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| Mathieu Amalric with Anne-Katrin Titze on a link between Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, Jerry Lewis, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Peter Sellers: “Somebody that is there, that didn’t ask anything and that puts the world in disorder.” |
Mathieu Amalric’s terrific Hold Me Tight (Serre Moi Fort), starring Vicky Krieps and Arieh Worthalter was a highlight of the 74th Cannes Film Festival and New York’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. He just premiered Zorn III (2018 - 2022) in Cinéma du réel at the Centre Pompidou and this weekend he will be in Hamburg on stage with Barbara Hannigan to perform Zorn’s The Song of Songs (written for Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson). Then Mathieu is off to Rome to star in Nanni Moretti’s Il Sol Dell'Avvenire.
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| Barbara Hannigan and John Zorn in Mathieu Amalric’s Zorn III (2018 - 2022) |
In the first of my series of conversations with Mathieu Amalric we discuss his adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters, starring Nicolas Bouchaud (Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s Mes Provinciales, Jacques Rivette’s Ne Touchez Pas La Hache), working with John Zorn, and his obsession with Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities and how it links to Jerry Lewis.
From Paris, Mathieu Amalric joined me on Zoom for an in-depth wide-ranging exploration of his cultural interests.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Good to see you! How are you?
Mathieu Amalric: You too! Yesterday night [March 14] we had Beaubourg for the Cinéma du réel. There was the screening of the Zorn III (2018 - 2022) for the first time. I finished the film Saturday. It was wonderful. People got crazy. It wasn’t supposed to be shown at a festival; those films are always shown during John Zorn’s concerts. It’s for Hamburg.
I’m leaving Thursday and it’s shown on Saturday during his concerts. But it was beautiful that people who didn’t come for a Zorn concert - a lot of people didn’t even know who John Zorn was or Barbara Hannigan or anything - were just ahhhhhh.
AKT: That’s great.
MA: You just see musicians search, rehearse, and so much energy is John. It’s just wow.
AKT: Was he there?
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| Nicolas Bouchaud and Guillaume Depardieu in Jacques Rivette’s Ne Touchez Pas La Hache |
MA: No, he’s in New York now. I saw him when I was there and I’ll join him Thursday in Hamburg
AKT: Please send him greetings from Ed Bahlman of 99 Records!
MA: Wait, I have to write that down. Okay, I will!
AKT: This is so un-corporate. I just came off a Zoom call with Eva Husson on Mothering Sunday. Do you know her?
MA: I know her name.
AKT: It was with her and Odessa Young and Sony Pictures Classics organized the Zoom and I had to go through three different waiting rooms with different threshold guardians, so I’m glad to speak with you in a much more casual way.
AKT: You had your Zorn premiere last night, what is coming up for you?
MA: I just finished the Zorn and that was quite a lot of work. Just before I did another sort of commission I loved. Because an actor couldn’t perform as theatres were closed, we found some money from French television. We were supposed to do a “captation” [capture] with six cameras to just film a performance with no audience. 25 technicians and cameras, one day of shooting. I said “can I have just one camera, four technicians, but three days of shooting?”
In fact, with one camera immediately it has to do with cinema. It’s a novel, one of the last novels by Thomas Bernhard, called Old Masters. It takes place in a museum. It’s about an old man who goes for 35 years always in front of the same painting of Tintoretto's [White-bearded Man]. Always the same place, it’s extraordinary. And we did a film in three days! One hour and 20 minutes. I just loved doing that.
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| Mathieu Amalric on Jerry Lewis: “I feel a link between The Bellboy, The Errand Boy, and The Man Without Qualities.” |
AKT: Who is the actor?
MA: It’s Nicolas Bouchaud who is more a theatre actor. You have maybe seen him with Jeanne Balibar in Rivette’s film La Hache [Ne Touchez Pas La Hache, aka The Duchess of Langeais] with Guillaume Depardieu. He also plays sometimes with Pierre Salvadori. In Dans La Cour [In The Courtyard] he plays the bad neighbour, but he’s really a theatre actor. So I did things like that. And now I’m obsessed with The Man Without Qualities.
AKT: Musil!
MA: For five years now and now I’m getting crazy. It’s 2000 pages and not finished. He didn’t finish it. I’m obsessed by that. I see the whole world in it.
AKT: Starting with the weather report.
MA: Yeah, the beginning, of course.
AKT: I didn’t finish it. I just wanted to show off that I know what you are talking about! And that I do remember the start with the weather.
MA: Nobody finished it. Or very few.
AKT: What are your plans with it? A film about The Man Without Qualities?
MA: I can’t get rid of it. It’s like a magnet now. It helps me to read the world. It helps me with how Europe is reacting against Putin. This thing about nothing happens, but everybody is talking and we have to do something. Humankind has to do something and nothing is happening. It’s just [Mathieu makes a hand gesture of the world spinning very fast out of control].
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| Mathieu Amalric on Nanni Moretti’s Il sol dell'avvenire: “I go directly to Rome, starting on Monday, shooting till June.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
Of course, Musil wrote it after the First World War. He started in 1919 because he was so in despair that all those millions of dead people in the First World War didn’t change anything one year after the end of the war. It happens only in 1913, one year before the catastrophe. And they’re talking about peace, about having great ideas.
With all the human intelligence, they are going toward catastrophe. And there’s a lot of humour and there’s love, there’s adventure and there’s Proust and Joyce and there’s stupidity and there’s admiration. There’s everything! There’s what is a man, what is a woman, because the second part is about this love with his sister which is very incredible. He calls it another state.
AKT: You convinced me! I have it on my bookshelf. I’m going to start reading it again!
MA: The trick really is to read only ten pages a day, not more.
AKT: Okay!
MA: Because it’s so dense. Just read ten pages a day. It will just go inside you. After 100 pages you’ll get addicted.
AKT: I’ll do that. Thank you! I’ll take on your reading assignment!
MA: I want to do something like Fassbinder with Berlin Alexanderplatz.
AKT: A series?
MA: Yeah! I went to ARTE and I told them that’s really how I would love the film to exist. Because the story takes place during one year, I said: What about 52 times 26 minutes? Every week during one year some Musil! One time a week for one year. And they said, well that is not possible! I said, yes, that is not possible, but that’s Musil. Musil only worked on utopia! He said “It’s the man of the possibles, it’s not the man of reality.”
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| John Zorn’s Reflektor at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg from March 17 through March 20 |
The fact that something exists is the proof that it could have been something else. So if you start thinking that way … You have a man who at 32 years old decides to put himself on leave from his own life. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I also look at a lot of Jerry Lewis’s first comedies that he directed. There’s a link, there’s really a link.
AKT: Between Jerry Lewis and Robert Musil!
MA: Yes, I feel a link between The Bellboy, The Errand Boy, and The Man Without Qualities. Somebody that is there, that didn’t ask anything and that puts the world in disorder. Like Buster Keaton, like Chaplin.
AKT: The classic trickster figure that exists in storytelling all over the world; that is the catalyst character who himself - mostly they were men - doesn’t change, but the world around him is completely shifting because he’s there at the crossroads.
MA: That’s it, yes. Do you know the film, in France it’s called Bienvenue Mister Chance? With Peter Sellers.
AKT: Yes, Being There (directed by Hal Ashby). Exactly. Everything is shifting because of him but he is standing still.
MA: It’s Jesus. That’s why he’s 32 years old. I’m sure that meant that he’s going to die at 33 in 1914. I’m sure he thought about it.
AKT: Of course! That age is never coincidental. You are doing a film with Nanni Moretti?
MA: I’m going to start! I’m going from Hamburg where I’m showing the film and also being on stage with Barbara [Hannigan]. We have to do The Song of Songs that John had written for Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. And we’re going to do it [Mathieu in a scared voice]. With five women voices behind us and we are doing the récitant. Then I go directly to Rome, starting on Monday, shooting till June.
AKT: He’s wonderful, send greetings from me. It’s so lovely to talk!
MA: I know, thank you so much!
AKT: Let’s stay in touch and do this more often!
MA: Oh yes, thank you so much Anne-Katrin! Bye!
Coming up - Mathieu Amalric on Hold Me Tight (Serre Moi Fort).
