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September 04, 2006
Resnais at 84: our destiny can depend on a person we’ve never met
"I’ve never felt a very big difference between film and theatre," Alain Resnais tells CineEuropa's Camillo de Marco. "We usually say “I’m going to the theatre”, because it’s the opposite of cinema, because theatre is fixed, it’s in the past. Actually, it’s like the various languages of the world, which are all different, yet linguists say they’re all similar, that the differences are not that great. 
Adapting a play [Couers, from an Alan Ayckbourn play] does not scare me, because these two kinds of entertainment have one thing in common: you can never go back, you can’t tell the projection to show them the same scene again, you can’t act an actor to repeat a scene. I feel comfortable transposing a play into a film, and I am faithful to it... There is a gloomy and noisy aspect to this text, which we tried to create on the screen. During production, we tried to a framework of contradictions, to create that mix of fluctuating instincts that move within in us and that I imagine I share with a good number of the spectators. I wanted to bring out through images and acting characters that could potentially express something better, but can’t or don’t want to, to give an idea of a nostalgia to do better that leads them not to do better or to attempt hopeless cures... Our destinies, our lives, are always guided, our destiny can depend on a person we’ve never met."
Posted by Ray Pride at September 4, 2006 12:00 AM
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