Car­los Rey­gadas: ​‘I hate enter­tain­ment in cinema’

The bril­liant Our Time by Mex­i­can writer/​director Car­los Rey­gadas offers an unflinch­ing por­trait of a mar­ried cou­ple in roman­tic freefall: one, a poet, is played by Rey­gadas him­self; the oth­er is played by his wife and long-time edi­tor, Natalia Lopez. It’s anoth­er tumul­tuous and con­fronta­tion­al film to add to a canon that includes exper­i­men­tal mood piece Post Tene­bras Lux, tran­scen­dent reli­gious dra­ma Silent Light and the explic­it polit­i­cal alle­go­ry Bat­tle in Heav­en.

LWLies: In Our Time there is this idea of the artist as cold­ly ratio­nal, and the labour­er has this poet­ic and free view of the world. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing view of what it means to be an artist.

Rey­gadas: We think of the artist as some­one who isn’t dri­ven by the ratio­nal. This is actu­al­ly a cliché́. There are all sorts of artists, some that are ratio­nal, some that are intu­itive. Mar­cel Proust talked about this a lot in a book of his called ​‘Against Sainte-Beuve’, who was a crit­ic of his time, who said that it was impor­tant to know every­thing about an artist to see from where his cre­ation came. Proust said this is absurd, as it’s almost like you’re deal­ing with two dif­fer­ent peo­ple: the one who is cre­at­ing the art; the oth­er who deal­ing with life.

You can enter into anoth­er state of con­scious­ness when you cre­ate – you feel things dif­fer­ent­ly. In my case, I’m always asked about the speed of my films which are very con­tem­pla­tive, and then in per­son I talk very fast. All these com­plex­i­ties are dif­fi­cult to grasp, so I was real­ly into chal­leng­ing this roman­tic idea of the poet being some­one who has to walk around with a flower between his teeth.

What do you do when you’re not mak­ing art?

Before I make a film, I always do some oth­er things first. I like con­struc­tion. I live in the coun­try­side so I have a lot of work to do. I have designed some hous­es. Then I built them. Now I’m going to build a barn. I just built a house for some­one else. These things I have to put off when I’m film­ing. The first house I built was my own, 11 years ago. Then we built a stu­dio, then some bun­ga­lows, then a house for my par­ents. I have this architectural/​construction side. I like to spend whole days with the chil­dren. And read­ing more is very nec­es­sary for me. After fin­ish­ing a film, I want to cut off from every­thing for a cou­ple of years. In the mean­time, I’m think­ing of a new film. Not sit­ting down to work – just think­ing, observ­ing, devel­op­ing a theme. The one I’m think­ing of now has been in my head for five years. All this accu­mu­lates ener­gy. And when the ener­gy is there, I sit down and write.

How do you know the ener­gy is at the cor­rect level?

I can­not tell you. It’s like, how do you know you need to go on hol­i­day? You just know.

Do you procrastinate?

No. I’m pret­ty much the oppo­site. My wife says I’m almost like a Calvin­ist who needs to con­stant­ly work.

Do you feel that every­thing you do in life is work­ing towards some high­er pur­pose? Like a utilitarian?

No, no, no. I do things out of plea­sure. I do know, in anoth­er sense, that I don’t like to live with a sense of urgency. I am very aware of the fugue state of life – things just go, and you have to grab them. It’s more a mat­ter of build­ing sense into what you’re doing. Being awake. In that sense, I do like to get up and go out for a walk in the moun­tains with my dogs. Then I build and read and what­ev­er else I’m doing at the time.

Is there a con­nec­tion between this fugue state and fear?

There might seem to be, but I think they’re the exact oppo­site. When you are fear­ful, you want to evade life. You exploit your­self when it comes to work. You enter­tain your­self as much as you can. And you avoid pres­ence in life. The con­scious­ness of this fugue state pro­duces the oppo­site effect – it makes you live life more intense­ly, because you are not afraid to live. I see it much more in terms of enjoy­ment rather than fear. I know that this fear can be used in cor­rupt soci­eties all over the plan­et. In the devel­oped west­ern world it’s the worst.

Some­times I feel that Aldous Hux­ley was such a vision­ary in his nov­el ​‘Brave New World’, but the place where he got it wrong is that the drug they all took to go to work and be mer­ry is, instead of being an active drug, a pas­sive, depres­sive drug which is enter­tain­ment. Have you noticed how con­sumerism and cap­i­tal­ism soci­ety is at its most suc­cess­ful when it comes to enter­tain­ment? Nev­er more – enter­tain­ment is the drug for a fear­ful soci­ety of self exploitation.

Do you make entertainment?

Def­i­nite­ly not. I don’t want to enter­tain peo­ple at all. And I don’t like to be enter­tained. I hate enter­tain­ment in cin­e­ma. If I want to be enter­tained, I’ll watch a foot­ball match. If you ask me what enter­tain­ment is, I would say it’s a uni­lat­er­al pre­sen­ta­tion to keep your mind in a pas­sive state. Time pass­es where you’re not look­ing at what is real­ly going on. What I try to do is always bilat­er­al. I’m pre­sent­ing some­thing to you, but I’m not telling you where to look, what to think, what to feel or what things mean. When things are pre­sent­ed rather than rep­re­sent­ed, they don’t have a closed mean­ing. Just like life or a land­scape or a lit­tle build­ing. In this way, my films are like a paint­ing in that they don’t say any­thing to you, you can look, con­nect, cre­ate a rela­tion­ship and a sub­jec­tive meaning.

Our Time is released 12 July. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.