You can't create a movie as you think about it. And what's in the scene is not what's being seen. A shot always means something other than what it is. All are vehicles. A landscape is just a vehicle. The viewer might think different things, and I'm not going to intervene.
Women exist in my imagination. So they are necessarily a type of abstraction. Many women criticise me for this vision, but I explain to them it's to be expected, because I am a man.
The people follow what the media say. So if you said that Bruno Dumont is fantastic, it follows that more people would go to see my films. I have no wish to remain on the sidelines. I have no wish to make films that are only seen by bohemians in London and Paris.
The actor already comes with emotions to the scene: fear, the fear of being in front of the camera. It is this fear that spurs the emotion of the scene. I too am afraid; I don't know exactly what I am searching for. On the set, we are all participating in this fear together.
Personally, I don't give a toss about French viewers. I make films for foreigners - it's a bit like Ken Loach, who's not very popular in England but has had a lot of success in France. Cinema is always an experience in a foreign body.
I feel I have a political duty to reach out to the general public. I want to make films that the people want to see. So if the people want to see Johnny Depp or Tom Cruise, then it is really my job to incorporate them into my films.
I don't watch my own past films: when I watch them, I find they don't work very well, because I have changed. If I continue to make films, in fact, it is because I always want to repair my films. My inner rhythm has changed; I have changed. I have changed my way to film.
For working with non-professional actors, you have to have this particular desire to work with people who are reluctant to play in a movie. I like this relationship. I'm like a recruiter, an employment agency giving someone employment.
Cinema is my religion. It is a way to make people sensitive, through emotions. To make them feel, experience empathy. People are touched and act ethically when they are emotionally touched.
Cinema builds memories; great films continue to exist in the spectator's mind. We are naturally capable of and prone to nostalgia. A spectator will reconstruct a film he or she has seen, years later, and may even change their original opinion. One critic, for example, once gave the finger to one of my films; later he wrote me to apologize.
The battle between two men over a girl is the same as the fight for two men over a piece of land. It is all about desire. There is no difference between a love triangle and the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
I'm not Catholic. I don't believe in God. But at the same time, I'm obsessed by the sacred, by spirituality. The question of redemption has been present well before Christianity, but as French people are a bit stupid, they see all that in religious terms.
