Alice Rohrwach­er: ​‘We imag­ine that a good man does good, but it’s an illusion’

Alice Rohrwach­er has been a film fes­ti­val dar­ling since her 2011 debut fea­ture, Cor­po Celeste, looked at catholi­cism in con­tem­po­rary Italy through the prism of a young girl’s com­ing-of-age. Her fol­low-up, 2014’s The Won­ders, again rep­re­sents the con­fu­sion of female teen­hood, as well as the slow dis­ap­pear­ance of the tra­di­tion­al Ital­ian way of life.

Her lat­est, Hap­py as Laz­zaro, won Best Screen­play at the 2018 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and is inspired by a news­pa­per item about a vil­lage work­ing under slave con­di­tions. It fol­lows a hap­py-go-lucky farm boy named Laz­zaro liv­ing in a small com­mu­ni­ty of labour­ers liv­ing under a sim­i­lar set-up. We sat down with Rohrwach­er to chat about the film’s themes, and how she was inspired by a news­pa­per article.

LWLies: So is Laz­zaro happy?

Rohrwach­er: ​‘Laz­zaro Felice’ is how, in Italy, we talk about some­one who has noth­ing, but is hap­py because he sees oth­ers hap­py. I want­ed to tell the sto­ry of some­one who doesn’t pur­sue his own hap­pi­ness, but instead pur­sues the hap­pi­ness of others.

Do you think that Lazzaro’s open­ness to oth­ers and his pas­siv­i­ty is the only way to be happy?

No, absolute­ly not! I don’t think that we must be hap­py. The film is not about ​‘being’ hap­py, but about ​‘see­ing’ hap­py, which are two very dif­fer­ent sen­ti­ments. One is a search for ado­les­cent empa­thy for the char­ac­ter, as though the film told us to be like him. But there’s anoth­er mode of spec­ta­tor­ship, where the char­ac­ter is instead some­thing that we have to watch and remem­ber. Per­haps the mem­o­ry of Lazzaro’s inno­cence is both painful and pleas­ant because it’s an orig­i­nal yearn­ing, some­thing from which we’ve been sep­a­rat­ed but which we remember.

Laz­zaro keeps being good but is also beat­en down. Why is he like this?

Laz­zaro nev­er changes; the world changes around him. We often imag­ine that a good man does good, but it’s an illu­sion. A real good man doesn’t know what is good or bad, he’s sim­ply open to every­thing, with­out a fil­ter. Laz­zaro is a mys­tery and a form of gen­tle rev­o­lu­tion. A script is often seen as some­thing to dom­i­nate, but here I admit that there are few Laz­zaros and I watch him like I would watch a saint, or a tree.

The film rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent way of existing.

I think what you need to search for in the film is in the integri­ty of the image. It doesn’t try to seduce the spec­ta­tor, but instead appear to him, just like Laz­zaro appears. In a time when images have entered our lives like liq­uids, I want­ed to make a film with sol­id images that con­front the spectator.

It seems like you made the film from Lazzaro’s point of view, to make us see the world with the same open­ness as him.

I don’t think it’s Lazzaro’s point of view, but rather that of the world on Laz­zaro. He is some­times embar­rass­ing because he shows us some­thing that, deep inside, we recog­nise in our­selves too, but we pre­tend not to. We are embar­rassed when some­one sings bad­ly because maybe we don’t sing well either. We’re embar­rassed by things that we par­tic­i­pate in but that we hide, and I think this type of embar­rass­ment is important.

In the end, maybe we see how cap­i­tal­ism is bad in the sec­ond part in the big city, but we also see it in the first part.

The sec­ond part is more episod­ic because nar­ra­tive in our time is more episod­ic, espe­cial­ly because there isn’t one cap­i­tal­ism any­more. Cap­i­tal­ism cre­ates con­flict­ing class­es, and a sen­ti­ment of com­mu­ni­ty with­in one class, where­as now, there isn’t a sense of com­mu­ni­ty any­more. There’s only a dif­fused fear and an impos­si­bil­i­ty to believe in innocence.

The scene in the church when Laz­zaro lit­er­al­ly takes the music away is inter­est­ing because it places Laz­zaro sep­a­rate from religion.

For me, it was impor­tant to tell the sto­ry of a pre­his­toric saint, not belong­ing to reli­gion. Laz­zaro is a saint in the world, so he has to find his own place. This scene seemed like a fun and beau­ti­ful way to show that. It’s like a dream because it’d be nice to hear some beau­ti­ful music that we can take away with us.

You were inspired to make this film by a news article?

Yes, just a few lines! It wasn’t con­sid­ered a big thing because the peo­ple were not chained or caged. It was sim­ply that no one told them that they could choose their life. It was just silence. That sto­ry also shows that, when you are work­ing hard, you don’t allow your­self to think of what to do – and this last­ed for hun­dreds of years! It’s inspired by a real sto­ry, but I think it could hap­pen any­where, because there are priv­i­leged peo­ple who do the same thing every­where. They’re not known because it’s not some­thing that you can make a big show about.

Because it’s very dis­creet and a form of ​‘soft’ slav­ery, in a way.

Yes, and to me it’s almost worse. Because it’s insid­i­ous and some­thing that you can nev­er feel lib­er­at­ed from.

I also like how, in the sec­ond half, the peo­ple read the arti­cle about how hor­ri­ble their past was, but they are now in this awful lit­tle house…

I don’t think they want to go back…

No, but both places and times were bad.

Noth­ing changes for the peo­ple at the bot­tom of the world, never.

Hap­py as Laz­zaro is released 5 April. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.