Original subtitles

IT MAY BE THAT BEAUTY HAS STREGTHENED OUR RESOLVE

A film by Philippe Grandrieux.

I desired many things.

But it doesn't matter.

There were many regrettable things.

How can I put it...

There were things missing.

We had to find them, we had to make them...

or fill in the holes.

But I've always done that.

I wanted those things, I think. It's a shame...

Let's remember the regrettable things.

You could say that I regretted all the time but...

But I always...desired.

I don't like to say I don't like to talk about what I desired, I wish I could put it otherwise.

But there were so many things I desired.

Yes, I had this impression.

But if I express them with words, it's too beautiful!

The cold north wind

Trees with wilted falling leaves

The water surface as well as the mountains

freeze.

Desires unfulfilled

Singing men who grieve for the world.

The cricket.

Too sentimental?

Too sentimental?

It doesn't fit me!

What did I desire at the beginning of life?

My original desire...

Perhaps...

It must have been my mother.

That's normal, I had a lot of brothers.

Ah, yes, the neighborhood parties!

At the neighborhood party...

We were so poor,

we wanted a lot of things but we could only look.

The sorrow of only being able to look...

I suffered from lack.

That could be it.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The Kappa! (a water imp)

The Kappa!

Who do you think you are, Mr. Kappa?

Early on, it was always like this.

That's why,

at the time of the riots,

against the Security Treaty between the US and Japan,

we had nothing. Nothing at all.

We had to run, run.

The feeling of always running.

Where to? Where do you run?

What will I do after the race?

Run.

It was exhausting.

But I was happy.

I have the feeling I only demonstrated.

What if I went back to running?

As usual.

There, everything's logical now.

Formal logic.

Marx and Lenin also.

When you don't understand, it's only dialectical logic.

But why not take this view from the outset.

No, it's not a question of logic.

It's a question of taste.

That's why they hated me for so long.

But I took pleasure in being hated.

I like the offensive language.

There were so many things I'd rather not to remember.

Ah him, I was hard on him.

The one who shouted. Aaah! Ooooh!

But in a way...

The idea...

is a collection of thoughts.

And they superimpose themselves...

They juxtapose themselves or coalesce,

to establish an idea of the world.

My world view is formed,

by taste and dialectical logic.

That's what makes it.

What's the point?

Indeed,

for a long time,

I aspired to, was preoccupied by The Kingdom of a Thousand Years,

The Thousand-Year Kingdom is a biblical concept.

I didn't realise until recently.

In China, they call it "Tougenkyo".

It means "paradise", that's right.

The Thousand-Year Kingdom.

Heaven without Hell.

Heaven without Hell...

means nothing at all.

It's like a print on roll paper.

There is no Heaven without Hell.

There's none.

There's none.

Buddhism says that Hell

is 3000 leagues below ground.

That it's a world of red molten iron.

It sounds scientific, isn't?

How could it be?

How could a man say the center of Earth was molten iron

in such an era?

This is how it is.

It's incomprehensible.

Incomprehensible...

Incomprehensible...

Incomprehensible...

I don't understand.

It's not that I undestand or not,

it's a matter of taste after all.

The non-existent, the incomprehensible, the unknown,

that's why I try to imagine,

what's very far away,

on the other side of the mountain.

But...

actually...

in order to imagine,

we make use of our memories only.

The Revolution is also an image.

The problem is how to make the image real?

If only it were possible to literally turn it in concrete terms!

I said that I wanted to make films.

It was just to try out,

this image, this memory, this thought process.

I wanted to give all that a form.

I wanted to show people.

I wanted them to discover it.

Or rather...

What do you think?

What do you think, gentlemen?

What do you think, my lords?

Actually...

I was looking for someone.

I never stopped looking for someone.

What is it then?

Eternal, platonic love.

That's it.

That's why it's sadism.

I was drawn to it at the time.

I felt that I could actually visualise

things I couldn't understand.

Yes...

That must be it.

I don't know what to do... I don't know what to do...

I don't even know what to do with all things I don't understand.

But I carried on, it had to be what I wanted.

Does it mean I'm suffering?

Am I suffering?

I suffer.

I'm suferring, I'm not suffering.

I'm trying to suffer. But no, that's not it.

I would appear to suffer?

I don't suffer.

Let's suffer.

No, that's not it either.

I'm not suffering.

Ah, here we are, it doesn't make me suffer.

I'm often criticized

for denying everything systematically.

But I'm not looking for the negative form.

What am I supposed to do?

That's why I make films.

I can only express this with films.

I'll think again.

It's pleasant.

It's pleasant. It's not pleasant.

I want it to be pleasant.

I have fun.

Yes, I have fun, that's right.

I have fun therefore I suffer.

No, that's just clever lie.

I suffer while I'm having fun.

Damn, it's logical, what won't do.

Forget it then.

Lets forget.

Lets forget.

I lie to forget.

Am I lying?

Lie.

Do I make films in order to lie?

I'm ashamed of lying.

That's true.

Honesty.

If one talks to others honestly,

he's not ashamed.

Is that it?

I'm not ashamed. I'm ashamed.

It doesn't matter either.

It has no importance.

We return to the M�bius' strip.

It's always the same.

That's right.

M�bius...

Of course, everything is connected.

I don't know since when.

All films...

All films are interconnected.

Did I go hungry?

Did I want to eat?

Were there times when I was dying of hunger?

I think so.

I was hungry only once.

There.

What is the point of origin of the Revolution?

What is a point of origin?

They asked me why I participated in the Revolution.

I always want to be part of it but...

without knowing what the Revolution is.

So I wanted to do someting I didn't understand, is that it.

I don't understand.

Revolution means: I don't understand.

I want to do what I don't understand.

That's why I'm part of the Revolution. It's a syllogism.

That's it.

It's the best I can do.

Your stomac is empty so you're hungry.

You're hungry so you want to eat.

But you need food.

So...

it's on that level.

That's it, I understand now.

That's right.

Anyway all of this, it's just empty words.

Don't you think so?

Don't you think so?

You think so?

The portrait of a man, his hands, his face

shaped by time in which he lived.

Does the beauty of the hands, the face,

express the truth with which life pases through us?

Some have seriously asked themselves

if they were part of the Revolution or if they just made films.

For me, the two are one and the same thing.

I've never had any doubt about that.

It has caused many problems.

Here on the wall is a portrait of Haniwa, a writer whom I admire very much.

I have immense respect for him.

He was also a Marxist.

At the time, all Marxists in Japan were jailed.

He spent time in prison too.

He was torn between politics and art.

That question didn't bother me.

For me, it has always been the same.

In fact, in my world,

art is not separated from politics.

Or rather, there is no need to separate them

and it is in this world that I've developed my reasoning.

I'd love to carry on that way.

I was part of political movements,

and revolutionary movements,

but I never distinguished

between cinema and theatre.

Making movies seemed contradictory to the practice of guerrilla warfare.

But I told myself it was for me to resolve this issue.

Admittedly, I agreed to resolve it,

but I took the time to do so.

At the time, the issue of politics and art,

or of Revolution and art, excited everyone.

I couldn't say that I wasn't concerned by the issue.

So I accepted it and I put it into practice.

Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War

is considered my most political film.

I made that documentary to express my ideas,

but I had no intention whatsoever of being political.

I was criticized by both sides, politics and art.

To tell the truth I was happy with the criticism

even it it's a bit of a shame.

Ultimately I'm a surrealist.

You understand, Philippe?

Surrealist!

That says it all!

He was at our University.

Adachi was already a well known personality.

Is that how you met?

Yes, yes.

What was your first impression?

Let me see...

Lawless.

He was lawless.

Now, he lives outside the law.

He was outside the law.

That's what I think of him.

It's his personality.

I think that's the way he lived.

He hasn't changed.

He's a hero who chose to live as he likes.

And at the times of the student movements?

You could say there was a similar vibration...

between May 1968 in France...

and our October and November 1968.

Maybe it will take another 50 years to understand their ideologies.

In my opinion, it's for that reason that Adachi has always been way ahead of us.

He never stopped pushing forward.

That's why he's our hero.

How would you explain the Japanese student movements,

to a European who didn't know about them?

Neither Soviet or Chinese.

We had to create a Revolution, our Revolution.

And it was difficult.

Because we didn't manage,

the problem of '68 has always been overlooked.

Even in France, they didn't manage.

There are similitaries between the Revolution of 1848...

and those of the 1960s because ultimately they both failed.

They are failed revolutions.

Adachi still thinks about this.

Thank you very much.

Is that it?

We're done!

Documentary!

Last night, the taxi back to the hotel,

took the highway through Tokyo.

I thought of Tarkovsky,

of Solaris,

of the long film sequence, shot in the same location.

Cinema moves from one film to another

through time,

above and beyond those who make it.

Adachi-san told me that he met Jean Genet in Beirut,

after the massacre of Sabra and Shatila.

Genet refused all interviews, the hordes of journalists.

Adachi told me that when writing the screenplay with Oshima,

for Diary of a Shinjuku Thief,

they read twice, aloud,

the book of Jean Genet

The Thief's Journal.

From one man to another,

life is infinitely transferred.

I meet up with Adachi-san at a restaurant in Kinza,

run by one of his friends.

His wife and daughter are there too.

Nahuriko Onozawa whom he met in the '60s

and whose latest film

Prisoner/Terrorist he produced, is with them.

Adachi tells me about his mother,

who was poor, a peasant.

She taught him rebellion, revolt.

It was in an era when the Emperor was considered a living god.

She said that the war, the plight of japan

were the fault of the Emperor.

Adachi also tells me about his relationship with death,

that he is not, that he has never been afraid of it.

Buddhism, Zen, meditation.

Everything is nothing and the void is everything.

When I was young, I was into theatre...

but I thought I could speak more freely with film,

I decided to choose the cinema.

It was at that time,

that I read Andr� Breton's First Manifesto.

The book is very clear and easy to understand.

I realize I could be creative in my own way,

with everything that seemed unclear,

that it was enough to broach the subject of reality,

even if I didn't understand it.

And I felt relieved.

It's funny to say this,

but I was a boy who worried a lot.

After reading the First Manifesto

I decided to make films,

since then, I've reread all the theories on theatre and cinematographic language,

and it was excatly what I thought.

There's no point in confining our thoughts to a form.

Of course if you want to make movies for people,

there are certain ways to do it.

But I realized that I could let myself to go to the limit of my ideas.

So I was very happy.

Since then, I studied surrealism and I became a huge fan.

I felt like a surrealist.

I hung out with

painters,

of course there were also filmmakers

and poets too.

We didn't only discuss cinema,

we exchanged ideas on other artistic fields,

it was the late 1950s and through the 1960s,

I am very interested in the Japanese neo-dada movement,

I worked with them.

And at the same time...

I didn't tell a story,

I didn't treat a specific theme in my films,

I preferred to evoke the entire suffocationg atmosphere,

of our society.

Even if it becomes a melodrama.

How can I put it?

Even in talking about love and sex,

I sought na�ve forms of artistic expression.

Breton's First Manifesto introduced me to surrealism.

Trotsky was influenced by surrealism,

but by the end of his life he criticized it.

I thought he was stupid to do that,

There we are...

I want Philippe to know,

that I'm a surrealist rather than a Trotskyist.

The surrealist doesn't categorize,

politics, art or society,

he tries to encompass entirely everything.

Surrealists reject the banality of everyday life.

Our conversation continues for a long time,

punctuated regulary by the passage of trains.

I ask Adachi if he can recall a specific sound.

He remembers the sound of rice paper being torn.

His brothers drank and fought often,

and the rice paper door got torn off during their arguments.

He also remembers the sound water, the rivers

and above all the waves and the sound of the wind.

The sound of bamboo in the wind,

a noise that frightened him more than anything,

more than the sound of bombs and bullets that he would later hear

as a guerrilla fighting with the Fedayeen.

Guerrilla is a job in itself.

It's about achieving a goal.

The goal is modest, it won't change the face of the world.

Our goal was to use propaganda so the world know about our fight.

Making films is not that different.

It 's a bit odd to say this but

shooting a film,

even the most important one to me,

can't reflect all my desires and expectations.

It just can't, from the start to the end.

That's why fighting and cinema are quite alike.

This likeness...

I was always thinking about it.

In other words, preparing for an armed operation

is like writing a script.

While taking part in other directors' films,

I learned a lot of things.

At the same time,

they were very basic propaganda films.

I felt like I was one of them.

Many of them

were bringing to light the refugee camps issue.

That wasn't my cup of tea.

Everyone was asking me to shoot it.

No way! I didn't want to.

Quite like Philippe.

That's it.

One day,

something happened that shocked Wakamatsu even more than me.

We went to Jara mountain near the border between Israel and Jordan

for about two weeks.

Wakamatsu and I wanted to film guerrilla's everyday life,

but the guys there didn't want to be recognized.

We stopped shooting

and had military trainings instead.

They made us dig tunnels for days.

And suddently, they asked us to film them

and then wanted us to leave.

When we arrived in Beirut, via Amman and Damascus,

we saw their picture in a newspaper,

all of them hanged, all the men with whom we'd eaten the before.

It was reported on both sides of the border, Israel and Jordan.

On the front page of the newspapers.

There is a rapport with death that I evoked earlier.

The experience was a blow to Wakamatsu.

He felt he should act.

I stayed to continue filming.

I asked Wakamatsu to let me finish the film.

And he agreed.

Provided that the film served the Palestinian cause. That's when we decided to make the film:

Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War

We screened the movie all over the place.

It was the beginning of our actions to publicize the Palestinian issue.

Until then, it had been a tourist trip.

The experience taught me a lot.

And the fact is that I disappeared while trying to go on with shooting of the film.

I traveled from Palestine to North Africa.

I met people fighting against deforestation,

creating monoculture or against oil exploitation.

I wanted to go as far as Guinea-Bisseau.

And there I was hunted down as a member of the Japanese Red Army.

That's it.

It's all chance.

Chance!

That's life!

That's life, but life weighs you down.

I wanted to shot the continuation of Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War

via the Polisario Front.

I wanted to shoot with the African Maoist,

Amilcar Cabral,

called the reincarnation of Frantz Fanon, for the end of the film.

On the way, I met a group of Japansese people

who didn't inspire confidence.

I told them to be more involved,

if they were part of international volunteering.

So they pushed me to participate,

in the formation of an organization with them.

And they trapped me.

I was prompted due to their deplorable inability.

I wanted to do my best.

They said to me: "What are you doing here, man?"

It took us 4 or 5 years to establish the organization.

Then we embarked on armed operations,

because the fighters had been arrested and they had to be liberated.

We hijacked aeroplanes, occupied embassies.

Time passed in the blink of an eye.

There you go.

How can I put it?

At the time, I was serious.

I was really involved. I wasn't there for fun.

Those who didn't fight seriously got captured.

Looking back, that happened several times.

Of course I thought about going home and making movies,

but my priority was to improve the situation before my eyes.

Films can be made anytime, I could wait.

I considered filming there too.

We shared the tasks between us. Wakamatsu returned to Japan

to make his films, and I stayed there.

But he visited me every year.

He came to the front.

When I asked him why he came,

he nicely replied: "To purify myself!"

I asked him if that was so difficult?

Perhaps he'd done pretty stupids things but he came to reenergize himself,

in order to make his films in Japan.

Sometimes he came twice a year.

He cursed because he had to chop wood, a great director such as himself.

We were in the mountains,

and everyone had to cut wood to make their own bed.

But he got annoyed.

There.

He shouted across the mountain that he was a great director!

Funny, hey?

I don't know why, but that's the way it is.

That's life, right?

Yes, it's possible that beauty has strengthened our resolve.

I'm reminded of Dostoevsky.

"Beauty will save the world."

People liked the classic screen plays that I wrote.

People said that they should be made into films...

but they weren't realistic about the production side.

When you decide to go ahead and direct, a budget must be found.

The initial project is often modified.

It's always the same!

I mentioned this the other day.

My next film is about young people excluded from the society today.

These young people

resemble the Koreans immigrants,

in Japan during the '50s.

In my film, a Korean appears,

armed with a gun and dynamite and says:

"Why are you doing the same thing as 50 years ago? Morons!"

This is the film I want to make.

There's a lot of interest and everyone wants the film to exist.

When they ask who'll direct,

I reply, "Me". And there, everyone leaves.

The financial backers too.

They say: "Sorry!"

So it's not worth counting on those people,

we'll manage with what we find.

That's the state of affairs for now!

Is this the film you're planning to make this year?

I have an idea for an experiment with solitude.

I give someone a synopsis.

I offer them a series scripts one by one.

And they're responsible for directing.

If they don't manage to shoot, we stop.

We do rehearsals and film them.

And then we shoot the real takes for the film too.

Cinematically speaking, no storyline develops.

But I want to try.

That's my idea for now,

but I will have to be rigorously edited to tighten the style.

Only the essential images will remain.

Storytelling will no longer be an issue.

That's my intention.

So we'll need,

three cameras like this one.

I'll ask the actors to play the scenes.

We'll film everything, including the times I direct them.

We don't know if it's a feature or the making of a film.

Godard already tried this.

I'm not attempting to invent a new form.

I'd like to show the difference between now and 50 years ago.

And I'd prove that there's no difference.

If I was to shoot both the rehearsal and the final take,

I'd show that no difference exists.

So, as soon as the actors are in place,

we film everything they do.

And then they play the actual scenes.

They must play both sides, their roles and themselves.

I'd make sure it's not theatrical,

and I'd completely destroy the film's storyline.

I'll stop here for now,

If I go any further, I'll isolate myself even more.

How do you feel about the relationship

between the world of ideas and the world of sensations?

As I said earlier, I embrace solitude.

I'd like to unite the two concepts.

I want to film

and I want to play all the parts myself,

but it's impossible to play 5 or 6 characters at once.

I've asked myself a hundred times. How to do it?

Harmonizing the discrepancy between the two,

would require rehearsing the same scene for 1 or 2 years.

Films are made of these dislocations,

between feelings and ideas and, all that is missing.

By the way, I'll do anything so that nothing's missing.

But if I don't do that, I get further and further away from sensations,

and remain in the world of ideas.

If that happens, I stop.

Philippe is the same,

he has to do with what he has shot.

The film must be returned to the world of sensations.

Since we filmed with our sensations,

we must finish the film with sensations and not as a prisoner of our ideas.

To go on,

a sensation is something that flows,

it's very fluid,

while ideas are fragments of thoughts.

This goes back to what I said earlier on the cinema.

Actually, what are filmed are just fragments of thoughts.

The film is only visible once it is returned to the world of sensations.

It's a question I would like to pursue,

and it provokes in me the desire to experiment.

That's it, Philippe.

We're done.

I think that's the essence of cinema.

Can you explain to Philippe afterwards?

The world of ideas is made up of fragments of thought.

The world of sensations is linked to that of ideas and we just need to return to the world of sensations.

I say this because I think that Philippe does the same.

To return to the sensation?