She possesses a phenomenal ability to feel the real pulse of the world and life, as well as an ability to recreate this feeling with refined, merciless accuracy. This is perhaps the reason why Kira Muratova’s films, seemingly removed from the traditional epicenter of undermining the canon, have always been viewed by canon guardians as an immediate threat.
Muratova’s permanent estrangement from the forefront of cinematography, trendy themes, and streamline ideas did not prevent her from attaining the status of a top-notch cinema artist. And the special thing about her name is that it is impossible to imagine it among other names, even the ones that are comparable in terms of time period and creativity. Her membership in the 1960s generation is a mere biographical fact; and one will not find her name in its almost nomenklatura lists. No matter how her world view has changed over the years from Brief Encounters and The Long Good-Bye to Asthenic Syndrome and then from A Sensitive Militiaman to Three Stories, it still retains its sickly impartiality and a certain lack of experience, including an experience of success and official recognition. Her name remains a password for mediating cinema-lovers and snobbish intelligentsia. Her films, which did not enjoy sell-outs, have been painstakingly examined under a microscope in numerous cinema studies. The interview with Kira Muratova, which follows below, is unusual because of the sincere naivete of the questions posed by inexperienced viewers to a seasoned, yet also inexperienced, film director. For there is nothing more difficult than answering simple questions.
Q.: What kind of audience do you have in mind when directing your motion pictures?
A.: I do not aim at any particular audience. If I tailored my productions to a specific viewer, I would make a totally different movie, one to sell. In principle, I think I am not a cripple or a degenerate: I look like a normal human being with two arms, two legs, and one head. I think my brain structure is probably also similar to anyone else’s. This is why if I do what I am interested in, it will also be of interest to some, albeit few, other people. If it did not interest anyone, I would be a Martian. I am saying this to justify what appears to you to be the case. If you do not like it, then why do you watch it anyway?
Q.: I like it, but I get frightened at some point.
A.: So art scares us more than life. What you see on the screen is a mirage recorded on tape, and life around us consists of Chechnya, killings, and the like. If you can shut your eyes to all this, it is enough to just leave the movie theater. This is much easier to do than shut your eyes to life, because it will keep burdening you and, unlike art, it is with you all the time. If you only get scared and do not enjoy it at all, you don’t have to watch.
Q.: But I cannot help watching.
A.: That means that you actually feel good about something. This is what is called aesthetic enjoyment. You learn something shaped in the way that is not totally alien to you. So you do enjoy it, even though this enjoyment can sometimes be painful.
Q.: Exactly, painful is the word.
A.: It turns out that you want to sate your curiosity, to learn something. Otherwise, you would simply say, “To hell with it! Get out of here!” At the same time, you are tortured and drawn to what you saw. This is the kind of films I was making at first, although under all the regimes I was told the same thing: you are disfiguring, you are directing in the wrong way. I used to keep saying that this is my method, but then I got sick of it. We feel both pleasure and pain with the same nerve; however, as a rule, it protects itself during one’s lifetime, and eventually a callus grows over it. It becomes less sensitive — don’t disturb me, I want to sleep tight. First, it is as if I painfully scrape off the calluses in order to drip some holy oil on the nerve in the very end. It is a contrast of torture and pleasure: these are my thoughts and my world view. Most often, I take the world in with awe, whenever I am not eluding it. But as any artist, while recreating what I have seen, I experience only joy; the feel of the world becomes distant, and I free myself from awe for some time. This is the very reason why I love directing films. I hate pauses, idleness, and no money.
Q.: It must be difficult to find sponsors for noncommercial films.
A.: I keep looking, but, unfortunately, I don’t know how. I am made in some strange way. I have to wait for years until someone happens to offer me money. I can easily see myself not directing anything at all. My films are inexpensive, they have a special chamber feel. I don’t need that much money.
Q.: How do young people like your films?
A.: Young people watch them effectively, much more so than the older generation. While watching, they smile, experience family feelings, burst out laughing. They find some things pleasurable and others relevant to their experience. Older people take everything literally, with awe: they watch my films not as outsiders but rather as insiders, taking everything very personally. Young people are more abstract viewers.
Q.: Why do you always tackle the dark side of life?
A.: This is just my way of thinking, I guess.
Q.: Your films do not have happy endings.
A.: For The Three Stories, for example, I specially commissioned my friends to write novellas that would contain murders. And not investigations of murder cases, but simply facts of murder.
Q.: The theme of repayment is distinct in The Three Stories. Does this reflect your striving for equality?
A.: The second part of the motion picture portrays a maniacal woman who, in her view, has a simple, comprehensible logic of equity: a kind of an equitable angel who takes revenge for her children. Normally, we do not feel much sympathy for maniacs, but this one we understand: we understand how she developed her mania. It is difficult to trace it even for psychiatrists, but in my view, we came up with a genial approach in the film.
Q.: All your films are out-of-the-ordinary. Time has changed, but you haven’t.
A.: Today I can speak more freely about things I am concerned about. In the past, it used to be connected with all kinds of taboos and warnings.
Q.: Didn’t that give you some additional impetus?
A.: You hit the nail on the head here. There was more impetus because we had to take roundabout ways, which was difficult, but it forced us to make creative decisions. Before perestroika, our system was absurd and totally idiotic; it was based on the principle whereby nothing at all was allowed, even Korolenko’s Children of the Underground. And why did they in that case make a revolution, just to show how poor we are? It seemed to them that some parallels were being drawn, but it was very simple: run, but stand; go, but lie down. It was total death.
Q.: Now you are free in your creativity but limited financially.
A.: These things are not comparable for me. The most terrible thing is to be a slave. This is why even if I should never direct films, I am still free to say what I think. This is wonderful; ideology is terrible. Money is something more natural, more characteristic of people. I give you money, and you shoot what I want — this is understandable.
Q.: You probably used to enjoy more popularity in the past, since if something is banned, everyone tries to see it.
A.: No, I was known in very narrow circles, in film clubs. A film was shot, seven copies of it were made, and it was shown virtually nowhere. This is unnatural.
Q.: Have you come to terms with the fact that the majority wants something different from what you do?
A.: Absolutely. I only want my supporters to have money.
Q.: Do you have a group of supporters?
A.: You can hardly call them a group. Those are the people who like what I do, but they’re poor.
Q.: What will you do when you do not direct movies?
A.: I don’t know. If I were alone, I wouldn’t worry about it. One can make ends meet on very little money, especially for such people as me and my husband, an artist. When you have children, difficult children, you get scared: there’s no money, how are we going to live? I believe that monsters like me should be sterilized. They should not be allowed to reproduce since they are incapable of providing for their children.
Q.: Can you pass on your talent to them?
A.: I don’t think so. It does not happen so logically: you love them, but you cannot make them understand you. They are different, but you still love them.
Q.: Do your children understand you?
A.: Frankly, no. An artist should be lonely, only then is he free and responsible only for himself. Just he and nobody else. The rest is his private business. I feel guilty for my children. All my life I have felt guilty for someone because I didn’t want to do something else, and I didn’t know how to do it. If I was told to make a commercial film to feed my children, I would freeze instantly: it would be a dead end. It’s just the way I am, my destiny.
Q.: Perhaps, we live in a time when even professionals cannot earn money.
A.: It happens everywhere in the world. The fact that we are so wretched makes it only worse here.
Q.: Do you yourself like to watch some light, entertaining films?
A.: I am a very narrow director but a very broad viewer. Most importantly, I like well-made movies, because I notice the weak points immediately. For some reason, it is commonly believed that people have to like what is close to their heart, but with me it’s the other way around. If I can do it myself, then why should I watch it? I’m like a traveler who likes exotic countries.
Q.: What directors do you like?
A.: I can limit myself to one, whom I have always liked: Charlie Chaplin. He’s my idol, I can watch him a hundred, a thousand times. I worship him and I learn from him, and we all learn from him. We learn even from bad directors. I enjoy Chaplin immensely. I cannot relax while watching movies. If I’m bored, then I’d best go to bed. I tried to see everything at the recent film festival because nowadays a Ukrainian-made movie on the screen is a rare occurrence.
Q.: What kind of music do you like?
A.: Should I name Mozart, Beethoven, Masha Rasputina? I would not say I am much of a music expert, but I like many different kinds of music. Above all, I like silence.
Q.: Do you regret not being able to change this life?
A.: Everybody feels this more or less. It’s just a matter of the extent, like everything else in the world.
Q.: But you should feel it more than others do.
A.: Film directors have an illusion that when they film IT, they in a way get rid of some of IT, that some change occurs in them. I don’t believe it. I have a hope that for some time I will get rid of sad, obtrusive thoughts. I know how to enjoy cinema and art. At least, I can excite one’s interest in something beautiful, artificially wonderful. Art in general should work this way. It provides a substitute for something disgustingly lifelike. Perhaps, instead of drinking or killing people, a person will look at the screen and take in the reality in an estranged way, rather than take an evil part in it directly. But I don’t think this is the way to change the world. In my Asthenic Syndrome, two old people shout, “When I was a child, I thought that if everybody read Lev Tolstoy, they would be kind and sensible.” I also used to think that if everybody read War and Peace, they would become so much better and more reasonable. But for some reason, it just doesn’t happen. Art does not possess this kind of spell.
Q.: Then why doesn’t the younger generation learn anything from the experience of the older one?
A.: Evil is inherent in the nature of things. It is not brought in from somewhere artificially. Evil, just like virtue, is inside us. And art is pleasure!







