SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: The films of Michael Haneke are forbidding to the touch. Severe, often austere, precise, cool and yet voluptuous in the manner of ideas and uncomfortable emotions, they hammer away at the psyche the way our most fearsome dreams do and can. Consider the savage, unblinking view of human weakness in stuff like Funny Games (2007), Code Unknown (2000), Cache aka Hidden (2005, this writer’s favourite), and, of course, the triumphs that are The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012). Consider too, Haneke’s style and its fearsome challenge to gentle and soothing pieties that is, honestly, the norm for most of us in the cinema; this last point, perhaps the key note on what makes his work so fundamentally upsetting to sit through. 'My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its disempowerment of the spectator," he once declared. 'They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false [because too quick] answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."*
quite simply that rare film about a filmmaker where we actually see how a director directs
Certainly Haneke, an Austrian, is working in a cinematic tradition inherited – and to some extent defined – by intellectual heavyweights like Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski. Still, Haneke’s project – and I’m not alone in believing this – is darker than that of this quartet (and boy, that’s saying something.) And right now it seems essential. I’m reminded of what Martin Scorsese once said about David Cronenberg, and I’m paraphrasing: 'I’m afraid to watch them, but I must, because they say things and do things I don’t want to hear, and yet there’s something authentic and truthful in all that darkness.’
All of which is a way to start framing up this very good documentary from director Yves Montmayeur. A frequent collaborator of Haneke’s, Montmayeur has shot behind the scenes footage for him on quite a few of his pictures over a long period. (And a great deal of that stuff is used here to powerful effect.) Michael H – Profession: Director is, as the title suggests, a look at both the director and the director’s profession. But let’s get a few things out of the way: it’s not, strictly speaking, a bio; there’s zero attempt to contextualise Haneke in terms of the wider cinema in any academic way; and the tone avoids that slavishly celebratory tone that filmmakers adopt as a reflex when faced with a subject that is famous and monumental. Still, there’s no mistaking the essential point: Haneke is an important artist who needs to be taken seriously.
What Montmayeur has done is provide a compelling insight into method and process: Michael H is quite simply that rare film about a filmmaker where we actually see how a director directs. Montmayeur uses an observational style combined with talking heads. (A filmmaker friend wryly observed after the Sydney Film Festival screening that it was like watching two hours of B roll; which isn’t unfair, but it must be said it’s great B roll!)
But this riveting film’s assets must be qualified: we see how Haneke works with crew and actors on set and in the moment, but like so many films about filmmaking, Montmayeur offers here a somewhat compromised view of the role and responsibilities beholden to the director. Which is to say that a whole lot of fundamentals are missing: we don’t see or hear Haneke discuss that essential tool of the director – lens choice – and nor does he discuss how one builds rhythms in editing or use camera placement"¦
Still, we do get to see how Haneke develops scenes with actors on the set of Amour, The White Ribbon, The Piano Teacher (2001); his personal style is physical and deeply connected to the performer. He talks and moves around the set a lot. He touches the actors in support or to make a point; his voice is even, strong and so casually assertive at times he might be ordering take-out.
Haneke is famously close-mouthed about interpreting the themes and content of his work; indeed, the best stuff here is very revealing of a man who is both thoughtful and self-conscious. It’s priceless watching Haneke – this titan of the cinema of discomfort – squirming under Montmayeur’s questions on, say, the subtext of The White Ribbon.
Instead, Montmayeur turns to the director’s collaborators to fill in questions of content and interpretation while pondering Haneke’s idiosyncrasies as both artist and individual: Isabelle Huppert enjoys his sense of humour, while Juliette Binoche wonders why the director restricts his work to a place where he allows little hope to alight on all that darkness.
But I think the best thing about the film is the portrait of Haneke as an artist: he comes off as friendly, sensible, virile, and staggeringly youthful for a man who is seventy years of age. His voice is gentle; he’s rarely seen not smiling. His movements are quick. There are flashes of temper, but filmmaking is a notoriously burdensome business so these moments never seem excessive or a sign of an intolerant personality. (Indeed, Haneke appears to be supremely patient.) The film’s best bit has Haneke holding an actor/director workshop for some students; his criticism of their work is astute, to the point, and not at all flattering, but it’s delivered with such smiling precision the blows to their collective ego are nothing compared to the grave seriousness which Haneke addresses their efforts.
All of which to say is that Montmayeur’s film seems but a rejoinder to the old chestnut about confusing the artist with the work (a fallacy that Haneke comments on here, more than once). Haneke’s movies – violent, tough, deep – are the work of an avuncular man who likes people, himself and the world. Haneke is like a favourite uncle who, once the necessary parting arrives, one cannot wait to see again.
* In the interests of complete disclosure: I found this on Wikipedia – which for obvious reasons I am disinclined to quote from; but I noted that it derived from an Austrian publication called Film als Katharsis: in Austria (in)felix: zum österreichischem Film der 80er Jahre - Bono, Francesco (ed.), 1992 – so thought it worthy of inclusion.
