Michael Haneke on Hidden
It’s super to be number one, I’m very happy. I am surprised Caché
was a success because it wasn’t an easy film. Perhaps audiences aren’t
as stupid as mainstream film-makers often think. I am not preoccupied with
surveillance culture, but I hope my films reflect the times they are set in.
I don’t start with themes in mind, but rather constellations of people and
moral questions — in Caché, how Daniel Auteuil’s character
deals with the guilt he has bought upon himself as a child. I did not want
to resolve the mystery, but hold back so the audience engages with it more
actively.
It’s the same in The White Ribbon (released this Friday). The
only ones who know more in Caché are the children at the end,
but no one can hear what they are saying, and anyway their dialogue is one
other possibility. You never know the truth: that’s how it is in life.
There is no one film I am most proud of — a good father loves all his
children. Am I fulfilled? You never achieve what you want but I certainly
can’t complain. Next I am making a film about ageing with Isabelle Huppert.
My favourite film-maker of the decade is Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry,
The Wind Will Carry Us). He achieves a simplicity that’s so difficult
to attain.
Michael Haneke
Kathryn Bigelow on The Hurt Locker
What drove me to make The Hurt Locker was the desire to tell this
story about three men thrown together in one of the most dangerous jobs in
the world, and their extraordinary struggle to survive the war and each
other. Though I’m an avid news consumer and reader, I felt like Mark Boal’s
screenplay gave me an opportunity as a filmmaker to reveal an unseen side of
the war, to ask questions about the price of heroism and put the viewer as
close to the front lines of this conflict as you could get without actually
going to war. I was interested in how individuals cope in 21st century
combat. The reaction has been extremely gratifying – people come up to me
after a screening and say, ‘I had no idea what is was like over there’. Both
the cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, and myself felt that the visual style of
the film was influenced by the reportorial nature of the script, which took
us into corners of the war that the media rarely explores.
Mira Nair on Monsoon Wedding
The film is a portrait of the lovely chaos around my dining table. People
didn’t know modern India then, they only knew poverty stricken India. It was
one of the first films to speak about our middle class and upper middle
class India. People didn’t know about those people, but we, who were those
people, knew it was as old as the hills.
I was teaching in Cape Town in the townships, where they were full and fertile
but had no opportunity in life. I set myself a challenge: to make something
out of nothing, to make something on a small budget. I consciously designed
what I felt was an “intimate family flick”. It was yummy when it became so
much more. The making of it was like anything else, no glamour. I did the
casting in a small dank room in India, trying to find my bride out of 500
hopefuls. I gave myself 30 days to make a five string plot film. It made me
more assured, to have such limits. The script followed that ambition, to
make something beautiful out of such a complicated plot. It gave me
experimental zeal, to do it without compromising.
It was so well received. People came from all over and said “how do you know
my family?” From Santa Cruz, to India, Brazil, Palestine and Pakistan. At
the festivals it became a sensation, after originally being rejected at
Cannes, it was then said by the judges that the best film was outside the
selection. We went on to win the Golden Lion at Venice. At the screening in
the formal venetian environment we had ladies taking off their tiaras and
dancing in the aisles, then returning to their chairs and weeping. It was
completely visceral and immediate. We had no money for a party but played
our soundtrack in the corridors of the Excelsior hotel and stayed up late
into the night. It wasn't our home turf by any means but people came
together and danced with us and we were full of joy.
James Marsh on Man on Wire
My sole and perhaps secret ambition was to reconfigure the memory of the twin
towers, to connect them for a time with something other than 9/11.The
absence of the twin towers creates a new coda to Phillipe's story of walking
between them.The virtue of the film I think was to confine it to a single
place and story and to allow the audience to fill in the subtext. It was
structured like a heist movie - filled with disguises, plans, breaking in
and making drawings etc. But his great objective was actually to give
something away rather than to destroy anything. I found it very much life
affirming rather than being about defying death. But the story is Phillipe's
story, it isn't mine and it isn't that of the towers. He did such an amazing
thing, and I still absolutely love and cherish what he did there, even
though I've made and seen the film and worked with him I still can't get my
head round the amazing story, the beauty and subversion and audacity of what
he did. It's about a very universal and transcendental story of someone
chasing and realising the impossible dream and that has really struck
audiences. Even though you can see from the image on the poster that he did
it and you know that he lived, people are still unbelieving of how it can
really be possible. It has an irresistible veracity to the story.
I think when Phillipe first saw the film he had reservations about it because
of the way I told the story and the emphasis I gave to certain characters
but he overcame them when he sat with an audience and saw how they responded
to it and has since supported it in a very committed way. I have been
delighted and surprised by the film's connection with an audience. I saw
early on that people really engaged with it, as it gave them something they
wanted, a vision of such a hopeful experience. It has done very well and won
lots of prizes, and I'm very proud of that. It also meant that I was able to
make another film and as a director that is all you want to be able to do.
Steve McQueen on Hunger
The story of Bobby Sands had stayed in my psyche since about the age of 11 as
a hugely important part of contemporary British history and I knew that I
wanted to make a feature film about it. The response to Hunger was
amazing, especially the influence that it has had on other projects. Because
it didn't seem like something that could become a major, popular, film but
it did so well people have started to say that they would like to make films
that take more risks, both in their approach to the making of the film and
the kinds of stories they would tell.
The film was a thermometer to test the climate in the UK and Ireland about how
far we've come since Bobby Sands and I think it found that we have come a
long way. It was never meant to be a film to change things but to truly test
out the climate. No other medium can really do that because rather than
headlines on newspapers, film can provoke sustained debate and reach peoples
consciousness in a more subtle way. Film can cause a national debate on a
topic that was very sensitive for so many years. I'm really chuffed to be
included in the Top 100 list. For me the biggest thing I am pleased about it
that it could influence other film makers. I'm really very humbled by the
film's success and I'm just glad that people can take more risks and yet be
successful and so I'm just happy that I'm not alone anymore.
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