Author: Eric Kohn (Indiewire)
Translator: csh
The translation was first published in "Iris"
In the first paragraph of Gaspar Nou's "Climax", a dance group gathers in a remote building to practice their movements. If you only look at this passage, Gaspar Nou seems to be shooting a gorgeous dance documentary. However, the director who has filmed "Escape into Nothingness" and "Love" has always used his disturbing subjective photography and deviant film themes to continue his "bad boy" image. This film Of course it is no exception. When these dancers—all of them professional dancers, and none of them actors except Sophia Podora—inadvertently drank party punches mixed with psychedelic drugs, the film began to interact with Together they embarked on that extremely dark journey. The 55-year-old Argentine director working in Paris used these 96-minute fast-paced images to create the most manic visual impact of his film career so far.
This film was shot in 15 days in the weeks before its premiere in Cannes, and then it won the director’s bi-weekly art film award and the American screening rights of A24. The talkative director discussed with our reporter on Skype about his elusive inspiration, the free-flowing production strategy of this new work, and his relationship with the business world.
Reporter: Hello, Gasper.
Gaspar No: Hey you know what? You have to wait a while. I haven't smoked a cigarette for an hour, so I have to smoke a cigarette first.
Reporter: It must feel good at home.
Gaspar Nou: This film was released at the Cannes Film Festival, and it has been screened almost throughout Europe and South America. So, even though I made this film very fast-from the initial idea to the premiere in Cannes, it took me four and a half months-since May, I have been traveling, in various Answer the same question in various places. This is why I don't have time to start making (or preparing) another film.
Reporter: You must find it ironic. Even if you use the fastest production speed, it still takes you a lot of time.
Gaspar Nou: I think the promotion of the movie took me twice or three times as long. Traveling around is always fun-you will be arranged in a nice hotel, and so on. But maybe because I am getting older, I now enjoy the shooting of the movie more than the promotion of the movie.
Reporter: At the morning screening in Cannes, you looked really dizzy. I found you standing in the aisle, grinning all the time during the screening.
Gaspar No: The interesting thing about that early screening is that no one knows anything about the movie. This is the first time this happened at a film festival—especially the Cannes Film Festival. I was showing a film, and the audience and critics in the seats didn’t know anything about it. The only thing they knew was The title of the video. When the film was selected for the director's biweekly unit, they asked me to write a film outline for the screening manual. I thought, "Hey, I don't want anyone to know what this movie is about. Then I submitted this stupid summary: "Life and death are two extraordinary experiences."" So when you or When other people go to see this movie, you don't know anything except knowing that the movie is called "Climax" and its director is me. But the problem is that the "fake outline" became a joke-now, when I see my movie DVD sold in France or elsewhere, it is printed with this stupid summary: "Sheng And death are two extraordinary experiences." It was a joke, but they kept it.
Reporter: Usually your films will get polarized reviews, but "Climax" has been unanimously approved by the jury, and almost all types of audiences have given a good response. How do you feel about this?
Gaspar No.: I think it might be because this film is more interesting than my other works. "Escape into Nothingness" is probably the most serious one. It is more serious than "Irrevocable" and "Love". To a certain extent, these latter two films are just a bit violent and a little disturbing. While "Escape into Nothingness" seems to be more serious, it is difficult for the audience to laugh out loud while watching the movie. Some of the passages in "Climax" are very energetic and pleasant, while other passages are like hell.
The format of this film is very extreme. Once or twice, I walked into the theater while the movie was showing, and when I saw the second half of the movie, people started laughing. Bergman also makes such films; so does Haneke. I am a happy person. When happy people make a cruel movie, it becomes very interesting.
Reporter: "Climax" seems to allow more audiences to accept your style.
Gaspar No.: The reason that made this film more popular, or easier to be accepted by film critics, is that the characters in this film are not tortured. They are both positive images and creative. They are very happy in the first half of the film, so you can choose the characters you like and empathize with them. They are not defined as losers or "half losers" like the characters in my previous films. For those people, you can say that they keep making mistakes. But in this film, you see these twenty-three characters and you say, "Oh, they are all trying to be better in their lives, they are such great dancers." Then you will be because They were fascinated by their body language. Then we enter the second part. Of course, the same character will become a reptile under a more stressful situation.
In my other films, there will always be a fixed role that is the focus of the film from start to finish-like the butcher in "Stand Alone" or the young drug dealer in "Escape into Nothingness". "Irrevocable" has more than one (main) character, while "Love" has only one main character because she is responsible for the voiceover. But this "Climax" is an open-ended movie, a bit like the "Urban Ronin" filmed by Richard Linklater that I really like. In that movie, every five or ten minutes, your attention can shift from one character to another. This is more like a group portrait movie than a portrait of a specific character. So you can pay attention to the character you like.
Reporter: You have discussed using drugs to get creative inspiration before, especially in the process of making "Escape into Nothingness". But this film looks more like a work advocating drug rehabilitation. After these years, do you have any new thinking about the relationship between drugs and movies?
Gaspar No.: I've been thinking if I could make a psychedelic movie like "2001: A Space Odyssey". That was really my first psychedelic journey. I was about six or seven years old at that time. At that time I said, "One day, I will make a movie like "2001: A Space Odyssey." When I was a child, I was never addicted to any drugs except candy. Of course, when you have to meet friends and drink beer, it's hard to stop drinking. I am a member of our generation, so when I was a teenager, I smoked marijuana. I have never really escaped from these things that were placed in front of me. And when I was preparing for "Escape into Nothingness", I thought, "How can I find images that can help me create this film?"
When filming "2001: A Space Odyssey", Kubrick never used any hallucinogens, including LSD, because he said his brain is his best friend. I have seen Douglas Trumbull (Translator's Note: He was responsible for the visual effects of "2001: A Space Odyssey"), and he has never used psychedelics. Nevertheless, they made an incredible psychedelic movie.
On the other hand, Kenneth Anger tried psychedelics when making "The Unveiling of Bliss Mansion". And I drank some ayahuasca with a friend to get the images that can be included in my movie. But I do not advocate drug use. They can be very risky, just like alcohol. In fact, according to the examples around me, the social damage caused by alcohol is more serious than drugs.
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