The Finnish filmmaker tackles Euro social issues and French cinephilia in Le Havre. By David Fear The heavily accented voice on the other end of the phone line couldn’t sound more depressed: “Portugal just lost to Denmark for the Euro 2012 qualifying round. We got beat out.” There’s a pause, then a long, weary sigh. “Per usual.” It may be shocking to hear that Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki is such a rabid soccer fan that he traveled to Portugal to see the game (“Really, though, I’m here so I can talk to you on the telephone at 10pm at night,” he jokes). To hear this director of dour comedies sound as wryly defeated as his characters, however, is not surprising—though Kaurismäki’s latest, Le Havre, couldn’t feel more uplifting. A tale of a shoe-shine man (André Wilms) helping a young African immigrant (Blondin Miguel) evade the authorities, this tribute to the power of working-class communities doubles as a love letter to vintage French cinema. The 54-year-old auteur filled TONY in on the specifics.
You’d been thinking about this project for a while, hadn’t you?
AK - For a few years, actually. I had this idea that I wanted to do something on the immigration question in Europe, to detail some of the indignities that people coming in from other countries have to go through. The question was really where I was going to film. So I started driving up and down the European coast for two years, more or less, until I finally came across Le Havre, this little port town in the northwest part of France. Once I found the right place, I wrote the script in ten days.
The Finnish filmmaker tackles Euro social issues and French cinephilia in Le Havre. By David Fear
The heavily accented voice on the other end of the phone line couldn’t sound more depressed: “Portugal just lost to Denmark for the Euro 2012 qualifying round. We got beat out.” There’s a pause, then a long, weary sigh. “Per usual.” It may be shocking to hear that Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki is such a rabid soccer fan that he traveled to Portugal to see the game (“Really, though, I’m here so I can talk to you on the telephone at 10pm at night,” he jokes). To hear this director of dour comedies sound as wryly defeated as his characters, however, is not surprising—though Kaurismäki’s latest, Le Havre, couldn’t feel more uplifting. A tale of a shoe-shine man (André Wilms) helping a young African immigrant (Blondin Miguel) evade the authorities, this tribute to the power of working-class communities doubles as a love letter to vintage French cinema. The 54-year-old auteur filled TONY in on the specifics.
You’d been thinking about this project for a while, hadn’t you?
AK - For a few years, actually. I had this idea that I wanted to do something on the immigration question in Europe, to detail some of the indignities that people coming in from other countries have to go through. The question was really where I was going to film. So I started driving up and down the European coast for two years, more or less, until I finally came across Le Havre, this little port town in the northwest part of France. Once I found the right place, I wrote the script in ten days.
That’s pretty quick!
AK - Normally it only takes a weekend. I’m getting old. [Chuckles]
Once you’d decided on France as a locale, it was just a small leap to go, Hey, I’ll make a French Resistance film, right?
AK- Actually, I was gravitating more toward the prewar films in the ’20s and ’30s, stuff like poetic realism movies that Marcel Carné and Jacques Becker were making. I like that period a lot; there’s a weird kind of optimism in French movies at that time. France’s postwar movies are so pessimistic and downbeat. Which is not my style at all, as you can plainly tell. [Chuckles]
Do you consider yourself a Francophile?
AK - I mean, France’s 19th-century literature is amazing. So is its architecture—and its paintings and a lot of the cinema, of course. But it’s still a country with dirty, corrupt politics. Though I’m a Chevalier Légion d’honneur recipient, I’m still not convinced that their foreign policies have much honor.
I don’t think France is the only country one could say that about at the moment.
AK - No, you’re right. Horrible foreign policies and an inability to deal with an influx of immigrants in a humane manner are epidemic all over Europe. Everything feels like it’s tilting to the extreme side of right-wing politics right now; I’m a little afraid as to what’s going to happen in that lousy continent. I could have set the film in Spain or Italy, really—and I’d have undoubtedly added a lot of specific cultural references to those countries, too.
You’d have put a lot of Bicycle Thief references in there instead?
AK - I’d have shot it like a De Sica or Rosselini movie, maybe. Actually, the style here is more Hollywood classical, with the notion of the “invisible camera.” You’ve heard of the saying What Would Jesus Do? My motto here was What Would Howard Hawks Do? [Chuckles] In order to entertain myself and any film buffs out there, I threw in a number of different quotations—not just Port of Shadows, obviously, but also Casablanca, Chaplin, a few Jean-Pierre Melville movies. But I don’t expect people to get all of them, or even care that I put them in there. My end goal was to make a movie anybody could watch. If a Chinese lady can watch Le Havre without any subtitles and still follow what’s going on, then I’ve done my job.
Would you say that you’re becoming optimistic as you get older?
AK - Quite the opposite: I feel more pessimistic now than I have in years, which is why I needed to make a lighter movie, even if the subject isn’t exactly the kind of stuff people think of as happy-go-lucky. But the more pessimistic I feel, the more optimistic I need to make my movies. That’s my refuge.
Judging from Le Havre, you’re in a deep depression these days.
AK - I get optimistic about the human race every so often. [Pauses] But you can’t print that! I mean, I have a reputation to uphold. [Chuckles, chuckles, chuckles]
Originally published in Timeout http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/2096517/q-a-aki-kaurismaeki
No comments:
Post a Comment