Hirokazu Kore-eda

Japanese writer and director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to a thematic subject matter he knows well: loneliness and emptiness. This time out, he does so via the point of view of an inflatable sex toy and once again, Kore-eda manages to make compelling observation, grafting an original essay that is both warm and fuzzy, but tragic, contemporary and extreme -- in many regards it's a portrait full of heart and humor that will resonate with many. It's the Pinocchio-like tale of an air doll used for sexual pleasure by a lonely man, and then comes to life, indexes what makes humans human and falls for a video store clerk. Korean actress Bae Doona is pitch perfect as the air doll, she physically and emotionally gets into character which makes for a rich and satisfying observation about the human condition. To give enough substance to such an exaggerated premise is no easy task, but a talent such as Kore-eda makes it work with ease. SFIFF showcased the Cannes preemed Air Doll - here is my sit-down with the Japanese filmmaker.

Yama Rahimi: What was the the genesis of this project?
Hirokazu Kore-eda: The start of this film was 10 years ago when I first read the Manga comic story of this and there was one particular scene that really struck me. It was the plastic doll working at the video store and she cuts her arm on a nail and collapses onto the floor with the air deflating. The man working with her tapes her arm and blows air into her. I thought that was a very erotic scene. I had not thought of putting sex scenes into my films but I thought in this way I could depict a very erotic scene without to having the man and the woman be naked which could be done nicely. That was the start of the film.

Rahimi: I loved the idea of using a doll as a sex object which is usually how women are used. Was it intentionally to show the objectification of women through a doll?
Kore-eda: There are several men in the film that appear to use the doll as a sex object. However the man, Hideo, who lives with the doll reflects several men I met during the research who live with the plastic dolls. They don't see them just as sex objects. They might take them to the park, they make meals for them if the dolls don't eat so they meals together as a way to fill their own loneliness or emptiness. Even more so they interact with the dolls more than they do with other people. So that's another aspect I wanted to show.

Rahimi: The theme of loneliness and emptiness seems a byproduct of technology in the modern world that keeps people from interacting with each other in comparison to the third world where people live without the comforts of technology but have a shorter life because of the harsher conditions. What are your thoughts about that?
Kore-eda: As I developed the script I put people who doubt their own originality, they feel they are substitute themselves. Those kind of people are scattered around Tokyo. In fact Tokyo is full of those types of people. Because everything has become convenient in our modern lives, you really don't need to interact deeply with other people in order to live or survive but that means they are not fulfilled and suffering. These are people around me and I put those in the story as well.

Rahimi: What are the films or filmmakers who have inspired you to become one in your formative years?
Kore-eda: There are many but Truffaut, Fellini and Rosselini. Ken Loach and Hou-Hsiao Hsien inspired me after I became a filmmaker. In my first year at the University, I went to see Fellini's "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria" as a double feature. Of course I have seen and loved films before that but it was the first time I became aware of the director being there. I felt the director was looking at Giulietta Masina and became aware of the director's gaze. I thought making a film is gazing or looking at something.

Rahimi: The reason I'm asking is because one of the main setting is the video store and there are references to other films and I wanted to know if they are your favorite films.
Kore-eda: They are all my favorite movies.

Rahimi: What were the challenges of making a film about an air doll? How did you create a fully developed character
Kore-eda: This doll is a cheap doll. So she has an inferiority complex because she's translucent and has plastic lines she wants to hide. Now the dolls are more developed and expensive made out of silicone, so they have more weight which is closer to human feeling and touch. She has complexes that an adolescent girl might have whether her nose is too big or not high enough. Those are feelings she develops when she has a soul.

Rahimi: As far as the main actress goes, was it difficult to find a Japanese actress or did you want to work with that particular Korean actress?
Kore-eda: I'm a great fan of Bae Doona and always wanted to work with her. I know this was a difficult role but the language wouldn't be a problem for her. So I gave the offer to her as my first choice. When I think of it now, I don't think any of the Japanese actress we have could have done the role, so she's the only one.

Rahimi: What's next for you?
Kore-eda: I'm planning to shoot a film in summer with children, maybe five or six children. The story will be that a new bullet train will come to their town for the first time. They will go and see it that's all I have no. I haven't written the script now. Once I cast the children, then I will get more ideas from them. Once again it's an interactive process.

Samuel Maoz

Bestowed with the top honor at the Venice Film Festival, Lebanon is a powerful, gut-wrenching, claustrophobic, timeless antiwar film from Israel by writer/director Samuel Maoz. The story, set entirely in a tank on the first day of the first Lebanon war in 1982 shows how the four young men experience the horrors of war. While the setting is specific, the story is universal and could easily be the backdrop for any country, and any war. Based on Moaz's own experiences, Lebanon gives a singular vision and point of view on how he experienced the war - an experience that is engraved in the filmmaker and will surely be will surely be ingrained in future patrons of film. Selected as part of the 53rd SFIFF, I had the chance to sit down with the director.

Yama Rahimi: Can you tell me how this project came about?
Samuel Maoz: Well it's my own personal story. I was the gunner, Shmulik which is the nickname for Samuel in Hebrew. So it was a need for me to unload and to expose the war as it is -- without the heroic stuff and cliches. I don't know if the expression to forgive myself is correct, but I wanted to understand. I feel a responsibility towards my destiny because I survived it.

Rahimi: I think it's a powerful film because you put the audience in the tank and let them experience the war from a first hand POV. Was there any hesitation to have the entire film set in a tank?
Maoz: Yes. I told myself at the beginning that I needed a simple and basic plot, something that you can tell on eight or ten lines. Basically to have a ground to stand on and even the event which was real and much worse had to be toned down to tell the story of what's going on in the tank and the minds of the soldiers during the war. I was asking myself how can I tell the story to deliver it without talking about it. To understand it less through the head than through the stomach and the heart. To achieve that you need to create a strong emotional experience. So I told myself the only way you can do it, to actually take the audience into the tank, so that they totally identify with the characters so they see what they see and know what they know. I knew that the only way for the audience to understand it is to feel it, so feeling is understanding. I wanted you to see the gunner in front you and when the victims look, they look at the audience. That's the only way to smell and taste the war. That's why the film has minimal dialogue less than 30% and more 70% without a word because when you are dealing with such an extreme situation with dilemmas and conflicts, you can't use words. The only way is through the eyes and body language. It was an experiment that I was lucky that it paid off. It was more than luck because we worked very hard. (laughs)

Rahimi: Well the conflict you are depicting has affected people on both sides for generations. Do you think there will be peace someday?
Maoz: I can see from the reaction to the film in Israel. If you analyze the reactions, you can see that as much as the audiences are young, the reactions are positive. As much as the audiences are old, the reactions are less positive and more negative which refers to the past and the young to the future. I see it that way that my parents generation came from Europe from the German camps and they see it like they don't have any other choice but to fight. They really believe that someone wants to terminate them, so they have nothing to loose but to fight against all the chances and they won. Our generation was stuck in the middle, and the new, Internet generation had their war with the best army and weapons regarding the technology and equipment, they lost. Why? Because they don't have the same motivations. So the older generation doesn't want this film because they are afraid that mothers won't send their sons to war anymore. They still believe that everyone wants to terminate us. They have their good reasons to believe that. If someone came from the concentration camps, I can believe that they believe that but we had a normal childhood. When were 18, we didn't believe that someone wanted to terminate us. All that was in our heads was the Tel Aviv beaches and girls. The new generation is totally free of this thinking and because of that, they think peace will come. I don't think peace will come because of idealistic reasons, -- but because of egoistic reasons.

Rahimi: Peace is peace. I agree. There's a strong support for it from the Israeli cinema which has been outstanding with films such as Waltz with Bashir, Lemon Tree, Beaufort and your film.
Maoz: The reaction has been great every where we have been, all over Europe and here in the US. People have compared it to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with their soldiers and their sons. At the New York Film Festival, six people came to me and said how the film touched them and reminded them of their experiences in the Vietnam war. The people from Sony said this is about Lebanon and different from Vietnam but they said the experience was the same, the conflict and dilemma. It's something that remains with you the rest of your life.

Rahimi: It's also about the damage and the toll it war has on the individual. Even though the war finishes for some, they are haunted by it for the rest of their lives.
Maoz: Even during the making of the film, I was reminded how lucky I'm to be able to unload something that I have been holding for 25 years. Even that I was able to do the opposite, I still don't feel clean or clear of it. I can accept myself and learn to live with it but it's still the first thought in the morning and last at night. When you are taking a life, it's not a small issue. It's not like a broke a glass or lost my house. It's not something you can say what's gone is gone.

Rahimi: It seems to me that we as human beings still haven't learned from 4000 years or more of wars.
Maoz: In the end it's the cruel trick of war. The army can prepare you that you are in good shape to fight and operate the weapons but nothing can prepare you for the emotional experience. If the war is...for example, a beast, the war needs death in order to survive. So the soldiers are ordered to kill but it's not normal to kill, so you need to be psycho to do it or to be able to do it. The trick of war is primitively simple, not to take a soldier but a human being and put him in a real life danger situation. What I say now seems theoretical but when you are actually in that situation, you feel it with every cell of your body. It's this process it takes the first 24 or 48 hours for the metamorphosis to take place when our survival instincts takes control. It's like a heavy drug, it's physical. At first you loose your taste, then your sight, then you realize you haven't slept for 24 hours. Then you don't think about those moral or ethical codes that applies in normal life. In the war you are in such an extreme situation that everything in normal life does not applies anymore. You can't live with the codes of normal life. Of course you can but you won't survive for more than few hours.

Then you kill because you want to survive and become like an animal that somebody tries to hunt. Somebody measured the instincts and our strongest instinct is our survival instinct, more than our visual which is controlled through blinking. Once we went into a small town, they said 50% of the balconies are the shooters and the other 50% is the civilians. So they say you can't survive if you go from balcony to balcony because you won't survive past the third one if you look at them one by one. So what's your options at the end and be moral? I'm not talking about shooting at kids on the streets which is murder. That's why I set the film during the first day of the war because it's the most difficult day when the dilemmas and conflicts come. After two or three days you are on your surviving instincts there's no more dilemma or conflict that controls your judgment. You are just surviving the moment with all your body and mind without thinking what happens later or tomorrow.

Rahimi: It's our animal instinct.
Maoz: Yes, our most basic instinct. In the tank your view is limited which is why the war doesn't allow you to look at the big picture.

Rahimi: Even though the film is from the point of view of the soldiers in the tank, you still feel for the victims. As I have learned from my interviews from Israeli and Palestinians, it seems they are united in their vision and solidarity for each other than the governments. Have you experienced that as well?
Maoz: I could write you of Palestinians, Iranians, Syrians and Lebanese people that I met at the festivals. We could have signed on many peace agreements.

Rahimi: Which is a shame that the governments have the power where the people can live together peacefully.
Maoz: It's the point of view of the governments that's the problem because they think that war is the only solution. If they start from the point where they don't think war is any solution at all, which will be starting point, we can start to achieve something. If they start with war, then there's nowhere else to go. Take the Lebanon war for example, it started as an operation that was supposed to last 40 days but ended after 18 years. So as I said before, if the war is a beast, you can't control it once you release it.

Rahimi: What were the challenges of shooting the film with the young cast?
Maoz: First I knew I could do the traditional rehearsals because there wasn't much of dialogue to begin with. Words were my enemy, so it was a very tough two months preparation without a word which was to get them to experience inside the tank. So I talked about the experience then I locked them each separately in a dark containers for few hours. Instead of telling them about the claustrophobic experience, I let them experience it. In the container your body save energy but after two hours you are in a hypnotic state of mind. Then I started to knock on the containers with iron pipes to simulate a sudden attack on the tank and to jump from 0 to 100% of awareness. Then came another two hours where they were expecting another attack that didn't came. So after five hours when they came out and I look at them, I knew I didn't have to tell them anything. Because I was going for feelings and the actors had to deliver that feeling. I had to create warlike situation that was similar. The shooting was tough because it was a very physical experience because of the heat, sweat, dust and oil. It was something they had to feel which you can't act. Since the audience would experience it through the visual language.

Rahimi: What films or filmmakers inspired you to become a filmmaker?
Maoz: It was a stupid western when I was 4 or 5 years old. I had an uncle who used to take me to the movies 3 or 4 movies a week, so I was raised on American westerns. So in one film there was a shot of train that approached the camera and passed it. I was amazed at that. When I had my bar mitzvah, I asked my father to buy me an 8mm camera which he did. The day after I was on the train tracks and tried to copy that shot. I saw the train smashing the camera into pieces. That was my first lesson in cinema but it didn't break me so I worked and bought another camera. Next time, I put other objects and experimented. I did a lot of shorts until I was 18 but the war cut short my career.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet returns in top form with this visually stunning comedy that has everything you would expect and more. After a man is injured by a random gun shot, he unites with a group of friends to take revenge on two rival weapon manufacturers. A film that evokes an inner child's sensibility and emphasizes the more whimsical qualities that can be found in smaller doses in the French filmmaker's previous work. An original script with a superb cast make this film a treasure full of wonders. The film unites Jeunet with comedian Dany Boon (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis) and it's match made in cinematic heaven.

Yama Rahimi: In this film you manage to merge successfully the whimsical and fantastical with a political message...:
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: It was a risk actually to mix a serious subject with slapstick. To reassure me I thought of The Great Dictator. It was a risk and I hope it works.

Rahimi: It worked for me because it's a timely subject matter. With the 30-plus wars ongoing wars in the world, this gets to the root that weapons and bombs do have consequences. I'm from Afghanistan which is still one of the countries with the most mines.
Jeunet: When we did the research for the film, we met this weapon's dealers and discovered they were nice guys. They were open minded and have the passion for technology. They were very nice with us. They are unaware of consequences of the technology. When we brought it up, they would say, "no we work for the right side, we are the good guys. We don't build mines, it's them the bad guys."

Rahimi: This is your first film in 6 years. Did it take that long to make this film?
Jeunet: Well I write my own scripts which is not for everybody because it's a long process. Also a long process to find financing, then you lose an actor and so on. It's a long process also because I'm picky, I'm taking time to shoot and in post-production. I also lose a year in promotion of the film which I follow everywhere. This time it was specially long because I lost two years on "Life of Pi" which is a beautiful project. I wrote the script, made the story board and scouted the locations in India and Spain.

Rahimi: What happened to "Life of Pi"?
Jeunet: It was just too expensive that it didn't make any sense. When you read the book, you think it's easy because you have a kid and a tiger in a boat in sea, so it must be cheap to make but no tigers love kids, kids don't like the sea and tigers are good swimmers, so you can't put all the elements at the same time. Everything has to be done with visual effects which is very complicated to make.

Rahimi: How did this project came about?
Jeunet: After two years I was starving to make a film, so I opened my book of ideas and looked on what I could use to make a film. Oh a story of revenge, perfect. Oh I loved the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the toys of Toy Story. So I make a story of a man with a group of stupid people. Then the weapon dealers which is preoccupation of mine. So I mix it all.

Rahimi: How ingenious. Your films are rich with wonderful details. At what point do incorporate them? During the writing process or after you have the script?
Jeunet: At the beginning when we have the concept of the story. Once we know we have a revenge story, we open the book of details and see what we can use. For example the story of the sugar and coffee or the mine in the football field which I had in mind for 20 years. I have boxes of ideas and details like that. It's pre-occupation to have a rich movie. For some people it's too much and too many details.

Rahimi: No I love it. I think it's rewarding on repeat viewings and a pleasure when you discover a new detail you missed the first time.
Jeunet: This guy wrote me that he saw Amelie 54 times and his wife wants to divorce him because of that. (Laughs all around.)

Rahimi: Chance or fate are always playing a role in your films. What is about it that fascinates you?
Jeunet: I had a good luck and chance in my life. I love stories with coincidences and fate like the books of Paul Auster. I had some premonitions of my own. One day I was visiting a huge set at the Universal Studio long time ago for the Steven Spielberg movie "Hook," I had this voice or feeling that one day I would make a film in Hollywood. So when I was called to do "Alien," I knew the time has come.

Rahimi: You have found the perfect match with Dany Boon. Was this project written for him?
Jeunet: No I wrote the part for Jamel Debbouze (Amelie, Indigenes) but he dropped 10 weeks before the shooting because of personal reasons. It was the right opportunity to hire Dany. I have been following his career for 15 years from stage because he's the king of stand-up comedy. He's a very talented writer, actor and director. He's funny and I hate him. His film "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis" in France holds the same record as "Titanic".



Rahimi: You have an impeccable cast again. Was it difficult to cast the film?
Jeunet: No. I love this family of actors and my casting director knows that and my taste. Usually the main character I find myself but for the others he sends options. I pay attention to all the characters, even the small roles. For characters that have only one sentence, I see twenty people. For Amelie, for the character who said "Ticket please!" I saw like 40 people which pissed off a lot of people. I look for interesting faces and character actors.

Rahimi: There's an homage to movies of the 40's and 50's, especially the Humphrey Bogart kind...
Jeunet: Well I wanted to start with "The End" which was in my book of ideas. So I looked at the films. I used the Bogart film but could have been any other. But the French dubbing is very tacky because it was done in the 50's which was appropriate for our film.

Rahimi: What films or filmmakers inspired to become a filmmaker?
Jeunet: Definitely Sergio Leone with "Once Upon A Time in the West." Second one was Stanley Kubrick. I saw "A Clockwork Orange" 14 times at the theater. Before that when I was 8 years old, I was making puppet's theater with lights and everything. So I made everything myself, the stage, the costumes.

Rahimi: What's some of your favorite films?
Jeunet: Again "Once Upon A Time in the West" which I can watch again and again. "Night of the Hunter" by Charles Laughton, Gus Van Sant's "Good Will Hunting," which is not a masterpiece but I loved it because it touched me. "The Godfather" of course which is not very original. French films by Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert.

Rahimi: What's next for you?
Jeunet: Now I would like to make an adaptation because I'm not ready to write another personal movie. It's a good opportunity to make another kind of film which would be more adult and serious. I don't know yet. I found an amazing book. I will meet the author in LA who's a famous script writer. I heard he wants to direct the book himself.