In una meravigliosa intervista di Jessica Kiang, pubblicata da The Playlist, James Gray (Little Odessa, I padroni della notte, Two Lovers) si sofferma sul lavoro con i due attori protagonisti del suo nuovo film, Low Life, quindi sullo stato del cinema americano e sulle derive del racconto.
Ne ripubblichiamo alcuni passaggi, ma vi consigliamo di leggerela integralmente qui. Ne vale la pena.
Su Marion Cotillard:
I had no idea who…Marion Cotillard was. When I was in Paris for “Two Lovers,” a publicist told me, “A guy named Guillaume Canet wants to have lunch with you.” So we met and had lunch, I found him incredibly funny — I didn’t know anything he had done at that stage, but we sort of bonded because a rat ran across the floor of the restaurant. And then he said, “Come meet my girlfriend” and I met this woman who looked like a silent film actress like Pola Negri or something. And I said, “Who’s your girlfriend?” and he said [French accent] ”You don’t know my girlfriend? She won an Oscar, are you stupide?” And my wife and I became very friendly with them.
Su Joaquin Phoenix, che per girare il mockumentary I’m not there, di Casey Affleck, mandò all’aria tutta la campagna promozionale del suo Two Lovers, per fingere il suo ritiro dalle scene:
I was really angry with him, let’s be honest here. But you know, totally brilliant actors who will agree to do your film are not people who grow on trees. I was upset with him. I mean, I think he and Casey[Affleck] did something very silly, but, whatever — it’s not for me to judge, who cares what I think? My argument was that it came on the back of the publicity tour for the film that I had made with him, which actually was fairly well received in the United States, but there was no discussion of the film. In fact the [David] Letterman appearance where he went nuts was to publicize “Two Lovers” — he apologized to me for that and ultimately I decided that I couldn’t really care about it, because he’s a wonderful actor so in a way you forget it.
Sulla prima presentazione alla Mostra di Venezia del suo esordio, Little Odessa:
I took it to Venice, the film festival and it was a ridiculous experience because the theater was half full, and at the end of the movie there was like one clap and I thought, “Well, this is a disaster.” I got on a plane back to New York and I got off the plane and they had a sign: “Call so-and-so in Venice.”
So I went to a payphone, they said, “You have to go back to Venice, you’ve won.” So I got back on a plane, I pick up my award, Monica Vitti is giving me a kiss on the cheek and I’m thinking, “Well this is how it goes. You’re 24 years old, you make a movie and Monica Vitti kisses you.”
Sul fatto che i suoi film sono molto più considerati in Europa che in America:
I think I’m a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around 1976. I never left the mainstream of American movies, the American mainstream left me. Really what I’m doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore, Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved. Because really American film was that! An American commitment to narrative with an interest in the creation of atmosphere that came probably from Japan or Asian cinema, with a commitment to thematic depth that comes from Europe… We lost that.
James Gray riflette poi sulla scomparsa di quello che lui chiama “middle of mainstream american cinema”, cioè non quello prodotto degli indipendenti a piccolissimo budget e non le mega-produzioni hollywoodiane. Nemmeno i critici più attenti hanno scritto abbastanza su questo fenomeno:
I think it’s in profound trouble in a way that is not reflected by people writing about cinema now. What I find troubling is, I’ll read, for example, conversations between AO Scott and Manohla Dargis [in the New York Times] and I find that they’re extremely erudite, and I love what they say.
But sometimes I feel like the subtext is them trying to convince themselves and each other that the state of cinema not so bad. And what neither of them has ever really addressed, and I have not read it anywhere else either, is the troubling disappearance of “the middle.”
[…] It’s what United Artists would have made in 1978 or something.
Like “Raging Bull” could not be a low-budget movie, it just couldn’t, there’s a certain scale that’s involved in making it, and no one would make “Raging Bull” today. The last example of the industry doing this middle movie that I’m talking about, to me would be Michael Mann’s film “The Insider” which I really like. That has scale and also a bit of truth it. What I don’t see as part of the discourse is a discussion on the economic forces that have forced out the middle. There is some discussion, some awareness, but not enough, because to me that is the central crisis of American movies: the disappearing middle of the mainstream.
Il pubblico per questi film c’è ancora ma è migrato sulle cable tv, che trasmettono ottimi prodotti, ma non comparabili a quel cinema. James Gray usa un metafora molto forte, per rappresentare questo fenomeno di infantilizzazione e sclerotizzazione del gusto:
I think the studios have done a brilliant job of creating the audience it’s now attempting to satisfy. There is a difference between the satisfaction and the exploitation of public tastes. If you give — and I’ve used this analogy many times, but it’s true — if you give somebody a Big Mac every day, and then you give them salmon sushi, their first inclination is not to say that salmon sushi is the most delicious thing they ever ate, their first inclination is to say, “That’s weird and I don’t like it.” And it’s very hard to get them back.
Questo ovviamente ha determinato uno scadimento del dibattito culturale attorno a film che incassano invece sempre di più:
I think the reason movies are no longer relevant is not because they don’t make money, because they make more money than ever. They’re not relevant because the self-appointed cognoscenti have nothing to go watch. So if you look at the numbers they’re doing great, but look at people like, you know… Norman Mailer would not have a movie to see. Norman Mailer, if he were alive, would see a movie from Europe.
Ma il motivo non è solo banalmente economico, ma anche culturale e filosofico:
But there’s a whole other swirl of issues that is not only about this, it’s not only about economics. It’s all connected to a post-1968 drive toward post-structuralism, the focus on the destruction of narrative… I think telling a story is somehow [becoming] “quaint.”
I’m not exactly certain when that began. And it’s not just movies, it’s culture-wide. Look at music, the idea of melody. I would say over the last 30 years melody is not really particularly important. Isn’t that analogous to story [in film]?
I think that people have done [the destruction of narrative thing].
[…] And by the way I love these people. Jackson Pollock is the greatest, I’m not badmouthing these people, but cinema, for me, the meaning of it is telling a story on film.
For me, it’s an act of hubris to say that you don’t need story because it means that we would be members of the first group of human beings in the entire history of the human race that didn’t need story. And I’m not so arrogant as to suppose that’s the case.
L’intervista si conclude conclude con due citazioni:
George Eliot said “the purpose of art is to extend our sympathies” which I think is very beautiful. Kubrick wished all movies were “more daring and more sincere.” A lot of directors today are focusing on what is daring, but are not really focused on what is sincere.
Stanze di Cinema 