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.
Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself.
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.
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.
An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.
Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.
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.
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.
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.
The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.
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.
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.
Usually music is used to hide a film’s problems.
It is boring to have all the answers. Only political people have answers.
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.