"Attention!" "The Seventh Continent" "Interview with Michael Haneke by Serge Toubiana" "With this subject in The Seventh Continent," "At the time, I often wrote my films abroad, I wrote the... on a Greek island, and I travelled there this time, too." "I tried to tell this story without..." "I didn't want to give any answers." "And I wanted to tell the story, that is the build-up to their suicide through flashbacks of their life." "And I worked for six weeks without success, because each flashback ended up being an explanation." "Eventually, I understood that I couldn't tell the story that way if I wanted the secret to remain troubling." "I decided I would give myself a sort of framework." "Three years, one day, and we see what happens." "And it's up to the viewer to find his or her own answers." "And I think that..." "After that, it was very easy to write the script." "It went very quickly" "I finished it in about four weeks." "And I was very happy" "But the TV producers were very unhappy." " Really?" "And there you have it." "That's how it happened." "And so, through the difficulty I had telling this story," "Which I had read in a newspaper, where, naturally, the journalist explained everything." "He did some research." "He said that yes, it was..." "The father was i debt and couldn't pay." "He and his wife had sexual problems." "Just a lot of lame explanations that diminished..." " The impact of what they did." " Right, right." " The impact of what they did..." " Yes." "And at first, I didn't know how to tell the story in a traditional way." "And by choosing to limit myself with a sort of simple framework it was a way of getting closer to my subject." "We did research with..." "To determine children's ability..." " To stay..." "...to understood a sequence of images." "And it is true that 5- and 6-year-olds can retain more from a rapid sequence of images than someone from an older generation." "But on the other hand, they discovered that the impressions they were left with were less emotionally potent." "They can decipher it, agree on the meaning, identify the meaning of the sequence." "But all the depth behind it" " is lost." " Yes." "And that's why..." "Well, that's not the only reason, but I think it's..." "It's a sort of protest against this way of giving bits of pseudo-information in rapid succession because we already understand everything." "We already know everything that's being shown." "When you tell a story on any given subject" "Viewers have already read a similar story." "So how do you impact the viewer more deeply?" "Naturally, one of the possibilities is rhythm" "Because basically, film is about rhythm." "It's..." "For me, film is much closer to music than to literature." "In the first I don't know how many minutes, we only see hits and pieces" "Why?" "To show, sort of, how we are in our everyday lives, how we are forced" "to serve everyday things." "And so, they don't really live, they do things." " They go through the motions." " They go through the motions." "And we are stuck in these motions." "And all of life is the sum of these motions." "There's nothing left." "And maybe that's also why they do what they do in the movie." "And they engage in the destruction of their property, of all that they have, with the same intensity, with the same slowness, with the same..." "They become completely wrapped up in it." "And it isn't..." "It could be an act..." " Of liberation." "...of liberation." "But the way they go about it shows that for them it isn't a liberation." "And for me, that's what is saddest in the film." "Because we also could have made the film from only the second half, from the moment the decision is made to leave." "We could have made a provocative film that was a liberation." "But in my opinion, it would be a lie." "No!" "This destructive violence," " it's a violence against one's self." " Yes, of course." "Yes." "And when they break the aquarium, when the fish die, naturally, it's a metaphor for the inner death of the girl, of the little girl." "She is the only one that can't handle it." " Let go of me!" " Let go of me!" " Calm down, Evi." "The viewer is always drawn to details of what is being shown." "This small family in a rather bourgeois world, it's the world I know best." "And that's why..." "And I'm talking about what I know." "The purpose, obviously," "Is to be precise enough in the details so that the viewer, because of the attention to detail, becomes interested" "in the people who do that." "It's a sort of composition, as opposed to decomposition." "And so we do a decomposition, and with this decomposition we create the entire composition of the characters." "In this process, you're more interested in the effects than the cause." "Is this true?" "Yes, because I think it's the way we can tell a story today with a clearer conscience, rather than pretending to know the causes." "I think that it's the same thing in literature." "There is no novelist today that would want to write a novel claiming to fully analyse the causes, to tell why the story unfolds the way it does." "It's always..." "We can tell a story through what everyone perceives." "We explain..." "If we want an explanation, we explain only through the structure" "The structure of the story might explain something." "But it always allows one to remain ambiguous compared to a way of telling that is..." "Explaining?" " Explanatory." " Explanatory." "And so it becomes wordy and banal, because if we start dealing with a subject that is a little bit more complex, it becomes ridiculous." "In that way, films..." "Not genre films, but..." "How do you say it?" "What makes..." "I can't think of the word" "Forget it." "Cut!" " After having seen the accident..." " Yes." "...with the dead bodies on the road..." " That's it." "Yes." "...they go in to wash..." " Right." "...the car, and then she has that attack." "It's like a moment of fear, of claustrophobia, is that right?" " Yes." "Yes." "But in that moment she understood something about her life." "And it's not always very pleasant to understand something about one's own life." " But there, it's purely physical." "There isn't..." " Yeah." "But the idea was to show that using only images." "It was quite complicated to film because the brushes were always..." "It had to be lined up to match the shots." "She had to start crying at the precise moment the brush reached a certain place." "It was quite complicated, but I feel it was successful." "It's a shot with three images." "There's a beach with the ocean," " and behind the ocean, a mountain." " Yes." "At the beginning, it's only a picture." "It's a photograph, an advertisement." " It's Australia, right?" " Right at the beginning..." "Yes, an advertisement for Australia." "And the last time we see it," " the ocean is moving." " Yes, that's right." "In reality, it couldn't be moving..." " Yes." "...because it isn't possible." "In this picture..." "It gives it a..." "It's calm, but it's, for me at least, it's an anxious calm." " It's death." "It's..." "We don't know." " Yes, you can interpret it the way you want." " But it can also be the..." " It might only be the memory they have of this image they saw going through the car wash." "That they saw, and that became troubling for them." "Maybe also..." "Also... an image of peace." " Of peace, yes." " However you want to see it." "It's also ambiguous." "I'm always trying to find ambiguous solutions." "It's always the unknown that's troubling." "Any genre film works with that." "It's always the thing we don't know how to understand." "It's troubling." "Why do people hate strangers?" "Because they don't know them, so they are afraid, so they hate them." "It's a shame, but that's the way it is." "It isn't any more complicated than that." "I remember, when we were invited to Cannes, I was saying to the producer," ""You'll see, there are two scenes people will be upset about."" "And it's the scene where the..." "When they break" " the aquarium." "The death of the fish." " The aquarium." "The death of the fish." "Yes." "And the..." "And the..." "And the shot of the money." "And the producer said, "No, that's ridiculous."" ""Maybe the part with the fish because they're animals, etc."" " And because of the child, the child." " Yeah. "But never that."" "And in the end, that's exactly how it was." "There were people who left the cinema, slamming the doors." "Everywhere I showed the film, that was the main scene people complained about." "Because it's the greatest taboo." "It's a lot less disturbing if parents kill their children and themselves than if they destroy money." "It's completely taboo in our society." "I didn't make up this scene." "In that article I read, that's what those people did." "So, I don't know if I could have come up with that, but it's something that really happened." "They went to the bank, as well." "And they threw all their money..." "Because the police recovered..." "Well, they didn't recover it, but all the small change stayed down below." "And that's how they deduced that they destroyed all that in the..." "I remember, with The Seventh Continent, I was also at Cannes." "It was my first time at Cannes." "And because it was the first film, it was for..." "There were also discussions with the public." "One woman stood up and said," ""Is Austria really so depressing?"" "And fortunately, everyone laughed." "I think everyone understood that it was a sort of escape." "Because it's always the typical attitude, if you will, to think that a certain film or book doesn't have to do with me, and I'm trying to find the reasons why it doesn't have to do with me." "Because it takes far from where I live and..." "And I think this film is as easy to understand in Japan as in America, France or Austria." "It isn't a portrait of Austria." "It's a portrait of rich countries." "It isn't a portrait of the Third World because they really have other kind of problems, but it's..." "It's also..." "For example, the film is set in Linz, and you can tell it's Linz because of the car, but we didn't film anything there, because I wanted it to remain completely neutral." "I didn't want to have elements that were typically Viennese, because I really think that the film must look like it could take place anywhere." "And that's what..." "In my films I always try not to be too..." "I try to be specific" " without being local." " That's right." "Those are two different things." "What is also striking, is that compared to other films that you've made, there's no "other" in this film." "There are no enemies." "There are no elements..." "There is no intrusion of a foreign body." " We are confined to the family." " Yes." "Yes." "And yet, that's what makes it even more troubling." "Yes, because it makes this family a typical family." ""The family." This family represents" ""the family."" "And that is more provocative, obviously, because we don't want to be this family." "Well, there you have it, we don't want to be this family." "Subtitles ripped by Qrosawa a.k.a. qbebh"