Press-Kit Poster for Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke

“I don’t approach a film with an idea of making it about a certain theme. Personal experiences or figures or constellations of individuals are what interest me… Most catchy phrases are generalizations… The minute something can be described with a single term, it’s dead artistically. Nothing living is left, and there’s no reason to watch the film. That’s always the problem with an artistic statement and an article about it. When you watch a film without any prior knowledge, it’s much more contradictory and complex. “Amour” involves a thousand different things, and when I emphasize one of them, I reduce all the others… What led to me making this one was the question of how you deal with the death of someone you love. That interested me because I’ve experienced it in my own family, and it moved me a great deal. That’s why I began to think about it. And you think of things from your own memories or your imagination. The result is that situations with a certain meaning develop… But the theme’s never the starting point of my work as an artist. Nothing else would occur to me if what I wanted to say was already obvious at the very beginning.” - Michael Haneke in a May 2012 interview with the Austrian Film Commission

Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke

“In the case of Emmanuelle Riva, I was captivated – along with so many men – by her performance in Alain Resnais’s “Hiroshima Mon Amour” (1959).” - Michael Haneke

“The dream sequence is there because I needed to find some way to move away from the stark realism of the first part of the film… You have, for example, the moment when he hears her playing the piano. So it was necessary to bring the audience to a more spiritual level…“ - Michael Haneke

Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke

“It’s a question of timing, also of modesty. These paintings give a certain mental impression that allows us to live with this situation that we’ve seen. In the beginning, there’s something similar: When Anne has the accident with the tea, there are these wide shots of the empty apartment. Then later you have these empty landscape paintings. There’s a correspondence.” - Michael Haneke

Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke

“People always fight to maintain their dignity, and the more difficult the situation you’re in, the bigger the battle. That’s our fate as humans, regardless of age. Every individual is confronted with the question of how much of their dignity they’re prepared to give up, or the extent to which they’ll fight against it.” - Michael Haneke

Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke

“Also, I wanted to avoid making my film a “social drama”. There have been enough films that present these themes as a social drama, that deal with context and environment, with hospitals, ambulances and doctors. That’s not what I was trying to do. I didn’t want to make a social drama, but an existential drama that deals with the question: “How do I cope with the suffering of a loved one?”.” - Michael Haneke

Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke

“In fact, [Jean-Louis Trintignant] hadn’t worked in the movies for 14 years prior to working on my film. I wrote the script for him… He read it and liked it and was so enthusiastic about the film that it was relatively easy to convince him to come on board for this project.  In fact, he was going through a difficult situation personally. He was unwell and wanted to commit suicide. My producer told him, “Well, make the film first, and then you can commit suicide.”” - Michael Haneke

“Consider the pigeon just a pigeon. You can interpret it any way you want. I wouldn’t describe it as a symbol. I have problems with symbols, because they always mean something specific. I don’t know what the pigeon means. All that I know for certain, I think, is that the pigeon appears. It may symbolize something in particular to Georges and individual viewers, but it doesn’t symbolize anything to me. You have to be careful when you deal with elements with multiple meanings, they must be dealt with ambiguously… [Y]ou could regard that as a metaphor, as an opportunity to see it as more than it is. But you don’t have to. There are lots of pigeons in Paris.” - Michael Haneke

"All the things you mentioned — not just the paintings but also the pigeons, for example, and any number of other elements — are open to interpretation. In fact, that’s why they’re in the film to confront the audience, to invite the audience to think about these questions. For that reason, it would be counterproductive if I were to impose a specific, rigid, single meaning on those elements. If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what’s important to them."

Michael Haneke in a December 2012 interview with Collider

"

[Have] you discussed the content of your film with your family prior to making the film and what their reaction was to it?

“First of all, both of my parents are dead. And the second of all, as I said in my acceptance speech at Cannes, my wife and I promised to each other that we will do everything in our power to avoid the other person being shunned off to the old age home or hospital at the end of our lives.”

"

Michael Haneke in a December 2012 interview with Twitch Film

Cache - Hidden (2005) dir. Michael Haneke

“In all of my films, I try to fuel mistrust in our faith in reality. We know nothing about the world, except the things we have experienced directly. And we can examine these things. But everything else we experience through the media… What I’m really trying to do is point out to the viewer that he is only being confronted by an artefact. I challenge him to think for himself… The viewer is also being permanently unsettled. The static opening image of the house is initially perplexing. This turns to mistrust after a series of scenes where you ask yourself if this is a video image again. I really like this kind of mistrust which emerges from the images. This is something cinema should focus on more.”

- Michael Haneke

Das Weisse Band - The White Ribbon (2009) dir. Michael Haneke

Das Weisse Band - The White Ribbon (2009) dir. Michael Haneke

Das Weisse Band - The White Ribbon (2009) dir. Michael Haneke

branduponthebrain:

The Piano Teacher (2001) dir. Michael Haneke

La Pianiste - The Piano Teacher (2001) dir. Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke on the set of Cache

via static.guim.co.uk