With maturity, Nanni Moretti does not give up his quest for authenticity, but gains in emotion. The Italian filmmaker innovates in his latest film, “Mia madre”, where his alter ego is the first time a woman, played by Margherita Buy.
Is it because he had already had the Palme d’Or in 2001 for The son of House ? The last Cannes Film Festival, Nanni Moretti returned empty-handed, but the winner of a Palme symbolic, that of emotion. Switch from laughter to tears, the expression is not hackneyed about Mia madre . The author is hiding behind the guise of Margherita Buy, who plays an obsessive filmmaker, beset by doubt. On the set of his political film, nothing will. In his private life either: the days of his mother are counted. For forty years Nanni Moretti began his “Diary” film, by concealing the fiction. He confronts egocentrism and citizenship, caustic and harmony. The slap to a journalist (in Palombella rossa ) remaining in the memories, we apprehend a little maintenance. In truth, Moretti is not unpleasant, it refuses to seduce. Shade. He paid attention to the words he uses, as if they were mined. He is wary of himself too. The reserve is a constructive question.
Your immediate reaction to the attacks of Paris?
These attacks are a despicable act, a true act of war. I am horrified. How would he have to take to stop this?
Returning to Mia madre , which summarizes and refines the same time your film, shared tragedy and satire, fiction and autobiography …
If true, that would make me happy. Reference was also made a film of maturity, which would contain all the others. In any case I made sure to be primarily serving the feelings of the characters – I almost want to tell people – in order to get more authenticity. I did not want to show my muscles, I tried to erase me in the staging as in my interpretation. What mattered was to tell emotions. This time the film is an emotional time Margherita, the heroine, who is facing lot of problems to some emergency. And simultaneously, she dreams, remembers, indulges in his thoughts. Often found elsewhere than where it is physically.
“It was much more interesting to tell this story of a woman’s perspective.”
This is the first time the main character is a hero.
I chose Margherita Buy as an alter ego, without really knowing why but without hesitation. It was clear to me that it was much more interesting to tell this story of a female perspective. I am still as an actor, but muted. This is a film of women there are three: the grandmother, mother and daughter. There are also three women screenwriters elsewhere! What motivated me was to break an agreement: we often see female characters altruistic, devoted. I just wanted to show who is struggling to care for others. Especially his mother.
The death of your own mother she was the trigger?
Yes. I turned We Have a Pope when she fell ill. She died during assembly. I usually put a lot of time – and that is what is happening to me right now – to get rid of the last film I did, to recharge my energy, continue with another. There, it was not the case. Hardly had I finished We Have a Pope that I knew I wanted to tell the story of this director busy with his work.
Your mother was as teacher, like in the movie?
Yes, she was a professor of Latin and Greek in a high school in Rome. And my father, he was a professor of Greek epigraphy at the University. All books that we see in the scene from the desktop to the end, the one where Margherita finds the soul of his mother at the same time as the place belonged to my father and mother. I actually brought on the set a lot of personal items that were familiar to me. Pullover that Margherita door are those of my mother, the small frame at the hospital, a calendar, a glasses case also.
What have you learned from your parents?
To take responsibility for what I say and what I do.
“Now I am emotionally close to the actors. “
Over the years, we have the feeling that your report to the actors has evolved, has pacified. You do not really to enjoy your debut, right?
I would say that I considered them more like pawns on my chessboard. Now I am close to them an affective and emotional point of view, simply. Still, there is one constant: directing actors has always been an essential part of my work. I do not explicitly say that as Margherita “the actor must remain next to the character,” but it’s something that I think nevertheless constantly. I do not like to theorize; by cons, I’m a perfectionist. Very often I myself play the role attributed to the actor to show him what I have in my head and what I want to see on the screen.
“Seeing the actor next to the character,” would it see “pretend to pretend”?
I would not get lost in endless games of mirrors. But what pleases me is that there is some discrepancy, detachment. What comedians perform and they see themselves doing it, without forgetting. As a spectator and director, I do not much like these performances where the actor goes so far and deep into his character that eventually disappears. This is a guarantee of public and critical success, but not to me. I always like to perceive, feel a personality, if a person next to the person.
There is always in your films a special way, fluid, amble through the apartments. Between straying, breathing, inner exploration …
One of the characters of Mia madre , is the home grandmother. When one is in the hospital, his daughter Margherita settles. Office, kitchen, living room are then places his own daughter seems more at ease, more easily appropriates the objects Margherita herself. This reflects more spontaneous, less complicated relationships between grandparents and grandchildren, between parents and children. As for the fluidity, I wanted more generally as Mia madre is built on different levels of reality. I liked the dream, the memory and all that is attached to the “film within the film” overlap limpid, without difference in style. Both in writing and in the directing and editing, I wanted to crossfades movement.
Your movies often oscillates between gravity and lightness quest …
More than a search for lightness, I would speak of a search for simplicity. Which should not be a starting point, but a point of arrival. There is a job to do so.
he continues filming to be a source of anxiety?
More than other phases. Even in the days of super-8 shooting worried me because there is a program to follow, lots of people waiting for a decision while no you should not and must still move forward. The assembly comes as a relief – I do not have a team to manage. As for writing, it has become the longest and most difficult stage because I am even more critical than in the past.
” I might even shoot a movie that I have not written a thriller … for example. “
Have you ever considered making a film without playing in?
Thirty years ago, I would have said no. Today, it would be yes. I even answer that I could make a film that I have not written. I get into very different things. A thriller, for example, if the shooting remained my alley. For a comedy, it might be more difficult, because it is something that is personal to me. I do not know if I could adapt to another form of comedy that I practice.
The cinema he helps you live?
It may have therapeutic value for the viewer, but not for one who does! It is not a cure for me. I spent my life making films on my tics, my mannerisms, my obsessions and they remained intact, like new! Nothing has changed in that direction.
Is it not still vital for you to film?
I have not been a spectator of childhood as Truffaut tells it in for Night . I started to go to the movies later, not until 15, 16 years. I had the intuition that cinema in high school was the means of expression best suited to bring out of me things that I needed to speak to others, but perhaps also to myself. There, it is true that it was a necessity, it was impossible to me to consider anything else, any trade. During those years, I thought only cling to this hope of making movies.
When you started to film in super-8, you had a model?
The auteur films of the 1960s Each course had its own style, but it was a new cinema that broke with the previous and also with society inherited. In Italy, there were the first films Ferreri, Pasolini, Bellocchio, Bertolucci, Taviani, Carmelo Bene too. In France, it was the New Wave; England, free cinema.
Antonioni?
When I was 15, in Italy, there really were two camps, two irreconcilable clans . Those who loved and those who loved Fellini Antonioni. I was “Fellini”. Because it gave me more emotion, he surprised me more.
On the set of Mia Madre.
Photo: Alberto Novelli
What are the contemporary filmmakers that you feel as
Since the last Cannes festival, I no longer cites the Coen brothers, who presided over the jury (laughs). I like some, but deep down I always expect more from them. I find it difficult to be attached solely to the movies, separate work from the personality of a director, of his career in the long term. I need to feel an aesthetic and economic coherence. I think for example that could represent John Cassavetes ago forties. What comes to mind, it is rather filmmakers who have died, as Buñuel or Bergman.
And Ken Loach?
Movies Ken Loach often I like. Even if I sometimes find advanced sadism that I find complacent.
“When I was 15, in Italy, there were those who Fellini loved and those who loved Antonioni. I was ‘Fellini’. “
You are always at the head of a movie theater in Rome, Nuovo Sacher. How is she?
We currently showing The Market Act , Stéphane Brizé. Vincent Lindon came himself to present the film to the public. The concern of this room is that there is absolutely no generational succession. The average age of the audience is high. In the afternoon, there is always an older audience, very loyal. But for the session 22:30, there are very few people. When young people go to the movies, if they go there, they will see a different kind of film and other types of rooms. This is partly to address why I created “Bimbi belli”, a kind of festival of first films, I organize summer for eleven years now. After each outdoor projection, there are discussions that I lead myself.
From 1998 through Aprile , you mentioned the plight of Albanian refugees and the striking absence of political reaction. What is your view today on the crisis of migrants in Europe?
When Aprile , I wanted show what we did not talk at the time. Today the situation is different. The few documentaries that I have done have always been motivated by the fact of seeing myself clearer. So should I go filming. I made this documentary for example, La Cosa (1990), devoted to the internal debates of the Communist Party in Italy at the time the Berlin Wall fell. It was not to deliver a message. My first goal was really to understand what was going on in sections.
Since coming to power in Italy Matteo Renzi, one speaks of a cultural revival. You share this optimism
It’s a fact: since the arrival to power of Italian Matteo Renzi saw nothing abnormal situation. She’s no longer hostage to financial interests, economic and justice of a single person. But before we can accurately answer your question, I prefer to wait. Avoid general answers and a little mundane. It is too early to realize real change, overnight, to really understand what’s going on.
“I do not think I was one day inhabited by ideological certainties. “
” I nothing understand “is a replica which returns several times in Mia madre …
Obviously I told Margherita some of my characteristics. Me neither, I can not always do me a clear view of the Italian reality.
This misunderstanding is she not the translation of a vis-à-vis distance ideological dogmas?
I do not think I was one day inhabited by ideological certainties. There has always been a double movement at home. My eyes could of course be very critical on the right, but also on my own side, namely the left. I even think that at 20 years, in my most committed period, I was not someone dogmatic. My first short film, called The Lost (1973), shot in Super-8, made fun of a leftist activist. I hope never to have been like him.
Are you still left?
I try.
From We Have a Pope , it nevertheless feels you further back over the life of the city, in your time as …
We returns to misunderstanding, confusion. Without prejudging anything, I note for example that this way of life consists of being connected to everything and everyone together is something that is quite foreign to me. I do not feel better or worse than another on this, it’s just that I have no particular idolatry supposedly inevitable for these new technologies.
Football ( The Mass is ended ), water polo ( Palombella rossa ), volleyball ( We Have a Pope ). But in Mia madre , there is more sport. Reassure us, you still practice?
I always do a little tennis. But I have more and more difficult to find someone I can beat. Even my son, until then, I could beat him, but next time, it will be him … At the end of the parties, there is always someone to say, the important thing is to participate , for making exercise, have spent. Bullshit! The important thing is to win.
1953 Born in Brunico, in the Trentino-Alto Adige.
1976 I Am Self Sufficient first feature, the super-inflated by 8 16 mm.
1991 Resumes a Roman theater and renamed Cinema Nuovo Sacher.
1994 Diary.
2001 Golden Palm with The son of the House.
2015 Mia madre.
No comments:
Post a Comment