Q&A WITH ROBERTO MINERVINI
Roberto Minervini has chronicled the lives of marginalized communities in the United States for almost two decades. His films straddle the line between fiction and nonfiction, offering lived-in portraits of disenfranchised Americans that often stem from real-life stories and situations. More recently, he also co-produced Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light. The Damned, his new film about a group of soldiers sent to patrol the hinterlands of Montana during the Civil War, earned him a Best Director Award in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
Q. You’ve written about how you weren’t surprised that Trump won the election in 2016 since you’d seen the rise of right-wing grassroots movements, and now extremist groups, in the United States for years. How have these observations influenced your film practice and your decision to make a film about the Civil War at this moment?
A. As I was observing the rise of right-wing extremism and seeing the resurgence of paramilitary groups in the South, I was observing a chronic, pathological, and endemic division among people. That division reflected both ideological and class differences.
The ideas for my films came about parallel to these observations. I don’t see The Damned as the sub-product of The Other Side or What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire, both of which deal with extremism, but as an idea that came about at the same time, because the Civil War was not about fixing a division, so much as creating one. My film, which is not a war film about the Civil War, stems from this idea: that the Civil War never ended and the division it created has calcified. So when I talk about the emergence of a populist leader like Donald Trump, or the fact that I am concerned about extremism in America, I’m reacting to the same division that has calcified over centuries.
Q. Your film engages a series of topics revolving around the question of war, but returns to dilemmas around faith several times. What accounts for the prominence of faith in The Damned?
A. I look at faith as the most successful way to make sense of things. That’s why faith is almost omnipresent and omniscient in my films. I let faith into my films because it allows me to see how people really try to make sense of things that absolutely don’t make sense, are anachronistic, or go against our democratic principles. As an observer, or student of American society, I am interested in the fact that faith is once again heavily politicized. I think that the only way to make sense of some of the things that are happening in America is by going against rationality and making a — pun-intended — leap of faith.
War is a supreme case that allows us to talk about how faith can justify something that is absolutely inhumane. But the same goes for the attempt to justify the great political and ideological divide among people in America. The divide always comes down to faith, to that which is godly or ungodly. My question is: is faith really meant to unify, or is it meant to calcify pre-existing divisions among different classes, races, and genders?
Q. The use of shallow focus in The Damned keeps all of the action fixed on the soldiers on-screen in spite of whatever happens around them. Is there a reason you privileged this form of proximity?
A. These decisions were influenced by how I thought about placing the film within the war movie genre, particularly the American tradition of war cinema. I looked at the tropes and precepts of American war cinema to try to redefine, redesign, and recontextualize them.
For example, American war films set in the Old West always emphasize the beauty of landscapes, which I believe mitigates the violence of the films themselves. I was thinking about that and how I could come up with an artistic way to create dissonance between man and nature. So that closeness I create using vintage lenses is not meant to humanize the experience of these people at war, but to make it about the people themselves. Landscapes already carry a lot of meaning, so I wanted to emphasize the human experience as much as possible by throwing everything out of focus except the protagonists.
Q. At what stage of production do you feel most connected with your work?
A. I adore shooting because I am involved in all of the aspects of the shoot. I operate cameras and if I’m not operating a camera, I’m writing on-the-fly or gathering ideas from people around me. I become extremely relational on set and it’s beautiful to be engaged with so many people at the same time. My modus operandi when I shoot is completely different from my modus operandi in my day-to-day life, which is more silent and pensive.
And I love editing for different reasons. To be honest, I think that attending editing sessions would be extremely boring and tedious for me if it wasn’t for the fact that the person who I edit with is one of the most exquisite human beings I’ve ever met in this life. That’s Marie-Hélène Dozo, my longtime editor, a wonderful and sensitive woman. To see her rejoice in every single cut, or move back-and-forth from frame-to-frame is just a true pleasure!
Q. What’s the last film you saw and loved?
A. There’s two. One is fairly new. Since we’re talking about love and I talked about lighting, I’ll mention All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia, which I happened to be a co-producer of. But I also love the film because I love her process and the uniqueness of her voice, her sensitivity, and how she approaches a whole range of different topics.
I also love watching Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker again and again. It’s one of my favorite films and I love it because it’s just a wonderful reminder of how absorbing the experience of watching a film can be even when it’s tedious. It’s a film that never ceases to amaze me and bore me at the same time, and I value tedium as a good thing when it comes to watching films.
Q. Where is your favorite place to watch movies?
A. It used to be movie theaters. I feel really attacked by a sense of anxiety and sadness when I am in an empty or half-empty movie theater. It’s not how it used to be, so it’s bittersweet for me to go to an empty movie theater. But a very full movie theater, like in New York, is a wonderful experience. In Texas, I’ve had to deal with half-empty, huge movie theaters for years.
The other place I love to watch films in is where I’m sitting right now, my basement. I have a fairly big screen and a fairly good sound system, so at night, when my kids are asleep, I can come here and enjoy a good film.
Q. What image would you like to end this interview on?
A. This morning, for some strange reason, I was thinking about the poster for Satyajit Ray’s Devi. I was thinking about it because of how it expresses the duality of people. Everyone has a shadow that can be interpreted as their dark side, or their unknown self. We’re often defined by our secrets and I was thinking about how in society people often carry secrets, or are made to hide parts of themselves.
