All language subtitles for 2005 interview with Michael Haneke

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THE SEVENTH CONTINENT

INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL HANEKE
BY SERGE TOUBIANA

With this topic
of The Seventh Continent...

at the time,
I often wrote my films abroad,

on a Greek island,

and I went there as well,

and I tried to tell this story
without giving any answers.

I wanted to tell the facts of the story
when he commits suicide,

with flashbacks on his life.

I worked on it for six weeks,
and I couldn't do it.

Because each flashback
was an explanation.

And at a certain point, I realized
that you can't tell it like this

if you want to keep
the frightful secret.

And I decided to use
a kind of protocol:

three years, one day.

We see what happens.

And it's up to the viewer
to find his own answers.

And I think from that point on,

it was very easy
to write the script.

It went very fast.
It was done in four weeks.

I was very happy,

and the television station was
very unhappy.

That's it.

That's the way it happened.

Through the difficulties
I had telling this story,

which was a story
I read in the paper

where, of course,

the journalist explained everything.

He did some research, he said:

"He had some debts. He couldn't pay.
He had sexual problems with his wife."

All these silly explanations

that diminished--

-The strength of the gesture.
-Yes.

And at the beginning, I didn't know
how to tell it traditionally.

And this idea to use
a very simple protocol

became my way
to approach my topic.

We did some research

on young people's aptitude
for deciphering edited images.

It's true that five-year-old children

are more able to assimilate information
from fast edited images

than someone from another generation.

But on the other hand,

we also found
that their impressions

are weaker emotionally.

They can decipher it,
"Yes, this means that."

But the depth that's behind it is lost.

For that reason--

Well, not only for that reason,

but I think it's also a kind
of protest against this manner

of giving pseudo information very quickly.

Because we know it all.
Everything that's shown, we know.

If you tell a story on any topic,

we've already read a similar one.

How can you make
a deeper impact on the viewer?

One of the possibilities is the pacing.

In general, film
is a matter of pacing.

For me, film is much closer
to music than to literature.

For the first several minutes,

you see only pieces

that show, in our day-to-day lives,

how much we're dominated

by the obligation
to do daily tasks.

They don't live. They do things.

They go through the motions.

We're enslaved to these gestures.

Our whole life is the sum total
of these gestures.

It's what remains the most.

And perhaps it's also the reason
they do what they do in the film.

They destroy their possessions
and everything that's theirs

with the same intensity,
the same methodicalness.

They devote themselves completely to it.

And it could be an act of liberation.

But the way they do it

shows that it's not
a liberation for them.

And for me,
that's the saddest thing in the film.

We could have made the entire film
starting from the halfway point,

from that decision to leave.

We could have made
a provocative film

as a liberation.

But in my view,
that would be a lie.

No!

-This violence is against themselves.
-Yes, of course.

And when they break the aquarium,

when the fish die,

it's an image

for the internal death
of the little girl.

She's the only one
who doesn't stand for this.

Let me go!

Leave me!

The interest of the viewer always comes
from the precision of what's shown.

This little family
from a middle-class background

is the world I know the best.

And I speak of what I know.

The goal is to be
precise enough in the details...

that the viewer, on account
of this precision in the details,

takes interest...

in the people who are doing it.

It's a sort of construction,
as opposed to deconstruction.

We deconstruct it,
and out of the deconstruction,

we make a complete construction
of the characters.

Are you more interested
in consequences than in causes?

Yes, because I think that's
the method we can use

to tell a story today
with more of a good conscience

than when we claim
to know the causes.

In literature, it's the same.

No novelist would want
to write a novel today

which claimed
to analyze completely

the reason why the story
unfolds the way it does.

You can always narrate
by means of...

what appears,
what appears for everybody.

You can explain--

If you want an explanation--

You can only explain with structure.

The structure of the story
explains something, maybe.

But it allows you
to remain always ambiguous,

instead of a way of narrating
that's explaining--

-Explanatory.
-Explanatory.

It becomes long-winded and dull.

If you're dealing with a subject
that's even a little more complex,

it's ridiculous to--

That's why the films--

Not genre films.
How do you say it?

I can't find the words.

Forget it. Cut!

After seeing the accident
with the dead bodies lying there,

he enters to wash the car,

and she has this attack.

Like a moment of phobia,
of claustrophobia.

She realizes something
about her life at that moment.

It's not always pleasant to realize
something about your own life!

-It's purely physical, there.
-Yeah.

That was the goal,
to show it only with images.

It was complicated to shoot,

because with the brushes,
for the continuity

she had to start crying
exactly when that brush was there.

It was complicated,
but I think it worked.

It's a montage of three pictures,

because it's a beach with the sea...

and at the horizon,
there's a mountain.

At the beginning,
it's only a picture, a photo, an ad--

-For Australia, right?
-Yes, an ad for Australia.

And the last time it comes back,

the sea is moving.

Normally, it couldn't move.

There's no possibility in this image.

It gives you a--

It's peaceful, but at least for me,

-it's a frightening peace.
-Is it death?

Yes, you can interpret it
any way you want to.

Maybe it's also--

It may only be their
memory of that picture

that they saw when
they were washing the car

and which has become
a frightening image for them,

perhaps also of peace.

As you like.

It's also ambiguous. I always try
to find ambiguous solutions.

It's always the "strange"
that's troubling.

All genre films work with that.

The things you don't know
how to decipher are worrying.

Why do people hate foreigners?

Because they don't know them.

So they're afraid,
and they hate them.

It's too bad, but true.
It's as simple as that.

I remember,
when we were invited to Cannes,

I said to the producer, "There are
two scenes where they'll scream.

The scene where they break the aquarium,

the death of the fish,

and the--

The shot with the money."

And the producers aid,
"That's ridiculous.

Maybe with the fish,
because they're animals.

But never that."

But that's exactly what it was.

People walked out of the theater
slamming the door.

Everywhere I showed the film,
these scenes rose protests.

Because it's the worst taboo.

It's much less shocking

for parents to kill their
children themselves,

than for someone to destroy money.

It's a total taboo in our society.

I didn't come up with that scene.

It's mentioned in the article I read
about the people who did that.

I don't know if I could've
come up with that.

But it was a real act.

They went to the bank,
took all their money and they threw it--

The police recovered

all the little pieces
that stayed down there.

And that's how they deduced
that they'd thrown it all down there.

I remember with The Seventh Continent,

I was at Cannes for the first time.

And because it was my first film,

there were also
discussions with the audience.

A woman got up and said,

"ls Austria really that depressing?"

Everybody laughed, fortunately.

And I think they understood
that it was a kind of escape.

Because that's always
the classic position.

If I don't want a film
or a book to concern me,

I look for reasons
for it not to concern me.

Because it takes place
far away, for example.

I think this film can be
understood just as well

in Japan, America,
France or Austria.

It's not a portrait of Austria.
It's a portrait of rich countries.

It's not a portrait of the third world.
They have other problems.

But it's also--

For example,
the film takes place in Linz.

You see it on the car.

But we didn't shoot any of it there.

I wanted the film to stay neutral.

I didn't want to have
recognizable Viennese elements.

Because I think the film should
be able to take place anywhere.

What I always try to do
in my films is not be too--

I try to be precise, but not local.

Those are two different things.

What's also striking, with regards
to the other films you've made,

is that there are
no others in this film.

There aren't enemies.

No foreign bodies enter into it.

You're just by yourself.

And therefore
it's even more disconcerting.

Yeah, because that makes the family
into a type: "The family."

It's not "this" family, but "the" family.

And of course that's more provocative,

because you wouldn't want
to be that family.

That's right.
You wouldn't want to be that family.