The School (Kitisenrannan koulu), Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival, Saturday, 16 June 2012. The discussion was conducted in Hungarian and translated into Finnish and English.
EXCERPT: PROLOGUE (2004) FROM: VISIONS OF EUROPE
Q: WHAT WAS THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW?
A: I don't much remember. I don't remember movies. I remember people. Cinema is a mirror of the world, of the reality in front of our eyes. All film-makers are autonomous actors.
Q: YOUR FAMILY BACKGROUND WAS A CULTURAL HOME...
A: You cannot speak about culture very much. My parents were at the theatre. I was alone, loitering in the streets. Like a nice regular kid I was fighting with other kids, played football, lived my life. Where you come from and what you do does not influence you.
Q: HOW ABOUT YOUR SIBLINGS, THE THEATRE...
A: They had no influence. Childhood is not at all interesting.
Q: AT WHAT STAGE DID THE CINEMA START TO MEAN SOMETHING FOR YOU?
A: Such an enormous number of people at such an early hour in the morning to listen about my childhood. When I was about 16 years old I started to think that the world functions in a very unjust way. I dediced that the world must change. I acquired a 8 mm camera and made a movie about gypsies in a worker's brigade. They worked, they toiled, they could not make ends meet. There was a letter to Janos Kadar, a petition to let them work abroad. The action had an effect. I became a persona non grata. I was not not accepted into the school. I worked at a dockyard.
Q: HOW ABOUT FINDING ACTORS WHILE MAKING 8 MM MOVIES?
A: It was a long process. The problems were not only social. Much more they were ontological, cosmic, and it took me 34 years to understand. One movie becomes the foundation of a next one. I have raised the question and continued the work in the next one, until there is no longer a way to go forward. I was 22 years old when I made my first feature film, and 56 years old when I made my last one.
Q: HOW ABOUT THE SUBJECTS IN THE 1970S?
A: The very same subjects as now. Unfortunately the world does not change. We just grow old and grow out of it.
Q: IN THE 1970S WHICH MOVIES AND PERSONALITIES MADE AN IMPRESSION ON YOU?
A: I have never enjoyed going to the cinema, I don't know why. The new waves of the 1960s, Czechoslovakia and other countries, have been important, and the impact of the year 1968. Mizoguchi, Bresson, and Ozu.
Q: LET'S TALK ABOUT THE LANGUAGE OF THE CINEMA. JANCSO.
A: Jancsó and me are friends. The maestro is 90 years old, mentally very alert. We meet, we consume quite a lot of red wine, and smoke up the room.
Q: WHEN DID YOU MEET?
A: I acted the role of Jesus Christ for him. For him I did it. [Szörnyek évadja, 1987].
Q: WAS THE OFFER SURPRISING?
A: I was not very excited about it.
Recently he was directing a five minute episode for the movie Hungary 2011 / Magyarország 2011, and I went to say hello to him.
Q: THE JANCSÓ / TARR COMPARISON. HAVE JANCSÓ'S LONG TAKES AND TRACKING SHOTS INFLUENCED YOU?
A: The long take is just a tool. It is not a means in itself. The most important thing is that the director is believable. Otherwise all the work goes down the drain. There is a big difference in our ways of thinking. Jancsó tells about politics. His movies are structured. I tell about the everyday. These are two quite different ways. Jancsó's movies are choreographed, dance-like. Me, I approach the faces of people.
Why I use long takes? I'm happy to tell. A long take is a splendid way to keep an actor in a shot for ten minutes. Then the actor cannot act. "Don't act, live". In casting I don't care what the actor is going to portray but how the character is. It doesn not matter whether the actor is Schygulla, Swinton, or a salami factory worker. What matters is how the person is, what kind of an impression he makes. We go to see him or her.
I want to portray the dignity of a person. In comparison to that it does not matter what the story is. Since the Old Testament it has been the same. All the wrongdoings, all the moments of happiness have been experienced before. The story is not interesting. The presence of the people is. The appearance of the people. That is why I use long takes. Because I want to show this continuum in its entirety, completed. One has to create a real situation in which the actor can live.
Q: CAN FACES BE THE STARTING-POINT?
A: Absolutely. In Werckmeister Harmonies the face is the entire starting point - Lars Rudolph. I had read the novel by László Krasznahorkai in the 1980s. It is wonderful, but impossible to film. Then I was in Berlin, and in the corner in a workshop there was Lars Rudolph. I called László Krasznahorkai: "I have found the person".
EXCERPT: WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. The Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Eclipse: a cosmic performance in a bar, a cosmic dance.
Q: BUILDING A SCENE.
A: In the space, there are people.
I don't have much use for a manuscript. A script is for producers, financers, etc. There is a belief that a manuscript would be a guarantee of something. One might reckon that a good manuscript guarantees a good movie.
A movie is a human look - human situations - an image and a rhythm. Things that are impossible to express on paper. If a movie could be explained in words, it would be cheaper. It is impossible to explain a human look.
"This is how one might begin. This is how it might go on."
I see a movie as a whole already when I start. Why would one then need a manuscript?
I wanted to show the eclipse.
You can compare this with the art of cooking. It depends on the cook.
Q: AKI HAS COMPARED A MANUSCRIPT WITH A COOKBOOK.
MIGHT WE TALK ABOUT MUSIC - MIHÁLY VIG.
A: I am reasonably faithful. For decades I have worked with the same colleagues.
Ágnes Hranitzky - 30 years.
Mihály Vig - since 1983.
László Krasznahorkai - since 1985.
We hardly talk.
We hardly need to talk.
Our basic conception of the art of the cinema is parallel.
We see things very much in the same way.
We hardly need to negotiate.
We just click on our fingers and do it.
To Mihály Vig I tell the plan. He goes to his studio, composes and brings me a cd. There is little that needs to be changed. This happens very much in advance of the shooting. Music is one of the protagonists. I need to know the player of even this part well, quite like I need to know the actors. Music can patch up a tension. I like it when the ingredients are prepared in advance, like in cooking.
Q: A PARTNERSHIP LIKE LEONE / MORRICONE.
A: Possibly.
Q: HIS MOVIES ARE MADE BY THE SAME CORE COMBO. THE CUTTER ÁGNES HRANITZKY IS THE SPOUSE OF THE DIRECTOR. THERE IS A MONTAGE INSIDE THE SHOT.
A: Within a shot there are different field sizes although the shot persists. This planning I always do myself.
Q: YOUR AESTHETICS WAS FORMED DURING THE 1970S AS A RESULT OF A PROLONGED PROCESS. KARHOZAT / THE DAMNATION WAS YOUR FIFTH FEATURE FILM. HOW DID YOU PROCEED FROM YOUR FIRST FEATURE FILM TO KARHOZAT?
A: There were long takes in them, as well, long close-ups, shots of faces. All the time my progress was into more reduction. I have attempted at a very simple, pure language of the cinema. A Torinói ló / The Turin Horse is the vanishing point. I have reached my destination.
Q: A TORINOI LO. BUT IS IT REALLY SO?
A: If you ask once more about that I will become really difficult. It is a pretty boring movie.
Q: SATANTANGO IS A GIGANTIC, MAGNIFICENT WORK.
A: (Sighs, ay, yay). We used 120 days of shooting and wasted film incredibly. We shot it during two years. The circumstances demanded that it could only be shot during the springs and during the autumns. We loved to make it. There was something permanent and eternal in it. As if it were our life that we shoot this movie. I knew from the start that it will be long. Seven hours and 15 minutes. It was an enormous work about the situation of the world, the human being, an outcome of profound thinking. It is based on the novel of László Krasznahorkai. It has been translated into English, German, French, and Spanish. Read it.
A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR.
Q: THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HUNGARIAN CINEMA PRODUCTION TODAY.
A: They are miserable, below any standards. In two years movies have hardly been made. Since 2010 the right-wing government has decided that art as it has been created until now is no longer needed, and something new needs to be done. I don't get happy. This is not a topic I want to discuss.
Q: IN THE LONG TAKES, WHICH COMES FIRST, THE PEOPLE OR THE CAMERA?
A: This is a dangerous approach, and you can compare it with a football match. It is about spontaneity and creativity. A director needs to know what he wants. Most rewarding is to handle everything at once, step by step, and proceeding like a game of dominoes. It is reciprocal, gradual. Important is the presence of sensitivity, not crossing the border of reciprocity.
Q: YOU HAVE FOUNDED A FILM SCHOOL.
A: I was thinking what I could do, about producing. In Hungary: impossible. The other possibility: teaching - totally impossible. Everybody is different. Yourself, your language. I hold an umbrella. Just go ahead, beat the door. I want to liberate you. The idea: freedom. The post-graduation studies take place in Croatia. Jean-Michel Frodon, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Jonathan Romney are participating. I am inviting Aki, too. It takes 2-3 weeks. Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, and Carlos Reygadas are some of the friends. We start next February. It is for graduated film-makers. We will work with, be with you, for post-graduation, for your degree of a doctor of the liberal arts. It is only for 16 people. You can come from everywhere.
Q: SATANTANGO.
A: The basic situation is there in absolutely every society. Our wishes are unrealistic. It is easy to make believe things. How easily we deceive each other. How prepared we are for any kind of crimes.
MARTTI-TAPIO KUUSKOSKI: SUSAN SONTAG.
A: I would not like to tell. Among friends there is discretion, we can trust each other, and I won't divulge personal matters, because of my high respect for her.
Q: WHICH MOVIE WOULD YOU TAKE TO THE DESERT ISLAND?
A: (No answer, and when gently pressured:) Then we can spend the whole day here. I am a friend of the long form. There are no movies. A man does not take a movie to the desert island. There would be no movie in my suitcase.
(My English translation from Marjatta Manni-Hämäläinen's excellent translation into Finnish).
EXCERPT: PROLOGUE (2004) FROM: VISIONS OF EUROPE
Q: WHAT WAS THE FIRST FILM YOU SAW?
A: I don't much remember. I don't remember movies. I remember people. Cinema is a mirror of the world, of the reality in front of our eyes. All film-makers are autonomous actors.
Q: YOUR FAMILY BACKGROUND WAS A CULTURAL HOME...
A: You cannot speak about culture very much. My parents were at the theatre. I was alone, loitering in the streets. Like a nice regular kid I was fighting with other kids, played football, lived my life. Where you come from and what you do does not influence you.
Q: HOW ABOUT YOUR SIBLINGS, THE THEATRE...
A: They had no influence. Childhood is not at all interesting.
Q: AT WHAT STAGE DID THE CINEMA START TO MEAN SOMETHING FOR YOU?
A: Such an enormous number of people at such an early hour in the morning to listen about my childhood. When I was about 16 years old I started to think that the world functions in a very unjust way. I dediced that the world must change. I acquired a 8 mm camera and made a movie about gypsies in a worker's brigade. They worked, they toiled, they could not make ends meet. There was a letter to Janos Kadar, a petition to let them work abroad. The action had an effect. I became a persona non grata. I was not not accepted into the school. I worked at a dockyard.
Q: HOW ABOUT FINDING ACTORS WHILE MAKING 8 MM MOVIES?
A: It was a long process. The problems were not only social. Much more they were ontological, cosmic, and it took me 34 years to understand. One movie becomes the foundation of a next one. I have raised the question and continued the work in the next one, until there is no longer a way to go forward. I was 22 years old when I made my first feature film, and 56 years old when I made my last one.
Q: HOW ABOUT THE SUBJECTS IN THE 1970S?
A: The very same subjects as now. Unfortunately the world does not change. We just grow old and grow out of it.
Q: IN THE 1970S WHICH MOVIES AND PERSONALITIES MADE AN IMPRESSION ON YOU?
A: I have never enjoyed going to the cinema, I don't know why. The new waves of the 1960s, Czechoslovakia and other countries, have been important, and the impact of the year 1968. Mizoguchi, Bresson, and Ozu.
Q: LET'S TALK ABOUT THE LANGUAGE OF THE CINEMA. JANCSO.
A: Jancsó and me are friends. The maestro is 90 years old, mentally very alert. We meet, we consume quite a lot of red wine, and smoke up the room.
Q: WHEN DID YOU MEET?
A: I acted the role of Jesus Christ for him. For him I did it. [Szörnyek évadja, 1987].
Q: WAS THE OFFER SURPRISING?
A: I was not very excited about it.
Recently he was directing a five minute episode for the movie Hungary 2011 / Magyarország 2011, and I went to say hello to him.
Q: THE JANCSÓ / TARR COMPARISON. HAVE JANCSÓ'S LONG TAKES AND TRACKING SHOTS INFLUENCED YOU?
A: The long take is just a tool. It is not a means in itself. The most important thing is that the director is believable. Otherwise all the work goes down the drain. There is a big difference in our ways of thinking. Jancsó tells about politics. His movies are structured. I tell about the everyday. These are two quite different ways. Jancsó's movies are choreographed, dance-like. Me, I approach the faces of people.
Why I use long takes? I'm happy to tell. A long take is a splendid way to keep an actor in a shot for ten minutes. Then the actor cannot act. "Don't act, live". In casting I don't care what the actor is going to portray but how the character is. It doesn not matter whether the actor is Schygulla, Swinton, or a salami factory worker. What matters is how the person is, what kind of an impression he makes. We go to see him or her.
I want to portray the dignity of a person. In comparison to that it does not matter what the story is. Since the Old Testament it has been the same. All the wrongdoings, all the moments of happiness have been experienced before. The story is not interesting. The presence of the people is. The appearance of the people. That is why I use long takes. Because I want to show this continuum in its entirety, completed. One has to create a real situation in which the actor can live.
Q: CAN FACES BE THE STARTING-POINT?
A: Absolutely. In Werckmeister Harmonies the face is the entire starting point - Lars Rudolph. I had read the novel by László Krasznahorkai in the 1980s. It is wonderful, but impossible to film. Then I was in Berlin, and in the corner in a workshop there was Lars Rudolph. I called László Krasznahorkai: "I have found the person".
EXCERPT: WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. The Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Eclipse: a cosmic performance in a bar, a cosmic dance.
Q: BUILDING A SCENE.
A: In the space, there are people.
I don't have much use for a manuscript. A script is for producers, financers, etc. There is a belief that a manuscript would be a guarantee of something. One might reckon that a good manuscript guarantees a good movie.
A movie is a human look - human situations - an image and a rhythm. Things that are impossible to express on paper. If a movie could be explained in words, it would be cheaper. It is impossible to explain a human look.
"This is how one might begin. This is how it might go on."
I see a movie as a whole already when I start. Why would one then need a manuscript?
I wanted to show the eclipse.
You can compare this with the art of cooking. It depends on the cook.
Q: AKI HAS COMPARED A MANUSCRIPT WITH A COOKBOOK.
MIGHT WE TALK ABOUT MUSIC - MIHÁLY VIG.
A: I am reasonably faithful. For decades I have worked with the same colleagues.
Ágnes Hranitzky - 30 years.
Mihály Vig - since 1983.
László Krasznahorkai - since 1985.
We hardly talk.
We hardly need to talk.
Our basic conception of the art of the cinema is parallel.
We see things very much in the same way.
We hardly need to negotiate.
We just click on our fingers and do it.
To Mihály Vig I tell the plan. He goes to his studio, composes and brings me a cd. There is little that needs to be changed. This happens very much in advance of the shooting. Music is one of the protagonists. I need to know the player of even this part well, quite like I need to know the actors. Music can patch up a tension. I like it when the ingredients are prepared in advance, like in cooking.
Q: A PARTNERSHIP LIKE LEONE / MORRICONE.
A: Possibly.
Q: HIS MOVIES ARE MADE BY THE SAME CORE COMBO. THE CUTTER ÁGNES HRANITZKY IS THE SPOUSE OF THE DIRECTOR. THERE IS A MONTAGE INSIDE THE SHOT.
A: Within a shot there are different field sizes although the shot persists. This planning I always do myself.
Q: YOUR AESTHETICS WAS FORMED DURING THE 1970S AS A RESULT OF A PROLONGED PROCESS. KARHOZAT / THE DAMNATION WAS YOUR FIFTH FEATURE FILM. HOW DID YOU PROCEED FROM YOUR FIRST FEATURE FILM TO KARHOZAT?
A: There were long takes in them, as well, long close-ups, shots of faces. All the time my progress was into more reduction. I have attempted at a very simple, pure language of the cinema. A Torinói ló / The Turin Horse is the vanishing point. I have reached my destination.
Q: A TORINOI LO. BUT IS IT REALLY SO?
A: If you ask once more about that I will become really difficult. It is a pretty boring movie.
Q: SATANTANGO IS A GIGANTIC, MAGNIFICENT WORK.
A: (Sighs, ay, yay). We used 120 days of shooting and wasted film incredibly. We shot it during two years. The circumstances demanded that it could only be shot during the springs and during the autumns. We loved to make it. There was something permanent and eternal in it. As if it were our life that we shoot this movie. I knew from the start that it will be long. Seven hours and 15 minutes. It was an enormous work about the situation of the world, the human being, an outcome of profound thinking. It is based on the novel of László Krasznahorkai. It has been translated into English, German, French, and Spanish. Read it.
A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR.
Q: THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HUNGARIAN CINEMA PRODUCTION TODAY.
A: They are miserable, below any standards. In two years movies have hardly been made. Since 2010 the right-wing government has decided that art as it has been created until now is no longer needed, and something new needs to be done. I don't get happy. This is not a topic I want to discuss.
Q: IN THE LONG TAKES, WHICH COMES FIRST, THE PEOPLE OR THE CAMERA?
A: This is a dangerous approach, and you can compare it with a football match. It is about spontaneity and creativity. A director needs to know what he wants. Most rewarding is to handle everything at once, step by step, and proceeding like a game of dominoes. It is reciprocal, gradual. Important is the presence of sensitivity, not crossing the border of reciprocity.
Q: YOU HAVE FOUNDED A FILM SCHOOL.
A: I was thinking what I could do, about producing. In Hungary: impossible. The other possibility: teaching - totally impossible. Everybody is different. Yourself, your language. I hold an umbrella. Just go ahead, beat the door. I want to liberate you. The idea: freedom. The post-graduation studies take place in Croatia. Jean-Michel Frodon, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Jonathan Romney are participating. I am inviting Aki, too. It takes 2-3 weeks. Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, and Carlos Reygadas are some of the friends. We start next February. It is for graduated film-makers. We will work with, be with you, for post-graduation, for your degree of a doctor of the liberal arts. It is only for 16 people. You can come from everywhere.
Q: SATANTANGO.
A: The basic situation is there in absolutely every society. Our wishes are unrealistic. It is easy to make believe things. How easily we deceive each other. How prepared we are for any kind of crimes.
MARTTI-TAPIO KUUSKOSKI: SUSAN SONTAG.
A: I would not like to tell. Among friends there is discretion, we can trust each other, and I won't divulge personal matters, because of my high respect for her.
Q: WHICH MOVIE WOULD YOU TAKE TO THE DESERT ISLAND?
A: (No answer, and when gently pressured:) Then we can spend the whole day here. I am a friend of the long form. There are no movies. A man does not take a movie to the desert island. There would be no movie in my suitcase.
(My English translation from Marjatta Manni-Hämäläinen's excellent translation into Finnish).
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