Translated material
Raul Ruis
Dmitry Volchek: For the first time I saw the film by Raul Ruis - these were "Three Croes of the Sailor" - in the 84th year at a semi -underground viewing, they spent a movie in a terrible basement; The copy of the French consulate in St. Petersburg was lent a copy for the evening. I remember the feeling of stunning - the picture was so unlike everything that I had seen before, it seemed so mysterious and illogical that even Bunuel’s films compared to it seemed to be a state realism. Only now, twenty years later, having met with Raul Ruis at the Rotterdam Film Festival, I found out that the "Three Crons of the Sailor" was a surprise for producers who expected that Ruis would make an adventure television series on their order.
Raul Ruis: This was the only film that survived from the series. There was a danger of a different kind with him - he enjoyed too much success. And I was scared, tried to destroy this success and make a film that no one would like. This is what I hate is to be popular. It was a false idea of the French left - to make a large, popular art. False, because popularity is nothing. "Popularity" means that everyone likes the film. And this is terrible.
Dmitry Volchek: Raul Ruis, who has been working in the cinema for forty years (he shot his first short film in 1964) should not be afraid of a sudden explosion of popular love. Even many Sinefils who despise the Hollywood type cinema admit that Ruis’s films seem to them too incomprehensible, too incoherent and therefore unbearably boring.
Raul Ruis: If you have enterprise, imagination, ambition, and a modest budget, all the more difficult things you want to do. The problem is that this approach is considered nonsense these days, because you are expected to make films that the audience will perceive instantly. Previously, there was such a principle - if you can do something complicated, why do simple? If you have the opportunity to make a film, you must invest in it the maximum of what you want. And then - not so important. Someone will be interested, someone is not. If three people are interested, this is already wonderful. That is, you specifically do not address your film. The decoding is very simple: you make films not for the public, but for individuals, for individuals, but each of them is the public.
Dmitry Volchek: One of the reasons for the confusion, into which the audience leads Ruis's paintings is a categorical disagreement of the director with the theory of the central conflict underlying Hollywood cinema. In the book "Poetics of Cinema", Ruis explains:
"The theory of the central conflict requires that the story begins with the fact that some characters want something, while others prevent them in every way. Such a conflict makes us abandon all stories that do not imply confrontation, from all events requiring indifference or impassive curiosity, whether it is a landscape, distant a thunderstorm or dinner with friends, and, finally, all that is called mixed mixed Scenes: say, the usual meal is interrupted by an inexplicable incident that is not related to what is happening, and, therefore, both development and meal continues the worst that the theory of the central conflict celebrates “serial scenes”, that is, events that are not connected with each other, but are equally directed, and two people are fighting on the street. ice cream".
"What type of cinema causes you disgust?" I asked Raul Ruis.
Raoul Ruis: What is called “Formatism” in French is all the elements that reduce the film to a well -made product. I love films that are completely different from mine, but here we are talking about any television films, from which there remains that you have already watched them, because they have absolutely the same structure as the films that you have already seen.
Dmitry Volchek: It is interesting that the Ruis method is easiest to compare precisely with the television series strategy: the behavior of heroes is determined not by the logic, but by the addictions of numerous screenwriters and the conditions of acting contracts. Moreover, some paintings of Ruis (for example, the "golden ship") are filled with quotes from soap operas. A mixture of incompatible genres, the labyrinth -shaped design of the narrative (in many films of Ruis there is a storyteller, announcer) and, finally, the total absurdism of conflicts is confused by the viewer, expecting from the cinema "intelligence" and "credibility". The Ruis turns the absolutely traditional documentary television film on elections to the National Assembly of France into a study of cinematographic time - a tape of Mebius with repeating scenes, which become shorter and shorter; Who won the elections and whether they have passed the public at all and does not recognize. He transforms the melodrama into a detective in order to immediately move on to social satire; The plot lines suddenly break off, new characters appear that change the alignment of forces ... Ruis calls this technique “pentaludia”, the method of unpredictable story - the characters are thrown, like playing bones, and find themselves in situations that only the case and fate are commanded.
The unpredictability of plot turns in Ruis's paintings illustrates the story of the film adaptation of the novel by Sadekh Hedayat "Blind Owl".
Raoul Ruis: I have long wanted to make a film on this Iranian book, so strange, I really liked it. Benois Peters and I wrote the script, and suddenly two days before the start of the filming, something terrible happened: I found that the production designer, who made all the scenery and costumes, decided that the film was happening in Arabia, but in fact it was India. Everything turned out to be Arabic. I had two days to change the script. We started shooting, and suddenly in the middle I saw that the film turned out to be too anti -General. I did not understand this at first, but gradually I began to notice that the film is about the predetermination and evil emanating from women. And, little by little, as the filming, I hated this novel. And I decided to go to another plot - the Spanish play Tirso de Molina - the play about freedom of choice completely opposite in spirit. And this mixture turned out to be a truly Muslim film, which many of my friends who profess Islam liked.
Dmitry Volchek: I asked Raul Ruis to formulate two key thesis of his three -volume lectures "Poetics of Cinema" for our transfer.
Raul Ruis: the image should appear earlier than the narrative. The image that will determine, frame, generate the narrative. This is the first. And the second is that if your film has 500 frames, you should always perceive them as 500 different films. Each frame is at least one film. And you can combine them in different ways, not only installation. This implies that you need to change the filming method.
Dmitry Volchek: Of course, the anarchism of Ruis and his unwillingness to follow the artificial logic of the linear narrative, brought to the white heat of the producers of his paintings.
Raul Ruis: It’s funny that I was going to become a revolutionary and prepared for the struggle - I studied how to make an escape, how to live underground and all that. Only later did I realize that all this is not at all necessary for the revolutionary, but it is very useful for the filmmaker. You have to communicate with the producer, he is your enemy, but you are forced to deal with him, negotiate - everything is like that.
Dmitry Volchek: The first and only Hollywood film by Ruis, the “Broken Image” was the field of the battle of the director and producer. Ruis believes that he won. It seems to me that Hollywood still won: Ruis’s handwriting can only be recognized by the traditional topic of a bifurcation of consciousness, everything else was killed by the terrifying game of William Baldwin and Ann Pario.
Raul Ruis: When the Spaniards came to Chile, they won all the battles. These were very good warriors hardened in battles in Flanders. Typically, the Spaniards used such tactics - they first captured the head - the Indian emperor - killed him and, of course, became, at the head. But in Chile it came out differently - the Spaniards captured the king, but fifteen days later a new one appeared among the Indians. The Indians invented many tricks that helped them defeat the Spaniards on the battlefield. When I shot the film "Broken Image", it was very difficult because I was seriously controlled. And I had to resort to all sorts of tricks - I answered “yes”, referring to “no”, “no”, implying “yes”, and little by little I realized that I was playing the same game as the Indians with the Spaniards. After all, the Indians, in the end, won the war. She dragged on for almost three hundred years, but they won - the Spaniards had to go to negotiations. Here are their tricks - never attack if the enemy is waiting for you; If he is waiting for you here, you attack in another place; If he is waiting for you everywhere, you do not attack, but go to rest. And somehow I told myself: "I am not making my Hollywood film, but a documentary about Indians in Chile." If you watch this film, pay attention to this hidden part: a hidden part of a “broken image” is a film about the struggle of the Indians with the Spaniards in Chile.
Dmitry Volchek: European and American audience Political emigrant Ruis is signed by paintings made after the 75th year. His Chilean films, which were supported by the Government of Salvador Allende, did not even fall into the Soviet rental. I saw only one of his films of the end of the 6th, “three sad tigers”, and I can say that he looks most like “I walk around Moscow”, although Ruis himself claims that it was inspired by the experiments of Dushan Makaveev.
Raoul Ruis: In Chile, I made a variety of films - both very cheap and more expensive, but it was always clear to me that it was not worth making openly political cinema, because the audience is too chaste, naively perceives it. We had very interesting discussions with the workers, and I found that the majority are interested in Van Gogh, some circumstances from the life of Rembrandt, and not a "proletarian culture." Little by little, I realized that perhaps we, people from non-hungry circles, came up with all this, believing that films should help people. So I began to make films, trying to affect paradoxical situations: for example, peasants refuse the land that the government gives to them because they do not know what to do with it. This happened many times. They refused this poisoned gift, preferring to stay with the landowner, whom they knew well. I, in particular, shot about this, but I always tried not to be serious, because if you make a film seriously, it is a dangerous film, because of this chaste, naive reaction.
Dmitry Volchek: Ruis managed to work again in Chile only in the 89th year. He returned to his homeland for the filming of the BBC series "TV Dante" on a new translation of the Divine Comedy. The other series was shot by Peter Greenway.
Raul Ruis: Dante descends to hell, and this hell is Chile. He arrives on an official visit accompanied by the consul, that is, Virgil. I explained to the actors that the main idea is that if you sin in this world, after death you will become a Chilean. And we beat this idea that Chile is hell. The film was not shown in Europe, but some American bought it for rental and changed the name: "Dante" to make it clear to the public, he replaced with "Diablo TV". In Chile, the film was accepted very well. Chileans instantly admitted that Chile is hell. Of course, we are real patriots: we support our underworld.
Dmitry Volchek: Some Ruis biographers claim that he was an adviser to Salvador Allende. This is not entirely true.
Raul Ruis: I was an adviser to the Socialist Party, one of the eight parties that were part of the coalition of "popular unity". Alende had his own advisers, and, I must say, I did not want to approach him - for a very simple reason: I wanted to be able to freely criticize the party’s policy, to be more independent. In truth, my interest in politics was rather modest. I was and remain a socialist - of course, this word means a lot of everything ... let’s say - I believed that a certain part of state functions should go to society, and my views have not changed in this. After the coup, the military, as you know, did not particularly almond, so all their opponents had to unite. One of the metaphors for Chile is hell, but this is an idea of the underworld, which was proposed by Swedenborg. Swedenborg has this strange idea that hell is quite like paradise. In hell, you can only become what you want to be, and this is the essence of hell, in this limited possibilities. Chile is precisely this type of hell, there is nothing terrifying, but this tiny element of a nightmare is present, which is gradually pumped and it becomes almost impossible to resist. There is such a sociological concept of "hatred of the homeland." In French they say: "La haine du Pays Natal".
Dmitry Volchek: Until the mid-90s, Ruis worked aside from large-budget star cinema, financing of many of his paintings was provided by the Gavr Cultural Center, which he headed for several years. These tapes, as a rule, fell, if you use comforting euphemisms, in the "club rental" - in other words, almost no one saw them. Commercial distributors became interested in Ruis when the painting “Three Life and one Death” came out, since the main role - more precisely, four roles - played by Marcello Mastroianni. The film was released shortly before the death of the great actor.
Raoul Ruis: Kyare Mastroianni liked my films, she talked with her father, and a man called me and said that Mastroianni would like to star from me. Then I decided that since it was Mastroanni, to make a film with one story for him to be disrespectful for him. It is better to make two stories, or even three, and even better four. I met Mastroianni and told him that my films never bring money. He replied: "I like it." I explained to him that these would be four films at once. He replied: "A! Originale." I told him that he would have to play four characters, and little by little we understand that this is one and the same person, but these four characters do not need to play differently. "Play the same way, and the audience will believe that they are different, because the difference is not how you play, but in the connections between situations."
Dmitry Volchek: After the Three Life, Raul Ruis shot several more films with the participation of stars: Katrin Denev and Michelle Piccoli played in the "Genealogy of Crime", Isabelle Juppper and Jeanne Balibar in the "Comedy of Innociality". We will not forget the Ruis’s cash register - “the time gained”, the film adaptation of Roman Proust with Katrin Deneuve, Emmanuel Bear and Vincent Perez. Now Ruis is starting shooting a film about Gustav Klimte - a star is also invited to the role of the artist - an American actor, who, in Europe, seems to love more than in their homeland.
Raul Ruis: This is an imaginary story developing around Klimt. The film will be called "Vienna History. Fantastic play." This is a narrative in the spirit of Schitzler, a fantastic, unreal, imaginary relationship of Klimt with Cleo de Merod. Naturally, turning to this topic, we choose one aspect of Klimt’s life - his relationship with women. But other aspects of the artist’s life are also the moment when art passes from the custody of the state to private patrons, philanthropists. Apparently, John Malkovich, who is very similar to Klimt, will play the main role.
Dmitry Volchek: If we count the shortages, Raul Ruis shot more than fifty paintings. In a conversation with the director, I said that by inertia I perceive the "Three Crons of the Sailor" - a film that I watched 20 years ago, as its main work. What picture does the director himself consider his Opus Magnum?
Raoul Ruis: I think I don't have such a film. Jonathan Rosenbaum, a famous critic, once told me: "You are a master who has no masterpiece." But creating a masterpiece is not easy. When you become a master in a limited society and do something new, imperfect, it should be something very small, because there are so many other things around. For me, the main thing is poetic qualities. If we are talking about the "three crowns of the sailor", there are, in fact, ten films united together. It should be considered in two senses - as a comic book, a metaphorical adventure; And, on the other hand, this is an introduction into English logic. I worked on this script with my friend - I wrote in Spanish, and he translated. We worked in my little Parisian apartment ... This man was a mathematician, and in order to warm his interest in translation, I began to offer logical examples. If you are interested in analytical philosophy, you know the well -known paradox of Moore "It is raining, but I do not believe it." Or "do not believe today what I will say tomorrow." The film has a dancer from a cabaret who speaks exclusively the theses of Heidegger, and Heidegger's words look almost pornographic in this context - all these discussions about the “nudity of being” ... What distinguishes my films is a constant inclusion of frivolous elements and what is called bodily plastic. And constantly - this is my nature - a game with what is considered a "bad taste." So, if you want to introduce me into the Russian context, I am probably Anti-Tarkovsky. I love Tarkovsky, but I am probably his antipode.
Dmitry Volchek: It’s strange, because critics are just finding parallels with Tarkovsky - in the picture “riding on the whale”, for example ...
Raul Ruis: Maybe through Florensky. I was engaged in Florensky, in the "poetics of cinema" there are even some allusions. I am not so religious in this sense, I am not a mystic, but I think that Florensky has many wonderful ideas related to cinema. And it delights me. I am not a mathematician and, unlike Florensky, I know very little about the philosophy of mathematics, but everything that is connected with the cinema is very important to me. The lectures that he gave in an art school give very important definitions for cinema, which I have never met before. If you place me in the Russian context, Vygotsky is closer to Florensky for me. After all, Tarkovsky revered Florensky, so maybe through Florensky I have this connection with Tarkovsky.
Dmitry Volchek: In the preface to his monograph "Poetics of Cinema", Raul Ruis says that cinema is a tool for reflection, a machine that allows you to travel through space and time. Speaking at the Rotterodm festival, Raul Ruze proposed a new, more sophisticated definition of cinema.
Raul Ruis: I am constantly trying to find a definition of what a movie is, and often change my opinion. My last definition is: "Cinema is all types of art connected by poetry." Poetry - means madness. And also inspiration and technology, as, say, with an Ezra Pound. There are a great many types of arts. In the prolon to the book "The Art of Cutting Meat", written in the middle of the 15th century, it is told how the Roman dad decided which art forms are acceptable. Three hundred arts were proposed, and he recognized eighty. The art of gait, the art of dance, the art of the view - all these are types of art, because each needs their own formalization. Everyone has rules no less important than the rules of football or road. But the problem of these rules is that they tend to become tough. So the task of poetry is to destroy this rigidity in reality created by the unity of arts.
Raul Ruis: This was the only film that survived from the series. There was a danger of a different kind with him - he enjoyed too much success. And I was scared, tried to destroy this success and make a film that no one would like. This is what I hate is to be popular. It was a false idea of the French left - to make a large, popular art. False, because popularity is nothing. "Popularity" means that everyone likes the film. And this is terrible.
Dmitry Volchek: Raul Ruis, who has been working in the cinema for forty years (he shot his first short film in 1964) should not be afraid of a sudden explosion of popular love. Even many Sinefils who despise the Hollywood type cinema admit that Ruis’s films seem to them too incomprehensible, too incoherent and therefore unbearably boring.
Raul Ruis: If you have enterprise, imagination, ambition, and a modest budget, all the more difficult things you want to do. The problem is that this approach is considered nonsense these days, because you are expected to make films that the audience will perceive instantly. Previously, there was such a principle - if you can do something complicated, why do simple? If you have the opportunity to make a film, you must invest in it the maximum of what you want. And then - not so important. Someone will be interested, someone is not. If three people are interested, this is already wonderful. That is, you specifically do not address your film. The decoding is very simple: you make films not for the public, but for individuals, for individuals, but each of them is the public.
Dmitry Volchek: One of the reasons for the confusion, into which the audience leads Ruis's paintings is a categorical disagreement of the director with the theory of the central conflict underlying Hollywood cinema. In the book "Poetics of Cinema", Ruis explains:
"The theory of the central conflict requires that the story begins with the fact that some characters want something, while others prevent them in every way. Such a conflict makes us abandon all stories that do not imply confrontation, from all events requiring indifference or impassive curiosity, whether it is a landscape, distant a thunderstorm or dinner with friends, and, finally, all that is called mixed mixed Scenes: say, the usual meal is interrupted by an inexplicable incident that is not related to what is happening, and, therefore, both development and meal continues the worst that the theory of the central conflict celebrates “serial scenes”, that is, events that are not connected with each other, but are equally directed, and two people are fighting on the street. ice cream".
"What type of cinema causes you disgust?" I asked Raul Ruis.
Raoul Ruis: What is called “Formatism” in French is all the elements that reduce the film to a well -made product. I love films that are completely different from mine, but here we are talking about any television films, from which there remains that you have already watched them, because they have absolutely the same structure as the films that you have already seen.
Dmitry Volchek: It is interesting that the Ruis method is easiest to compare precisely with the television series strategy: the behavior of heroes is determined not by the logic, but by the addictions of numerous screenwriters and the conditions of acting contracts. Moreover, some paintings of Ruis (for example, the "golden ship") are filled with quotes from soap operas. A mixture of incompatible genres, the labyrinth -shaped design of the narrative (in many films of Ruis there is a storyteller, announcer) and, finally, the total absurdism of conflicts is confused by the viewer, expecting from the cinema "intelligence" and "credibility". The Ruis turns the absolutely traditional documentary television film on elections to the National Assembly of France into a study of cinematographic time - a tape of Mebius with repeating scenes, which become shorter and shorter; Who won the elections and whether they have passed the public at all and does not recognize. He transforms the melodrama into a detective in order to immediately move on to social satire; The plot lines suddenly break off, new characters appear that change the alignment of forces ... Ruis calls this technique “pentaludia”, the method of unpredictable story - the characters are thrown, like playing bones, and find themselves in situations that only the case and fate are commanded.
The unpredictability of plot turns in Ruis's paintings illustrates the story of the film adaptation of the novel by Sadekh Hedayat "Blind Owl".
Raoul Ruis: I have long wanted to make a film on this Iranian book, so strange, I really liked it. Benois Peters and I wrote the script, and suddenly two days before the start of the filming, something terrible happened: I found that the production designer, who made all the scenery and costumes, decided that the film was happening in Arabia, but in fact it was India. Everything turned out to be Arabic. I had two days to change the script. We started shooting, and suddenly in the middle I saw that the film turned out to be too anti -General. I did not understand this at first, but gradually I began to notice that the film is about the predetermination and evil emanating from women. And, little by little, as the filming, I hated this novel. And I decided to go to another plot - the Spanish play Tirso de Molina - the play about freedom of choice completely opposite in spirit. And this mixture turned out to be a truly Muslim film, which many of my friends who profess Islam liked.
Dmitry Volchek: I asked Raul Ruis to formulate two key thesis of his three -volume lectures "Poetics of Cinema" for our transfer.
Raul Ruis: the image should appear earlier than the narrative. The image that will determine, frame, generate the narrative. This is the first. And the second is that if your film has 500 frames, you should always perceive them as 500 different films. Each frame is at least one film. And you can combine them in different ways, not only installation. This implies that you need to change the filming method.
Dmitry Volchek: Of course, the anarchism of Ruis and his unwillingness to follow the artificial logic of the linear narrative, brought to the white heat of the producers of his paintings.
Raul Ruis: It’s funny that I was going to become a revolutionary and prepared for the struggle - I studied how to make an escape, how to live underground and all that. Only later did I realize that all this is not at all necessary for the revolutionary, but it is very useful for the filmmaker. You have to communicate with the producer, he is your enemy, but you are forced to deal with him, negotiate - everything is like that.
Dmitry Volchek: The first and only Hollywood film by Ruis, the “Broken Image” was the field of the battle of the director and producer. Ruis believes that he won. It seems to me that Hollywood still won: Ruis’s handwriting can only be recognized by the traditional topic of a bifurcation of consciousness, everything else was killed by the terrifying game of William Baldwin and Ann Pario.
Raul Ruis: When the Spaniards came to Chile, they won all the battles. These were very good warriors hardened in battles in Flanders. Typically, the Spaniards used such tactics - they first captured the head - the Indian emperor - killed him and, of course, became, at the head. But in Chile it came out differently - the Spaniards captured the king, but fifteen days later a new one appeared among the Indians. The Indians invented many tricks that helped them defeat the Spaniards on the battlefield. When I shot the film "Broken Image", it was very difficult because I was seriously controlled. And I had to resort to all sorts of tricks - I answered “yes”, referring to “no”, “no”, implying “yes”, and little by little I realized that I was playing the same game as the Indians with the Spaniards. After all, the Indians, in the end, won the war. She dragged on for almost three hundred years, but they won - the Spaniards had to go to negotiations. Here are their tricks - never attack if the enemy is waiting for you; If he is waiting for you here, you attack in another place; If he is waiting for you everywhere, you do not attack, but go to rest. And somehow I told myself: "I am not making my Hollywood film, but a documentary about Indians in Chile." If you watch this film, pay attention to this hidden part: a hidden part of a “broken image” is a film about the struggle of the Indians with the Spaniards in Chile.
Dmitry Volchek: European and American audience Political emigrant Ruis is signed by paintings made after the 75th year. His Chilean films, which were supported by the Government of Salvador Allende, did not even fall into the Soviet rental. I saw only one of his films of the end of the 6th, “three sad tigers”, and I can say that he looks most like “I walk around Moscow”, although Ruis himself claims that it was inspired by the experiments of Dushan Makaveev.
Raoul Ruis: In Chile, I made a variety of films - both very cheap and more expensive, but it was always clear to me that it was not worth making openly political cinema, because the audience is too chaste, naively perceives it. We had very interesting discussions with the workers, and I found that the majority are interested in Van Gogh, some circumstances from the life of Rembrandt, and not a "proletarian culture." Little by little, I realized that perhaps we, people from non-hungry circles, came up with all this, believing that films should help people. So I began to make films, trying to affect paradoxical situations: for example, peasants refuse the land that the government gives to them because they do not know what to do with it. This happened many times. They refused this poisoned gift, preferring to stay with the landowner, whom they knew well. I, in particular, shot about this, but I always tried not to be serious, because if you make a film seriously, it is a dangerous film, because of this chaste, naive reaction.
Dmitry Volchek: Ruis managed to work again in Chile only in the 89th year. He returned to his homeland for the filming of the BBC series "TV Dante" on a new translation of the Divine Comedy. The other series was shot by Peter Greenway.
Raul Ruis: Dante descends to hell, and this hell is Chile. He arrives on an official visit accompanied by the consul, that is, Virgil. I explained to the actors that the main idea is that if you sin in this world, after death you will become a Chilean. And we beat this idea that Chile is hell. The film was not shown in Europe, but some American bought it for rental and changed the name: "Dante" to make it clear to the public, he replaced with "Diablo TV". In Chile, the film was accepted very well. Chileans instantly admitted that Chile is hell. Of course, we are real patriots: we support our underworld.
Dmitry Volchek: Some Ruis biographers claim that he was an adviser to Salvador Allende. This is not entirely true.
Raul Ruis: I was an adviser to the Socialist Party, one of the eight parties that were part of the coalition of "popular unity". Alende had his own advisers, and, I must say, I did not want to approach him - for a very simple reason: I wanted to be able to freely criticize the party’s policy, to be more independent. In truth, my interest in politics was rather modest. I was and remain a socialist - of course, this word means a lot of everything ... let’s say - I believed that a certain part of state functions should go to society, and my views have not changed in this. After the coup, the military, as you know, did not particularly almond, so all their opponents had to unite. One of the metaphors for Chile is hell, but this is an idea of the underworld, which was proposed by Swedenborg. Swedenborg has this strange idea that hell is quite like paradise. In hell, you can only become what you want to be, and this is the essence of hell, in this limited possibilities. Chile is precisely this type of hell, there is nothing terrifying, but this tiny element of a nightmare is present, which is gradually pumped and it becomes almost impossible to resist. There is such a sociological concept of "hatred of the homeland." In French they say: "La haine du Pays Natal".
Dmitry Volchek: Until the mid-90s, Ruis worked aside from large-budget star cinema, financing of many of his paintings was provided by the Gavr Cultural Center, which he headed for several years. These tapes, as a rule, fell, if you use comforting euphemisms, in the "club rental" - in other words, almost no one saw them. Commercial distributors became interested in Ruis when the painting “Three Life and one Death” came out, since the main role - more precisely, four roles - played by Marcello Mastroianni. The film was released shortly before the death of the great actor.
Raoul Ruis: Kyare Mastroianni liked my films, she talked with her father, and a man called me and said that Mastroianni would like to star from me. Then I decided that since it was Mastroanni, to make a film with one story for him to be disrespectful for him. It is better to make two stories, or even three, and even better four. I met Mastroianni and told him that my films never bring money. He replied: "I like it." I explained to him that these would be four films at once. He replied: "A! Originale." I told him that he would have to play four characters, and little by little we understand that this is one and the same person, but these four characters do not need to play differently. "Play the same way, and the audience will believe that they are different, because the difference is not how you play, but in the connections between situations."
Dmitry Volchek: After the Three Life, Raul Ruis shot several more films with the participation of stars: Katrin Denev and Michelle Piccoli played in the "Genealogy of Crime", Isabelle Juppper and Jeanne Balibar in the "Comedy of Innociality". We will not forget the Ruis’s cash register - “the time gained”, the film adaptation of Roman Proust with Katrin Deneuve, Emmanuel Bear and Vincent Perez. Now Ruis is starting shooting a film about Gustav Klimte - a star is also invited to the role of the artist - an American actor, who, in Europe, seems to love more than in their homeland.
Raul Ruis: This is an imaginary story developing around Klimt. The film will be called "Vienna History. Fantastic play." This is a narrative in the spirit of Schitzler, a fantastic, unreal, imaginary relationship of Klimt with Cleo de Merod. Naturally, turning to this topic, we choose one aspect of Klimt’s life - his relationship with women. But other aspects of the artist’s life are also the moment when art passes from the custody of the state to private patrons, philanthropists. Apparently, John Malkovich, who is very similar to Klimt, will play the main role.
Dmitry Volchek: If we count the shortages, Raul Ruis shot more than fifty paintings. In a conversation with the director, I said that by inertia I perceive the "Three Crons of the Sailor" - a film that I watched 20 years ago, as its main work. What picture does the director himself consider his Opus Magnum?
Raoul Ruis: I think I don't have such a film. Jonathan Rosenbaum, a famous critic, once told me: "You are a master who has no masterpiece." But creating a masterpiece is not easy. When you become a master in a limited society and do something new, imperfect, it should be something very small, because there are so many other things around. For me, the main thing is poetic qualities. If we are talking about the "three crowns of the sailor", there are, in fact, ten films united together. It should be considered in two senses - as a comic book, a metaphorical adventure; And, on the other hand, this is an introduction into English logic. I worked on this script with my friend - I wrote in Spanish, and he translated. We worked in my little Parisian apartment ... This man was a mathematician, and in order to warm his interest in translation, I began to offer logical examples. If you are interested in analytical philosophy, you know the well -known paradox of Moore "It is raining, but I do not believe it." Or "do not believe today what I will say tomorrow." The film has a dancer from a cabaret who speaks exclusively the theses of Heidegger, and Heidegger's words look almost pornographic in this context - all these discussions about the “nudity of being” ... What distinguishes my films is a constant inclusion of frivolous elements and what is called bodily plastic. And constantly - this is my nature - a game with what is considered a "bad taste." So, if you want to introduce me into the Russian context, I am probably Anti-Tarkovsky. I love Tarkovsky, but I am probably his antipode.
Dmitry Volchek: It’s strange, because critics are just finding parallels with Tarkovsky - in the picture “riding on the whale”, for example ...
Raul Ruis: Maybe through Florensky. I was engaged in Florensky, in the "poetics of cinema" there are even some allusions. I am not so religious in this sense, I am not a mystic, but I think that Florensky has many wonderful ideas related to cinema. And it delights me. I am not a mathematician and, unlike Florensky, I know very little about the philosophy of mathematics, but everything that is connected with the cinema is very important to me. The lectures that he gave in an art school give very important definitions for cinema, which I have never met before. If you place me in the Russian context, Vygotsky is closer to Florensky for me. After all, Tarkovsky revered Florensky, so maybe through Florensky I have this connection with Tarkovsky.
Dmitry Volchek: In the preface to his monograph "Poetics of Cinema", Raul Ruis says that cinema is a tool for reflection, a machine that allows you to travel through space and time. Speaking at the Rotterodm festival, Raul Ruze proposed a new, more sophisticated definition of cinema.
Raul Ruis: I am constantly trying to find a definition of what a movie is, and often change my opinion. My last definition is: "Cinema is all types of art connected by poetry." Poetry - means madness. And also inspiration and technology, as, say, with an Ezra Pound. There are a great many types of arts. In the prolon to the book "The Art of Cutting Meat", written in the middle of the 15th century, it is told how the Roman dad decided which art forms are acceptable. Three hundred arts were proposed, and he recognized eighty. The art of gait, the art of dance, the art of the view - all these are types of art, because each needs their own formalization. Everyone has rules no less important than the rules of football or road. But the problem of these rules is that they tend to become tough. So the task of poetry is to destroy this rigidity in reality created by the unity of arts.