magazine.

PK: It’s similar to “21 Grams” and “Babel”  -- the multiple narrative.

MH: Yes, these films have similar structure.

PK:  There’s no multi-narrative really in "Funny Games."

MH:  I mean I did a few films that did this  but, you know, I’m not forced to do every film the same way of course.

PK:  “72 Fragments” is kind of like Kieslowski’s “Three Color  Trilogy” without a happy ending.

MH:  “The Trilogy” is three dramas, three stories. They come together in a disaster.

PK: But they’re saved. I guess that’s the difference right there, one of them anyway. It seems like you are drawn to a particular actor, like Daniel Auteuil, you wrote the role in “Cache” for him. Do actors provide your inspiration for making movies these days?

MH:  I mean it’s not THE inspiration, no. But if I like an actor or an actress then obviously I’m very intrigued to get to know them, and it’s very gratifying then to get to work together. In Juliette Binoche’s case, she approached me. She had seen some of my films, some of my television films, so she called me and asked me whether we could do something together. =

PK: And they all asked to do more movies with you. Maybe Naomi Watts can do a sequel to this movie!

MH:  We can do one of these multiple end things where the viewer has the ability to manipulate which end he’d like.

PK It could be a video game actually.

MH:  Yes (Laughing).

PK: This is how you make money these days. So it’s a shot by shot remake but there are some differences. What are the differences?

MH:  Well the difference is obviously the actors. The actors have a different charismatic, different way of portraying things, and that obviously results in differences. And I did try and really succeed in reflecting all the shots one to one. I mean there are even shots that I wouldn’t have done in such a way nowadays, had I done the film from scratch. But because I decided to do an exact replica in terms of shots, I left them in.

PK: So you’ve become a better filmmaker since you repeated the same?

MH:  If it’s better? I don’t know. It’s a different sensibility.

PK:  It’s also different because 10 years have passed and there are different connotations and historical contexts.

MH:  In some ways I feel that the film has become more up to date because violence in the media, if anything, has increased, and the senseless consumption of it. I mean, you had to do nothing different, you had to change nothing, and it became more apropos. And the social level I am describing there, they are the same all over the world. I mean whether they are in Austria or in the United States, they are “bo-bo-” maybe you know that expression describing the bourgeoisie in France. A well educated, cultivated, and still saturated blasé bourgeoisie. In other words the people from which I come.

PK:  But it’s not the group of people who go to see movies like "Saw IV" or "Hostel" or something like that.

MH:  The young people? Or the “bo-bos?”

PK: [agenda in mind, obviously not paying attention] I was thinking of the scene with the kid with the pillowcase over his head- Abu Ghraib crossed my mind.

MH: Yeah, you know, it was actually the poster of the first “Funny Games,” and it was way before Abu Ghraib, but the associations of course have multiplied.

PK:  So do you think “Funny Games” inspired Abu Ghraib?

MH: (Laughs) No. You don’t need to inspire these kinds of things. Yesterday, actually, at the master class [taught for students at the Harvard Film Archive], I mentioned a story that illustrates that you don’t need to tell people how to commit violence. When the first film came out -- well it had not come out yet, it was finished, but it had not come out. Nobody had seen it yet. There was an article in “Der Spiegel,” a German magazine, and it had talked about a case that happened in Spain where two young men got white gloves [part of the m.o. in “Funny Games”], very polite, the whole thing, and tortured a family -- one person to death.

PK: So when the movie came out they probably started blaming you for it.

MH:  It’s interesting to see the parallels because the two young men that did that, in reality, were two well educated people. One was a student of chemistry, and when he was put in jail he actually then wrote a very intelligent essay. He quoted Nietzche and everything and the worthlessness of life. The victims deserved to die, he argued,  because there is no point to existence.

PK: That Nietzsche -- he's got a lot to answer for.  Do you remember the Virginia Tech killings, where a student killed 20 or 30 other students? They were saying that it was inspired by this Korean movie because there was a shot of the killer with a hammer and there was the same shot in the Korean movie. He made a video of his like, manifesto, and it’s the same shot as the movie. But he never saw the movie, he never played video games. He just spent his time in his room doing nothing. He never had any connection to videos. So it’s like as soon as something like this happens, they look for something in the film culture or popular culture…

MH:  It’s a clever method of the lawyer’s too. It’s the famous litigation of “Natural Born Killers.”

PK: Right. But you also seem to suggest in your films, and in Benny’s video, and that whole “glaciation” trilogy that there is an alienation effect that images and video and the whole culture seem to have. Some people start losing their connection with reality.

MH:  Now our understanding of reality is really based on television nowadays, and that’s of course very dangerous because the images are not the reality. So I always in my films try to nourish some distrust in taking this reality for granted.

PK: Do you own a TV?

MH:  Yes.

NEXT: What Michael Haneke watches on TV!

10/26/2007 7:18:13 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

As I was pondering what to go as to the many Halloween parties I haven’t been invited to, it occurred to me -- this is how we can save the democratic system. Instead of another one of those boring, repetetive and frankly embarassing “debates,” why not have the candidates dress up as their favorite movie monster and let the voters pick the scariest? I have some suggestionsto start them off.

1. Rudy Giuliani.

Conventional wisdom says go with The Weekly World News’s Bat Boy. But the WWW has folded -- not a good sign. I’d advise a more traditional image -- Max  Schreck’s Nosferatu. Just don't forget the sunblock

2. Hillary Clinton

The Wicked Witch? The Bride of Frankenstein? How common and obvious. Leave those for such populists as John Edwards and Joe Biden. Take on those who have been making fun of your unsettling titter by dressing up as Conrad Veidt’s The Man Who Laughs.

3. John McCain

Face up to those who question your stability. Don’t wait for the full moon to turn into Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man

4. Mitt Romney

Slick hair, cadaverous face, unctuous eastern charm, shape-shifting style: Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula.

5. Dennis Kucinich

Lowly in the polls, ignored and held in contempt, still, he craves the Ring of Power: Gollum.

6. Fred Thompson

Impersonate that terrifying former Republican president: Fred Thompson as Ulysses S. Grant in "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."

10/24/2007 6:23:03 PM by Peter | Comments [1] |  

At this point I began to suspect that maybe these dropped calls were not entirely accidental. Maybe he was getting defensive or even angry. Judging from his response when I finally called back, the comparison to “In the Mood for Love” seemed to touch a nerve. However, when I got into more sensitive areas, like whether the hard core sex in the film might drive first time actress Wei Tang into the loony bin, as was the case with Maria Schneider in “Last Tango in Paris,” there were no more disruptions (the static was still pretty bad and, let’s face it, the guy’s English isn’t as fluent as his filmmaking). So here’s the remainder of the interview, which proceeded without further interruption, supplemented though with editorial insertions.

PK: We were talking about “In the Mood for Love” and repressed sexuality. Did that movie play into your mind at all when you were casting?

AL: No, not at all. Actually, I tried everything to avoid it.

PK: You did?

AL: Yeah. The one scene where she seduces him into the apartment — the way they walk, it reminds him [Leung] of that movie. He was very upset because he wanted it to be different. I knew the movie was going to be different, so I wasn’t really paying much attention to being in those shoes. But that was the second scene he shot, so when I saw that reaction I knew I had work even harder to get away from that movie, just to get him to function.

PK: Did you try to get away from other movies that are similar? You know, like “Last Tango in Paris” or “In the Realm of the Senses.”

AL: Those are great movies. But sexually, I think “Last Tango in Paris” is nowhere near what we do, even though I’m a great admirer of “Last Tango in Paris.” “In the Realm of the Senses” -- there are some similarities. Sexually, there are some similarities: [in both]they exhaust  each other. But the movie is very different. 

PK: They’re set in the same period.

AL: Yes, they are of the same period. Other than the sexual part, though, I don’t see a lot of the similarities.

PK: You mentioned “Notorious” and “Dishonored” as inspirations in another interview.

AL: Yeah, not so much me, but for Eileen Chang [when she wrote]this story, which is kind of written like a movie. She uses intercutting and such technique. “Notorious” -- I think the plot is very similar, except the end. At the end of German movie there is honor. I think “Casablanca” might have something to do with this and might have played in Shanghai at that time [when the story takes place]. They have a similar kind of mood. For me, I check out quite a bit of old film noir for references. I really like the romantic mood they put in towards the end — one of sophistication that I very much admire, the unpredictability which has sort of been lost over the years. But there are no movies that I directly wanted to influence this movie.

PK: You have a couple of snippets from “Intermezzo” and “Penny Serenade,” but they seem to be totally different movies from the one you’re making..

AL: Right, at one point I tried to use “Suspicion,” which was the biggest hit in Shanghai that year. At one point I put a poster in, but finally I decided not to use it, because it was too on the nose for female anxiety. Usually, the way I’ll pick a reference is through the music because a movie should try to avoid too much on the nose. But somehow reference is how movies function that we try to see. For her,  Ingrid Bergman is definitely an actress to aspire to. After all, she’s an actress always trying to pick up attitudes and ways of behavior.   

PK: Are you in the movie? There’s an early scene where I though I might have seen you.

AL: No, no. Not at all.

PK: I thought it might have been a Hitchcock moment.

AL: No, I really just wanted to identify with the girl. So I kind of just shot the stage [in a way recalling] how I felt when I first stood on stage.

PK: You’ve discussed that this film is more about acting and the theater than it is about love and sex and war.

AL: Yes, and in some ways, movies as well. [a bad connection here: audible are fragments sounding like “It’s kind of an existential question” and “The reality is sort of the opposite of truth” and “who’s the real thing?”] Pretending can be more truthful. So that’s kind of the exercise.

PK: It’s similar to “Brokeback Mountain” in that they’re playing a role that’s supposed to be their real lives but they’re true selves are completely different.

AL: Yeah, what you wish for and what you pretend in your fantasies. There’s more truth to it.

PK: The Oscar, I guess, makes a lot of things possible for you. I was surprised, however, that after the success of “Brokeback,” there weren’t more films made with gay themes. Were you surprised by that?

AL: Yeah, I was. I don’t have an explanation. Maybe they’re waiting for a good script. I don’t really check with the studios. Can you tell why?

PK: [some off-the-cuff long-winded bullshit] Let’s not get too off topic, though. In some of the other films, like Last Tango, where young actresses are included in a very graphic sexual relationship, they’ve had problems afterwards. I know Maria Schneider ended up in a mental institution a few years later. I spoke to Kerry Fox [for “Intimacy”] and she had problems. Do you fear the same fate will befall the young actress in your movie?    

AL: Oh gosh, I hope not. I try everything to protect the actors—and not just the sexual scenes, but a whole career thing. Before she was nothing and now she’s getting so much attention. I try every step of the way to protect her and educate her—make sure she’s going on the right path. I helped her find her next project. I do the best I can. I have not sent any young actor in my career to a mental institution. Even though she has many sex scenes, I do my best to make sure she’s comfortable and walking in the right path. Take care of her as much as I can. So far, there has been praise for her performance. She believes in each role like a child. That’s the beauty.

 

 

10/10/2007 6:11:15 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

I recently interviewed Ang Lee about his new film “Lust, Caution,” an adaptation of a short story by the revered Chinese auther Eileen Chang He was on a cell phone, riding or maybe even driving through New York while talking to me. This is an arrangement I don’t recommend. The reception was frequently garbled — maybe on both ends, because Lee’s answers were sometimes — and every ten minutes or so cut off. I’d ask a long, carefully thought out question and there would be silence. I’d repeat the question, differently phrased, worried that Lee might have been offended or perhaps killed in a traffic accident. Then I realized we were disconnected and I’d call back and he’d resume answering the previous question. It was a little like being in one of those Cingular/AT&T dropped call commercials.
  At any rate I was able to glean some worthwhile material about the movie and it’s many controversies, which includes not only its rambunctuously graphic sex scenes between Tony Leung as a vicious Chinese collaborator during WWII and newcomer Wei Tang as an undercover spy, but also because it presents the Chinese experience in this period in a not altogether flattering light. Not a big deal here, maybe, but an issue in Taiwan and Hong Kong where Lee had just premiered the film.

PK: Are you in Hong Kong, because the last I heard you were in Hong Kong when the movie was premiered there 

AL: I was in Hong Kong, Taiwan and I just flew back. I’m in New York now.

PK: How did things go in Taiwan--they liked it?

AL: Oh yeah. I was so moved I was in tears—in public.

PK: Would say it was one of the best receptions you got for any of your movies there?

AL: It was the most [successful?] movie I’ve ever had. I was sitting there with the audience and I could feel that it [inaudible except for “fat” “in the heart” and “punch me in the guts”]. It’s a tough movie for them, but I could feel the energy. They didn’t come out with their heads down; they were very emotional. It was as very emotional experience.

PK: So, it deals with a past that most people probably don’t speak about.

AL: Yeah, the past. The way we live through them, the way I was raised. They lose it in the public eye of fear, but there will always be a solution at the end. It’s a pretty tough movie, but I really think people embraced it. I couldn’t get a ticket to get in the first couple days.

PK: I read that in Hong Kong you said that you thought it was a film that American audiences wouldn’t appreciate—that it was more like a Chinese movie.

 [Long pause. A dropped call. Redialed]

AL: …yeah, it was a very emotional experience for me. Most people couldn’t find words for it. Even critics are pretty quiet—relatively quiet. It seems like they need a second viewing, or something, to figure out what they think. I think it hit pretty hard.

PK: In Hong Kong, you said you didn’t expect American audiences to…

AL: Yes, it’s a level 3 [ a censorship designation?]. Usually, it’s equivalent to porno film. But people are really going to see it, whether the reaction [can be?] is pretty tremendous.

PK: Are you somewhat regretting it had so much explicit sex, because it seems the whole conversation surrounding the film, at least here in the United States, is about the sex scenes. Do you think that’s kind of not the right focus for the film?

AL: I don’t mind if the focus on those three scenes, I think it’s a shame because I think the whole movie is pretty sexy, probably because of those three scenes. I do as much [something like “reduction”] as possible both ways, but when I dive into those sex scenes it was pretty dramatic driven. That’s how I could convince myself and my actors to go through with it.

PK: Would you describe those scenes as pornographic, because I saw in one interview that you said you don’t shoot pornography all the time, so that sort of implies-- [garbled?]

AL: Yeah, it’s very hard. I think it’s not hard for some people. But for me and, at least, for Tony, it’s pretty hard. That’s just how it

goes. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just hard for us.

PK: The actress who was in it—this was her first movie.

AL: Her first movie, yes. She seems to be pretty natural when you put her in the zone. She’ll do anything as long as she’s in the part, she’ll do anything. She’s almost like a child actor. It’s really nice in how much she devoted to the character and the believability. The difficult part is that I had to couch her in the different skills.

PK: So, you designed all the rather ornate and complex sexual positions?

AL: Yes, pretty much, I did.

PK: Did you get that from a book?

AL: Yeah, I’m pretty guilty of that; I had to try all those positions. For a thematic purpose—

[someone’s phone rings; long pause; disconnected; called again]

AL: … I was guilty of designing those shots. The only way I could pull it off was to be dramatic and ornate. They were designed for a thematic purpose; therefore, it’s easy for actors to do their action.

PK: Was anyone injured in some of those positions? It seems as though some of them required some athleticism.

[Dropped]

AL: …for dramatic needs, it’s easier for actors to express their feelings. Like who you’re blocking a scene, even it’s about balancing a scene. Secondly--visually, to stimulate the audience. To veer them towards what I want them to think about the scene. Pretty much pure dramatic cinematic pieces rather than sexual fantasy.

PK: But a little bit of that probably went into it, right?

AL: Well, yeah. That’s something I would probably deny, but probably some [sounds like  “houses”]. Because it worked for me, so it must be part of my fantasy. But I just think that way—what do I need to tell a story. I actually shot those scenes relatively early in the shooting schedule. I wanted to see how they landed before I could crop the second half of the movie.

PK: So you used that as a dramatic--

AL: Anchor, yeah. It’s an abstract feeling. About how you feel solid in your heart than with the heart that you make the movie, something like that. It’s a strange process that I had never experienced before.

PK: Everybody asks you, but you usually shake off the question, as to whether they actually did it.

AL: Yeah, I can’t answer that question. Either way, it’s kind of awkward. I can tell they’re great actors—their very devoted to the movie, their roles and their situation, their dramatic situation.

PK: How about that scene where he shoves her head against the wall? Does she actually get her head banged against the wall?

AL: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Certainly. But it’s padded wall. You can feel the bounce, the collision.

PK: It’s kind of a parallel to the interrogations that the guy does that happen off screen.

AL: Yeah, that’s the only scene where you see what he does—and the frustration and the repression.

PK: Everybody talks about the sex scenes. I found much more graphic and disturbing the one killing scene in the movie.

AL: Oh yes. That scene is what I call the “mitzvah” scene. They had the girl lose her virginity and somehow they also have to lose innocence. It’s a ritual kind of sceneis  how I see it, so that’s the direction I decided to go to. It’s about disillusion, about growth—it’s about the war though I never really show the war.  This is the other side of the war, the darker side of the war. I felt I had to introduce it and to get into the second half.

PK: That wasn’t in the book.

AL: Yeah, it’s not there. That passage of three years between Hong Kong and Shanghai there is almost nothing. We’re making a film here. She didn’t put much into the characters much, either. I had to develop them.

PK: In this movie, and also in your previous movie, unlike other adaptations you’ve done, you’ve gone from—instead of a long or longish novel and cutting it down—you’ve taken a short story and

AL: Only the last two movies, since Brokeback Mountain.

PK: Is that just a coincidence?

AL: I think so. But, again, who’s to say? You know, I have a lot of choices, why did I choose to make two short stories in a row? I think it’s because you have more space. With a novel, usually, you feel obliged, especially if it’s a famous writer, to tell the story and put everything that’s in the book and you don’t have much time to do your own thing.

PK: Tony Leung, when I was watching it, it occurred to me that he’s almost playing the same role here as he did in In the Mood for Love, except there’s graphic sex and World War II. Did you have that film in mind at all when you were making this one?

[Call is dropped. I call back and get Lee’s voicemail].

FEMALE VOICEMAIL VOICE: Please leave your message…

To be continued…

10/5/2007 4:38:50 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

 

Sixteen years ago I made the mistake of playing pundit when “Time” magazine asked me for my opinion on Ridley Scott’s “Thelma and Louise.” “Ten years from now,” I intoned, “it will be seen as a turning point.” So much for prophecy. And they never asked my opinion about anything ever again.

So I was encouraged  a couple of weeks ago when Judith Warner in her “New York Times” blog “Domestic Disturbances”
took a look back at the movie. Warner feels that the tale of two women who revolt against violent macho oppression by blowing up 18-wheelers with handguns and [spoiler] driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon embodied an age of female terror and “feminist victimization” which, thank goodness, is all in the past. She concludes:

“It’s easy to forget now how vital and urgent the new focus on date rape and sexual harassment seemed, for a brief moment, back then. And yet it was, truly, transformative; the world of “Thelma and Louise,” I think it’s fair now to say, is not the one that we inhabit psychologically or physically today. Rape itself is down – its incidence having dropped 75 percent since the early 1990s, according to the Department of Justice. These are profound and meaningful changes, and we should celebrate them — and revel  in ‘Thelma and Louise’’s passage into history.”

Needless to say, Warner took a lot of heat in her comments column for her rosy assessment. And if I could put in my two cents 16 years after my previous pontification, regardless of whether the rape rate has declined or not,  the domestic violence that initially sent T & L off on their anti-patriarchal crime spree doesn’t seem to have waned muchsince 1991. Every other night on the news there seems to be a story about some boyfriend/husband murdering their girlfriend/spouse. Hasn’t anybody else noticed this epidemic? Isn’t it just another, more widespread and lethal form of terrorism?

Anyway, I suspect this renewed interest in “T & L” springs in part from the recently released “The Brave One” (which, I confess, I have not seen yet), in which Jodie Foster goes all Charles Bronson on gangbangers after they attack her and kill her fiancé (In real life these days she would more likely have been the one killed — by the fiancé).

Be that as it may, the film has been compared to Abel Ferrara’s superb rape-revenge thriller “Ms. 45" (1981). Clint Eastwood’s unheralded masterpiece “Sudden Impact” (1983) also comes to mind. Rather than reinforcing rightwing law and order values (before it entered Ronald Reagan’s lexicon, “Make my day” was the film’s catch phrase), the film dismantles them.

Dirty Harry Callahan, the cop dedicated to serving out justice to evil doers, whose worst foes, more so than the perps themselves, are the namby pamby do-gooders and bureaucrats who insist on constitutional rights and proper procedure, finds out that one of the evil doers he’s pursuing  is acting on the same principles as he is.

A rape victim (played by Eastwood's then girlfriend Sondra Locke) is astounded when the pack of lowlifes who assaulted her and her sister get  off the hook through some legal shenanigans. Seeking her own justice, she hunts each one down and gives them a “.38 caliber vasectomy” (even the bull dyke lesbian).  How can Harry turn in her in when she is essentially doing the same thing he’s been doing? How can he NOT turn her in and remain true to his belief in justice/revenge? The contradiction breaks down the whole vigilante thriller. It’s Clint Eastwood’s Hamlet.

10/2/2007 6:00:02 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |