Emir Kusturica is a secret and almost imperceptible man. Somehow like Stanley Kubrick, his works require and defy analysis at the same time. Emir does not speak : he is like his arrowtooth, he “knows”! In most of his interviews, he limits his answers only to evasive or practical sentences. To go further, one should watch for it (”Anne, Anne my sister, don't see you anything coming ?”) ; he is so nice and disarming that it becomes difficult to give him the pressure required for this kind of exercise. If somebody tries to enter his own intimacy, he closes at once… These remarks, collected between February 25 and March 6 (1993) in Normandy, are hybrid, without obvious coherence. Kusturica passes from pragmatism to hermetism with the most total ease and there is certainly enough to discourage more than one. We chose to deliver them to you at the rough state and to let to you read between the lines, to try to preserve their energy and their emotion. Anyway, Kusturica will undoubtedly remain a long time unexplored, such as virgin forest, so dense that years of investigation would not be enough to clear it. The secrecy of Emir, well kept, is in his films.
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Emir Kusturica :
It's a logical part of film : its essence. It's much more than an homage ! Each time I see a piece of “L'Atalante”, I remain persuaded that it is undoubtedly the best film ever made. I don't know exactly if it's due to its pure qualities or the lapse of time during which the film was finally concluded, or both. The dialogued parts however are not very developed, the sound is limited in quality but its meeting with the image is made under the best possible conditions, despite everything. It is one of first sounded films, you know ! It contains so many different plans, so many smart framings, the whole at the service of simple emotions. Today, it would be practically impossible to make it. An allegory would have to be tried… This film undoubtedly contains the necessary energy to understand the human being. It's really my favourite film and I pay it a tribute every day of my life.
As recalled by Vincent Gallo in Arizona Dream, the main thing is to be an artist even if you're a missed artist…
EK : Feelings are often contrary to what cinema wants to say. Then, you can decide to remain apart from the system. Fortunately, in my case, even if I do not move in a very traditional way, I can nevertheless touch a broad audience, to share the emotions I have and to offer to the others. There is the direction, I think, of the sentence pronounced by Vincent Gallo. A missed artist and an artist are the same. The main thing is to test something ; it is not serious if there are only two people to listen to you. We approach the end of the century and all the forms of classic art are exhausted. But, on the other side, these forms are still used especially in the cinema, because nobody found other solutions, other ways. My idea is simple : if I bring energy, the pure art, I mean not calculated, even if the way or the message of film do not match completely to what people wait, they come and sit in front of the screen. They know there is no cheating and they can be identified, come with their heart without preconceived opinion.
“Women, like the salt, are not essential, but life is more insipid without them”, dixit the father in Dolly Bell. What is your opinion of women ?
EK :
People I talk about in my films come from small countries, natural regions, like me. They clearly do not have this problem in head, do not make really the distinction between the sexes : the things are as they are. Preparing my films, all except perhaps the first one which is very close to me adolescent, in a very autobiographical direction, I never insinuated anything which can in a way or another make believing in an unspecified difference between the roles of women and the roles of men. I became aware of this problem during the shooting of When father was away on business. I said to myself : “If we made the film on the Mother” ; and I quickly realized that adopting this bias could become so complex, so near to Freud and the psychoanalysis, that I fled in another direction. I preferred to get out of this danger. So dramatically speaking, the man and the woman remain on the same level, also treated and shown. Since, I try to maintain it like that, to remain in the medium to be able to look in the two directions. I am not inevitably objective compared to everyday life in the various religions. But the films, according to the devoted expression, must be “bigger than life”. They have for me the function to make discover and to show the share of humanity able to include all the sins of the world.
Your heroes are underprivileged. Their gifts are not used a priori for large thing, but prove to be major assets to draw the alarm bell from the society (Malik the sleepwalker, Dino the hypnotist, Perhan the forks bender, Grace the flying girl…). What do you think about it ?
EK :
It is the initial apprehension I have of the design of a film, completely anti-rational. I need the torments inherent in this option. I claim them because they help me to escape to me from the gravity. I think that it is the way in which films must be conceived, and not like science fiction films, at least most of them, which hide physically behind explosions, but with a human touch, at the manner of Chagall's paintings. I deeply think that the idea even of a film and its team is intrinsically beautiful, but it moves, it is not static. I live in this end of century and I feel the need “to move” the things. This is why, if I have an immediate chance to show that a person fell in love in a visual way, to show the things while flying in the sky, I seize it without problem. I think that films are paintings of reality. I was always impressed, filled with wonder by the way in which Chagall depicts all his fabulous characters, contorsionned in incredible positions. It shows that all is possible, people can fly away, float in space. Why would this be impossible?
Today, optics, the way of “touching” the audience changed. Look at MTV and their clips all day along in which the formal respect of optics is diverted. In Arizona Dream, I tried to transfigure the relation between Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway. They don't say “I love you” but it is even stronger than that. It is at the same time natural and deeply existential. Perhaps I moved away a little from Dolly Bell which however functioned in the same way, but I think that artistically the comprehension of my films don't rise enormous problems. They all use pure realism to turn into something which holds more magic, a diving in the unreal. The most significant thing at the end, is that I never left on the way my substantial and basic connection to realism. I did nothing but select from them parts that I combine then with other more irrational elements, but that remains realism.
There are also these symbols : the balloon, present in three films like a link ; Animals, in particular the turkey and the fish. What do they really mean ?
EK :
The fish in Arizona Dream is a very good example of my way of creating metaphors. The fish means loneliness, something huge for me, a kind of opposition between a rational explanation and the history of humanity. Each time I look at the eyes of a fish, I see a mark of real intelligence, something of very human also, completely contrary to the human being history, of his route and his social and historical rise. The fish is thus for me the essence of human being, its fundamentalism, preserved of any change. That confirms the idea that the man comes from the sea, a fish. I do not believe in linear development of humanity history. I believe rather in metaphysic things of the kind “the fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything”. Anyway, it is the impression I have each time I meet a fish. The problem is to introduce it into a serious and not very cheap film without running up against the opinion of some spectators who would not understand its meaning. The only thing that I can say to them, it is that they don't have to understand, just to support the trouble during 2h15, and that's all ! In the opposite, it is possible to find a rational explanation to the incursion of fish. If you go to the cinema, who obliges you to understand instantaneously what you see ?
When I arrived in America, I felt like a fish. Not a fish in its natural elements but rather in sand ; certainly not like a bird free and flying, but like a foreigner in a funny aquarium. As for the turkey of Time of the Gypsies, it belongs to a private mythology, a tradition. Even when it is eaten by the uncle, the tragedy makes its appearance in the film. When the gypsy family eats the turkey, it is to some extent to divert the destiny of Perhan. All that could take place before is like the nightmare which separates childhood and adulthood. I do not have significance for the balloon. I am just attracted and fascinated by his geometrical forms. The circle is a significant figure in my life and I try to connect it to my work as a director.
What about these recurring images : Flight, initiation, present in all your films… ?
EK :
I do not try to create symbols at any price. I just want to position my heroes in the risks of life, provided with the obligatory passports which are the funeral ceremonies, parties, Weddings or birthdays, always celebrated as one would celebrate spring. It is always a mixture, subtle I hope, of realism and surrealism. I suppose that you will find these symbols in my next films, but it is not calculated at all.
From all that arise simple things. Everything is easy to make, and anyone can make it, but the famous gifts who strew your films and make them bend in the most total onirism. Is this a manner of bending reality in fiction ? To perhaps reduce it and to make it acceptable ?
EK : Both join. It is not a deliberated artistic intention. I think that life is heavy, not that easy. Then, when I start a film, most of the time, I try to leave what there is the best in me to help the spectators to fly away a little, to escape from the prison reality, marked out permanently. I hope that my metaphors turn life easier to them during a moment. It is my first and only wish : to be able, would it be only one second, to change the life of people…
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EK : As I said previously, I use some elements with which I want to play. It is my point of view, what I want to do. I have some elements, very close, that I carry with me. Thus, the rain appears in each one of my films and, in a certain way, in my life. I do not want to venture further.
Drama meets permanently the comedy and heights are reached at the time of the dinner, in Arizona Dream, which culminates by an omnipresent figure in your work : missed Hangings (the water flush in Father, the scene of the bell in Time of the Gypsies, nylon stocking in Arizona Dream). Can one say that your films are tragi-comedies ?
EK : Certainly. I try each time to make a comedy and I permanently arrive to the tragedy, despite my efforts. It is a thing in which I believe. The pure elements of life are essential in a film and influence it, especially if you're within the realistic film framework. You cannot escape from it. This is why I feel myself nearer to the technique of the carpet craftsmen than of that of the film manufacturers. If you look at paintings of Chagall, it is the same thing, it always uses the same colours. Formally speaking like substantially speaking. The missed suicides you mention proceed in the same way. They are not to be strictly accurate my “substance” but raise rather of my formal aspirations. They are there only to express my problems. I adopt the same attitude with other concepts relating to the life and his future. I try to take distance, to leave on my boat to more think of nothing other than the wind and the sea. When I return, the problems are always there and the only solution which remains is to laugh at it, at least if I can. It is the life and there is not an other alternative. The human life is made of extremes, you pass from the laughter to the tears permanently and you can do nothing there. I would like to make the pill easier to swallow thanks to the brightness of the colours that I bring in my films.
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EK :
The problem is that, if I say to you no, you will believe that I lie because Sheikh has indeed a small air of Brando, but I cannot answer yes to this question. It is unconscious. I saw many films, in particular those of Coppola, and it is possible that I was influenced by certain more than by others. All that is not made consciously is projected in the unconscious and you cannot be aware of it, just as you cannot resist your unconscious. It is also a problem for a director to permanently see his films peeled, analysed. The films belong to the public and not to their creator. Each spectator can and must have his vision. We must respect it. Personally, I have neither time nor will to look behind me, I prefer concentrating on the future.
Your films talk, among other, about the precariousness of the life, a way so strong which one has the impression to discover. What do you think about it ?
EK : I think that it is closely related to my design of the drama. In my films, it is difficult to know what will occur afterwards. Each scene functions in an autonomous way and creates to some extent a feeling of insecurity for the spectator. My films are sometimes difficult to follow. The bounces do not certainly appear where they are awaited, because of the precariousness about which you speak. But the life also is precarious. You have in vain your job, your insurances, you do not know therefore what will arrive to you tomorrow. My films are like the life but are not assured. If you study their skeleton, you cannot pre-empt their outcome.
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EK : I don't know. I suppose that each opus listed is based on the way in which its author fought the nihilism. I do not want to be the “obsolete” director who would claim a special confrontation with the nihilism, but I am constrained, like any artist, to meet it sometimes. If I use the nihilism or some of his aspects, it is for better demolishing it. That's all !
There are also this rare thing, this perfect osmosis between the image and the sound which multiplies by ten the emotion. Few directors understood it, even if some start to consider the music with its right value. You were born in the music, undoubtedly ?
EK :
Yes, I was even a guitarist some times in a rock'n'roll group which was called ”no smoking”. My last film, particularly, shows something very significant. We permanently ask questions while working in art. The worst would be to want to accelerate the destruction of the existing forms to impose new of them. I believe that in Time of the Gypsies and in Arizona Dream, we made a success of a mixture of both : to take in the old while excavating in the modern. Let's stop confining us in kinds. There are no musical films at 100% and dramas at 100%, nor police films at 100%. It is necessary to be useful of materials, to use what there is the best in them. The collision of the music and the image serves the emphasis of my films and each part makes them better. I think that they are experimental for this reason, closer to technological things like the compact-disc in a sense, while preserving the emotion, the traditional cinema.
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EK :
It's very difficult for me, it's the past now. What I can do is to give you some details. It's the first part of my life in which I tried to reproduce what I had learned while looking from other films. Guernica taught me how to think only in filmic, practical terms if you prefer. The two others helped me to make me the hand. I do not disavow them at all, they are very important for me because they act as detonators. I was then like a blind man searching the light. The only thing that I can say to you is that their style resembles my other incursions into the cinema.
Interview by Jean-Marc Bouineau, translation by Matthieu Dhennin