Reviews > Interviews > Michael Haneke interview…

With his latest offering The White Ribbon, a look at the strange happenings taking place in an Austrian farming village on the eve of World War 1, picking up one of the greatest film accolades, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, we spoke to the auteur director on the eve of the film’s release here in the UK.

Michael Haneke: That’s always a difficult question. Where do the lines of a poem come from? Where does the idea for a piece of music come from, or a film? It just suddenly appears at a moment.

MH: I had the original idea 20 years ago and the script was completed about 10 years ago. I had to collect a lot of ideas and do a lot of reading about the history of education, and about life in the country and I made other films came in between.

At a certain point I decided that I had enough material so I started to work on structuring that material. That’s where the real work comes in, deciding where the highlights are going to be and the construction, after that I sat down to write it. That’s the nicest part of the work, when you know what is going to happen and the characters take life and begin to speak.

MH: You can’t write it without actually feeling yourself into the characters themselves. You need the overview to see where the characters are going to go and how they are going to fit into the overall structure.

MH: Yes it was, to show the contradictions. If it’s an ensemble piece, if there are so many characters you need to show both sides of it in that way.

MH: Yes of course. Particularly when structuring it, you need to think about the climaxes, the high points and the low points and about the rhythm of it all. It’s extremely important because obviously in a book if it doesn’t work you can skip a few pages, but in a film if that doesn’t work then the people have gone.

MH: It’s a question of balance. Film as an art form is closest to music.

MH: From a desire to emphasise observation, from an estranged form of narration where the audience realises they are outside the event.

MH: We started six months in advance because I was worried we wouldn’t find them. I had to see seven thousand children before we cast the right actors.

MH: When they are very young it is particularly difficult because they can’t concentrate or they can’t concentrate for very long. If they are talented then it is more gratifying than working with a professional actor because you don’t have to get them to perform to be a lion, they can actually be a lion.

MH: It wasn’t difficult in itself, except getting the him to sit there (laughs). He wanted to get up and play around!

MH: It’s important for the English distributor, that’s the main thing. The festivals are always important in terms of publicity of course, but the most important festival is always the first one. Cannes is where the global audience get to see it. Local ones are important for the city they are shown in, but not so much in general terms. Particularly over here, because it’s not a matter of a competition in this case, it’s more about publicity. But it’s friendly and nice and that’s fun.

MH: Yes because the more prizes you win, the better it is at the box office and the more recognition you get for the film. It makes it much easier to finance the next project.

MH: No. I never have to.

MH: All directors only see the mistakes they have made when they watch it back.

MH: A ‘jolly’ film about the decomposition and the humiliation of the human body in old age. (laughs) I am hoping to shoot it in next summer in France.