Serhii LOZNYTSIA: Tomorrow everything will collapse, but this is precisely the movement
The recent Kyiv film forum will be remembered not only because it was the 40th anniversary of the festival, or because of the number of cinema stars that could rival any film forum in the world (Fanny Ardant, Sophie Marceau, Gerard Depardieu, Christopher Lambert, Renata Litvinova, Liudmila Gurchenko, Vladimir Menshov, Aleksei German Jr., Karen Shakhnazarov etc.), traditionally strong programs, or even the “spicy” master call by the American director of homosexual porno films Bruce LaBruce. Molodist-2010 will stay in our memory because for the first time in the festival’s history its grand prix went to a Ukrainian director. The documentary moviemaker Serhii Loznytsia won this award for his debut live-action film My Joy (joint production of Ukraine, Germany and the Netherlands). We remind that Ukrainian moviemakers had surprised us with awards in some categories, but there has never been any grand-prix winner among them.
My Joy was much-expected in Kyiv, above all because the brilliant documentary director Loznytsia has many admirers among moviemakers and those who love intellectual cinema. Therefore his first live-action film drew much attention. Some questioned his ability to move beyond his habitual niche. Skeptical statements were heard until the film My Joy was included in the main competition program of the Cannes Film Festival this year. Then there was the open Russian film festival Kentavr (awards for best director’s work and from the Guild of Cinema Experts and Cinema Critics), the Young European Cinema Voices (Grand Prix), the Golden Apricot in Yerevan (Silver Apricot Award), the open festival of the CIS countries, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia Kinoshok (award for best screenplay), and finally, the two most important awards at Molodist — the grand prix and the FIPRESCI award. And on top of this, My Joy has already been purchased by over 20 countries of the world, including Germany, France, Greece, Israel, and even the US.
It seemed that Loznytsia had triumphantly proved his competence as a live-action moviemaker in some six months, when another reason why one ought to watch My Joy in order to make one’s one opinion about the film emerged.
The story of a hauler who decided to take the bypass in the Russian backwoods, accidental encounters with a road inspector, war veteran, and a young prostitute who ruin his life. This is a schematic plot of this allusive film, which has received wonderful response in the foreign press, but the elite of Loznytsia’s fellow moviemakers in Russia (Nikita Mikhalkov, Fedor Bondarchuk, Karen Shakhnazarov and other gurus of Russian cinematography) categorically rejected the film, as they saw there open Russophobe motives.
It is impossible to retell My Joy, one must see it. I, for one, went to the premiere out of professional interest, as I am not an admirer of alternative movies. I can’t remember how the two hours passed. But I wanted to hear every phrase uttered by the leading hero Georgii. It seemed that there was nothing outstanding about him, but Belarusian actor Viktor Nemets played him very naturally. I was absolutely enchanted by the existential camera of Oleg Mutu, which is no surprise, as he was a cameraman of the Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days that won Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival several years ago. In the past few days I have been somewhat depressed, you cannot call it otherwise: I don’t get how Loznytsia succeeded to reach such a magical effect of this film on certain part of audience via the elementary combination of middle-, close- and long- distance shots. It produced an effect on me personally. I will watch the film once more. Maybe then the picture will become clearer to me. Or the paradoxical Loznytsia will explain something. Fortunately, I had the chance to discuss these issues with him personally.
Mr. Loznytsia, your film My Joy was highly appraised, winning numerous awards and prizes. However, within cinematographic circles, only lazy people have not accused you of Russophobia.
“After the premiere the creative group was invited to the TV show Schuster LIVE, where Savik showed one of the final, key, scenes of the film and asked everyone present, ‘What do you think? Could the same thing happen in Ukraine?’ And do you know what the answer was? Eighty-five percent of the audience replied positively, and only fifteen percent negatively. So I have a counter question, ‘What does Russophobia have in common with the film?’ Why should we link our actions to the stupidity of some individuals?”
You must admit that you could have avoided many hysterical pin-pricks of critics and colleagues if you avoided specifics — the film could be about some present-day backwater: Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian.
“There are situations that you reflect on only because you find yourself in them. In a different situation, I would think differently. But I happened to find myself in precisely that situation. I saw it. Therefore I can speak only about the things I know, otherwise I would be lying. If I decided to make some abstract epaulettes, I would have found some protection — let it be some unknown society, let’s think about it in an abstract way. It seems to me stupid to build such protective blocks: basically, cinema is an abstraction. You don’t see people on screen — this is no Roman theater — just shadows. The audience takes this abstraction as something real that is still going on.”
In My Joy there are many actors that we haven’t seen before. Non-professionals also took part in your film. Perhaps the past of a documentary director had its effect, which in my opinion only did the film good. But what caused you to invite Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov to play the very small, episodic role of “Moscow’s militiaman?” Why not a Ukrainian or Russian actor?
“I invite all the actors for one simple reason — their talent. Ivanov is a real actor and he is good for this role. Incidentally, a Romanian actress also played in the film. She had a small scene — she played a Gypsy woman, we did not even dub her, but the result was good. Why don’t I invite Ukrainian actors? There is a motivation. First, an actor should have a constant training, on a serious level. In Ukraine three to five films are shot during a year, so the actors don’t have the possibility to stay in constant vigor. I have held a casting in Kyiv and invited only one actress, Olha Kohut, to work with me. She is a good actress. But I could choose only her from many. There is one more thing. Besides being a skillful actor, the person should possess an attitude to life based on moral values, and a distinctive worldview. This is very important. Unfortunately, the level of actors is not very high, which can be understood as many people are leaving the country. Once they make themselves known, they immediately leave for Moscow. There are more possibilities for self-realization: Serhii Harmash, Oleksii Horbunov, Olena Yakovleva. I can name many others. Therefore I think that not the country of actor’s origin is important, but first of all that they are talented.”
What dramaturgy has a future, in your opinion?
“Quantum-mechanical, perhaps.”
What is this?
“The following categories are part of space description: probability characteristic, quantum transition or leap, when the situation changes cardinally and abruptly, but there is no gradual movement to change. This way. The whole and opposite things exist simultaneously. At one and the same moment. This is hard to understand.”
It is.
“For example, there is Erwin Schroedinger’s principle, when you’re dead and alive simultaneously. This is really hard to understand. It is the principle of instability which is important and leading, not the conservatism of our views of the world. What slogan is used by the politicians? ‘Tomorrow everything will be the same, only somewhat better.’ Nothing is going to change for the better: this is conservatism. Tomorrow it will be terrible, simply impossible, but we should do something about this — this is a completely different approach. Tomorrow everything will collapse, but it is precisely the movement. The world is arranged like a structure that regularly collapses. This is not a pendulum that returns to its equilibrium position, you know everything about it. It is a pendulum, which swings you don’t know where.”
Don’t these thoughts terrify you?
“They don’t. An interesting thing: you are in a situation you cannot get out of. What relation does my fear have here? It just lessens the ability to perceive the situation in an adequate manner. It hinders me. So different agreements and escape to hope, which is no more than illusion, deprive me of the ability to act. There are only two scenarios: either you are efficient, or someone efficiently ‘does’ you — the world is arranged in this specific way.”
You came to live-action movie making as a mature man, and your choice of the topic of the film My Joy evokes not just questions, but a respect for the position of an author, because many people know you as a documentary director, with an uncommon face. Why, in your opinion, do many beginning directors, who are frequently young students, shoot their film in an overtaxing, depressive manner? In other words, they prefer openly gory stories to the eternal verities clear to everyone: the questions of life and death, relationships between a man and a woman, feelings of love and hatred? Frequently, you simply don’t believe their films, feel shame or disgust, and involuntary you begin to think that the topics of a madhouse, geriatric home, and orphanages are topics that have a life of their own.
“It is hard for me to answer. Perhaps, this is a reaction to the world we are living in. I don’t want to make groundless statements. I should know a specific man who made a specific work. Only then will it be possible to say whether they indeed are playing on their own.”
In this case, why have you chosen, for this debut in live-action cinema, such a cruel topic?
“Haven’t you ever noticed that when you meet a person you haven’t seen for ages, you tell them most important things?”
Maybe everything My Joy is about is painful for you?
“Sure. Look, we are on the verge of total collapse. The society is falling apart. The structures marking certain stages, levels of this society, are fading. Everything becomes featureless, when ‘judge-bandit-policeman’ become one thing, because they lose their individual faces and have one face for all. A total depersonification is taking place. You don’t know to whom to appeal to on a given issue. If injustice is taking place, you cannot expose it by any ways. What does it lead to? ‘Mad’ active people who cannot cope with this injustice begin to seek justice on their own. This is even worse. Then a chain of revenge takes place. Remember the incident in Primorsky Krai? Five boys went to the forest where they shot militiamen. When this story emerged on the Internet, many users supported the boys. These are two awful things. People faced injustice on the part of the government and did not find a possibility to fight it in court, so they decided to act at their own peril, go to the forest and take revenge. This is awful. And another terrifying thing is that when people who learnt about the situation supported the cycle of revenge. This means that the very thin layer that has been creating culture for several millennia to protect the society from self-destruction, to protect people from being destroyed by another one, is a thing of the past. In my opinion, this is the most significant issue, because wars begin in such environments, not because some evil genius emerges. An evil genius is an embodiment of the minds of many people. The embodiment of the movement of masses’ thoughts. Is not this essential? My next film by the way won’t be a comedy either.”
Will it be the screening of the novelette by Vasil Bykau In the Fog?
“Yes. It is a story of human choice in inhuman conditions. A story of one personality. And in this case the society does not squash him. The personality preserves itself. But for this one ought to make radical decisions, at least concerning oneself. This is called suicide. I have started to work on this film. We have even partially held the casting.”
Once you said that you wanted to make a film about Kyiv.
“Because of the picture. This work needs a big budget, we need to find money. Time is needed.”
Speaking about creative work, you have reached success in making documentary films; you have become one of the most renowned directors in the post-Soviet space. The success of your first live-action film My Joy does not need to be commented. Don’t you want to try yourself in theater?
“No.”
Aren’t you interested?
“At this moment no. It is not interesting for me. I don’t like the level of conditionality in theater. I don’t know what to do with it. When I know, it might become possible.”
You have quite a charismatic appearance. Have you ever wanted to play in one of your films?
“No, never. This is way I am staying on the other side of the camera. I don’t like to give interviews, stand on stage, get in the objective of a cinecamera or camera. I don’t like this very much, because I have some knowledge of myself, and all these influence distort my notion of myself.”
Then if you were asked to give a short characteristic of yourself, what would you say? Or is this something intimate?
“This is impossible to say in one sentence, or even several. This is energy. Every person is a miracle, and how this energy is created, where it flows… We can see only imprints, and those exiting on film or screen, at which we orient ourselves, are far from them. Proust’s In Search of Lost Time describes this impossibility in a very detailed way. It only seems to us that everything is simple and can be described. Everything is not simple and cannot be expressed. And it remains unknown. We deal with numerous manifestations of this unknown. I think the new dramaturgy will come from this. You will be embarrassed by the cinema of the future.”
Do any films embarrass you these days, if to abstract from the fact that you are a film director?
“Certainly. Today there are interesting directors. Gus Van Sant Jr., for example. His Paranoid Park is an amazing film which remains a mystery. Francois Ozon has one interesting film — I don’t like other films by him — called Under the Sand. It shrouds you in some strange mystery. I am least interested with the films that are openly moralizing. Art is not for this. Carlos Reygadas’ Batalla en el cielo (Battle in Heaven) or Luz silenciosa (Silent Light) are very strong films. David Lynch. I am naming the directors who do not use the traditional forms of dramaturgy; they are digging in other spheres. As for me they are close to each other in certain sense. The film Entre les murs (The Class) by Laurent Cantet which won the Golden Palm is a wonderful film. And you feel with your skin 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu — on physiological level. Cristi Puiu. I haven’t seen his last film, but the previous one The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is wonderful. Among Russian films I think the strongest, deepest and most significant is Khrustalyov, My Car! by Aleksei German Sr., 1998. Very apt and important words were said about the society there, even not society but territory, culture. Kira Muratova, who belongs both to Russian and Ukrainian culture. I am outlining the circle of my interests, but this is so far a sort of marginal cinema.”
Not to finish our conversation on the pessimistic note. To my surprise I have learnt that in your past life as an engineer and mathematician — along with developing of systems on making decisions and dealing with the problems of artificial intellect — you were a translator of Japanese?
“It was in the past. Language needs training.”
What caused the choice of such a complicated language?
“I had to earn my living. I had to choose between Japanese and Chinese. I chose Japanese. I don’t regret it, because a language is a culture, a way of thinking, feeling of composition. As in this example, because there are certain rules for writing symbols, they are written into a square with an artistic precision.”
Can’t you recall now how the phrase My Joy is written?
“No, I don’t. I haven’t practiced in a long time.”
Then I will read for you the tanka by Isikawa Takuboku, which fits our conversation:
Yes, I do believe
That new tomorrow comes!
There is not a drop of lie
In my words
Yet…
It can be put as an epigraph to the article.
“It should rather be an epilogue.”
