By Eric Kohn
Translator: Chen Sihang
Proofreading: Issac
Source: IndieWire
In the first passage of Gaspa No's Climax, a dance troupe gathers in a remote building to practice their movements. If you look at this passage alone, Gaspar Noir seems to be just shooting a gorgeous dance documentary.
Climax (2018)
However, the director who has shot "Into nothingness" and "Love" has always continued his "bad boy" image with his disturbing subjective photography and deviant film themes, and this film is certainly no exception.
Love (2015)
When the dancers—all of whom are professional dancers and none of them actors except Sophia Podola—inadvertently drink pedche-ridden prank at a psychedelic party, the film begins to embark on that extremely dark journey with them. The 55-year-old Argentine director, who works in Paris, uses these ninety-six minutes of fast-paced images to create the most manic visual impact of his film career so far.
The film was shot over fifteen days a few weeks before its premiere in Cannes, and it then won the Art Film Award for the Director's Biweekly Section, as well as the A24 Company's rights to screen in the United States. The talkative director spoke to our reporters on Skype about his elusive inspiration, the freewheeling production strategy of the new work, and his relationship with the business world.
Reporter: Hello, Gaspar.
Gaspar No: Hey you know what? You'll have to wait a minute. I hadn't smoked in an hour, so I had to smoke a cigarette first.
Reporter: It must feel good at home.
Gaspar Nou: The film was released at the Cannes Film Festival and has been screened almost all of Europe and South America. So, even though I made this film quickly — from the initial idea to the premiere in Cannes, it took me four and a half months — I've been traveling since May, answering the same questions in a variety of places. That's why I didn't have time to start making (or preparing) another film.
Reporter: You must have found it ironic. Even if you use the fastest production speed, it still takes a lot of your time.
Gaspar No: I think the promotion of the film took me twice or three times as long. It's always fun to travel around - you'll be put in nice hotels, stuff like that. But maybe because I'm older, now I enjoy the filming more than the promotion of the movie.
Reporter: At that morning screening in Cannes, you looked really dizzy. I found you standing in the aisle, grinning all the time during the screening.
Gaspar No: The interesting thing about that morning screening was that nobody knew anything about the film. This is the first time this has happened at a film festival – especially at the Cannes Film Festival – where I screen a film and the audience and the critics in the audience don't know anything about it, and the only thing they know is the title of the film.
When the film was selected for the Director's Bi-Weekly Unit, they asked me to write an outline of the film for the screening manual. I thought, "Hey, I don't want anybody to know what this movie is about." Then I submitted this stupid summary: "Life and death are two extraordinary experiences." So when you or anyone else goes to see this movie, you don't know anything but know that the film is called Climax and that it's directed by me.
The problem, though, is that the "fake outline" became a joke — and now, when I see my movie DVDs sold in France or elsewhere, it has this stupid synopsis printed on it: "Life and death are two extraordinary experiences." It was a joke, but they kept it.
Usually your films get polarizing reviews, but "Climax" was unanimously approved by the jury, and almost all types of audiences gave a good response. How do you feel about that?
Gaspar No: I think it's probably because this film is more interesting than my other works. Escape into Nothingness is probably the most serious one, it's more serious than Both Irrevocable and Love, and in a way, the latter two films are just a little bit violent, a little disturbing. And "Into nothingness" looks more serious, and it is difficult for the audience to laugh out loud during the process of watching the movie.
Into Nothingness (2009)
Some passages in Climax are very dynamic and very pleasant, while others are like hell scenes.
The format of this film is very extreme. Once or twice, I walked into the theater while I was playing the movie, and when I saw the second half of the film, people started laughing. Bergman also made films like this; so did Haneke. I am a happy person. When happy people make a cruel movie, it becomes funny.
Reporter: "Climax" seems to have made more viewers accept your style.
Gaspar No: What made this film more popular, or more acceptable to critics, was that the characters in this film were not tortured. They're all positive, both creative, and they're all happy in the first half of the film, so you can choose the characters you like and empathize with them. They are not defined as losers, or "semi-losers," as I did in previous films.
For those people, you could say they make mistakes all the time. But in this film, you see these twenty-three characters and say, "Oh, they're all trying to be better in their lives, they're such great dancers." Then you'll be intoxicated by their body language. Then we move on to the second part, where, of course, the same characters become reptiles under more stressful situations.
In my other films, there will be a fixed character who is the focus of the film from beginning to end—like the butcher in Standing Alone, or the young drug dealer in "Gone into Nothing."
Irrevocable has more than one (main) character, while Love has only one main character because she is responsible for voiceover. But "Climax" is an open-ended film, a bit like the Richard Linklater film I really liked, "Urban Ronin".
"Urban Ronin" (1991)
In that film, every five or ten minutes, your attention can shift from one character to another. It's more like a group portrait movie than a portrait of a particular character. So you can focus on the character you like.
Reporter: You've talked about using drugs to get creative inspiration, especially in the process of making Escape into Nothingness. But the film looks more like a work that advocates drug rehabilitation. Over the years, do you have any new thoughts on the relationship between drugs and movies?
Gaspar No: I've been thinking that it would be nice to make a psychedelic film like 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was really my first psychedelic journey, when I was about six or seven years old. And I said, "One day, I'm going to make a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey." When I was a kid, I was never addicted to any drugs other than candy.
Of course, when you have to meet friends and drink beer, it's hard to quit drinking. I was part of my generation, so when I was a teenager, I smoked marijuana. I never really escaped from these things that were put in front of me. And when I was preparing Into Nothingness, I thought, "How do I find the images that helped me create this film?"
During the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick never used any psychedelics, including LSD, because he said his brain was his best friend. I've met Douglas Trump, who didn't use psychedelics. Still, they made an incredibly psychedelic film.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Kenneth Anger, on the other hand, experimented with psychedelics while making Elysium Tower Unveiling. I drank some dead vine water with a friend to get the images that could be put into my movies. But I don't advocate the use of drugs. They can be highly risky, just like alcohol. In fact, according to the examples around me, alcohol is more socially damaging than drugs.