Il arrive souvent que l’on parle d’un film “à la Jia Zhangke”. Je suis curieux de savoir comment vous définiriez cela.
Jia Zhangke - Il faudrait se garder de coller des étiquettes à un film ou à un réalisateur, c’est forcément réducteur. Certains ont cherché à résumer mes dix années de cinéma ; ils ont trouvé deux expressions pour cela : “marginal” et “Chine d’en bas”. Or je déteste ces deux formules. Pour moi, la notion de marginalité a d’abord le sens de minorité, en chinois du moins. Mais, depuis Xiao Wu, artisan pickpocket, ce que je ressens et ce que je m’efforce d’exprimer, c’est l’inverse. J’ai voulu filmer les masses, la vie d’une majorité de Chinois, la vie de gens simples, trop rarement portée à l’écran. De ce fait, quand de tels films sortent, ils semblent particuliers.
Ces films ont été montés en épingle : ils ont été interdits, considérés d’abord comme du cinéma underground, parce que le régime ne les acceptait pas [et ne les diffusait pas], puis primés à l’étranger – on s’est alors mis à les regarder en secret ou à acheter les DVD piratés… C’est ce qui m’a donné une image “marginale”, en particulier pour Xiao Wu, artisan pickpocket, où les gens ont pensé que je filmais des marginaux. J’estime que c’est un grand malentendu ! En fait, ces films ne sont marginaux qu’au sein du courant cinématographique dominant en Chine, mais la réalité qu’ils dévoilent, le genre de vie et les gens qu’ils montrent, c’est l’essentiel de notre société.
Quant à la “Chine d’en bas”, toute société a forcément une structure, et il faut bien reconnaître sans hypocrisie que notre monde n’est pas égalitaire. Mais ceux qui parlent de cinéma en employant l’expression “Chine d’en bas” s’identifient en fait au pouvoir et se considèrent comme distincts de ceux dont ils parlent, ce qui est très dangereux. Personne n’avoue en faire partie, parce qu’on pense toujours trouver quelqu’un de plus malheureux que soi ; cette “Chine d’en bas” n’a pas sa place dans notre culture sociale, et il ne peut être question d’injustice vis-à-vis de ce groupe social, puisqu’en fait personne ne s’identifie à lui.
Ces étiquettes vous dérangent-elles ?
Oui et non ! En tant que réalisateur, cela ne me dérange pas quand je conçois mes propres œuvres et que je filme l’univers qui m’est familier, que j’aime et qui m’intéresse. Mais, en tant que travailleur de la culture, cela me gêne beaucoup, surtout parce que cela implique d’adapter ma manière de présenter les choses pour pouvoir ouvrir certaines portes. Je veux, au-delà des expressions ou des conclusions simplistes sur la vie, proposer aux spectateurs une ouverture, ou même simplement aiguiser leur curiosité vis-à-vis des autres et de leur propre vie. Mais même la curiosité n’existe plus. Comment faire, avec les médias dont nous disposons, pour infléchir cette réalité culturelle ?
L’un des moments les plus pénibles que j’aie vécus, c’était en 2002, au Festival de Cannes, où j’étais allé présenter Plaisirs inconnus. Lors de la conférence de presse après la projection, la présentatrice vedette d’une chaîne de cinéma [chinoise] avait longuement pris la parole pour dire que c’était un film mensonger : nous, les Chinois, ne vivions pas du tout ainsi [le film décrit la vie quotidienne de deux jeunes chômeurs traînant dans les rues d’une petite ville du nord de la Chine] ; beaucoup de nos jeunes pouvaient apprendre l’anglais, l’informatique, partir à l’étranger poursuivre leurs études ; les portes de notre pays étaient grandes ouvertes… Pourquoi ce film décrivait-il ce genre de vie ? Cela relevait du mensonge !
Ces paroles, sans aucun doute sincères, m’ont piqué au vif, car elles m’ont brusquement fait comprendre que, tout en vivant dans le même pays, nous en étions arrivés à ne pas reconnaître l’existence d’une autre réalité que la nôtre. Il faut au moins garder une ouverture d’esprit permettant d’admettre que certaines personnes vivent de telle ou telle manière. Il en va de même en ce qui concerne l’Histoire. Moi, je ne suis pas “de droite”, et je n’ai donc jamais été jeté à ce titre en camp de travail. Il nous faut pourtant bien admettre qu’une partie des Chinois a vécu cela [allusion au “mouvement antidroitier” de 1957]. Pour quelle raison ne reconnaissons-nous pas l’existence d’une autre perception, d’autres expériences de vie, d’une autre mémoire nationale ? C’est une gêne dans mon travail.
Comment voyez-vous la réalité ?
On est toujours très influencé par les apparences de l’époque, et cela nous limite. Par exemple, ces dernières années, la communauté internationale comme les Chinois eux-mêmes ont surtout conscience d’une chose : du boom économique de la Chine et de son enrichissement. S’enrichir, c’est le maître mot aujourd’hui. Mais je considère qu’en réalité la pauvreté est un grave souci, et que cette pauvreté est source de très nombreux autres problèmes pour la société chinoise.
Quand la pauvreté rentrera-t-elle à nouveau dans notre champ de vision ? En prendre conscience n’est pas difficile mais, quand on parle de la Chine, et notamment de l’art, on met toujours ce problème de côté. Notre état d’esprit est vraiment bizarre !
Outre la pauvreté, ne peut-on pas parler de la monotonie de l’existence ? Un projet de projection de films en zone rurale devait permettre à chaque village de voir un film par mois. Une enveloppe budgétaire annuelle de plusieurs centaines de millions de yuans était prévue, mais cela a conduit à des malversations. Qu’en pensez-vous ?
La question ne concerne pas seulement les villages, mais aussi les petites villes, les chefs-lieux de district, où il n’y a quasiment pas de grand écran. On peut toujours envoyer des équipes de projectionnistes parcourir la Chine, c’est comme lancer une poignée de sable dans l’océan ; on ne voit pas où ça va. Naturellement, il y a aussi des arnaques, mais ce n’est pas le problème de fond. Il est frappant de voir à quel point la vie culturelle rurale est monotone et insipide. En dehors de la télévision, elle se réduit au mah-jong et aux paris. Les vieux sont couchés à 8 ou 9 heures, que reste-t-il aux jeunes ? Le jeu : tout le monde est réuni dans une activité divertissante, et ce n’est pas tant pour l’argent que pour combattre la solitude. Dans un tel contexte, que peut apporter le cinéma ? Il faudrait d’abord se demander comment le faire entrer dans la vie des ruraux.
La diffusion de films par les chaînes de cinéma peut-elle apporter une solution ?
Non, car pour les jeunes le plaisir de se retrouver l’emporte largement sur celui d’apprécier un spectacle. Ils sont les premiers à se précipiter quand arrivent dans leur village un cirque ou des montreurs d’animaux. Ils ne viennent pas tant pour la représentation que pour être ensemble. Le plaisir du cinéma c’est de partager, de voir un film en groupe. Avez-vous remarqué comment les médias modernes séparent les gens les uns des autres ? Par exemple, avec le home cinema, on passe d’une salle de cinéma accueillant cinq cents personnes à un salon familial en rassemblant quatre ou cinq. Même chose pour le téléphone portable ou l’ordinateur, ils vous isolent, et tout cela réduit les occasions de pratiquer des activités en groupe.
Pour améliorer la vie culturelle en milieu rural, j’ai beau réfléchir, je ne vois pas par quel bout prendre le problème ni comment faire avec une population aussi importante et des ressources aussi réduites… Dans l’état actuel des choses, il me semble difficile que le cinéma parvienne à briser la médiocrité de la vie culturelle dans les campagnes.
Le cinéma chinois est-il adapté à cette population ?
Jadis, les spectateurs chinois avaient la solide habitude d’aborder les scénarios sous l’angle d’un discours collectif, et les textes leur fournissaient d’ailleurs matière à cela ; il existait une correspondance entre les œuvres et les attentes du public. Depuis les années 1990, la création a évolué vers une démarche très individualiste ; en particulier au cinéma, l’expérience personnelle est devenue primordiale, et les procédés esthétiques ou le langage choisis par un individu ne peuvent plus être uniformisés. Cependant, avec ces changements dans la création, l’inertie de toute une culture fait que les Chinois ne sont plus en phase avec les textes. Les spectateurs ont du mal à s’habituer rapidement à des scénarios aussi différents. La réaction la plus élémentaire consiste pour le spectateur à dire : je ne comprends pas ce que tu racontes. Avant, on saisissait ce que montrait le cinéma : le sang était toujours bouillant ; les réformes, une arme à double tranchant ; le lœss, les racines de notre peuple ; le sorgho rouge, un air de liberté… Quand la création devient une affaire très personnelle, quand on ne trouve plus de liens directs avec soi, quand la culture met en valeur des sentiments et une perception individuelle infiniment différents des siens, on en arrive à ne pas comprendre. Ce que les gens ne comprennent pas, ce n’est pas l’histoire, c’est qu’ils ne trouvent pas de cadre explicatif familier. C’est en ce sens que je dis que notre culture doit s’adapter peu à peu à l’individualisme, mais pas à l’aveuglette, il faut qu’elle apprenne petit à petit à faire face à une vraie expression personnelle.
On dit souvent que vous êtes un opposant au cinéma grand public. Est-ce le cas ?
Je m’intéresse beaucoup à ce que fait l’industrie du cinéma grand public en Chine, et j’approuve ce qu’elle produit ; je ne suis pas contre l’industrie, ni contre les gros budgets ou les grosses productions. Ce n’est pas à l’industrie cinématographique en tant que telle que je m’oppose, mais à une idéologie véhiculée et manipulée dans les films, qui s’associe en cela au pouvoir. Cela porte atteinte à de grands principes sociaux. Tout le monde croit que je m’oppose au cinéma commercial à gros budget. Je n’en suis pas un adversaire.
Pour remédier à la faiblesse de l’industrie cinématographique chinoise, beaucoup proposent de tourner davantage de grosses productions et des films commerciaux à moyen budget. Qu’en pensez-vous ?
C’est surtout pour le talent des gens de l’industrie cinématographique que j’ai de l’estime. Le cinéma commercial repose sur des talents. Aujourd’hui, à l’exception de deux ou trois cinéastes de Chine populaire, les réalisateurs de grosses productions sont tous des Hongkongais ou des Taïwanais. C’est le cas de Peter Chan Ho-Sun, de John Woo (Wu Yusen), d’Ang Lee (Li An) et de Tsui Hark (Xu Ke), et c’est particulièrement vrai pour les films de kung-fu et le cinéma d’art et d’essai. En fait, la grosse production réunit les meilleurs talents de toutes les régions chinoises. Mais je ne vois pas où est le moteur qui permette l’émergence de jeunes créateurs chinois, que ce soit en Chine populaire ou dans la région.
Les films commerciaux les meilleurs sont des films qui ont été conçus en se fondant sur l’expression des sentiments et les considérations artistiques, et ont employé ensuite des procédés les rendant accessibles à tous pour exprimer leur philosophie. Par exemple, dans Le Parrain, Le Seigneur des anneaux ou Star Wars, le réalisateur prend comme point de départ une réflexion philosophique et sentimentale très poussée.
Qui dit gens différents dit choix d’expression cinématographique différents. Certains aiment les films d’auteur ou les films expérimentaux, d’autres préfèrent un genre plus industrialisé. Mais l’industrie ne vit pas de ses seules ressources, elle repose aussi sur des sentiments et une philosophie. Pourquoi les films de science-fiction et les dessins animés chinois ne parviennent-ils pas à se développer ? Tout le monde dit que c’est du fait de leur manque d’imagination, mais ce n’est qu’une toute petite partie du problème ; le plus important, c’est que ces films manquent de fondement philosophique.
Certains estiment que les conditions sont loin d’être réunies en Chine pour la création de chaînes de salles de cinéma.
Pourquoi ne peut-on pas mettre en place ces chaînes ? Ce n’est pas faute de spectateurs, mais faute de films. Dans ce genre de cinémas, on projette des films 365 jours par an, et même ceux d’un pays comme la France ne parviennent pas à s’alimenter avec la seule production nationale, mais eux ont le droit d’importer librement des films de toutes les régions du monde. Ce n’est pas le cas en Chine, où nous sommes soumis à des restrictions très strictes [avec une liste annuelle de films étrangers autorisés par l’administration]. Si l’on voulait vraiment mettre en place un réseau de salles de cinéma, il faudrait d’abord obtenir du gouvernement qu’il ouvre plus grand la porte.
On dirait qu’il existe un décalage de plus en plus marqué entre le cinéma chinois et la réflexion moderne, alors qu’il doit pourtant être un art particulièrement engagé dans son temps.
C’est lié à la capacité des réalisateurs en tant que groupe social. Or la réflexion que l’ensemble du cinéma chinois est capable d’apporter à la société n’est pas très fournie. Mais ce n’est pas une raison pour supprimer tous les efforts en ce sens. Quand j’étais à l’Institut du cinéma, j’ai été frappé par une remarque du professeur et réalisateur Xie Fei, qui nous avait conseillé de penser et de lire davantage, ajoutant que le niveau d’ensemble du cinéma chinois était équivalent à celui de la littérature de gare. Je pense qu’il voulait parler de notre niveau culturel.
Entretien avec Xu Baike, publié par Courrier International le 29 janvier 2009, trouvé ici.
mardi 9 mars 2010
Flood Refugees
Walker Evans - Household goods of a Negro flood refugee in the temporary infirmary. Forrest City, Arkansas, 1937
Walker Evans - Negro girl in the temporary infirmary. Forrest City, Arkansas, 1937Walker Evans
W.E. - I guess I'm the only survivor of my age of the school of non-commercial and extremely self-virtuous young artists that I was when I was your age. We wouldn't do anything we were asked to do, and we fought around it. Of course that kills most people. For some reason or other it didn't kill me. And I feel that since I've progressed rather slowly, I still have a long career ahead of me.
Could you tell us something about the experience of working with James Agee on the book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men?
W.E. - Oh yes. That of course is the most conspicuous thing I've done, entirely due to Agee. I have a lot of false renown because I was working with a tremendous man, and I'm embarrassed just talking about it because Agee's character doesn't fit the apotheosis he's gone through. He was a very humble man and also very opposed to all kinds of establishments, particularly including the academic, and to put his name in a circle like this— well, he didn't like to be in that kind of an atmosphere. But I will say, he was a great friend of mine before we went off and worked in the South together, and he was distinctly the leader-instigator of that project and I don't think we could have succeeded without his talent with people.
Incidentally, part of a photographer's gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you're doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You've got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate. Agee was very good at that. He and I moved into some very remote but typical farming families in the Depression, at a time when everything just reeked of poverty. There wasn't a cent of money around. And these people were in terrible shape, but typically, because everybody else was. And I suppose, without meaning to, that what I was doing was photographing human poverty. I just couldn't help it. We were all in it. Everybody was desperate. I find that it's very hard to describe what that was like.
Did it take long to overcome their nervousness?
W.E. - Not really, because Agee was very gifted in the field that I was just talking about—making people feel all right. In fact, they began to love Agee and to be awfully interested. He also took great care to let them know that this was not an invasion or a burden that would set them back in any way. At that time we didn't know it was going to be a book —this was just for a magazine article—and he told them all about it and made them feel that they were participating. We made ourselves into paying guests, with their understanding, and they hadn't seen any money for the longest time, and although that wasn't a corrupt gesture it did make them feel a little bit ahead of the game. Since the game was zero right then.
How long was it before any of the work was actually published?
W.E. - It was quite some time, as a matter of fact. What was first done was a two-part article that was rejected by the magazine that had commissioned it, and Agee asked for a release of rights. He then got a small advance from a publisher and wrote the book, but it took three or four years. I believe we were there in 1936 and the book was published in '41, so there was a long period and a whole lot of sub-adventures—the book was rejected by the first publisher and taken to a second. It's a complicated and not very interesting story. But it's typical of the history of any venture. If you're going to start to do something you're going to have setbacks bringing it to fruition. Any venture is a rocky road. Your education is, too.
You talk about yourself rebelling against the Establishment and about the misfortunes of Depression times, but your photographs are not critical. I find them more of a glorification—glorification of the plain and simple reality.
W.E. - I'm pleased to hear you say that, because I didn't like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me. I knew by then that nobody was going to do that. And that kind of history has repeated itself. People in the late '60s, not long ago, had those same ideas, and there hasn't been a single dent in the forces that they were going to bring down.
But certain photographs really do have political content, starting with, for example, Hine's photographs of children working in the mills at the turn of the century.
W.E. - Well, Hine can be used more than I can for that purpose—and there's a good reason. Hine did intend to arouse political action, or at least arouse an interest in child labor. I cared to have certain things read into my work, but I really don't intend to have my ideas and my work and my vision used as political action.
Since you raised the question of whether I'm a politically-minded artist or not, the answer is no, I'm not. I never undertake direct political action. Every time I've had a political idea it has proved perfectly wrong. For example, when I heard Mr. Nixon's speech—you remember the famous one that he made with his little dog—I was just convinced, "Well, that's the end of Richard Nixon." The next morning the country hailed him as a white knight.
In your picture of the dock workers in Cuba, it was obviously a very hard existence. The faces are as black as coal dust, or whatever it is they were working with, and yet your pictures seem to show them almost as cheerful.
W.E. - Well, you must remember, I didn't attempt to put that in. I want to record what's there, and you're right—those people have no self-pity and no sense of very much of anything. They were just as happy as you are, really. Are you happy? Maybe you're having a worse time than they were.
Do you think in photographing, say, suburban America—which is a very wide part of American life today—you could use the same approach, of just looking at the very surface to portray it?
W.E. - It doesn't work. I've tried. I thought, "Here's a great, significant sector of America," but I've been bored looking at the work of those who have done it and I've been bored with my own work.
But have you seen any good ideas in photographing suburban America?
W.E. - The movie called THE GRADUATE was satirical and quite true, quite penetrating, but that's not still photography. And there's a long tradition of it in writing, identified by Sinclair Lewis. His characters like Babbitt are relentless pictures of middle-class American life. But I can't imagine myself photographing a group of people sitting around a country club, or whatever they call it. I've never found them satirical enough material.
Some people have said that you knew more about America in the '30s than anybody else. How did you learn? You understood America.
W.E. - Well, yes, but only instinctively. That and many other questions come to me now as unanswerable and inexplicable. I knew a whole lot of things— I can see now in retrospect—instinctively and unconsciously, and that goes along with a theory of mine: that almost all good artists are being worked through with forces that they're not quite aware of. They are transmitters of sensitivities that they're not aware of having, of forces that are in the air at the time. I've done a lot of things that I'm surprised at now which show a lot of knowledge that I didn't have or knew I had. I can now learn something from my own pictures.
Was it hard to find America at that time after going to Andover?
W.E. - Well, that's a large and subtle question, and that's also something I don't know much about, but I've thought about it. Yes, I'm a product of a very Establishment place like Andover, for example, but I was always rather against it, even at the time. I didn't want to admit that I was in such a classical establishment, and I used to go around pretending that I wasn't, or that I was uneducated, and that was a youthful force. It was false thinking, but I've got my balance about that now.
Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you.
Actually, in my generation only a very few people people were anti-establishment or were revolutionary or were artists. But now there's a great change, one of the most remarkable revolutions in thought and style that we have ever seen. For one thing, young people today have a place to go if they want to run away. We didn't have any place to go. The Communist Party let us down by the Stalin Pact and by the Moscow trials. The whole world offered us no escape from our condition and our past and authority. We couldn't get out of it. But if you look at a phenomenon like Woodstock you realize that there's a mass of people all in the same boat, who take care of each other. We had no strength in union. There wasn't any union.
Do you think that this change in consciousness has resulted in an increase in good photography?
W.E. - That's a complicated question. I have a theory that the extensive interest in non-commercial photography that can be taken seriously now is due to the association between your minds and your idealistic yearning for honesty. And you have assumed that photography is an artistic medium and that it is more adaptable to honest work than words and drawings and paintings. I believe that's responsible for the enormous interest in noncommercial photography, though I'm not sure you're right about thinking that this is an honest medium or one that opens up possibilities of honest expression.
It seems to me that you are an early pioneer of this very movement you've been describing. One reason for your appeal is that you have always been a photographer of extraordinary honesty and simplicity—that what you've been looking for in America is something unadorned and plain and true.
W.E. - You must remember that this is an unconscious phenomenon, and it is to me an amazing accident of art history and psychological history and American history that I was unconsciously working in terms that surfaced, so to speak, in your generation. You talk about simplicity. When I first made photographs, they were too plain to be considered art and I wasn't considered an artist. I didn't get any attention at all. The people who looked at my work thought, well, that's just a snapshot of the backyard. Privately I knew otherwise and through stubbornness stayed with it. I think I knew what I was doing but I didn't know that I was bringing into play these characteristics you're talking about. You talk about honesty. I didn't know I was honest—I was just doing that instinctively. It just so happens that in a university the habit of mind is reflective and analytical, but that's exceptional. The so-called man in the street, if he exists, is neither reflective nor analytical.
When you take pictures some kind of change occurs. There's something different between your photographs and if you went to that place and looked at it with the naked eye, and I was wondering—you must have reflected on this, just having taken all those photographs—what effect your mind has when you make the conscious decision to push the button.
W.E. - Indeed I have. I think it's fascinating, but it's insoluble also. But I'd venture, if I could do it in a humble way, to claim to be an artist, and the motivation of artists is a great mystery. Who knows why a paragraph by Tolstoy is an inspired and often an almost deathless thing. It's a piece of literature and high art, and a New York Times editorial never is. It couldn't be. Yet they're both uses of language.
Do you think it's possible for the camera to lie?
W.E. - It certainly is. It almost always does.
Is it all right for the camera to lie?
W.E. - No, I don't think it's all right for any thing or any body to lie. But it's beyond control. I just feel that honesty exists relatively in people here and there.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is, if you take a beautiful photograph of a garbage can, is it lying?
W.E. - Well, somebody wrote a whole essay called "There's No Such Thing as Beauty." And that's worth thinking about. A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That's because you're seeing. Some people are able to see that—see it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject.
Is that simply because they present a challenge to you?
W.E. - No, I'm just made that way. It's partly rather perverse. I got a lot of my early momentum from disdain of accepted ideas of beauty, and that's partly good, it's partly original. It's also partly destructive. I wasn't a very nice young man. I was tearing down everything if possible. I only see that in retrospect. It was just in me, as there are certain curious things in you that you'll wonder at, later on when you're my age, but you won't ever get to the bottom of.
To get back to the difference between non-commercial photography and journalism, if a picture is honest I don't see what difference it makes if it's hung in a gallery or printed on a page.
W.E. - I don't either. In fact, I'm rather suspicious of hanging a picture in a gallery. I cut out remarkable pictures from the daily press all the time.
Have you ever tried color film and do you think it renders a less honest image than black and white?
W.E. - No, I've tried it. I'm in a stage right now that has to do with color and I'm interested in it. But I don't think that the doors open to falsehood through color are any greater than they are through the manipulation of prints in black and white. You can distort that, too. I happen to be a gray man; I'm not a black-and-white man. I think gray is truer. You find that in other fields. E. M. Forster's prose is gray and it's marvelous.
Most of the people who have been doing color seem to be drawn to the dramatic, like Ernst Haas.
W.E. - I understand all that, but I've now taken up that little SX-70 camera for fun and become very interested in it. I'm feeling wildly with it. But a year ago I would have said that color is vulgar and should never be tried under any circumstances. It's a paradox that I'm now associated with it and in fact I intend to come out with it seriously.
At the beginning you said that you were a late starter and you felt that your career still had a long way to go. What are you doing now?
W.E. - Well, I just told you one thing. I'm very excited about that little gadget which I thought was just a toy at first.
What are you trying to do with it?
W.E. - Oh, extend my vision and let that open up new stylistic paths that I haven't been down yet. That's one of the peculiar things about it that I unexpectedly discovered. A practiced photographer has an entirely new extension in that camera. You photograph things that you wouldn't think of photographing before. I don't even yet know why, but I find that I'm quite rejuvenated by it.
What do you think of the modern emphasis on technology?
W.E. - Well, I don't think much of it and so I'm very confused about that new camera. I took it to England last summer and a friend of mine who is an art critic said, "But it's a precept that hard work and mastering a difficult technique is a necessary part of artistic achievement, and therefore this thing is immoral." True, with that little camera your work is done the instant you push that button.
But you must think what goes into that. You have to have a lot of experience and training and discipline behind you, although I now want to put one of those things in the hands of a chimpanzee and a child and see what happens. Well, not the chimpanzee—that's been done before. But I want to try that camera with children and see what they do with it. It's the first time, I think, that you can put a machine in an artist's hands and have him then rely entirely on his vision and his taste and his mind.
Maybe that's one of the worst things about the SX-70—that there is no technical hurdle. Just anyone can take shots.
W.E. - Well, that isn't the worst thing. That's always been true with anything, whether there's any technical need or not. For example, we're all taught to write, and anybody can sit down and write something. Not everybody can sit down and write something that's worth writing.
It seems that a lot of new pictures are just interested in displaying what's in the picture without much emotional feeling about it. Alfred Stieglitz said what he was most interested in was an intensity of feeling that he got from the object itself.
W.E. - I think in his case he was led into too much introspection about artistic matters. The more he thought about that, the less of an artist he became. When he began to think that he was photographing God, he was photographing nothing. But he did some wonderful work, say, around 1906 in the Paris streets. The reality of those streets—he caught it. He was a master technician, and those are very endearing works. But those pictures of clouds are nothing to me, absolutely nothing. And he thought they were the greatest things he ever did.
What do you tell your students?
W.E. - First of all, I tell them that art can't be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable. And you can't put talent into anybody. I think you ought to say so right away and then try to do something else. And that's what a university is for, what it should be— a place for stimulation and an exchange of ideas and a chance to give people the privilege of beginning to take some of the richness of general life that's in everybody and has to be unlocked.
Originally published in Image Magazine, Vol. 17., No.4, December, 1974. Trouvé ici.
Could you tell us something about the experience of working with James Agee on the book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men?
W.E. - Oh yes. That of course is the most conspicuous thing I've done, entirely due to Agee. I have a lot of false renown because I was working with a tremendous man, and I'm embarrassed just talking about it because Agee's character doesn't fit the apotheosis he's gone through. He was a very humble man and also very opposed to all kinds of establishments, particularly including the academic, and to put his name in a circle like this— well, he didn't like to be in that kind of an atmosphere. But I will say, he was a great friend of mine before we went off and worked in the South together, and he was distinctly the leader-instigator of that project and I don't think we could have succeeded without his talent with people.
Incidentally, part of a photographer's gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you're doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You've got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate. Agee was very good at that. He and I moved into some very remote but typical farming families in the Depression, at a time when everything just reeked of poverty. There wasn't a cent of money around. And these people were in terrible shape, but typically, because everybody else was. And I suppose, without meaning to, that what I was doing was photographing human poverty. I just couldn't help it. We were all in it. Everybody was desperate. I find that it's very hard to describe what that was like.
Did it take long to overcome their nervousness?
W.E. - Not really, because Agee was very gifted in the field that I was just talking about—making people feel all right. In fact, they began to love Agee and to be awfully interested. He also took great care to let them know that this was not an invasion or a burden that would set them back in any way. At that time we didn't know it was going to be a book —this was just for a magazine article—and he told them all about it and made them feel that they were participating. We made ourselves into paying guests, with their understanding, and they hadn't seen any money for the longest time, and although that wasn't a corrupt gesture it did make them feel a little bit ahead of the game. Since the game was zero right then.
How long was it before any of the work was actually published?
W.E. - It was quite some time, as a matter of fact. What was first done was a two-part article that was rejected by the magazine that had commissioned it, and Agee asked for a release of rights. He then got a small advance from a publisher and wrote the book, but it took three or four years. I believe we were there in 1936 and the book was published in '41, so there was a long period and a whole lot of sub-adventures—the book was rejected by the first publisher and taken to a second. It's a complicated and not very interesting story. But it's typical of the history of any venture. If you're going to start to do something you're going to have setbacks bringing it to fruition. Any venture is a rocky road. Your education is, too.
You talk about yourself rebelling against the Establishment and about the misfortunes of Depression times, but your photographs are not critical. I find them more of a glorification—glorification of the plain and simple reality.
W.E. - I'm pleased to hear you say that, because I didn't like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me. I knew by then that nobody was going to do that. And that kind of history has repeated itself. People in the late '60s, not long ago, had those same ideas, and there hasn't been a single dent in the forces that they were going to bring down.
But certain photographs really do have political content, starting with, for example, Hine's photographs of children working in the mills at the turn of the century.
W.E. - Well, Hine can be used more than I can for that purpose—and there's a good reason. Hine did intend to arouse political action, or at least arouse an interest in child labor. I cared to have certain things read into my work, but I really don't intend to have my ideas and my work and my vision used as political action.
Since you raised the question of whether I'm a politically-minded artist or not, the answer is no, I'm not. I never undertake direct political action. Every time I've had a political idea it has proved perfectly wrong. For example, when I heard Mr. Nixon's speech—you remember the famous one that he made with his little dog—I was just convinced, "Well, that's the end of Richard Nixon." The next morning the country hailed him as a white knight.
In your picture of the dock workers in Cuba, it was obviously a very hard existence. The faces are as black as coal dust, or whatever it is they were working with, and yet your pictures seem to show them almost as cheerful.
W.E. - Well, you must remember, I didn't attempt to put that in. I want to record what's there, and you're right—those people have no self-pity and no sense of very much of anything. They were just as happy as you are, really. Are you happy? Maybe you're having a worse time than they were.
Do you think in photographing, say, suburban America—which is a very wide part of American life today—you could use the same approach, of just looking at the very surface to portray it?
W.E. - It doesn't work. I've tried. I thought, "Here's a great, significant sector of America," but I've been bored looking at the work of those who have done it and I've been bored with my own work.
But have you seen any good ideas in photographing suburban America?
W.E. - The movie called THE GRADUATE was satirical and quite true, quite penetrating, but that's not still photography. And there's a long tradition of it in writing, identified by Sinclair Lewis. His characters like Babbitt are relentless pictures of middle-class American life. But I can't imagine myself photographing a group of people sitting around a country club, or whatever they call it. I've never found them satirical enough material.
Some people have said that you knew more about America in the '30s than anybody else. How did you learn? You understood America.
W.E. - Well, yes, but only instinctively. That and many other questions come to me now as unanswerable and inexplicable. I knew a whole lot of things— I can see now in retrospect—instinctively and unconsciously, and that goes along with a theory of mine: that almost all good artists are being worked through with forces that they're not quite aware of. They are transmitters of sensitivities that they're not aware of having, of forces that are in the air at the time. I've done a lot of things that I'm surprised at now which show a lot of knowledge that I didn't have or knew I had. I can now learn something from my own pictures.
Was it hard to find America at that time after going to Andover?
W.E. - Well, that's a large and subtle question, and that's also something I don't know much about, but I've thought about it. Yes, I'm a product of a very Establishment place like Andover, for example, but I was always rather against it, even at the time. I didn't want to admit that I was in such a classical establishment, and I used to go around pretending that I wasn't, or that I was uneducated, and that was a youthful force. It was false thinking, but I've got my balance about that now.
Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you.
Actually, in my generation only a very few people people were anti-establishment or were revolutionary or were artists. But now there's a great change, one of the most remarkable revolutions in thought and style that we have ever seen. For one thing, young people today have a place to go if they want to run away. We didn't have any place to go. The Communist Party let us down by the Stalin Pact and by the Moscow trials. The whole world offered us no escape from our condition and our past and authority. We couldn't get out of it. But if you look at a phenomenon like Woodstock you realize that there's a mass of people all in the same boat, who take care of each other. We had no strength in union. There wasn't any union.
Do you think that this change in consciousness has resulted in an increase in good photography?
W.E. - That's a complicated question. I have a theory that the extensive interest in non-commercial photography that can be taken seriously now is due to the association between your minds and your idealistic yearning for honesty. And you have assumed that photography is an artistic medium and that it is more adaptable to honest work than words and drawings and paintings. I believe that's responsible for the enormous interest in noncommercial photography, though I'm not sure you're right about thinking that this is an honest medium or one that opens up possibilities of honest expression.
It seems to me that you are an early pioneer of this very movement you've been describing. One reason for your appeal is that you have always been a photographer of extraordinary honesty and simplicity—that what you've been looking for in America is something unadorned and plain and true.
W.E. - You must remember that this is an unconscious phenomenon, and it is to me an amazing accident of art history and psychological history and American history that I was unconsciously working in terms that surfaced, so to speak, in your generation. You talk about simplicity. When I first made photographs, they were too plain to be considered art and I wasn't considered an artist. I didn't get any attention at all. The people who looked at my work thought, well, that's just a snapshot of the backyard. Privately I knew otherwise and through stubbornness stayed with it. I think I knew what I was doing but I didn't know that I was bringing into play these characteristics you're talking about. You talk about honesty. I didn't know I was honest—I was just doing that instinctively. It just so happens that in a university the habit of mind is reflective and analytical, but that's exceptional. The so-called man in the street, if he exists, is neither reflective nor analytical.
When you take pictures some kind of change occurs. There's something different between your photographs and if you went to that place and looked at it with the naked eye, and I was wondering—you must have reflected on this, just having taken all those photographs—what effect your mind has when you make the conscious decision to push the button.
W.E. - Indeed I have. I think it's fascinating, but it's insoluble also. But I'd venture, if I could do it in a humble way, to claim to be an artist, and the motivation of artists is a great mystery. Who knows why a paragraph by Tolstoy is an inspired and often an almost deathless thing. It's a piece of literature and high art, and a New York Times editorial never is. It couldn't be. Yet they're both uses of language.
Do you think it's possible for the camera to lie?
W.E. - It certainly is. It almost always does.
Is it all right for the camera to lie?
W.E. - No, I don't think it's all right for any thing or any body to lie. But it's beyond control. I just feel that honesty exists relatively in people here and there.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is, if you take a beautiful photograph of a garbage can, is it lying?
W.E. - Well, somebody wrote a whole essay called "There's No Such Thing as Beauty." And that's worth thinking about. A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That's because you're seeing. Some people are able to see that—see it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject.
Is that simply because they present a challenge to you?
W.E. - No, I'm just made that way. It's partly rather perverse. I got a lot of my early momentum from disdain of accepted ideas of beauty, and that's partly good, it's partly original. It's also partly destructive. I wasn't a very nice young man. I was tearing down everything if possible. I only see that in retrospect. It was just in me, as there are certain curious things in you that you'll wonder at, later on when you're my age, but you won't ever get to the bottom of.
To get back to the difference between non-commercial photography and journalism, if a picture is honest I don't see what difference it makes if it's hung in a gallery or printed on a page.
W.E. - I don't either. In fact, I'm rather suspicious of hanging a picture in a gallery. I cut out remarkable pictures from the daily press all the time.
Have you ever tried color film and do you think it renders a less honest image than black and white?
W.E. - No, I've tried it. I'm in a stage right now that has to do with color and I'm interested in it. But I don't think that the doors open to falsehood through color are any greater than they are through the manipulation of prints in black and white. You can distort that, too. I happen to be a gray man; I'm not a black-and-white man. I think gray is truer. You find that in other fields. E. M. Forster's prose is gray and it's marvelous.
Most of the people who have been doing color seem to be drawn to the dramatic, like Ernst Haas.
W.E. - I understand all that, but I've now taken up that little SX-70 camera for fun and become very interested in it. I'm feeling wildly with it. But a year ago I would have said that color is vulgar and should never be tried under any circumstances. It's a paradox that I'm now associated with it and in fact I intend to come out with it seriously.
At the beginning you said that you were a late starter and you felt that your career still had a long way to go. What are you doing now?
W.E. - Well, I just told you one thing. I'm very excited about that little gadget which I thought was just a toy at first.
What are you trying to do with it?
W.E. - Oh, extend my vision and let that open up new stylistic paths that I haven't been down yet. That's one of the peculiar things about it that I unexpectedly discovered. A practiced photographer has an entirely new extension in that camera. You photograph things that you wouldn't think of photographing before. I don't even yet know why, but I find that I'm quite rejuvenated by it.
What do you think of the modern emphasis on technology?
W.E. - Well, I don't think much of it and so I'm very confused about that new camera. I took it to England last summer and a friend of mine who is an art critic said, "But it's a precept that hard work and mastering a difficult technique is a necessary part of artistic achievement, and therefore this thing is immoral." True, with that little camera your work is done the instant you push that button.
But you must think what goes into that. You have to have a lot of experience and training and discipline behind you, although I now want to put one of those things in the hands of a chimpanzee and a child and see what happens. Well, not the chimpanzee—that's been done before. But I want to try that camera with children and see what they do with it. It's the first time, I think, that you can put a machine in an artist's hands and have him then rely entirely on his vision and his taste and his mind.
Maybe that's one of the worst things about the SX-70—that there is no technical hurdle. Just anyone can take shots.
W.E. - Well, that isn't the worst thing. That's always been true with anything, whether there's any technical need or not. For example, we're all taught to write, and anybody can sit down and write something. Not everybody can sit down and write something that's worth writing.
It seems that a lot of new pictures are just interested in displaying what's in the picture without much emotional feeling about it. Alfred Stieglitz said what he was most interested in was an intensity of feeling that he got from the object itself.
W.E. - I think in his case he was led into too much introspection about artistic matters. The more he thought about that, the less of an artist he became. When he began to think that he was photographing God, he was photographing nothing. But he did some wonderful work, say, around 1906 in the Paris streets. The reality of those streets—he caught it. He was a master technician, and those are very endearing works. But those pictures of clouds are nothing to me, absolutely nothing. And he thought they were the greatest things he ever did.
What do you tell your students?
W.E. - First of all, I tell them that art can't be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable. And you can't put talent into anybody. I think you ought to say so right away and then try to do something else. And that's what a university is for, what it should be— a place for stimulation and an exchange of ideas and a chance to give people the privilege of beginning to take some of the richness of general life that's in everybody and has to be unlocked.
Originally published in Image Magazine, Vol. 17., No.4, December, 1974. Trouvé ici.
vendredi 5 mars 2010
Walker Evans
Walker Evans - General Store Interior, Alabama
Walker Evans - New Orleans Street Corner, 19362046
TIME: 2046 debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, but I've heard that you've made changes since then. How much has the film been altered?
Wong: It hasn't changed much. We just switched the sequence of certain scenes, and took out a few other scenes to compensate, because we are in a rush to catch the deadline of Cannes, so that version the sound and also the music is not perfect. We improved it, and also the special effects of the film. All this CG works hadn't been complete during Cannes. We put all the things that were supposed to be in the film back in their right place. Part of the delay is because I am working with CGI for the first time in my career. This is something beyond my control, and there are a lot of factors which are unpredictable.
TIME: What was it like watching the film for the first time at Cannes?
Wong: It is really a trip. We just finished the first reel of the film, one hour before we got on the plane. I didn't get any chance to watch the film as a whole in the cinema before that. We got to Paris the next morning. That night, I get to the cinema, and actually this is my first time to watch the film on a big screen, in front of the public. It's exciting because every moment you don't know what mistake will happen.
TIME: Why did the editing go down to the wire?
Wong: The structure was constantly changing. We can't be sure. Some of the scenes are supposed to be there, but at the last moment we look at the material we have, and it's not done yet. It's not perfect yet. So we have to take that scene out, and then we have to change the structure again, because you have to then delete not only one scene, but many scenes. We started this film at the same time as In the Mood for Love. And at first, these two films were two separate projects. But at the time it was extremely difficult for me [to keep them separate] because it was like falling in love with two women at the same time. So I tried to find a kind of connection between these two projects. So one day while shooting In the Mood, we were shooting in a hotel room, and the memories triggered something, so I thought why don't we call it 2046?
TIME: Is 2046 a continuation of In the Mood for Love?
Wong: A lot of people think that 2046 is like a sequel of In the Mood, but I don't think so. For me it's more like Mood is a chapter in 2046. It's like 2046 is a big symphony, and Mood is one of its movements.
TIME: How did the many changes in 2046 evolve? At first we were hearing the movie was going to have a futuristic feel, to be set in the year 2046, with robots and everything else, but that seems to have been dropped from the original version. What happened?
Wong: The whole thing, the reason we want the idea to make the film, comes from the promise the Chinese government gave to the Hong Kong people, of 50 years of no change. I think that would be very interesting, because 2046 is the last year of that promise. And I think, this is interesting, is there anything similar that is so unchanged in life? It has different layers this number can apply to a lot of things in life. In terms of a love story, normally when we fall in love with someone we're concerned with our promise. Will they change? Will I change? How can we make this moment last forever? I think this is a very interesting idea, to create a film based on that number, on that promise. So we start with that. Because of that number, I thought we could set the film in 2046, 50 years in the future, so naturally we start thinking about a futuristic story, sci-fi stuff. But I didn't want a realistic version of the future. What we are trying to achieve is like a manga, something like the imagination of a person in 1966 thinking about the future.
TIME: You had a much larger cast than usual, with a very large crew as well. How do you keep them all together and working for such a long, five-year production period?
Wong: To keep people working for a long time is very hard, to keep the spirit and the focus is extremely hard. We know that we were trying to do something that is very ambitious because we have a big cast, and so everyone is trying to deliver their best. To work together for five years is extremely hard, so you need the belief that we're really doing something. Even the cast needs to believe in something. Of course during the five years, some people will lose their faith and they have to leave, and some people will join in. We were supposed to be shooting the Eros project in Shanghai during the SARS period. At that time because we can't leave Hong Kong, we have to shoot in Eros in the city, and some of our crew members were coming from Taiwan. Their wives just went crazy, because they couldn't accept their husbands working on such a dangerous film, in such a dangerous city. But they still came.
TIME: Given your fairly iconoclastic working methods and long shoots, how do you convince people to sign onto your projects, especially newcomers? How do you get them to believe in you?
Wong: There's always a myth thing that we don't have a script or that everything is improvised. But that's not true. Most of the actors, when they join the production, they know their story. They don't know their whole story, but they know their chapter. Like Zhang Ziyi, because she knows she's going to play a ballroom dancer in the 60s, and she doesn't have any idea what that is. She's coming from a totally different background. I have to give her a lot of homework. I have to give her all of these films from the period, so she can understand the gestures, the actions. And also I give her all the costumes, because she has to get those manners down. So she simply took all the costumes back to the hotel, and wore them everyday until she was comfortable in them.
TIME: Were you happy with Zhang's performance?
Wong: Very much. Before 2046, everyone thinks about Zhang mostly through Crouching Tiger or Hero, because she's very good with action work. But I think she's more than that. She's a very very good actress, very sensitive. Very hard working.
TIME: What about Gong Li? How did she prepare for her role?
Wong: She played a gambler, so she went to Macau by herself to watch and prepare. She wouldn't take a production assistant with her. It was Macau undercover. She is very serious. She is very smart. She needs to have a lot of preparation.
TIME: Do all your actors need that level of preparation?
Wong: No. Like Faye Wong, she doesn't need to do that because we've worked before, and she always tries to make herself very relaxed.
TIME: 2046 features a lot of actors who are new to you, like Li and Zhang. Is it difficult to accustom them to your working methods?
Wong: The script actually develops with the characters. If you want to make a film with an actor or actress, there must be something that attracts you. I'm trying to exploit it, the quality that they might not even be aware of themselves. Normally, I don't ask people to act certain persons. It's just be you. Like Gong Li when I'm making Eros with her, I have kind of a picture what if she's a gambler, or a hustler, it would be very interesting. It's something inside her that you find.
TIME: So the character and the actor co-exist in your mind?
Wong: Yes. There is no acting in it. It's like seamless, because they have that quality, at least according to my observation.
TIME: Your job is to bring that out?
Wong: Yes.
TIME: How do you relate your films to each other? What does 2046 have in common with the others?
Wong: I think Days of Being Wild, In the Mood and 2046 all fit in one continuous story. It would be a very interesting to put Days and Mood together with 2046 and let it become a complete story. If we think Days is a chapter of 2046, and Mood is a chapter of 2046, then 2046 is the complete story.
TIME: Does that help explain why 2046 took so long to complete, if it really is the final section of the a story you've been working on for almost 15 years? If Cannes hadn't been last May, would you still be working on it?
Wong: The thing is, when you say stop, and it's the end of the film, it doesn't mean it's the end really. Sometimes it means you are running out of money or running out of time. Like Days was supposed to be two parts. And Mood, the story should be a little longer, they [Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung] should have more encounters, though they never come together. There was an epilogue in my original idea. But you have to stop at that moment. But that doesn't mean you can't put these things back into another film. In a broader sense it's like a transection of different characters. Days, Mood and 2046 are like a trilogy, and this is the last chapter. At a certain point, it might take me years, I might come back to this period again. Now it's almost done. Maybe 10 years later, or much later, I think, well, we can have another chapter, or it can belong to someone else.
TIME: Does the act of dealing with those limitations, of time or money, help shape what the film ends up looking like?
Wong: Absolutely. To be a director is always to deal with the limitations, restrictions. Productions, creative, financial, there's so many restrictions and limitations. And sometimes the way you make the film is to cope with these problems. So a lot of people think your film is very stylized, you have a different way to make this film, you have your signatures, but much of it is due to your response to these limitations. The way we make films is to solve all of the problems. The thing is it's very hard to find a balance, because you find a way to solve the problem, and at the same time you want to keep as much of your original intention as possible.
TIME: If you had your preference, would you ever stop making this film?
Wong: For me to make films should be like a circus, we should just go from one town to the other, always on the road, and you stop when you think you should stop. To me, if there's no Cannes, no other reasons, you can make 2046 for another year. So that's why I think we have to present the film now. I agreed to send the film to France even though it was not completed yet. But I think it is a good thing to do because it means we have a deadline. I need a deadline. But I have my hesitation too. I have questions about these things [whether he should really keep working on the film]. Am I doing too much? Is it worth it? You are putting yourself in a prison. You are imprisoned by this situation. Actors can have a break, you can do another film, and come back. It's very hard. At the end you just want to get away from it as soon as possible. A few weeks ago, we finished the final mix, we spent a lot of time doing the sound, and at the end, the film is done. And I looked at the film and I realized that you have to say goodbye to this project, and you feel very very... You know it's not easy, and you know it's not a normal practice to make a film for five years. And I'm not sure we'll be able or willing to do that again in the future. This is a very special film. It is the hardest to let go. But you have to let go. And that's it. And move onto something else.
TIME: Were you disappointed to miss out on the Palme d'Or at Cannes?
Wong: No. For me, the reason to appear in Cannes is to have a deadline. That's the purpose. And to win an award in a festival is purely something that you can't control. It's up to timing, and the makeup of the jury.
TIME: Do you consider your films romantic?
Wong: For me, romanticism means you follow your heart more than your mind. If that's the case, the films are 75% romantic. The other 25% is the realities, the problem solving, and luck. I cannot describe in detail in the films which moment is like that [the nonromantic proportion], but overall it's 25%.
TIME: What about you? Are you romantic?
Wong: [Laughing] I'm 60% romantic.
TIME: Where do you see yourself in regards to other directors, Western and Asian? What can you take away from them?
Wong: I'm always curious about how directors make their films, because I didn't go to film school and I don't have any technical training. The way that I make films is the only way I know. So I'm curious sometimes how the other directors make their films. When I was very young, we watched a lot of films from different directors, and each of them give you a window, showing you how a film can be made in this way. So by the time you face all of these problems, you know you can solve by this alternative, or the other alternative.
TIME: Why do you make your films the way you do?
Wong: I'm not that self-analytical. I just do it by instinct, simply by instinct.
TIME: You started off your career as a screenwriter. Is it odd for someone who began their career as a writer to seemingly turn away from scripts altogether?
Wong: I worked as a writer for almost 10 years, and I realized the purpose of the script is as a prescription to make everyone seem to know what they're doing. And the role of the writer is like a psychiatrist to the director. During the productions, the director has a lot of queries. sometimes he has second thought on this idea and he want to make sure this line is perfect. And he needs a psychiatrist to tell him that what he's doing is right. And in my case, I'm my own psychiatrist, which kind of just makes things even worse.
TIME: For a filmmaker whose work is so consumed with desire and its frustration, you seem remarkably hands-off about actually showing sex. Why is that?
Wong: I think to describe a so-called love scene, or intercourse is very boring. There must be a point to your focus. Like in Eros, it's always about this person's perspective. It's about the hand, instead of the actual act. In 2046, the only physical relationship between Tony and the women is the story between him and Zhang Ziyi. The reason we want to have three parts of that story is because the character of Tony is always thinking about his past. And sometimes he has a fantasy about the future, but he's always missing the present. And that's why he wants to change, he wants to have physical contact, very solid relationships with someone else, and that woman is the woman next door, Zhang Ziyi. He wants to change, he wants to have direct contact with someone, another person. So his story with Zhang Ziyi is entirely straightforward, there are no second thoughts. He just wants to believe by instinct. And afterwards, when things don't work out well with Zhang Ziyi, he goes back to talking to himself, and writing. Writing is a way to have a dialogue with yourself. You can never compete with something in the past, in memory. Like some people said, we love what we can't have. In this world, the end becomes the beginning. It's very unfair for anyone around him [Tony] in the present, because they can never compete with his imagination or his memory. We love what we can't have, and we can't have what we love.
TIME: I heard that your cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, once claimed that all of your films were about the impossibility of love. Do you agree?
Wong: No, I don't think so, because if you have it [love] in your memory, it's already possible to me. He [Doyle] thinks that because he's very physical. [Laughs]
TIME: What's your working relationship like with Doyle and with your art director, William Chang?
Wong: It's a very long working relationship, and it makes a lot of things much easier. And actually we don't have to discuss much about the film. We don't need meetings. Sometimes I ever prefer that way because we need some suspense between each other. I have to guess what William is doing. By the time I get to the set, I have to respond to that. So that may be a very good way to inspire each other. Otherwise it would become very boring, like a very long relationship, a marriage, everything becomes very predictable, and you'd know that we are talking about the same thing all the time. We prefer to stay away form each other and have some mystery. Sometimes it's like a competition. They create something hard, and you have to solve it. And I create something hard. I will ask Chris if he can do something better. It's like a challenge. It works very well in our case.
TIME: Can you give an example from the making of 2046?
Wong: We're shooting in a small hotel, everything is very narrow, tight, and I decided to shoot in Cinemascope, which created a huge problem for the lighting and camera man because they don't have a stage or anything to put their light. So Chris has to create something on his feet, and for him, this is the first time he has used this format. Actually he's quite lost, and he has to find a new way to deal with this problem. Of course he complains, and we have mistakes and problems, but this is the way, the challenge, otherwise it will be the same thing. Everyone will sleep, it will be very boring. Especially if it takes five years to make a film.
TIME: How do you communicate with each other?
Wong: I think we speak almost the same language. We know that. And I think we respect each other very well. And I know that, this is the best way to deal with the films.
TIME: Can you ever imagine working with anyone else?
Wong: Sure, possibly. At some point for Chris, he needs some inspiration. He's a sailor, and he has to travel, and for me also, if I have a chance to work with another director of photography, it would be another challenge.
TIME: Now that 2046 is done, and that continuous story has been completed, what will your next project be? How do you start a new project? Do you start with an image?
Wong: Yes, you need to have the image. Sometimes you can start with the look of an actress, or a certain space, or even with a hand. Like Eros, I started the whole image with the single hand.
TIME: Your vision of Hong Kong is so individual, so different from the place we live in. What it's like to be an elegiac artist in a city that is constantly eating its own past?
Wong: It's like you try to keep something. That's why you have a story like 2046. You want to create a place in the world where what we think is nice, we can keep it that way. It's like the Hong Kong that we picture in our films is something from our impressions, from our memories, a certain wonderful moment of our city. And we want to keep that on film.
Interview réalisée par Bryan Walsh publiée le 27 septembre 2004 par Time Magazine.
Wong: It hasn't changed much. We just switched the sequence of certain scenes, and took out a few other scenes to compensate, because we are in a rush to catch the deadline of Cannes, so that version the sound and also the music is not perfect. We improved it, and also the special effects of the film. All this CG works hadn't been complete during Cannes. We put all the things that were supposed to be in the film back in their right place. Part of the delay is because I am working with CGI for the first time in my career. This is something beyond my control, and there are a lot of factors which are unpredictable.
TIME: What was it like watching the film for the first time at Cannes?
Wong: It is really a trip. We just finished the first reel of the film, one hour before we got on the plane. I didn't get any chance to watch the film as a whole in the cinema before that. We got to Paris the next morning. That night, I get to the cinema, and actually this is my first time to watch the film on a big screen, in front of the public. It's exciting because every moment you don't know what mistake will happen.
TIME: Why did the editing go down to the wire?
Wong: The structure was constantly changing. We can't be sure. Some of the scenes are supposed to be there, but at the last moment we look at the material we have, and it's not done yet. It's not perfect yet. So we have to take that scene out, and then we have to change the structure again, because you have to then delete not only one scene, but many scenes. We started this film at the same time as In the Mood for Love. And at first, these two films were two separate projects. But at the time it was extremely difficult for me [to keep them separate] because it was like falling in love with two women at the same time. So I tried to find a kind of connection between these two projects. So one day while shooting In the Mood, we were shooting in a hotel room, and the memories triggered something, so I thought why don't we call it 2046?
TIME: Is 2046 a continuation of In the Mood for Love?
Wong: A lot of people think that 2046 is like a sequel of In the Mood, but I don't think so. For me it's more like Mood is a chapter in 2046. It's like 2046 is a big symphony, and Mood is one of its movements.
TIME: How did the many changes in 2046 evolve? At first we were hearing the movie was going to have a futuristic feel, to be set in the year 2046, with robots and everything else, but that seems to have been dropped from the original version. What happened?
Wong: The whole thing, the reason we want the idea to make the film, comes from the promise the Chinese government gave to the Hong Kong people, of 50 years of no change. I think that would be very interesting, because 2046 is the last year of that promise. And I think, this is interesting, is there anything similar that is so unchanged in life? It has different layers this number can apply to a lot of things in life. In terms of a love story, normally when we fall in love with someone we're concerned with our promise. Will they change? Will I change? How can we make this moment last forever? I think this is a very interesting idea, to create a film based on that number, on that promise. So we start with that. Because of that number, I thought we could set the film in 2046, 50 years in the future, so naturally we start thinking about a futuristic story, sci-fi stuff. But I didn't want a realistic version of the future. What we are trying to achieve is like a manga, something like the imagination of a person in 1966 thinking about the future.
TIME: You had a much larger cast than usual, with a very large crew as well. How do you keep them all together and working for such a long, five-year production period?
Wong: To keep people working for a long time is very hard, to keep the spirit and the focus is extremely hard. We know that we were trying to do something that is very ambitious because we have a big cast, and so everyone is trying to deliver their best. To work together for five years is extremely hard, so you need the belief that we're really doing something. Even the cast needs to believe in something. Of course during the five years, some people will lose their faith and they have to leave, and some people will join in. We were supposed to be shooting the Eros project in Shanghai during the SARS period. At that time because we can't leave Hong Kong, we have to shoot in Eros in the city, and some of our crew members were coming from Taiwan. Their wives just went crazy, because they couldn't accept their husbands working on such a dangerous film, in such a dangerous city. But they still came.
TIME: Given your fairly iconoclastic working methods and long shoots, how do you convince people to sign onto your projects, especially newcomers? How do you get them to believe in you?
Wong: There's always a myth thing that we don't have a script or that everything is improvised. But that's not true. Most of the actors, when they join the production, they know their story. They don't know their whole story, but they know their chapter. Like Zhang Ziyi, because she knows she's going to play a ballroom dancer in the 60s, and she doesn't have any idea what that is. She's coming from a totally different background. I have to give her a lot of homework. I have to give her all of these films from the period, so she can understand the gestures, the actions. And also I give her all the costumes, because she has to get those manners down. So she simply took all the costumes back to the hotel, and wore them everyday until she was comfortable in them.
TIME: Were you happy with Zhang's performance?
Wong: Very much. Before 2046, everyone thinks about Zhang mostly through Crouching Tiger or Hero, because she's very good with action work. But I think she's more than that. She's a very very good actress, very sensitive. Very hard working.
TIME: What about Gong Li? How did she prepare for her role?
Wong: She played a gambler, so she went to Macau by herself to watch and prepare. She wouldn't take a production assistant with her. It was Macau undercover. She is very serious. She is very smart. She needs to have a lot of preparation.
TIME: Do all your actors need that level of preparation?
Wong: No. Like Faye Wong, she doesn't need to do that because we've worked before, and she always tries to make herself very relaxed.
TIME: 2046 features a lot of actors who are new to you, like Li and Zhang. Is it difficult to accustom them to your working methods?
Wong: The script actually develops with the characters. If you want to make a film with an actor or actress, there must be something that attracts you. I'm trying to exploit it, the quality that they might not even be aware of themselves. Normally, I don't ask people to act certain persons. It's just be you. Like Gong Li when I'm making Eros with her, I have kind of a picture what if she's a gambler, or a hustler, it would be very interesting. It's something inside her that you find.
TIME: So the character and the actor co-exist in your mind?
Wong: Yes. There is no acting in it. It's like seamless, because they have that quality, at least according to my observation.
TIME: Your job is to bring that out?
Wong: Yes.
TIME: How do you relate your films to each other? What does 2046 have in common with the others?
Wong: I think Days of Being Wild, In the Mood and 2046 all fit in one continuous story. It would be a very interesting to put Days and Mood together with 2046 and let it become a complete story. If we think Days is a chapter of 2046, and Mood is a chapter of 2046, then 2046 is the complete story.
TIME: Does that help explain why 2046 took so long to complete, if it really is the final section of the a story you've been working on for almost 15 years? If Cannes hadn't been last May, would you still be working on it?
Wong: The thing is, when you say stop, and it's the end of the film, it doesn't mean it's the end really. Sometimes it means you are running out of money or running out of time. Like Days was supposed to be two parts. And Mood, the story should be a little longer, they [Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung] should have more encounters, though they never come together. There was an epilogue in my original idea. But you have to stop at that moment. But that doesn't mean you can't put these things back into another film. In a broader sense it's like a transection of different characters. Days, Mood and 2046 are like a trilogy, and this is the last chapter. At a certain point, it might take me years, I might come back to this period again. Now it's almost done. Maybe 10 years later, or much later, I think, well, we can have another chapter, or it can belong to someone else.
TIME: Does the act of dealing with those limitations, of time or money, help shape what the film ends up looking like?
Wong: Absolutely. To be a director is always to deal with the limitations, restrictions. Productions, creative, financial, there's so many restrictions and limitations. And sometimes the way you make the film is to cope with these problems. So a lot of people think your film is very stylized, you have a different way to make this film, you have your signatures, but much of it is due to your response to these limitations. The way we make films is to solve all of the problems. The thing is it's very hard to find a balance, because you find a way to solve the problem, and at the same time you want to keep as much of your original intention as possible.
TIME: If you had your preference, would you ever stop making this film?
Wong: For me to make films should be like a circus, we should just go from one town to the other, always on the road, and you stop when you think you should stop. To me, if there's no Cannes, no other reasons, you can make 2046 for another year. So that's why I think we have to present the film now. I agreed to send the film to France even though it was not completed yet. But I think it is a good thing to do because it means we have a deadline. I need a deadline. But I have my hesitation too. I have questions about these things [whether he should really keep working on the film]. Am I doing too much? Is it worth it? You are putting yourself in a prison. You are imprisoned by this situation. Actors can have a break, you can do another film, and come back. It's very hard. At the end you just want to get away from it as soon as possible. A few weeks ago, we finished the final mix, we spent a lot of time doing the sound, and at the end, the film is done. And I looked at the film and I realized that you have to say goodbye to this project, and you feel very very... You know it's not easy, and you know it's not a normal practice to make a film for five years. And I'm not sure we'll be able or willing to do that again in the future. This is a very special film. It is the hardest to let go. But you have to let go. And that's it. And move onto something else.
TIME: Were you disappointed to miss out on the Palme d'Or at Cannes?
Wong: No. For me, the reason to appear in Cannes is to have a deadline. That's the purpose. And to win an award in a festival is purely something that you can't control. It's up to timing, and the makeup of the jury.
TIME: Do you consider your films romantic?
Wong: For me, romanticism means you follow your heart more than your mind. If that's the case, the films are 75% romantic. The other 25% is the realities, the problem solving, and luck. I cannot describe in detail in the films which moment is like that [the nonromantic proportion], but overall it's 25%.
TIME: What about you? Are you romantic?
Wong: [Laughing] I'm 60% romantic.
TIME: Where do you see yourself in regards to other directors, Western and Asian? What can you take away from them?
Wong: I'm always curious about how directors make their films, because I didn't go to film school and I don't have any technical training. The way that I make films is the only way I know. So I'm curious sometimes how the other directors make their films. When I was very young, we watched a lot of films from different directors, and each of them give you a window, showing you how a film can be made in this way. So by the time you face all of these problems, you know you can solve by this alternative, or the other alternative.
TIME: Why do you make your films the way you do?
Wong: I'm not that self-analytical. I just do it by instinct, simply by instinct.
TIME: You started off your career as a screenwriter. Is it odd for someone who began their career as a writer to seemingly turn away from scripts altogether?
Wong: I worked as a writer for almost 10 years, and I realized the purpose of the script is as a prescription to make everyone seem to know what they're doing. And the role of the writer is like a psychiatrist to the director. During the productions, the director has a lot of queries. sometimes he has second thought on this idea and he want to make sure this line is perfect. And he needs a psychiatrist to tell him that what he's doing is right. And in my case, I'm my own psychiatrist, which kind of just makes things even worse.
TIME: For a filmmaker whose work is so consumed with desire and its frustration, you seem remarkably hands-off about actually showing sex. Why is that?
Wong: I think to describe a so-called love scene, or intercourse is very boring. There must be a point to your focus. Like in Eros, it's always about this person's perspective. It's about the hand, instead of the actual act. In 2046, the only physical relationship between Tony and the women is the story between him and Zhang Ziyi. The reason we want to have three parts of that story is because the character of Tony is always thinking about his past. And sometimes he has a fantasy about the future, but he's always missing the present. And that's why he wants to change, he wants to have physical contact, very solid relationships with someone else, and that woman is the woman next door, Zhang Ziyi. He wants to change, he wants to have direct contact with someone, another person. So his story with Zhang Ziyi is entirely straightforward, there are no second thoughts. He just wants to believe by instinct. And afterwards, when things don't work out well with Zhang Ziyi, he goes back to talking to himself, and writing. Writing is a way to have a dialogue with yourself. You can never compete with something in the past, in memory. Like some people said, we love what we can't have. In this world, the end becomes the beginning. It's very unfair for anyone around him [Tony] in the present, because they can never compete with his imagination or his memory. We love what we can't have, and we can't have what we love.
TIME: I heard that your cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, once claimed that all of your films were about the impossibility of love. Do you agree?
Wong: No, I don't think so, because if you have it [love] in your memory, it's already possible to me. He [Doyle] thinks that because he's very physical. [Laughs]
TIME: What's your working relationship like with Doyle and with your art director, William Chang?
Wong: It's a very long working relationship, and it makes a lot of things much easier. And actually we don't have to discuss much about the film. We don't need meetings. Sometimes I ever prefer that way because we need some suspense between each other. I have to guess what William is doing. By the time I get to the set, I have to respond to that. So that may be a very good way to inspire each other. Otherwise it would become very boring, like a very long relationship, a marriage, everything becomes very predictable, and you'd know that we are talking about the same thing all the time. We prefer to stay away form each other and have some mystery. Sometimes it's like a competition. They create something hard, and you have to solve it. And I create something hard. I will ask Chris if he can do something better. It's like a challenge. It works very well in our case.
TIME: Can you give an example from the making of 2046?
Wong: We're shooting in a small hotel, everything is very narrow, tight, and I decided to shoot in Cinemascope, which created a huge problem for the lighting and camera man because they don't have a stage or anything to put their light. So Chris has to create something on his feet, and for him, this is the first time he has used this format. Actually he's quite lost, and he has to find a new way to deal with this problem. Of course he complains, and we have mistakes and problems, but this is the way, the challenge, otherwise it will be the same thing. Everyone will sleep, it will be very boring. Especially if it takes five years to make a film.
TIME: How do you communicate with each other?
Wong: I think we speak almost the same language. We know that. And I think we respect each other very well. And I know that, this is the best way to deal with the films.
TIME: Can you ever imagine working with anyone else?
Wong: Sure, possibly. At some point for Chris, he needs some inspiration. He's a sailor, and he has to travel, and for me also, if I have a chance to work with another director of photography, it would be another challenge.
TIME: Now that 2046 is done, and that continuous story has been completed, what will your next project be? How do you start a new project? Do you start with an image?
Wong: Yes, you need to have the image. Sometimes you can start with the look of an actress, or a certain space, or even with a hand. Like Eros, I started the whole image with the single hand.
TIME: Your vision of Hong Kong is so individual, so different from the place we live in. What it's like to be an elegiac artist in a city that is constantly eating its own past?
Wong: It's like you try to keep something. That's why you have a story like 2046. You want to create a place in the world where what we think is nice, we can keep it that way. It's like the Hong Kong that we picture in our films is something from our impressions, from our memories, a certain wonderful moment of our city. And we want to keep that on film.
Interview réalisée par Bryan Walsh publiée le 27 septembre 2004 par Time Magazine.
jeudi 4 mars 2010
2046
Dans une scène de In the Mood for Love, Chow referme la porte de sa chambre d'hôtel sur laquelle on peut lire le numéro 2046. Cela veut-il dire que vous aviez déjà 2046 en tête au moment du tournage de In the Mood for Love ?
Wong Kar-wai : C'est mystique, vous savez ! En fait, nous avons tourné les deux films en même temps. Nous avons tourné la partie futuriste de 2046 à Bangkok et, en même temps, nous y tournions In the Mood for Love. Un jour où nous tournions une scène de In the Mood..., j'ai remarqué que le numéro de la chambre était trois mille et quelques. Je me suis alors dit : pourquoi ne pas plutôt décider qu'elle porte le numéro 2046, titre du film d'anticipation que je venais de commencer en parallèle ? C'était seulement un clin d'œil. Mais peu à peu s'est imposée une connexion plus profonde. A tel point qu'après avoir terminé In the Mood for Love, quand je me suis remis à l'écriture de 2046, tout est parti de cette chambre.
Qu'est-ce qui vous a amené à reprendre le même personnage que dans In the Mood for Love ?
Dans la première version du scénario de 2046, le personnage principal était un facteur du futur. Mais j'ai considéré qu'en 2046 plus personne n'aurait encore besoin d'un facteur, puisque personne n'enverrait plus de lettres. Et puis, à force de tout articuler autour de cette chambre, je me suis convaincu qu'il fallait reprendre le même personnage. Il vit dans son monde, ce chiffre 2046 devient pour lui une obsession. Cette obsession signifie qu'il ne s'est pas remis de son passé, qu'il vit encore dans cette époque de sa vie.
Selon vous, Tony, M. Chow de 2046, est-il le même personnage que dans In the Mood for Love ?
Tony Leung : Non, pour moi, ce sont deux personnages très différents. Le premier jour où je suis arrivé sur le plateau, Kar-wai m'a dit que je jouerais le même personnage, mais qu'il voulait que je le joue différemment, comme s'il s'agissait d'un autre personnage. Un play-boy très sombre, presque cynique, à la Bukowski. Pour moi, ça a été très dur, parce qu'il porte la même coiffure, les mêmes vêtements et le même nom. Dans ces conditions, c'est très difficile de jouer différemment. Il faut trouver une allure, une voix, une façon de marcher différentes.
Il est différent par rapport à In the Mood for Love, mais il est également différent dans chaque épisode du film. On n'a pas le sentiment que c'est la même personne selon qu'il est avec Zhang Ziyi ou avec Faye Wong.
Absolument : j'ai essayé de le jouer différemment dans sa relation avec chacune de ces femmes. Avec le personnage de Gong Li, on peut penser qu'il en est très amoureux. Mais, en fait, non : il essaie juste de trouver quelqu'un pour remplacer le personnage de Maggie Cheung. Avec le personnage de Zhang Ziyi, je ne pense pas qu'il soit amoureux : il cherche juste une compagnie. Quand vient la période de Noël, vous pouvez sentir de façon très lourde le poids de la solitude. Il garde une apparence joyeuse, mais au fond il crève de solitude. Je ne pense pas que Chow soit profondément amoureux d'elle. Et finalement, il découvre qu'elle est tombée amoureuse de lui : ça l'effraie un peu. Ce qui est intéressant, c'est à quel point In the Mood for Love est présent dans 2046 : pas par les images proprement dites du film on ne voit quasiment pas Maggie , mais on sent que Chow est incapable de passer à une autre histoire. C'est vraiment quelque chose de difficile à jouer : faire sentir qu'on n'est pas dans le même film, mais que l'état du personnage dans 2046 est directement affecté par ce qu'il a vécu dans In the Mood for Love. On a beau être profondément déterminé à se débarrasser du passé, on est toujours à sa merci.
Quand on voit dans le taxi Tony et Maggie Cheung, est-ce un plan de In the Mood for Love ou avez-vous retourné cette séquence ?
WKW : On l'a retournée. Ils portent les mêmes costumes, mais c'est en noir et blanc. Et cette fois, on a tourné en Cinémascope. C'est la première fois que j'utilise ce format. Je voulais filmer les mêmes situations dans un autre format. Hong-Kong est une ville très étroite, où toutes les lignes sont verticales : ces paysages urbains rendent très différemment en Cinémascope.
On a l'impression que pour vous le rêve absolu serait de retourner ou remixer, d'un film à l'autre, toujours la même scène.
Pour moi, ce n'est pas la même scène. Je n'ai pas eu le sentiment de l'avoir déjà tournée. Ici, le point de vue est celui de M. Chow. On est au centre de son cerveau. Il revoit les moments les plus forts de sa vie et revient le fantôme de Maggie dans In the Mood for Love. Ce n'était pas cet état que je filmais en tournant les scènes de taxi de In the Mood... Les personnages que j'ai créés dans mes films précédents resurgissent parfois. En fait, je repense à mes premiers films, et je me dis : il n'aurait pas dû lui arriver ça ou ça. Alors je les reprends et je leur fais vivre d'autres choses. L'idéal serait un public qui n'aurait pas vu un seul de mes films et commencerait par 2046. Il aurait ensuite la curiosité de voir mes autres films : par exemple, ce spectateur qui aurait découvert Chow dans 2046 aurait envie de savoir pourquoi il est si fermé, se demanderait d'où viennent ses blessures, et il irait voir In the Mood for Love pour comprendre le secret de sa souffrance.
Vous travaillez donc pour la postérité plutôt que pour le public, qui découvre vos films dans l'ordre chronologique...
Le temps ne va pas toujours de l'avant, mais procède parfois par retours en arrière. Quand nous tournions en Argentine, à Buenos Aires, je ne savais absolument pas pourquoi nous étions là. Un de mes acteurs, Leslie, a dit : "Peut-être qu'on n'est pas là par hasard." Pendant le tournage, vous tournez certaines prises sans vous poser de questions, et puis c'est seulement à l'arrivée que vous réalisez à quel point ce plan est la clé de tout le film. J'ai souvent l'impression que le temps passe à l'envers : que le futur est derrière nous.
Il y a une constante dans vos films : vous filmez la plupart du temps des personnages seuls ou en couple. Il est très rare que vous filmiez trois ou quatre personnes dans le même plan.
Dans 2046, j'ai tourné quelques scènes de groupe. Pour le reste, je tiens à tourner avec des acteurs que je connais bien, que j'apprécie, ce qui réduit forcément leur nombre à l'écran. Je vois aussi une autre explication : je tiens à maîtriser ce que dit chaque acteur, la façon dont il se tient. Les scènes de groupe sont donc épuisantes pour moi car je dois veiller à chaque personne qui se trouve dans le cadre. Mais surtout, je pense que ce sont mes histoires qui dictent ce grand nombre de solos ou de duos. Je n'ai plus envie de filmer que des moments de grand intimisme, de grande intériorité.
Avez-vous tourné beaucoup de scènes qui n'apparaissent pas dans le montage final ?
Oui, beaucoup. On aurait pu tirer un long métrage de chacune des rencontres de Chow avec un nouveau personnage féminin. Mais on ne pouvait évidemment pas tout mettre. J'ai dû renoncer à beaucoup de scènes brillantes. On a assez pour faire trois films d'une heure et demie.
Vous y pensez sérieusement ?
Non, parce que ce serait une autre histoire. Or l'histoire que je veux raconter aujourd'hui, c'est celle qu'on voit dans 2046. Peut-être que plus tard j'aurai envie de faire un autre montage, peut-être aussi avec le matériel de In the Mood for Love. Je pourrais imaginer d'entièrement remonter autrement la matière des deux films confondus. On verra dans dix ans.
Pensez-vous que vous allez à nouveau filmer le Hong-Kong contemporain ?
C'est une question que je me pose souvent. Je n'ai pas filmé le Hong-Kong contemporain depuis au moins huit ou neuf ans. J'ai ressenti le besoin de filmer une histoire située dans les années 60 quand j'ai pris conscience il y a quelques années que les décors de ces années-là étaient en train de complètement disparaître. Or j'y suis évidemment très attaché puisque c'est dans ce décor que j'ai grandi. Ce sont des lieux mais aussi des visages comme celui de Rebecca Pan, la logeuse d'âge mûr dans In the Mood for Love. Mes films ont un aspect documentaire : il faut enregistrer tout ça avant que ça ne disparaisse. Mais depuis que je ne filme que les années 60, je me suis aperçu que le décor contemporain était lui-même en train de changer très rapidement. Il faut donc que je revienne vers l'époque contemporaine. Sinon je serais comme Tony dans 2046, toujours en train de courir derrière une chose qui s'évanouit (rires) ! Voilà, pour moi, la trilogie sur les sixties que forment Nos années sauvages, In the Mood for Love et 2046 est désormais close.
Pour vous, le tournage représente-t-il une grande bataille pour finir le film, y compris éventuellement contre vous-même ? Parce qu'il y a cette légende autour de vous depuis In the Mood for Love selon laquelle vous n'arrivez pas à finir vos films.
Oui, finir est le plus dur. Quand pouvez-vous lâcher ? La première difficulté, c'est de décider comment vous allez ouvrir le film. Quelle est la scène la plus intriguante ? Et après, il faut créer une fin aussi forte ! Souvent, je trouve assez facilement le début, mais j'ai du mal à inventer une fin aussi forte.
Cela vous est-il déjà arrivé de flirter avec le désastre économique, ou vous sentez-vous au contraire très responsable ?
Je produis mes films moi-même depuis mon deuxième film, pour la simple et bonne raison que personne d'autre ne veut le faire ! Je fais donc très attention et tente d'être le plus responsable possible. S'il y a un risque, c'est d'abord moi qui le prends. Donc oui, nous avons pris des risques, mais jusqu'à présent nous avons réussi à éviter ce désastre économique dont vous parlez. Le fait d'accepter que le film soit présenté à Cannes était un risque puisque nous savions que la postproduction était loin d'être terminée. Mais nous avons accepté parce que j'ai besoin de ce genre de contrainte pour mettre un terme à la production.
Extrait d'un entretien réalisé le 20 octobre 2004 par Jean- Marc Lalanne pour les inrocks, qu'on peut lire ici en entier.
Wong Kar-wai : C'est mystique, vous savez ! En fait, nous avons tourné les deux films en même temps. Nous avons tourné la partie futuriste de 2046 à Bangkok et, en même temps, nous y tournions In the Mood for Love. Un jour où nous tournions une scène de In the Mood..., j'ai remarqué que le numéro de la chambre était trois mille et quelques. Je me suis alors dit : pourquoi ne pas plutôt décider qu'elle porte le numéro 2046, titre du film d'anticipation que je venais de commencer en parallèle ? C'était seulement un clin d'œil. Mais peu à peu s'est imposée une connexion plus profonde. A tel point qu'après avoir terminé In the Mood for Love, quand je me suis remis à l'écriture de 2046, tout est parti de cette chambre.
Qu'est-ce qui vous a amené à reprendre le même personnage que dans In the Mood for Love ?
Dans la première version du scénario de 2046, le personnage principal était un facteur du futur. Mais j'ai considéré qu'en 2046 plus personne n'aurait encore besoin d'un facteur, puisque personne n'enverrait plus de lettres. Et puis, à force de tout articuler autour de cette chambre, je me suis convaincu qu'il fallait reprendre le même personnage. Il vit dans son monde, ce chiffre 2046 devient pour lui une obsession. Cette obsession signifie qu'il ne s'est pas remis de son passé, qu'il vit encore dans cette époque de sa vie.
Selon vous, Tony, M. Chow de 2046, est-il le même personnage que dans In the Mood for Love ?
Tony Leung : Non, pour moi, ce sont deux personnages très différents. Le premier jour où je suis arrivé sur le plateau, Kar-wai m'a dit que je jouerais le même personnage, mais qu'il voulait que je le joue différemment, comme s'il s'agissait d'un autre personnage. Un play-boy très sombre, presque cynique, à la Bukowski. Pour moi, ça a été très dur, parce qu'il porte la même coiffure, les mêmes vêtements et le même nom. Dans ces conditions, c'est très difficile de jouer différemment. Il faut trouver une allure, une voix, une façon de marcher différentes.
Il est différent par rapport à In the Mood for Love, mais il est également différent dans chaque épisode du film. On n'a pas le sentiment que c'est la même personne selon qu'il est avec Zhang Ziyi ou avec Faye Wong.
Absolument : j'ai essayé de le jouer différemment dans sa relation avec chacune de ces femmes. Avec le personnage de Gong Li, on peut penser qu'il en est très amoureux. Mais, en fait, non : il essaie juste de trouver quelqu'un pour remplacer le personnage de Maggie Cheung. Avec le personnage de Zhang Ziyi, je ne pense pas qu'il soit amoureux : il cherche juste une compagnie. Quand vient la période de Noël, vous pouvez sentir de façon très lourde le poids de la solitude. Il garde une apparence joyeuse, mais au fond il crève de solitude. Je ne pense pas que Chow soit profondément amoureux d'elle. Et finalement, il découvre qu'elle est tombée amoureuse de lui : ça l'effraie un peu. Ce qui est intéressant, c'est à quel point In the Mood for Love est présent dans 2046 : pas par les images proprement dites du film on ne voit quasiment pas Maggie , mais on sent que Chow est incapable de passer à une autre histoire. C'est vraiment quelque chose de difficile à jouer : faire sentir qu'on n'est pas dans le même film, mais que l'état du personnage dans 2046 est directement affecté par ce qu'il a vécu dans In the Mood for Love. On a beau être profondément déterminé à se débarrasser du passé, on est toujours à sa merci.
Quand on voit dans le taxi Tony et Maggie Cheung, est-ce un plan de In the Mood for Love ou avez-vous retourné cette séquence ?
WKW : On l'a retournée. Ils portent les mêmes costumes, mais c'est en noir et blanc. Et cette fois, on a tourné en Cinémascope. C'est la première fois que j'utilise ce format. Je voulais filmer les mêmes situations dans un autre format. Hong-Kong est une ville très étroite, où toutes les lignes sont verticales : ces paysages urbains rendent très différemment en Cinémascope.
On a l'impression que pour vous le rêve absolu serait de retourner ou remixer, d'un film à l'autre, toujours la même scène.
Pour moi, ce n'est pas la même scène. Je n'ai pas eu le sentiment de l'avoir déjà tournée. Ici, le point de vue est celui de M. Chow. On est au centre de son cerveau. Il revoit les moments les plus forts de sa vie et revient le fantôme de Maggie dans In the Mood for Love. Ce n'était pas cet état que je filmais en tournant les scènes de taxi de In the Mood... Les personnages que j'ai créés dans mes films précédents resurgissent parfois. En fait, je repense à mes premiers films, et je me dis : il n'aurait pas dû lui arriver ça ou ça. Alors je les reprends et je leur fais vivre d'autres choses. L'idéal serait un public qui n'aurait pas vu un seul de mes films et commencerait par 2046. Il aurait ensuite la curiosité de voir mes autres films : par exemple, ce spectateur qui aurait découvert Chow dans 2046 aurait envie de savoir pourquoi il est si fermé, se demanderait d'où viennent ses blessures, et il irait voir In the Mood for Love pour comprendre le secret de sa souffrance.
Vous travaillez donc pour la postérité plutôt que pour le public, qui découvre vos films dans l'ordre chronologique...
Le temps ne va pas toujours de l'avant, mais procède parfois par retours en arrière. Quand nous tournions en Argentine, à Buenos Aires, je ne savais absolument pas pourquoi nous étions là. Un de mes acteurs, Leslie, a dit : "Peut-être qu'on n'est pas là par hasard." Pendant le tournage, vous tournez certaines prises sans vous poser de questions, et puis c'est seulement à l'arrivée que vous réalisez à quel point ce plan est la clé de tout le film. J'ai souvent l'impression que le temps passe à l'envers : que le futur est derrière nous.
Il y a une constante dans vos films : vous filmez la plupart du temps des personnages seuls ou en couple. Il est très rare que vous filmiez trois ou quatre personnes dans le même plan.
Dans 2046, j'ai tourné quelques scènes de groupe. Pour le reste, je tiens à tourner avec des acteurs que je connais bien, que j'apprécie, ce qui réduit forcément leur nombre à l'écran. Je vois aussi une autre explication : je tiens à maîtriser ce que dit chaque acteur, la façon dont il se tient. Les scènes de groupe sont donc épuisantes pour moi car je dois veiller à chaque personne qui se trouve dans le cadre. Mais surtout, je pense que ce sont mes histoires qui dictent ce grand nombre de solos ou de duos. Je n'ai plus envie de filmer que des moments de grand intimisme, de grande intériorité.
Avez-vous tourné beaucoup de scènes qui n'apparaissent pas dans le montage final ?
Oui, beaucoup. On aurait pu tirer un long métrage de chacune des rencontres de Chow avec un nouveau personnage féminin. Mais on ne pouvait évidemment pas tout mettre. J'ai dû renoncer à beaucoup de scènes brillantes. On a assez pour faire trois films d'une heure et demie.
Vous y pensez sérieusement ?
Non, parce que ce serait une autre histoire. Or l'histoire que je veux raconter aujourd'hui, c'est celle qu'on voit dans 2046. Peut-être que plus tard j'aurai envie de faire un autre montage, peut-être aussi avec le matériel de In the Mood for Love. Je pourrais imaginer d'entièrement remonter autrement la matière des deux films confondus. On verra dans dix ans.
Pensez-vous que vous allez à nouveau filmer le Hong-Kong contemporain ?
C'est une question que je me pose souvent. Je n'ai pas filmé le Hong-Kong contemporain depuis au moins huit ou neuf ans. J'ai ressenti le besoin de filmer une histoire située dans les années 60 quand j'ai pris conscience il y a quelques années que les décors de ces années-là étaient en train de complètement disparaître. Or j'y suis évidemment très attaché puisque c'est dans ce décor que j'ai grandi. Ce sont des lieux mais aussi des visages comme celui de Rebecca Pan, la logeuse d'âge mûr dans In the Mood for Love. Mes films ont un aspect documentaire : il faut enregistrer tout ça avant que ça ne disparaisse. Mais depuis que je ne filme que les années 60, je me suis aperçu que le décor contemporain était lui-même en train de changer très rapidement. Il faut donc que je revienne vers l'époque contemporaine. Sinon je serais comme Tony dans 2046, toujours en train de courir derrière une chose qui s'évanouit (rires) ! Voilà, pour moi, la trilogie sur les sixties que forment Nos années sauvages, In the Mood for Love et 2046 est désormais close.
Pour vous, le tournage représente-t-il une grande bataille pour finir le film, y compris éventuellement contre vous-même ? Parce qu'il y a cette légende autour de vous depuis In the Mood for Love selon laquelle vous n'arrivez pas à finir vos films.
Oui, finir est le plus dur. Quand pouvez-vous lâcher ? La première difficulté, c'est de décider comment vous allez ouvrir le film. Quelle est la scène la plus intriguante ? Et après, il faut créer une fin aussi forte ! Souvent, je trouve assez facilement le début, mais j'ai du mal à inventer une fin aussi forte.
Cela vous est-il déjà arrivé de flirter avec le désastre économique, ou vous sentez-vous au contraire très responsable ?
Je produis mes films moi-même depuis mon deuxième film, pour la simple et bonne raison que personne d'autre ne veut le faire ! Je fais donc très attention et tente d'être le plus responsable possible. S'il y a un risque, c'est d'abord moi qui le prends. Donc oui, nous avons pris des risques, mais jusqu'à présent nous avons réussi à éviter ce désastre économique dont vous parlez. Le fait d'accepter que le film soit présenté à Cannes était un risque puisque nous savions que la postproduction était loin d'être terminée. Mais nous avons accepté parce que j'ai besoin de ce genre de contrainte pour mettre un terme à la production.
Extrait d'un entretien réalisé le 20 octobre 2004 par Jean- Marc Lalanne pour les inrocks, qu'on peut lire ici en entier.
梁朝偉 Tony Leung Chiu-Wai
2046 reportedly took five years to complete?
Tony Leung: We didn't shoot it all at once though. We were shooting it on and off. We encountered a load of difficulties, because there are a lot of big stars in the film and they don't expect to shoot that long and they had committed to other projects in-between. So there were scheduling problems with the actors. And then the SARS epidemic happened in-between, so not only show business, but all the other businesses, were shut down. There wasn't anyone willing to work at that time. And the epidemic lasted quite some time. Then there were the locations. We weren't shooting in only one country. We were shooting in three countries. We were only able to shoot indoors in Hong Kong, and we had to shoot outdoors in Bangkok. Because we weren't able to find the kind of streets in Hong Kong that existed in '68. It had changed that much. There were also the labor costs. We had to build the futuristic set in China. Another reason that it took so long is that the filmmakers are perfectionists [laughs].
How long did your part take to shoot?
About a year total, but once again, we were shooting on and off. I've done three other movies in-between! [laughs]
Was it hard to get back to the character of Chow each time you returned to the project?
Really tough. To stay in a character for five years is really tiring. It was really hard every time I went back to the set. I needed 1-2 weeks to warm up to get back to him again.
And he's not a real happy guy. You probably didn't look forward to inhabiting his skin.
Sometimes. But at least there were so many beautiful actresses in the film. That helped.
You've made a number of films with Wong Kar Wai. What is your collaborative process like from the start of a project?
I think that the way Kar Wai works is that he wants people to stimulate him. To inspire him. He gives a lot of freedom to everyone on the set. Not just the actors, but all of the crew. Our relationship is very strange. We never talk on the set. He'll just give me a little hint, a little clue, at the very beginning [as to what the project is about]. I start off knowing very little. We develop everything on the set, as we shoot. What I know at the very beginning is just my character. That's how we work together. We've always done it that way. It's how we worked together back on Days of Being Wild, in our early days. No one will work like Wong Kar Wai. I find it quite inspiring. Sometimes you have more space in creating your character. Because he will not give you a specific direction, so you can do whatever you want. Nothing is right or wrong, because you don't know what is right or wrong. Every time is like an adventuresome journey. No one knows what is happening during the shooting. And no one knows what the story is about. Not just me, but everyone on the set. And we shoot so much footage that we can cut it into five different movies.
But do you think that Wong Kar Wai has it set in his mind what the film is going to be from the very start?
I'm not sure. I think that he might have an idea at the very beginning, but he changes as he goes along.
Does he have a solid script in terms of the dialogue?
Sometimes. We used to give us the script for that day. When we arrive on the set, they give us the script of that day.
2046 contains a few characters who have appeared in Kar Wai's other films. You've spoken about this film as almost a summation of all your previous films together. Do you think you'll revisit these characters again?
I hope not [laughs]. I don't want to revisit Mr. Chow again. I think we should do something different. I talked to Kar Wai on the set, and said that this is the best we can do, in terms of the types of movies we've been doing since Days of Being Wild to 2046. We can't do it better and we should try something different.
Did you spend much time thinking about the Chow from In the Mood for Love while developing his current incarnation?
I tried to avoid thinking of that original Mr. Chow. Because on the first day, Kar Wai told me that he wanted to play me the same character again, but that he wanted me to play it differently this time. That he wanted me to play him as a dark, cynical playboy. And he wanted me to act differently, but with the same face. So I was trying to get rid of that Mr. Chow, to get rid of his past. Very much like what the character did in the movie. I didn't ask Kar Wai why he wanted me to do that on the first day, but I think he had a reason. When I saw the movie, I realized that Chow is trying to get rid of his past, but things keep reminding him of it. In the first few months, while I was trying to create this new Mr. Chow, I would jump back to the old Mr. Chow subconsciously. I don't know why. I had this difficulty. And Kar Wai kept reminding me, "No, Tony, this is not right. This is the voice of the old Mr. Chow." I was trying to create a new Mr. Chow, but things kept reminding me of In the Mood for Love. The scenes, the room number, everything. You're trying to be a new man but things just keep reminding you of the past. This is how I felt on the shoot. One day I discussed with the art director, "Do you know what we are trying to do? 2046 or In the Mood for Love? It seems like everything just keeps reminding me of In the Mood for Love." At the time, I didn't know that the story would be about lost memories [laughs]. But it works for the character and it really helps.
And do you think Kar Wai knew that conflict would be there for you and that it would help the film?
Yes, but he never revealed it to us during the shooting.
Kar Wai's shots seem incredibly meticulous in their construction. Even in the smallest, seemingly least consequential ones, there is great design in the camera movement and framing.
He spends a lot of time on every shot. We spend a lot of time waiting there, in a sense. He averages 3-4 hours on a shot. So we didn't do much on one day of shooting. He spends lots of time on the lighting and camera movement. And we do it over and over again. Many takes. Even the very intense scenes, like I did with Gong Li, the kissing scene...he'd do it forty times. And Gong Li would have to cry forty times! And it's exhausting. Every time we'd do that shot in a 1,000 foot magazine. We'd do a ten minute take for every shot.
Does he give you lots of correction in-between takes or do you just keep doing it over and over?
We usually just keep doing it. He feels that everything is okay, but something is off...the lighting, the camera movement, so we have to do it all over again.
It sounds like Stanley Kubrick's style of working a bit. The repeated takes and the meticulous perfectionism.
Uh-huh. I sometimes think that Kar Wai is trying to make you exhausted [laughs]. To make you get rid of all those skills you have. Because in the first few takes you still have a lot of energy and are trying to do some technical thing. And I think he hates that very much. He wants you to just be yourself. No techniques. No skills. I think that's why he kept doing things over and over again. Because then you get exhausted and just act naturally.
What do you think happens to Chow after this film? Can he ever be happy?
No. He'll never be happy. Because he loves to live in his dreams. He loves to live in the past, and he never wants to take any more risk. He never wants to commit to any relationship anymore because he doesn't want to get hurt. I think he's a coward in some respects. He can't take failure well. So his ideal relationship is in the past.
What does the title 2046 mean to you?
In the film, it means a room number, or the train to the past. To me, 2046 means something very personal. A secret that you can not share with others. I have this kind of thinking.
Entretien avec Terry Keefe, trouvé ici.
Tony Leung: We didn't shoot it all at once though. We were shooting it on and off. We encountered a load of difficulties, because there are a lot of big stars in the film and they don't expect to shoot that long and they had committed to other projects in-between. So there were scheduling problems with the actors. And then the SARS epidemic happened in-between, so not only show business, but all the other businesses, were shut down. There wasn't anyone willing to work at that time. And the epidemic lasted quite some time. Then there were the locations. We weren't shooting in only one country. We were shooting in three countries. We were only able to shoot indoors in Hong Kong, and we had to shoot outdoors in Bangkok. Because we weren't able to find the kind of streets in Hong Kong that existed in '68. It had changed that much. There were also the labor costs. We had to build the futuristic set in China. Another reason that it took so long is that the filmmakers are perfectionists [laughs].
How long did your part take to shoot?
About a year total, but once again, we were shooting on and off. I've done three other movies in-between! [laughs]
Was it hard to get back to the character of Chow each time you returned to the project?
Really tough. To stay in a character for five years is really tiring. It was really hard every time I went back to the set. I needed 1-2 weeks to warm up to get back to him again.
And he's not a real happy guy. You probably didn't look forward to inhabiting his skin.
Sometimes. But at least there were so many beautiful actresses in the film. That helped.
You've made a number of films with Wong Kar Wai. What is your collaborative process like from the start of a project?
I think that the way Kar Wai works is that he wants people to stimulate him. To inspire him. He gives a lot of freedom to everyone on the set. Not just the actors, but all of the crew. Our relationship is very strange. We never talk on the set. He'll just give me a little hint, a little clue, at the very beginning [as to what the project is about]. I start off knowing very little. We develop everything on the set, as we shoot. What I know at the very beginning is just my character. That's how we work together. We've always done it that way. It's how we worked together back on Days of Being Wild, in our early days. No one will work like Wong Kar Wai. I find it quite inspiring. Sometimes you have more space in creating your character. Because he will not give you a specific direction, so you can do whatever you want. Nothing is right or wrong, because you don't know what is right or wrong. Every time is like an adventuresome journey. No one knows what is happening during the shooting. And no one knows what the story is about. Not just me, but everyone on the set. And we shoot so much footage that we can cut it into five different movies.
But do you think that Wong Kar Wai has it set in his mind what the film is going to be from the very start?
I'm not sure. I think that he might have an idea at the very beginning, but he changes as he goes along.
Does he have a solid script in terms of the dialogue?
Sometimes. We used to give us the script for that day. When we arrive on the set, they give us the script of that day.
2046 contains a few characters who have appeared in Kar Wai's other films. You've spoken about this film as almost a summation of all your previous films together. Do you think you'll revisit these characters again?
I hope not [laughs]. I don't want to revisit Mr. Chow again. I think we should do something different. I talked to Kar Wai on the set, and said that this is the best we can do, in terms of the types of movies we've been doing since Days of Being Wild to 2046. We can't do it better and we should try something different.
Did you spend much time thinking about the Chow from In the Mood for Love while developing his current incarnation?
I tried to avoid thinking of that original Mr. Chow. Because on the first day, Kar Wai told me that he wanted to play me the same character again, but that he wanted me to play it differently this time. That he wanted me to play him as a dark, cynical playboy. And he wanted me to act differently, but with the same face. So I was trying to get rid of that Mr. Chow, to get rid of his past. Very much like what the character did in the movie. I didn't ask Kar Wai why he wanted me to do that on the first day, but I think he had a reason. When I saw the movie, I realized that Chow is trying to get rid of his past, but things keep reminding him of it. In the first few months, while I was trying to create this new Mr. Chow, I would jump back to the old Mr. Chow subconsciously. I don't know why. I had this difficulty. And Kar Wai kept reminding me, "No, Tony, this is not right. This is the voice of the old Mr. Chow." I was trying to create a new Mr. Chow, but things kept reminding me of In the Mood for Love. The scenes, the room number, everything. You're trying to be a new man but things just keep reminding you of the past. This is how I felt on the shoot. One day I discussed with the art director, "Do you know what we are trying to do? 2046 or In the Mood for Love? It seems like everything just keeps reminding me of In the Mood for Love." At the time, I didn't know that the story would be about lost memories [laughs]. But it works for the character and it really helps.
And do you think Kar Wai knew that conflict would be there for you and that it would help the film?
Yes, but he never revealed it to us during the shooting.
Kar Wai's shots seem incredibly meticulous in their construction. Even in the smallest, seemingly least consequential ones, there is great design in the camera movement and framing.
He spends a lot of time on every shot. We spend a lot of time waiting there, in a sense. He averages 3-4 hours on a shot. So we didn't do much on one day of shooting. He spends lots of time on the lighting and camera movement. And we do it over and over again. Many takes. Even the very intense scenes, like I did with Gong Li, the kissing scene...he'd do it forty times. And Gong Li would have to cry forty times! And it's exhausting. Every time we'd do that shot in a 1,000 foot magazine. We'd do a ten minute take for every shot.
Does he give you lots of correction in-between takes or do you just keep doing it over and over?
We usually just keep doing it. He feels that everything is okay, but something is off...the lighting, the camera movement, so we have to do it all over again.
It sounds like Stanley Kubrick's style of working a bit. The repeated takes and the meticulous perfectionism.
Uh-huh. I sometimes think that Kar Wai is trying to make you exhausted [laughs]. To make you get rid of all those skills you have. Because in the first few takes you still have a lot of energy and are trying to do some technical thing. And I think he hates that very much. He wants you to just be yourself. No techniques. No skills. I think that's why he kept doing things over and over again. Because then you get exhausted and just act naturally.
What do you think happens to Chow after this film? Can he ever be happy?
No. He'll never be happy. Because he loves to live in his dreams. He loves to live in the past, and he never wants to take any more risk. He never wants to commit to any relationship anymore because he doesn't want to get hurt. I think he's a coward in some respects. He can't take failure well. So his ideal relationship is in the past.
What does the title 2046 mean to you?
In the film, it means a room number, or the train to the past. To me, 2046 means something very personal. A secret that you can not share with others. I have this kind of thinking.
Entretien avec Terry Keefe, trouvé ici.
Sunless VI
Out there, eleven thousand miles away, a single shadow remains immobile in the midst of the long moving shadows that the January light throws over the ground of Tokyo: the shadow of the Asakusa bonze.
For also in Japan the year of the dog is beginning. Temples are filled with visitors who come to toss down their coins and to pray—Japanese style—a prayer which slips into life without interrupting it.
Brooding at the end of the world on my island of Sal in the company of my prancing dogs I remember that month of January in Tokyo, or rather I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory. I wonder how people remember things who don't film, don't photograph, don't tape. How has mankind managed to remember? I know: it wrote the Bible. The new Bible will be an eternal magnetic tape of a time that will have to reread itself constantly just to know it existed.
As we await the year four thousand and one and its total recall, that's what the oracles we take out of their long hexagonal boxes at new year may offer us: a little more power over that memory that runs from camp to camp—like Joan of Arc. That a short wave announcement from Hong Kong radio picked up on a Cape Verde island projects to Tokyo, and that the memory of a precise color in the street bounces back on another country, another distance, another music, endlessly.
At the end of memory's path, the ideograms of the Island of France are no less enigmatic than the kanji of Tokyo in the miraculous light of the new year. It's Indian winter, as if the air were the first element to emerge purified from the countless ceremonies by which the Japanese wash off one year to enter the next one. A full month is just enough for them to fulfill all the duties that courtesy owes to time, the most interesting unquestionably being the acquisition at the temple of Tenjin of the uso bird, who according to one tradition eats all your lies of the year to come, and according to another turns them into truths.
But what gives the street its color in January, what makes it suddenly different is the appearance of kimono. In the street, in stores, in offices, even at the stock exchange on opening day, the girls take out their fur collared winter kimono. At that moment of the year other Japanese may well invent extra flat TV sets, commit suicide with a chain saw, or capture two thirds of the world market for semiconductors. Good for them; all you see are the girls.
The fifteenth of January is coming of age day: an obligatory celebration in the life of a young Japanese woman. The city governments distribute small bags filled with gifts, datebooks, advice: how to be a good citizen, a good mother, a good wife. On that day every twenty-year-old girl can phone her family for free, no matter where in Japan. Flag, home, and country: this is the anteroom of adulthood. The world of the takenoko and of rock singers speeds away like a rocket. Speakers explain what society expects of them. How long will it take to forget the secret?
And when all the celebrations are over it remains only to pick up all the ornaments—all the accessories of the celebration—and by burning them, make a celebration.
This is dondo-yaki, a Shinto blessing of the debris that have a right to immortality—like the dolls at Ueno. The last state—before their disappearance—of the poignancy of things. Daruma—the one eyed spirit—reigns supreme at the summit of the bonfire. Abandonment must be a feast; laceration must be a feast. And the farewell to all that one has lost, broken, used, must be ennobled by a ceremony. It's Japan that could fulfill the wish of that French writer who wanted divorce to be made a sacrament.
The only baffling part of this ritual was the circle of children striking the ground with their long poles. I only got one explanation, a singular one—although for me it might take the form of a small intimate service—it was to chase away the moles.
And that's where my three children of Iceland came and grafted themselves in. I picked up the whole shot again, adding the somewhat hazy end, the frame trembling under the force of the wind beating us down on the cliff: everything I had cut in order to tidy up, and that said better than all the rest what I saw in that moment, why I held it at arms length, at zooms length, until its last twenty-fourth of a second, the city of Heimaey spread out below us. And when five years later my friend Haroun Tazieff sent me the film he had just shot in the same place I lacked only the name to learn that nature performs its own dondo-yaki; the island's volcano had awakened. I looked at those pictures, and it was as if the entire year '65 had just been covered with ashes.
So, it sufficed to wait and the planet itself staged the working of time. I saw what had been my window again. I saw emerge familiar roofs and balconies, the landmarks of the walks I took through town every day, down to the cliff where I had met the children. The cat with white socks that Haroun had been considerate enough to film for me naturally found its place. And I thought, of all the prayers to time that had studded this trip the kindest was the one spoken by the woman of Gotokuji, who said simply to her cat Tora, “Cat, wherever you are, peace be with you.”
And then in its turn the journey entered the 'zone,' and Hayao showed me my images already affected by the moss of time, freed of the lie that had prolonged the existence of those moments swallowed by the spiral.
When spring came, when every crow announced its arrival by raising his cry half a tone, I took the green train of the Yamanote line and got off at Tokyo station, near the central post office. Even if the street was empty I waited at the red light—Japanese style—so as to leave space for the spirits of the broken cars. Even if I was expecting no letter I stopped at the general delivery window, for one must honor the spirits of torn up letters, and at the airmail counter to salute the spirits of unmailed letters.
I took the measure of the unbearable vanity of the West, that has never ceased to privilege being over non-being, what is spoken to what is left unsaid. I walked alongside the little stalls of clothing dealers. I heard in the distance Mr. Akao's voice reverberating from the loudspeakers... a half tone higher.
Then I went down into the basement where my friend—the maniac—busies himself with his electronic graffiti. Finally his language touches me, because he talks to that part of us which insists on drawing profiles on prison walls. A piece of chalk to follow the contours of what is not, or is no longer, or is not yet; the handwriting each one of us will use to compose his own list of 'things that quicken the heart,' to offer, or to erase. In that moment poetry will be made by everyone, and there will be emus in the 'zone.'
He writes me from Japan. He writes me from Africa. He writes that he can now summon up the look on the face of the market lady of Praia that had lasted only the length of a film frame.
Will there be a last letter?
Chris Marker. Trouvé ici avec d'autres textes.
For also in Japan the year of the dog is beginning. Temples are filled with visitors who come to toss down their coins and to pray—Japanese style—a prayer which slips into life without interrupting it.
Brooding at the end of the world on my island of Sal in the company of my prancing dogs I remember that month of January in Tokyo, or rather I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory. I wonder how people remember things who don't film, don't photograph, don't tape. How has mankind managed to remember? I know: it wrote the Bible. The new Bible will be an eternal magnetic tape of a time that will have to reread itself constantly just to know it existed.
As we await the year four thousand and one and its total recall, that's what the oracles we take out of their long hexagonal boxes at new year may offer us: a little more power over that memory that runs from camp to camp—like Joan of Arc. That a short wave announcement from Hong Kong radio picked up on a Cape Verde island projects to Tokyo, and that the memory of a precise color in the street bounces back on another country, another distance, another music, endlessly.
At the end of memory's path, the ideograms of the Island of France are no less enigmatic than the kanji of Tokyo in the miraculous light of the new year. It's Indian winter, as if the air were the first element to emerge purified from the countless ceremonies by which the Japanese wash off one year to enter the next one. A full month is just enough for them to fulfill all the duties that courtesy owes to time, the most interesting unquestionably being the acquisition at the temple of Tenjin of the uso bird, who according to one tradition eats all your lies of the year to come, and according to another turns them into truths.
But what gives the street its color in January, what makes it suddenly different is the appearance of kimono. In the street, in stores, in offices, even at the stock exchange on opening day, the girls take out their fur collared winter kimono. At that moment of the year other Japanese may well invent extra flat TV sets, commit suicide with a chain saw, or capture two thirds of the world market for semiconductors. Good for them; all you see are the girls.
The fifteenth of January is coming of age day: an obligatory celebration in the life of a young Japanese woman. The city governments distribute small bags filled with gifts, datebooks, advice: how to be a good citizen, a good mother, a good wife. On that day every twenty-year-old girl can phone her family for free, no matter where in Japan. Flag, home, and country: this is the anteroom of adulthood. The world of the takenoko and of rock singers speeds away like a rocket. Speakers explain what society expects of them. How long will it take to forget the secret?
And when all the celebrations are over it remains only to pick up all the ornaments—all the accessories of the celebration—and by burning them, make a celebration.
This is dondo-yaki, a Shinto blessing of the debris that have a right to immortality—like the dolls at Ueno. The last state—before their disappearance—of the poignancy of things. Daruma—the one eyed spirit—reigns supreme at the summit of the bonfire. Abandonment must be a feast; laceration must be a feast. And the farewell to all that one has lost, broken, used, must be ennobled by a ceremony. It's Japan that could fulfill the wish of that French writer who wanted divorce to be made a sacrament.
The only baffling part of this ritual was the circle of children striking the ground with their long poles. I only got one explanation, a singular one—although for me it might take the form of a small intimate service—it was to chase away the moles.
And that's where my three children of Iceland came and grafted themselves in. I picked up the whole shot again, adding the somewhat hazy end, the frame trembling under the force of the wind beating us down on the cliff: everything I had cut in order to tidy up, and that said better than all the rest what I saw in that moment, why I held it at arms length, at zooms length, until its last twenty-fourth of a second, the city of Heimaey spread out below us. And when five years later my friend Haroun Tazieff sent me the film he had just shot in the same place I lacked only the name to learn that nature performs its own dondo-yaki; the island's volcano had awakened. I looked at those pictures, and it was as if the entire year '65 had just been covered with ashes.
So, it sufficed to wait and the planet itself staged the working of time. I saw what had been my window again. I saw emerge familiar roofs and balconies, the landmarks of the walks I took through town every day, down to the cliff where I had met the children. The cat with white socks that Haroun had been considerate enough to film for me naturally found its place. And I thought, of all the prayers to time that had studded this trip the kindest was the one spoken by the woman of Gotokuji, who said simply to her cat Tora, “Cat, wherever you are, peace be with you.”
And then in its turn the journey entered the 'zone,' and Hayao showed me my images already affected by the moss of time, freed of the lie that had prolonged the existence of those moments swallowed by the spiral.
When spring came, when every crow announced its arrival by raising his cry half a tone, I took the green train of the Yamanote line and got off at Tokyo station, near the central post office. Even if the street was empty I waited at the red light—Japanese style—so as to leave space for the spirits of the broken cars. Even if I was expecting no letter I stopped at the general delivery window, for one must honor the spirits of torn up letters, and at the airmail counter to salute the spirits of unmailed letters.
I took the measure of the unbearable vanity of the West, that has never ceased to privilege being over non-being, what is spoken to what is left unsaid. I walked alongside the little stalls of clothing dealers. I heard in the distance Mr. Akao's voice reverberating from the loudspeakers... a half tone higher.
Then I went down into the basement where my friend—the maniac—busies himself with his electronic graffiti. Finally his language touches me, because he talks to that part of us which insists on drawing profiles on prison walls. A piece of chalk to follow the contours of what is not, or is no longer, or is not yet; the handwriting each one of us will use to compose his own list of 'things that quicken the heart,' to offer, or to erase. In that moment poetry will be made by everyone, and there will be emus in the 'zone.'
He writes me from Japan. He writes me from Africa. He writes that he can now summon up the look on the face of the market lady of Praia that had lasted only the length of a film frame.
Will there be a last letter?
Chris Marker. Trouvé ici avec d'autres textes.
Walker Evans
Walker Evans - Posters covering a building near Lynchburg to advertise a Downie Brown Circus, 1936Sunless V
He wrote me that only one film had been capable of portraying impossible memory—insane memory: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. In the spiral of the titles he saw time covering a field ever wider as it moved away, a cyclone whose present moment contains motionless the eye.
In San Francisco he had made his pilgrimage to all the film's locations: the florist Podesta Baldocchi, where James Stewart spies on Kim Novak—he the hunter, she the prey. Or was it the other way around? The tiles hadn't changed.
He had driven up and down the hills of San Francisco where Jimmy Stewart, Scotty, follows Kim Novak, Madeline. It seems to be a question of trailing, of enigma, of murder, but in truth it's a question of power and freedom, of melancholy and dazzlement, so carefully coded within the spiral that you could miss it, and not discover immediately that this vertigo of space in reality stands for the vertigo of time.
He had followed all the trails. Even to the cemetery at Mission Dolores where Madeline came to pray at the grave of a woman long since dead, whom she should not have known. He followed Madeline—as Scotty had done—to the Museum at the Legion of Honor, before the portrait of a dead woman she should not have known. And on the portrait, as in Madeline's hair, the spiral of time.
The small Victorian hotel where Madeline disappeared had disappeared itself; concrete had replaced it, at the corner of Eddy and Gough. On the other hand the sequoia cut was still in Muir Woods. On it Madeline traced the short distance between two of those concentric lines that measured the age of the tree and said, “Here I was born... and here I died.”
He remembered another film in which this passage was quoted. The sequoia was the one in the Jardin des plantes in Paris, and the hand pointed to a place outside the tree, outside of time.
The painted horse at San Juan Bautista, his eye that looked like Madeline's: Hitchcock had invented nothing, it was all there. He had run under the arches of the promenade in the mission as Madeline had run towards her death. Or was it hers?
From this fake tower—the only thing that Hitchcock had added—he imagined Scotty as time's fool of love, finding it impossible to live with memory without falsifying it. Inventing a double for Madeline in another dimension of time, a zone that would belong only to him and from which he could decipher the indecipherable story that had begun at Golden Gate when he had pulled Madeline out of San Francisco Bay, when he had saved her from death before casting her back to death. Or was it the other way around?
In San Francisco I made the pilgrimage of a film I had seen nineteen times. In Iceland I laid the first stone of an imaginary film. That summer I had met three children on a road and a volcano had come out of the sea. The American astronauts came to train before flying off to the moon, in this corner of Earth that resembles it. I saw it immediately as a setting for science fiction: the landscape of another planet. Or rather no, let it be the landscape of our own planet for someone who comes from elsewhere, from very far away. I imagine him moving slowly, heavily, about the volcanic soil that sticks to the soles. All of a sudden he stumbles, and the next step it's a year later. He's walking on a small path near the Dutch border along a sea bird sanctuary.
That's for a start. Now why this cut in time, this connection of memories? That's just it, he can't understand. He hasn't come from another planet he comes from our future, four thousand and one: the time when the human brain has reached the era of full employment. Everything works to perfection, all that we allow to slumber, including memory. Logical consequence: total recall is memory anesthetized. After so many stories of men who had lost their memory, here is the story of one who has lost forgetting, and who—through some peculiarity of his nature—instead of drawing pride from the fact and scorning mankind of the past and its shadows, turned to it first with curiosity and then with compassion. In the world he comes from, to call forth a vision, to be moved by a portrait, to tremble at the sound of music, can only be signs of a long and painful pre-history. He wants to understand. He feels these infirmities of time like an injustice, and he reacts to that injustice like Ché Guevara, like the youth of the sixties, with indignation. He is a Third Worlder of time. The idea that unhappiness had existed in his planet's past is as unbearable to him as to them the existence of poverty in their present.
Naturally he'll fail. The unhappiness he discovers is as inaccessible to him as the poverty of a poor country is unimaginable to the children of a rich one. He has chosen to give up his privileges, but he can do nothing about the privilege that has allowed him to choose. His only recourse is precisely that which threw him into this absurd quest: a song cycle by Mussorgsky. They are still sung in the fortieth century. Their meaning has been lost. But it was then that for the first time he perceived the presence of that thing he didn't understand which had something to do with unhappiness and memory, and towards which slowly, heavily, he began to walk.
Of course I'll never make that film. Nonetheless I'm collecting the sets, inventing the twists, putting in my favorite creatures. I've even given it a title, indeed the title of those Mussorgsky songs: Sunless.
On May 15, 1945, at seven o'clock in the morning, the three hundred and eighty second US infantry regiment attacked a hill in Okinawa they had renamed 'Dick Hill.' I suppose the Americans themselves believed that they were conquering Japanese soil, and that they knew nothing about the Ryukyu civilization. Neither did I, apart from the fact that the faces of the market ladies at Itoman spoke to me more of Gauguin than of Utamaro. For centuries of dreamy vassalage time had not moved in the archipelago. Then came the break. Is it a property of islands to make their women into the guardians of their memory?
I learned that—as in the Bijagós—it is through the women that magic knowledge is transmitted. Each community has its priestess—the noro—who presides over all ceremonies with the exception of funerals.
The Japanese defended their position inch by inch. At the end of the day the two half platoons formed from the remnants of L Company had got only halfway up the hill, a hill like the one where I followed a group of villagers on their way to the purification ceremony.
The noro communicates with the gods of the sea, of rain, of the earth, of fire. Everyone bows down before the sister deity who is the reflection, in the absolute, of a privileged relationship between brother and sister. Even after her death, the sister retains her spiritual predominance.
At dawn the Americans withdrew. Fighting went on for over a month before the island surrendered, and toppled into the modern world. Twenty-seven years of American occupation, the re-establishment of a controversial Japanese sovereignty: two miles from the bowling alleys and the gas stations the noro continues her dialogue with the gods. When she is gone the dialogue will end. Brothers will no longer know that their dead sister is watching over them. When filming this ceremony I knew I was present at the end of something. Magical cultures that disappear leave traces to those who succeed them. This one will leave none; the break in history has been too violent.
I touched that break at the summit of the hill, as I had touched it at the edge of the ditch where two hundred girls had used grenades to commit suicide in 1945 rather than fall alive into the hands of the Americans. People have their pictures taken in front of the ditch. Across from it souvenir lighters are sold shaped like grenades.
On Hayao's machine war resembles letters being burned, shredded in a frame of fire. The code name for Pearl Harbor was Tora, Tora, Tora, the name of the cat the couple in Gotokuji was praying for. So all of this will have begun with the name of a cat pronounced three times.
Off Okinawa kamikaze dived on the American fleet; they would become a legend. They were likelier material for it obviously than the special units who exposed their prisoners to the bitter frost of Manchuria and then to hot water so as to see how fast flesh separates from the bone.
One would have to read their last letters to learn that the kamikaze weren't all volunteers, nor were they all swashbuckling samurai. Before drinking his last cup of saké Ryoji Uebara had written: “I have always thought that Japan must live free in order to live eternally. It may seem idiotic to say that today, under a totalitarian regime. We kamikaze pilots are machines, we have nothing to say, except to beg our compatriots to make Japan the great country of our dreams. In the plane I am a machine, a bit of magnetized metal that will plaster itself against an aircraft carrier. But once on the ground I am a human being with feelings and passions. Please excuse these disorganized thoughts. I'm leaving you a rather melancholy picture, but in the depths of my heart I am happy. I have spoken frankly, forgive me.”
Every time he came from Africa he stopped at the island of Sal, which is in fact a salt rock in the middle of the Atlantic. At the end of the island, beyond the village of Santa Maria and its cemetery with the painted tombs, it suffices to walk straight ahead to meet the desert.
He wrote me: I've understood the visions. Suddenly you're in the desert the way you are in the night; whatever is not desert no longer exists. You don't want to believe the images that crop up.
Did I write you that there are emus in the Ile de France? This name—Island of France—sounds strangely on the island of Sal. My memory superimposes two towers: the one at the ruined castle of Montpilloy that served as an encampment for Joan of Arc, and the lighthouse tower at the southern tip of Sal, probably one of the last lighthouses to use oil.
A lighthouse in the Sahel looks like a collage until you see the ocean at the edge of the sand and salt. Crews of transcontinental planes are rotated on Sal. Their club brings to this frontier of nothingness a small touch of the seaside resort which makes the rest still more unreal. They feed the stray dogs that live on the beach.
I found my dogs pretty nervous tonight; they were playing with the sea as I had never seen them before. Listening to Radio Hong Kong later on I understood: today was the first day of the lunar new year, and for the first time in sixty years the sign of the dog met the sign of water.
Chris Marker
In San Francisco he had made his pilgrimage to all the film's locations: the florist Podesta Baldocchi, where James Stewart spies on Kim Novak—he the hunter, she the prey. Or was it the other way around? The tiles hadn't changed.
He had driven up and down the hills of San Francisco where Jimmy Stewart, Scotty, follows Kim Novak, Madeline. It seems to be a question of trailing, of enigma, of murder, but in truth it's a question of power and freedom, of melancholy and dazzlement, so carefully coded within the spiral that you could miss it, and not discover immediately that this vertigo of space in reality stands for the vertigo of time.
He had followed all the trails. Even to the cemetery at Mission Dolores where Madeline came to pray at the grave of a woman long since dead, whom she should not have known. He followed Madeline—as Scotty had done—to the Museum at the Legion of Honor, before the portrait of a dead woman she should not have known. And on the portrait, as in Madeline's hair, the spiral of time.
The small Victorian hotel where Madeline disappeared had disappeared itself; concrete had replaced it, at the corner of Eddy and Gough. On the other hand the sequoia cut was still in Muir Woods. On it Madeline traced the short distance between two of those concentric lines that measured the age of the tree and said, “Here I was born... and here I died.”
He remembered another film in which this passage was quoted. The sequoia was the one in the Jardin des plantes in Paris, and the hand pointed to a place outside the tree, outside of time.
The painted horse at San Juan Bautista, his eye that looked like Madeline's: Hitchcock had invented nothing, it was all there. He had run under the arches of the promenade in the mission as Madeline had run towards her death. Or was it hers?
From this fake tower—the only thing that Hitchcock had added—he imagined Scotty as time's fool of love, finding it impossible to live with memory without falsifying it. Inventing a double for Madeline in another dimension of time, a zone that would belong only to him and from which he could decipher the indecipherable story that had begun at Golden Gate when he had pulled Madeline out of San Francisco Bay, when he had saved her from death before casting her back to death. Or was it the other way around?
In San Francisco I made the pilgrimage of a film I had seen nineteen times. In Iceland I laid the first stone of an imaginary film. That summer I had met three children on a road and a volcano had come out of the sea. The American astronauts came to train before flying off to the moon, in this corner of Earth that resembles it. I saw it immediately as a setting for science fiction: the landscape of another planet. Or rather no, let it be the landscape of our own planet for someone who comes from elsewhere, from very far away. I imagine him moving slowly, heavily, about the volcanic soil that sticks to the soles. All of a sudden he stumbles, and the next step it's a year later. He's walking on a small path near the Dutch border along a sea bird sanctuary.
That's for a start. Now why this cut in time, this connection of memories? That's just it, he can't understand. He hasn't come from another planet he comes from our future, four thousand and one: the time when the human brain has reached the era of full employment. Everything works to perfection, all that we allow to slumber, including memory. Logical consequence: total recall is memory anesthetized. After so many stories of men who had lost their memory, here is the story of one who has lost forgetting, and who—through some peculiarity of his nature—instead of drawing pride from the fact and scorning mankind of the past and its shadows, turned to it first with curiosity and then with compassion. In the world he comes from, to call forth a vision, to be moved by a portrait, to tremble at the sound of music, can only be signs of a long and painful pre-history. He wants to understand. He feels these infirmities of time like an injustice, and he reacts to that injustice like Ché Guevara, like the youth of the sixties, with indignation. He is a Third Worlder of time. The idea that unhappiness had existed in his planet's past is as unbearable to him as to them the existence of poverty in their present.
Naturally he'll fail. The unhappiness he discovers is as inaccessible to him as the poverty of a poor country is unimaginable to the children of a rich one. He has chosen to give up his privileges, but he can do nothing about the privilege that has allowed him to choose. His only recourse is precisely that which threw him into this absurd quest: a song cycle by Mussorgsky. They are still sung in the fortieth century. Their meaning has been lost. But it was then that for the first time he perceived the presence of that thing he didn't understand which had something to do with unhappiness and memory, and towards which slowly, heavily, he began to walk.
Of course I'll never make that film. Nonetheless I'm collecting the sets, inventing the twists, putting in my favorite creatures. I've even given it a title, indeed the title of those Mussorgsky songs: Sunless.
On May 15, 1945, at seven o'clock in the morning, the three hundred and eighty second US infantry regiment attacked a hill in Okinawa they had renamed 'Dick Hill.' I suppose the Americans themselves believed that they were conquering Japanese soil, and that they knew nothing about the Ryukyu civilization. Neither did I, apart from the fact that the faces of the market ladies at Itoman spoke to me more of Gauguin than of Utamaro. For centuries of dreamy vassalage time had not moved in the archipelago. Then came the break. Is it a property of islands to make their women into the guardians of their memory?
I learned that—as in the Bijagós—it is through the women that magic knowledge is transmitted. Each community has its priestess—the noro—who presides over all ceremonies with the exception of funerals.
The Japanese defended their position inch by inch. At the end of the day the two half platoons formed from the remnants of L Company had got only halfway up the hill, a hill like the one where I followed a group of villagers on their way to the purification ceremony.
The noro communicates with the gods of the sea, of rain, of the earth, of fire. Everyone bows down before the sister deity who is the reflection, in the absolute, of a privileged relationship between brother and sister. Even after her death, the sister retains her spiritual predominance.
At dawn the Americans withdrew. Fighting went on for over a month before the island surrendered, and toppled into the modern world. Twenty-seven years of American occupation, the re-establishment of a controversial Japanese sovereignty: two miles from the bowling alleys and the gas stations the noro continues her dialogue with the gods. When she is gone the dialogue will end. Brothers will no longer know that their dead sister is watching over them. When filming this ceremony I knew I was present at the end of something. Magical cultures that disappear leave traces to those who succeed them. This one will leave none; the break in history has been too violent.
I touched that break at the summit of the hill, as I had touched it at the edge of the ditch where two hundred girls had used grenades to commit suicide in 1945 rather than fall alive into the hands of the Americans. People have their pictures taken in front of the ditch. Across from it souvenir lighters are sold shaped like grenades.
On Hayao's machine war resembles letters being burned, shredded in a frame of fire. The code name for Pearl Harbor was Tora, Tora, Tora, the name of the cat the couple in Gotokuji was praying for. So all of this will have begun with the name of a cat pronounced three times.
Off Okinawa kamikaze dived on the American fleet; they would become a legend. They were likelier material for it obviously than the special units who exposed their prisoners to the bitter frost of Manchuria and then to hot water so as to see how fast flesh separates from the bone.
One would have to read their last letters to learn that the kamikaze weren't all volunteers, nor were they all swashbuckling samurai. Before drinking his last cup of saké Ryoji Uebara had written: “I have always thought that Japan must live free in order to live eternally. It may seem idiotic to say that today, under a totalitarian regime. We kamikaze pilots are machines, we have nothing to say, except to beg our compatriots to make Japan the great country of our dreams. In the plane I am a machine, a bit of magnetized metal that will plaster itself against an aircraft carrier. But once on the ground I am a human being with feelings and passions. Please excuse these disorganized thoughts. I'm leaving you a rather melancholy picture, but in the depths of my heart I am happy. I have spoken frankly, forgive me.”
Every time he came from Africa he stopped at the island of Sal, which is in fact a salt rock in the middle of the Atlantic. At the end of the island, beyond the village of Santa Maria and its cemetery with the painted tombs, it suffices to walk straight ahead to meet the desert.
He wrote me: I've understood the visions. Suddenly you're in the desert the way you are in the night; whatever is not desert no longer exists. You don't want to believe the images that crop up.
Did I write you that there are emus in the Ile de France? This name—Island of France—sounds strangely on the island of Sal. My memory superimposes two towers: the one at the ruined castle of Montpilloy that served as an encampment for Joan of Arc, and the lighthouse tower at the southern tip of Sal, probably one of the last lighthouses to use oil.
A lighthouse in the Sahel looks like a collage until you see the ocean at the edge of the sand and salt. Crews of transcontinental planes are rotated on Sal. Their club brings to this frontier of nothingness a small touch of the seaside resort which makes the rest still more unreal. They feed the stray dogs that live on the beach.
I found my dogs pretty nervous tonight; they were playing with the sea as I had never seen them before. Listening to Radio Hong Kong later on I understood: today was the first day of the lunar new year, and for the first time in sixty years the sign of the dog met the sign of water.
Chris Marker
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