Adored, reviled, emulated and microanalyzed, Michael Haneke is everything an auteur should be. The Munich-born, Viennese-raised filmmaker won his first Palme d'Or with this year's The White Ribbon (opening in the U.S., finally, on Dec. 30). Something of a departure for the man preoccupied with the intersection of technology and senseless violence in movies like Benny's Video, Caché and both sadistic versions of his Funny Games, Ribbon sheds the director's favored, blueish palette for monochromatic black-and-white, and dials the clocks back to 1913, where a series of bizarre mishaps and cruel, gruesome pranks befall a German agrarian town. As the braided narratives draw to a close and the Great War begins, we've borne witness to numerous brutalities and acts of violence. But what surprises are the frequent, deftly staged moments that come in between -- displays of what some might consider sheer sentimentality: a child grappling with the concept of death; a boy pleading with his strict father to nurse an injured bird back to health; a school teacher asking for his beloved's hand in marriage. Has Haneke at last betrayed his soft side? Movieline met with the director on a recent visit to Los Angeles, where we spoke of the perils of authoritarianism, the label of "provocateur," and the ambiguity of art.
It seems to me a great deal of this movie explores the consequences of faulty or misguided parenting. Would you agree with that?
Of course, it's a question of education. In each area where you have humiliation and depression and suffering, this is really where the seed of violence and extremism can grow. And of course the part of the parents is a very important part of this.
Was your childhood a happy childhood?
[Laughs] Compared to this film, yes. Each childhood has its own difficulties. I myself had a very privileged childhood, so we had no problems with money. But was my childhood really happy? I cannot say yes. I grew up in war time, so it was not so funny.
One of the least sympathetic characters in The White Ribbon is the pastor. I'm wondering what your feelings about religion and God are, and if his character exists in part as perhaps a critique of those institutions?
The film, first of all, is not a polemic against any religion. So whatever idea you take -- in the beginning it doesn't even matter if it's a good one or a bad one -- but the moment it becomes a doctrine or an ideology, it becomes dangerous. So in this case, religion itself is not bad, but if it becomes institutionalized, then the power the Church has can become very dangerous. But it's always the question of how you use that. The pastor in himself is not a bad person per se, and he himself might even be convinced that he's doing the right thing. He loves his children. But his behavior is connected to his children. Beating children, at that time, was totally accepted and used in almost every family. I read several hundred books about education, and from our perspective we think it's cruel, but in the time frame where it happened, it was just a normal punishment. A lot of the punitive techniques in the film are taken directly from these educational books offering hints to parents on how to punish their kids. So the title of the film, for example -- The White Ribbon -- is not a fantasy. It was actual advice from one of these books.
And so a central theme is that this kind of corporal punishment and repression will eventually lead to things like fascism?
It is one of the major columns of fascism, but not the only one. Fascism in itself is way too complex that you might find an answer in a single film, and I didn't even try to do that. It is one aspect.
And one I don't think I'd ever seen explored in film before.
That was the idea. It's important to say it's not just right-wing fascism, especially in Germany, but also the left-wing fascism, the religious kind. There are many different ways that it can appear. So I want it to be understood in a broader sense.
You once said that all your films "deal with my own fears." What are some of your phobias?
[Laughs] Some things are personal. I don't like so much that the approach to a film goes too much towards the psychology or biography of the auteur, because then it leads people to think too much about the personality of the writer and director, but not deal with the film work in itself.
Which leads me nicely into my next question, which is that you are a filmmaker of ideas, and yet you don't like to talk about those ideas.
[Laughs] Right!
Could you discuss then the difficulties of the paradox you've set up for yourself?
When you're on a conversation about ideas, everyone tries to bring it to a point. Art doesn't work that way. It's even more difficult because in talking about art in this sense, you kill art. So, like music, which is the art form most difficult to explain or bring to a point, is privileged. Because it's so difficult to do that. I just have no desire to bring things to a point. Otherwise, I would write an essay, not make a film.
But it is a medium that gets analyzed a lot.
There's a quote from Susan Sontag that goes, "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual against art." That's very smart. [Laughs]
Do you read analysis of your films?
Yes. Not all, but I read the most important newspapers.
Do they amuse you? Do they add things you hadn't thought of before?
It depends. You can learn a lot from an intelligent review, even if it's negative. I said yesterday, I prefer an intelligent negative review to a stupid good review. But with time, it has become less important to me. At the beginning, it's very important to your career. Of course there are some critics whose reviews I seek out.
Anyone you'd like to name?
American, I can't say. I read European reviewers.
Is validation at Cannes important to you?
Every director who brings his film to Cannes wants to win the Palme d'Or. So I had all the other prizes before. So it was very good! Cannes for me is very important, because all my films were presented in Cannes. It's the best place to premiere your film. The whole business is there.
You're a professor of film at the Vienna Film Academy. Do you teach your own films?
Never. The students would like to discuss with me about my films, but I refuse. We do the classics. There's so many films.
How do you feel about other schools using your film as text?
It's very good. Just not in my classes. For me, it's a little bit embarrassing to discuss my films. I have to do it for interviews for my new films, but afterward I'm not very interested to see again my own works. I look forward, not backwards.
You once introduced your film to a festival audience by saying, "I wish you a disturbing evening."
Yes. I always say this.
How much do you enjoy being a provocateur?
That's not me being the provocateur. That's not what it's about for me. It's always when you put your finger on a wound that it hurts. So what I'm aiming for is that I put my finger exactly on that point.
Do you feel you have a responsibility to affect social change with your films?
I put my films in the context of art. No single film can change the world, but any film that takes the viewer seriously and responsibly, they all together might over time change something. Just a little -- make them more sensitive. Like any art form. Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci did not change the world. The world would be much poorer without art.
Can art be entertaining?
Of course, it must be entertaining. But the question is, what is entertainment? Because in German, there are two words for entertaining. Unterhaltend can mean entertaining even if it's high art. The other word means "entertainment to kill time." Bach can be entertaining. But entertainment to destroy time -- that's nothing. It's business.
Is that what you associate with television, where you got your start?
Unfortunately, television today. Twenty years ago there was more responsibility on the set by television makers. In Europe, television is not very good, but here, it's worse. It's unbelievable! I was switching the channels -- it's incredible.
I won't attempt to defend it. Though there is some good TV -- you just have to find it. You might have to pay for it. I'd like to talk now about the children in The White Ribbon. I read you looked at 7,000 non-actor children.
Yes.
What were you looking for?
You have to have a nose. We started with ads in radio and newspapers. So people came, and there were photographs and a little interview. I had about twenty assistants who were looking in the whole area.
Were you looking in the countryside or the city?
Both. So finally we'd give them a little scene to try, and in the end, I saw maybe 200, and worked with 30 or 40 directly. It was step by step, and took about half a year, this process. It was a lot of work, but it was biggest fear that the film starts, and I haven't got the children. So we started very early.
What do you say to them before the camera turns on?
First of all you have to win the trust of these people to give them the confidence. The moment you jeopardize this confidence, perhaps by saying something stupid to your actor, then you destroy this confidence. Because they smell it; they know it. It's a question of relation.
Do you take on a father role?
I don't know. I can't say in a general way. Every person is singular, so you have to feel where he is. My students ask me how to do it -- the biggest fear with students are the actors. They have no fear with the cameras, but when they confront an actor, they have no idea what to do or say. You have to have a good ear, in my opinion. When I worked in theater, I had a lot of little discussions with actors who complained, "You don't look at me!" Because I was sitting turned away and listening. And I said, "It's because I see you better that way." You just feel immediately if it's wrong. The most important thing for a director is a good ear.
How did you write and cast the role of the school teacher narrator, the old voice taking us through the story?
I didn't want to pretend that he exactly knew how the world was at that time. It's just a memory. The film starts with him saying, "I don't know if what I'm saying is true. I can't remember exactly, etc." I hate how historical films pretend we know exactly how it was. This alienates me. So I needed to find a voice as believable compared with the actor who played him as a young man. So I needed a high voice, and a very old voice. It wasn't easy to find. This actor is Ernst Jacobi, a very famous theater actor in Germany.
And Christian Friedel, the boy who played him as a young man. Is he a known actor, or your discovery?
It's his first role in cinema. He is a very young theater actor, and he's amazing. He never during the whole shooting got a single phrase wrong. The tone was always exactly right.
I read your next project is something about the Internet.
That's the one after the next one. The next project is a film about very old age people, and the humiliation from outside society when your body begins to fall apart. Our future.