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In General, In All My Films, I Choose To Create A Certain Mistrust, Rather Than Claiming That What I'm Showing Onscreen Is An Accurate Reproduction Of Reality. I Want People To Question What They Are Seeing Onscreen. In The Same Way As I Used The Narrator, I Also Used Black And White, Because It Creates A Distance Toward What's Being Seen. I See The Film As An Artifact Rather Than A Reliable Reconstruction Of A Reality That We Cannot Know.

-Michael Haneke

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In General, In All

Michael Haneke

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In General, In All My Films, I Choose To Create A Certain Mistrust, Rather Than Claiming That What I'm Showing Onscreen Is An Accurate Reproduction Of Reality. I Want People To Question What They Are Seeing Onscreen. In The Same Way As I Used The Narrator, I Also Used Black And White, Because It Creates A Distance Toward What's Being Seen. I See The Film As An Artifact Rather Than A Reliable Reconstruction Of A Reality That We Cannot Know.

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Black And White

More From Michael Haneke

If I'm Reading A Book That Doesn't Leave Me With Questions, Moving Questions, That I Feel Confronted With, Then For Me It's A Waste Of Time. I Don't Want To Read A Book That Simply Confirms What I Already Know.

I Give The Spectator The Possibility Of Participating. The Audience Completes The Film By Thinking About It; Those Who Watch Must Not Be Just Consumers Ingesting Spoon-fed Images.

I Think That Religion Is An Integral Part Of Human Needs, But The Question Also Is How You Understand Religion.

For Me, It's Always Difficult When A Historical Film Claims To Depict Or Represent A Reality That None Of Us Can Know, That Is Always Different. It's Always The Case. We Never Know What Happened Then.

It's The Duty Of Art To Ask Questions, Not To Provide Answers. And If You Want A Clearer Answer, I'll Have To Pass.

It's Difficult Because You Can't Generalise About These Things. But In Essence, You Deal With Children As Simply As You Deal With Actors - You Have To Show A Certain Sort Of Respect. You Deal With Them Lovingly And Protect Them, But If You Protect Them Enough Then They're Open To Engage With What You Want To Do With Them.

I Think That What's Important As A Director Is To Give Your Actors The Feeling That They're Protected, The Feeling Of Confidence, The Feeling That If They Make Mistakes, Then As A Director, You'll Know How To Help Them. If You're Able To Convey That, Then The Actors Will Give You Wonderful Performances. As Well As The Author, You Have To Write Scenes That Give The Actors The Opportunity To Show What They're Capable Of.

I Like To Write For Actors I Know And With Whom I've Worked Before. You Can Write To Their Strengths And Weaknesses And Write Roles That Are Better Suited To Them.

I Always Seek To Mobilize, To Call On The Imagination Of The Spectator. It's Well-known That The Images That Are Created By One's Imagination Are Far Stronger Than Any That I Can Show. In Fact, It's An Error, A Widespread Error In Mainstream Cinema, To Always Want To Show Things And To Depict Things.

Usually, When Making A Film, The Surprises Are Negative Surprises. You Don't Get What You Wanted Or What You Hoped For. The Only Nice Surprises Are Those That Are Offered To You By Actors When They Offer You These Gifts, When They Are Better And Give You More Than What You Had Originally Conceived. That Doesn't Happen Every Day On Set, But If It Happens A Couple Of Times In The Course Of Making A Film, You Can Consider Yourself Very Lucky.

Because I'm The Author Of My Screenplays I Know What I'm Looking For. It's True That I Can Be Stubborn In Demanding That I Get What I Want, But It's Also A Question Of Working With Patience And Love.

Every Form Of Anti-semitism, Every Form Of Xenophobia Plays On The Fear Of The Unknown, And Unfortunately There Are All Too Many Politicians Who Know How To Manipulate That. The Dumber People Are, The More They Feel The Need For A Broad Set Of Shoulders They Can Lay Their Head Against.

Never Say No. It Always Depends On What's Possible. I Don't Care So Much Where It Is; It's What I Want To Do That Matters.

Well, The First Thing I Had To Do Was To Read A Lot. First Of All, About Education... And Looking At Education From The Middle Ages Right Through To The 20th Century. The Second Major Area Was Country Life In The 19th Century, Which I Don't Know Much About These Days.

The Dumber People Are, The More They Feel The Need For A Broad Set Of Shoulders They Can Lay Their Head Against.

In General, In All My Films, I Choose To Create A Certain Mistrust, Rather Than Claiming That What I'm Showing Onscreen Is An Accurate Reproduction Of Reality. I Want People To Question What They Are Seeing Onscreen. In The Same Way As I Used The Narrator, I Also Used Black And White, Because It Creates A Distance Toward What's Being Seen. I See The Film As An Artifact Rather Than A Reliable Reconstruction Of A Reality That We Cannot Know.

Black And White

I Think Watching A Movie That Simply Confirms My Feelings Is A Waste Of Time. That Applies Not Only To Movies, But Also To Books And Every Form Of Art.

Classicism Becomes Avant-garde When Everyone Else Is Doing Their Utmost To Develop New Stylistic Forms. I Think It's Healthy To Return To Classical Forms.

To Decide To Film A Movie Again Shot By Shot, You Must Be Masochistic To A Certain Degree Because It Is A Much Greater Challenge.

It Became A Gamble To Myself Whether I Was Able To Do The Exact Same Film ["funny Games"]under Very Different Circumstances.

It's More Enjoyable To Shoot In A Studio On A Single Location With Two Actors... If They Are Good.

I’ve Been Accused Of ‘raping’ The Audience In My Films, And I Admit To That Freely — All Movies Assault The Viewer In One Way Or Another.

If A Director Says He Doesn't Care How Many People See His Films At All, I Simply Don't Believe Him. Otherwise Why Would He Bother To Make The Film? The Only Explanation Would Be That It Would Be An Act Of Masturbation. I Think That Every Creator Is Looking For A Receptor. He's Looking For An Audience. There Are Two Parts Of The Equation: A Creator And, Necessarily, The Receiver Of The Work. It's The Same Thing For A Painter Who Wants His Paintings To Be Seen.

I Learned My Business In The Theater And In Television, Particularly Working With The Actors. You Can Learn Much More In The Theater Than Directing A Movie, Because Then You Have No Time When You Are Shooting A Movie To Really Work With The Actors. You Have To Learn This Craft Somewhere Else.

Usually Music Is Used To Hide A Film's Problems.

An Artist Is Someone Who Should Raise Questions Rather Than Give Answers. I Have No Message.

Raises Questions

My Feeling, However, Is That Films That Are Open Are More Productive For The Audience. The Films That, If I'm In A Cinema, And I'm Watching A Movie That Answers All The Questions That It Raises, It's A Film That Bores Me. In The Same Way, If I'm Reading A Book That Doesn't Leave Me With Questions, Moving Questions, That I Feel Confronted With, Then For Me It's A Waste Of Time. I Don't Want To Read A Book That Simply Confirms What I Already Know.

A Strict Form Such As Mine Cannot Be Achieved Through Improvisation.

And I Don't Believe That Children Are Innocent. In Fact, No One Seriously Believes That. Just Go To A Playground And Watch The Kids Playing In The Sandbox! The Romantic Notion Of The Sweet Child Is Simply The Parents Projecting Their Own Wishes.

People Expect Me To Be Dark And Gloomy, Then Write That I'm A Jolly Chap, And After All, That Is What I Am. I Think It's A Case Of An Absolute Romantic Naivety That There Should Be A Parallel Between The Work And The Artist.

I'm Not Really A Happy Person. It's A Question Of Temperament. I Have A Tendency Toward Melancholy. You Can Feel Quite Happily Melancholic.

Personally, I Can't Stand Violence. In Any Standard American Mainstream Movie, There's 20 Times More Violence Than In Any One Of My Films, So I Don't Know Why Those Directors Aren't Asked Why They're Such Specialists For Violence.

Because In The Feudal System Of That Period At Least 80% Of People Lived In Villages, So It's Very Simple To Get A Cross-section Of Society In A Single Village. You Get The Microcosm Of The Social Macrocosm.

Of Course There Are Many Films About The Period Of Fascism Itself But I Don't Know Of Any About That Period Beforehand. But It Wasn't That Specific Fact That They Weren't There That Got Me To Think About This In The First Place. It's Not What Led To The Basic Idea For The Film, Although It Became Apparent When I Began To Think About It.

At Its Best, Film Should Be Like A Ski Jump. It Should Give The Viewer The Option Of Taking Flight, While The Act Of Jumping Is Left Up To Him.

And If There Was One Title That Could Be Applied To All My Films, It Would Be 'civil War' - Not Civil War In The Way We Know It, But The Daily War That Goes On Between Us All.

If Someone's Lying To Us, Then It's Rare That We Know That They're Lying To Us. It's Only In Bad Films That You Recognize Immediately That An Actor's Playing In Such A Way That You Can See That He's Lying, And That's Simply Dumb. But To Reach That, It Requires That You Make A Film In Such A Way That A Spectator Feels Compelled To Find His Own Explanation. You Want To Lead The Spectator To Find His Own Interpretation. To Ask Questions Rather Than Provide All Of The Answers. Doing That Leads To Open Endings And Open Dramaturgy.

In My Film "benny's Video," I Depicted Violence But I Failed To Say All That I Had To Say, So I Wanted To Continue The Dialog And That's Why I Did "funny Games." The Irony Is That After I Shot "funny Games," But It Hadn't Been Released At All Anywhere.

The Difficulty, Then, Is When You Create A Church, An Institution, And You Create A Dogma. When You Create An Ideology, That's The Danger. Communism, Too, Is A Beautiful Idea, But Millions Of People Died When Communism Became An Ideology.

It's Unbearable When Someone Changes Around You. Just Imagine That Your Life Partner Changes, Then It Is Difficult To Cope With. Or Your Mother. Or Your Father. They Were Strong And Now They're Like A Baby - It's Not So Funny.

It's Much Harder To Write A Script That Involves Two People In A Single Location Than 20 People In 30 Different Locations.

There Is Just As Much Evil In All Of Us As There Is Good. We're All Continuously Guilty, Even If We're Not Doing It Intentionally To Be Evil. Here We Are Sitting In Luxury Hotels, Living It Up On The The Backs Of Others In The Third World. We All Have A Guilty Conscience, But We Do Very Little About It.

Writers And Filmakers, That Is, People Who Describe The World, Suffer From An Occupational Disease. They Never Experience Moments In Life Quite Spontaneously. You Always Look At Yourself From The Outside. Even As A Child I Always Observed Myself And The World. I Believe That Everyone Who Chooses This Path In Any Way, Who Chooses To Be A Describer Of Life, Suffers From This Condition. It's Like A Mental Obsession. It Can Be A Great Pity Too. It Robs You Of A Certain Joy In Spontaneity.

Even The Most Elitist Director Or Author Who Claims That He Doesn't Care If His Works Are Seen Or Not, Then I Have To Think That He's Either A Liar Or A Hypocrite.

Classicism Becomes Avant-garde When Everyone Else Is Doing Their Utmost To Develop New Stylistic Forms. And I Think It's Healthy To Return To Classical Forms.

I Make My Films Because I'm Affected By A Situation, By Something That Makes Me Want To Reflect On It, That Lends Itself To An Artistic Reflection. I Always Aim To Look Directly At What I'm Dealing With. I Think It's A Task Of Dramatic Art To Confront Us With Things That In The Entertainment Industry Are Usually Swept Under The Rug.

The Smaller And Younger Kids Are, The More Patient You Have To Be. But If They're Gifted, Then It's A Wonderful Present That You're Given By Having A Child Like That In Your Film... More So Than In The Case Of Actors Because, For Example, If You Ask Them To Play A Lion, They Don't Then Play A Lion, They Actually Are A Lion. So, A Gifted Child Is Something Very Special. On The Other Hand, If A Child Has No Gifts In That Way It's Absolutely Hopeless And There's Nothing You Can Do!

There Are Really Two Types Of Laughter On The Part Of The Spectator. There Is The Laughter Of Recognition - Which Means Seeing Things You're Familiar With And Laughing At Yourself. But There's Also Hysterical Laughter - A Way Of Dealing With The Things We See That Upset Us.

When Making A Film, I'm Never Concerned About Whether The Theme Is New Or Whether It's Been Done Before In Cinema Or Not. I'm Led To Make Films If There's A Theme That Interests Me Or I Experience Something In My Own Life That Confronts Me With Something That I Want To Deal With.

It's Impossible To Consider Living Without Ideals. However, When Ideas Lead To Ideology, That's A Very Dangerous Thing. Ideology Then Leads To Creating The Image Of An Enemy, And It Leads To The Murder And Massacre That We've Seen Since The Beginning Of Time.

To Be Perfectly Honest, I Think That As I'm Growing Older, I'm Just Growing More Impatient. I'll Be Very Happy If At Some Point People Say, 'michael's Grown Wiser And Softer In His Old Age.' But We'll Have To Wait And See What My Next Project Is.

The Film [the White Ribbon] Does Try To Use German Fascism As An Example, But Not Specifically Fascism... The Results Of German Fascism. It Shows How People Are Prepared Or Indoctrinated For An Ideology... People Who Are Already In A State Of Repression Who Have Been Humiliated By Society And Who Clasp At A Straw That's Offered To Them. And How That's Then Developed Into A Form Of Indoctrination.

I Want To Be Able To Control Things And That's Very Difficult To Do If You're Not 100% In A Particular Language. It Makes You Uncertain And It Makes You Nervous.

It's A Disease Of Critics That Once They've Labeled Someone, It's Very Hard To Change Their Perspective. It's Laziness.

That Is One Of The Characteristics Of Fascism, The Idea That The State Can Provide All Of The Answers For Everyone.

I Never Suffered From The Absence Of A Father. On The Contrary, As A Child I Was More Inclined To See Men As A Disturbing Factor. It Made Things Difficult For Me When I Started Working As A Director.

As A Private Person, Professionally I Am Invisible.

What I Like Are Films That Take Me Seriously, That Don't Treat Me As More Stupid Than I Am.

It Could Be Fascist, Religious Or Political - It's Always The Same Model That Operates In These Circumstances, And It's That Which Is The Actuality Of This Film. Therefore, It's Not Specifically An Explanation Of German Fascism Because That Would Be An Impossible Thing To Do In Any Case.

Impossible Things

I Try To Get Closer To Reality, To Get Close To The Contradictions. The Cinema World Can Be A Real World Rather Than A Dream World.

In Terms Of Cinema And Filmmaking, There Are Certainly The Unexpected Gifts That The Actors Bestow On You. Film Is Always A Question Of Compromises With Respect To What You Originally Intended.

Unexpected Gifts

Unfortunately, You're Helpless When People Interpret Your Work Wrongly. There Are Simply People Who Can't Or Won't Understand Or Accept What You're Trying To Do. When You Take The Risk Of Expressing Yourself In Public, You Have To Open Yourself To That Possibility.

Of Course I Am A Child Of European Culture. There Are A Number Of Great Directors From Which I Learned, But There Is Nobody In Particular I Got Inspired From.

Film Is 24 Lies Per Second At The Service Of Truth, Or At The Service Of The Attempt To Find The Truth.

People Have Been Educated To Expect Answers, Even Before The Questions Come Along. It's The Tv Principle. You Offer Three Possible Answers Before The Questions Come To Relax And Calm The Audience.

I Never Use Soundtrack; It Is Always Part Of The Story.

You Cannot Hurt Animals, So What Do I Do? I Kill The Dog First. Then I Do It With The Boy. You're Not Supposed To Break The Illusion Of This Being A Film, So I Make The Actor Talk To The Audience. Provocation Is The Principle Of The Whole Film [ Funny Games]. It Is Very Ironic.

When Ideas Lead To Ideology, That's A Very Dangerous Thing. Ideology Then Leads To Creating The Image Of An Enemy, And It Leads To The Murder And Massacre.

For Me, It's Always Difficult When A Historical Film Claims To Depict Or Represent A Reality That None Of Us Can Know, That Is Always Different. It's Always The Case. We Never Know What Happened Then. So My Approach With The Narrator Is To Question That, To Leave That Open, To Underline The Fact That This Is Uncertain.

As A European Filmmaker, You Can Not Make A Genre Film Seriously. You Can Only Make A Parody.

It’s Harder To Write A Story With Just Two People In A Room Than With 50 Characters.

A Feature Film Is Twenty-four Lies Per Second.

What We're Doing For Another Person Is More Important Than What We're Feeling For Them.

I'm Far More Relaxed With German. I'm A Control Freak. I Like To Know Exactly Who's Saying And Doing What.

Saying And Doing

I Don't Need A Psychiatrist. I Can Sort Out My Fears With My Work. That's The Privilege Of All Artists, To Be Able To Sort Out Their Unhappiness And Their Neuroses In Order To Create Something.

If You Go With The Principle, You Should Go With The Principle. If I Really Saw The Subject Very Differently Than Ten Years Ago, I Would Have Done A Different Movie.

My Father And I Had A Good Relationship, It Was Very Relaxed. He Had A Lot Of Humour. He Looked A Little Bit Like Me, Although He Had No Beard. He Had The Appearance Of A Very Elegant British-looking Man.

Good Relationship

I Want To Make It Clear: It's Not That I Hate Mainstream Cinema. It's Perfectly Fine. There Are A Lot Of People Who Need To Escape, Because They Are In Very Difficult Situations, So They Have The Right To Escape From The World. But This Has Nothing To Do With An Art Form.

Difficult Situations

Drama Lives On Conflict. If You're Trying To Deal With Social Issues Seriously, There's No Way Of Avoiding Violence, Which Is So Present In Society.

When You Create A Church, An Institution, And You Create A Dogma. When You Create An Ideology, That's The Danger. Communism, Too, Is A Beautiful Idea, But Millions Of People Died When Communism Became An Ideology.

I Consider All My Films Experiments.

If You Do An Original Film And You Want To Cut A Scene Out You Do It. But When You Do A Shot By Shot Remake You Don't Have That Option And Every Scene Has To Work Again.

I Love Actors, Both My Parents Were Actors, And The Work With Actors Is The Most Enjoyable Part Of Making A Film. It's Important That They Feel Protected And Are Confident They Won't Be Betrayed. When You Create That Atmosphere Of Trust, It's In The Bag - The Actors Will Do Everything To Satisfy You.

On The Set I Make Jokes I Can't Get Too Involved, Or It Turns Into Sentimental Soup. I Try To Keep It Light.

To Me, It's Far More Efficient To Mobilize The Imagination. It's Far More Efficient To Hear A Creaking Step, For Example, Than To See The Face Of A Monster, Which Usually Looks Ridiculous, And Where You Know That The Blood Is Ketchup.

If I Tell The Audience What They Should Think, Then I Am Robbing Them Of Their Own Imagination And Their Own Capacity Of Deciding What's Important To Them.

It's A Fact That People Who Are In A Weakened Position, Whether Physically Or Mentally, Have This Perception Of The Outer World As Threatening. Everything That Is Unexpected Or Unknown Is Seen As A Potential Danger.

You'll See More Violence In Any Television Crime Series Than You Will In My Films Art Is There To Have A Stimulating Effect, If It Earns Its Name. You Have To Be Honest, That's The Only Thing.

The Trouble Is That When You Read Criticisms About The Other Films That I've Made You Get The Impression That They're All About Themes, Or Problems, Or Ideas. But Those Are Actually Things That Develop Out Of Characters, Out Of Images And Out Of Other Things. These More Abstract Things Develop While Working On The Material, And Out Of It. It's Not A Theoretical Exercise From The Outset.

Film Is Simply The Most Complex Way You Can Express Yourself

Express Yourself

You Become A Film Critic Because You're Interested In Film. I Don't Know Whether Knowing So Much About Cinema Leads You To Make Better Films, But It Certainly Can't Hurt.

Pornography, It Seems To Me, Is No Different From War Films Or Propaganda Films In That It Tries To Make The Visceral, Horrific, Or Transgressive Elements Of Life Consumable.

My Mother As A Young Girl Went Out With A Young Ss Officer And She Didn't Really Know What Was Going On - She Just Liked The Uniform. When He Told Her About The Things That He Did, She Was Disgusted And Broke Up With Him.

I'm Not Someone Who Enjoys Long Talks, Long Rehearsals. I'm Very Technical: I Tell My Actors, You Come In, You Sit Down, You Pick Up A Coffee, You Look Here, You Say The Line. We Try It With The Cameras Rolling, And If It Doesn't Work, We Adjust It Until It Does. It's Very Simple.

Of Course, We Avoid Death. To Know Something Is Inevitable Is One Thing. To Accept, To Truly Feel It... That's Different.

My Films Are Intended As Polemical Statements Against The American 'barrel Down' Cinema And Its Dis-empowerment Of The Spectator. They Are An Appeal For A Cinema Of Insistent Questions Instead Of False (because Too Quick) Answers, For Clarifying Distance In Place Of Violating Closeness, For Provocation And Dialogue Instead Of Consumption And Consensus.

Films That Are Entertainments Give Simple Answers But I Think That's Ultimately More Cynical, As It Denies The Viewer Room To Think. If There Are More Answers At The End, Then Surely It Is A Richer Experience.

Film Is The Manipulative Medium Par Excellence. When You Think Back On The History Of Film And The 20th Century, You See The Propaganda That's Been Made. So There Are Moral Demands On The Director To Treat The Spectators As Seriously As He Or She Takes Himself And Not To See Them Merely As Victims That Can Be Manipulated To Whatever Ends They Have.

I've Never Let Producers Tell Me What To Do. Even When I Was Making Television, I Always Did What I Wanted To Do, And If I Couldn't, I Didn't Do It. It Was A Freedom That, These Days, Young Directors Starting Out Don't Have.

Awards Are Important For All Directors Because They Improve Your Working Conditions. You're Only As Good As Your Last Film, So If You Get Prizes Or Large Audiences, Then You Get More Money For Your Next Film.

In German. I'm More Sensitized To The Details, To The Emotions. In English, I Wouldn't Detect As Much Nuance.

It Is Boring To Have All The Answers. Only Political People Have Answers.

I Consider All My Films An Experiment, At Least In My Mind.

I'm Interested In Seeing Films That Confront Me With New Things, With Films That Make Me Question Myself, With Films That Help Me To Reflect On Subjects That I Hadn't Thought About Before, Films That Help Me Progress And Advance.

Mainstream Cinema Raises Questions Only To Immediately Provide An Answer To Them, So They Can Send The Spectator Home Reassured. If We Actually Had Those Answers, Then Society Would Appear Very Different From What It Is.

Raises Questions

Like Every Filmmaker, I Make My Films To Reach The Widest Audience Possible.

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