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Walter Salles - In Praise of an Imperfect Cinema
I once came across an interview given by Jean-Pierre Melville that would end up having a long-lasting effect on what I do. Melville had reinvigorated French filmmaking in the 1950s and '60s. His films influenced not only Godard, Truffaut, and the Nouvelle Vague gang, but also contemporary directors like John Woo. The interview had been conducted by a film student; the first question he asked Melville was, "What makes a film be a great one?in percentages?"Melville answered in one go: "Fifty percent, the choice of story, and that has to be personal to you, young man. Fifty percent the screenplay that will translate that story to the screen. Fifty percent the choice of the actors who will breathe life into the characters. Fifty percent the light, fifty percent the editing, fifty percent the music, and so on. And if one of those elements goes in the wrong direction, you just screwed fifty percent of your film. Good luck."
This is how I saw cinema early on: a narrative form in which every element that composed a film had to head in the same direction. Concept came first. It was necessary for me to project a film on an inner screen before filming it. Central Station, which I directed in 1998, was motivated by these principles. I traced a trajectory of development for the whole film, and worked in a way in which every department had to follow the same path.
With this approach, we were all dependent on each other, like musicians in a symphony. As in a symphony, there had to be complete synchronicity within the group in order to have harmony in the whole.
Today, I still believe in these same principles, but not with the same rigidity. Preparation continues to be vital for me. Anticipation, not as much. This choice affects every single aspect of the process.
A concrete example: In The Motorcycle Diaries, more than two years were spent on research alone. I took the journey through Latin America three times?twice to do the location scouting and to select the actors and non-actors who would take part in the film, and the third time for the shoot itself. Actors and crew met in Argentina four months prior to the shoot. Together, we immersed ourselves in the period, studying Latin American history, cinema, and music from the '50s.
And then we tried to forget it all. The film became about the journey itself, about being transformed by the physical and human geography of the continent we were crossing. I tried not to design every shot and select every lens in advance, like I had done with Central Station, but to move forward in a more organic way. Sometimes it was possible, sometimes not. But when it was, it was exhilarating.
With The Motorcycle Diaries, cinema became less about precision and more about discovery. That didn't mean that a certain rigor had to be abandoned during the process. Nor did it mean that all departments were now heading in different directions. No, in fact, cinema continued and continues to be a collaborative effort for me. The difference is that now the orchestra plays something that is closer to jazz.
In this new configuration, every member of the crew actually has an even greater role to play, because the filmic material is redefined throughout the process. Every moment becomes important to the narrative's integrity. And interestingly, by adopting this new approach even the editing process ended up being different. With Central Station, I slept in the cutting room. With The Motorcycle Diaries, I trusted Daniel Rezende, a very gifted 27-year-old editor, to polish the film I had directed.
Why do I find myself reevaluating so many different aspects of the profession I chose? There are several reasons. First, there’s the desire not to repeat myself; but that is not the major motivating factor. The main impulse has to do with the way that society has changed drastically in the last five years?and with the Orwellian world that surrounds us now.
(Un-)reality TV has locked people in programmed spaces. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. But beyond that, there's another even more disturbing form of manipulation and control?the ideological one. The angle: Fox News and its brothers are watching you. The reverse angle: counter-narratives, mainly documentaries, have also become preprogrammed and propagandistic. They don't ask questions, as direct cinema used to. Rather, their intent and raison d’être is to impose answers on you?to prove an already determined thesis. In both cases, you never feel invited to be part of a narrative. It is always imposed on you.
As a result of this perception, new questions have come to light. What is the role of independent cinema today? Does it still make sense to use this expression? What happens when films characterized as "independent" in the U.S. cost sometimes in the vicinity of 20 million dollars? Well, maybe it doesn't make sense any more. And yet, given the contrast between these films and less personal, more conventional Hollywood fare, it does.
What is a studio film today and what is an independent one? Having done both, here's my take on it. A studio film is one where almost everything is visible, every blank space filled. The preview system is conducive to this?the imposition of clarity. By contrast, independent cinema is or should be the territory of the invisible, the suggested. As with poetry, the spectator should be invited to complete the film that he or she is watching.
In this vein, truly independent cinema will only exist in films in which the narrative is, through the careful design of the filmmaker, incomplete and imperfect, so that life may spill in through the gaps. Brilliant filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Abbas Kiarostami, or the late Krzysztof Kieslowski trusted this concept in all the films they directed.
The problem, of course, is to understand when a film with such characteristics is ready to go. Easier to say than to do, and here's an example of that: I was recently involved in co-producing a film in Brazil. Four months prior to principal photography, I sat with the director, the co-director, the writer, and the rest of the creative team for a reading of the screenplay. When we finished, I thought that the draft wasn't ripe, and that it would be premature to start the shoot so early on. Everyone else disagreed. They were right, and I was wrong. The name of the film is City of God, and its director, Fernando Meirelles.
What Fernando and his collaborators knew was that with a theme as urgent as was the case in City of God, you couldn't predetermine every single plot point in the story. Reality had to play a decisive role in transforming those characters. Which drives me to another conclusion: Independent cinema, at least the kind I find more interesting today, is rarely about characters only. It's about how these characters are changed by the social and political reality that surrounds them. The films that share these beliefs are never solipsistic, and do not drift towards the easy comfort of nihilism or cynicism.
Last but not least: the most beautiful and resonant film I saw recently was Uzak, which means "distant" in Turkish. It was directed by a filmmaker named Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I loved it because it is brilliantly acted, beautifully shot and directed, but also because I felt invited to complete every single scene of the film.
Uzak is as much about two characters, two estranged cousins, as it is about the country surrounding them. It is at once intimate and epic. Peter Brook once said, "In my work, I try to combine the closeness of the everyday and the distance of myth. Because without the closeness you can't be moved, and without the myth you can't be amazed." This is how I felt watching Uzak?at the same time moved and amazed by its extraordinary humanity.
And it has another cause for celebration. Uzak was made by a crew of six people. In 35mm. What an ideal way to go.