I wanted to be a real writer, you can put it this way, but I was lazy. So I thought that cinema would be funnier because it's collective, and it's crazy, and it's chaotic, and also because I was based in Spain. So I said it will be easy to make a career of that - because all the other filmmakers there are very bad. And it will be funny at the same time. So this was the point. It will be funnier, easier, and maybe at the end there will be some unknown beauty, and maybe on the way we'll create the dream that a different logic is possible for life.
In art, I think it's not useful to be a professional of the profession. It will not give you something new.
I want to give meaning to the history of the past, but to do it in real time, as if it were lived. This gives a special touch to my films, because you feel that I didn't have one single idea of the concrete meaning of what I wanted to say or what you have to feel or what you have to think. For me, this is the beauty, to see the past being born in front of you.
What am I doing as a filmmaker? What is the goal? To look for the unknown atmosphere that hasn't been described before. This is my only goal. Unknown images. Because if not, it's boring, no?
I like to be challenged. I like rebellion. It adds some richness and some interest to life.
Every phase of a film has to go against what was done in the previous one.
This is the power of images, the ambiguity. You are never completely sure of anything. With written language, it's more concrete. You have to establish some facts, but in movies, you see things happening, and the exact meaning behind the images is more ambiguous.
There's the instability of my attitude as an artist, the instability of our perception of the world, and the idea that with this mix, you never know exactly what's the point of view of the filmmaker. This breaks the stability of the belief that a filmmaker is somebody who has a logical relationship with his own material. These elements create this atmosphere that I find more interesting than a normal atmosphere, based only on the characters.
In fact, my methodology is based on the idea of waiting for when inspiration arrives for the actors. And that means that the light, the cinematography, everything has to be ready for that moment, so they don't have to wait.
I am quite a positive man in real life. In fact, even when I have a hard discussion with somebody, it lasts only five minutes. Then I forget. And I forgive everything. But at the same time, as I am such an easygoing guy, to create something more intense, I have to be auto-destructive on the making of a film. And this will guarantee some density.
We didn't want to live anymore in the old logic. And I like that. The consequence of that is to create the dream of that, but we all know this dream may be not possible. So here we have the key of the ambiguity of the atmosphere of my films. Is it possible, this dream? Is it as funny as it seems, or is it tragic?
Sometimes you go to a film and well, you are not very concentrated. In reading, you have to concentrate, to spend the time it requires in order to feel the experience of the work. You have to put all of yourself there to experience something new and to feel and perceive an atmosphere that is unprecedented.
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Aki Kaurismaki Screenwriter
