Q. Art is a recurring theme throughout your films. Is that down to your early training as a painter or do you see film as an art form in itself?
It鈥檚 curious how you say 鈥渁rt鈥. What do you think you mean by 鈥渁rt鈥? Isn鈥檛 cinema art? Everything man-made has to be designed and at the top of the chain of all man-made designing is the painter. He or she should be prized. He or she creates the man or woman-made world from the design of your underpants to The Eiffel Tower, to the Apollo spaceship on its way to Jupiter.
An Italian journalist once asked me how is it that I started my career as a painter and I am now principally known 鈥 if known at all 鈥 as a film-maker. I gave an answer that suggested I grew disenchanted by painting because paintings do not have soundtracks. Perhaps I try to make paintings with movement and sound-tracks 鈥 Velazquez in bed with Rauschenberg?
It is certainly true that I am not much interested in telling stories in the cinema. I have no desire to play games with Freudian introspection. If you want to tell stories, be a novelist 鈥 a much better medium for story-telling. Unfortunately we have a writer鈥檚 cinema whereas we ought to have a painter鈥檚 cinema, but since text is the world鈥檚 primary communication vehicle it will be sometime before we have a painter鈥檚 cinema.
Q. Why do you believe The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover became such a cult favourite?
It鈥檚 a very simple revenge-story drama and we all know about the satisfaction of revenge. It鈥檚 a love story and we all identify with love stories. And it has a curious and puzzling format because it is all about colour. Puzzles are a sure thing to hold an audience鈥檚 attention, and curiosity. Most of all, it is very well acted by very watchable actors.
Q. It has an amazing cast list who before, and particularly since, have achieved global success 鈥 was it a challenge to work with them?
Everyone was co-operative and everyone enjoyed themselves, wearing Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes, eating fine food, acting in a set as big as the Ritz (whose cooks serviced the eatables). It was said among actors that you must work in a Greenaway film 鈥 that you will not become celebrated for working in a Greenaway film, but you will become famous in the next film you work in. It was sort of true. Ralph Fiennes acted in the Baby of Macon and became very famous in his next film Schindler鈥檚 List, Ewan McGregor acted in The PillowBook and became very famous in his next film Trainspotting and Martin Freeman acted in Nightwatching and soon after became super-famous in The Hobbit.
Q. What are your own personal feelings about the film almost 30 years on?
I am still intrigued by the colour games. I enjoy Michael Nyman鈥檚 music. I am appalled by Michel Gambon鈥檚 language and I watch every moment and gesture and eye-flick of Helen Mirren鈥檚 acting. Curiously, the film was very celebrated in Russia where it was distributed parallel to perestroika and glasnost. Many Russians saw the film as a metaphor for what happened when Capitalism destroyed the Soviet Union 鈥 excess greed, excess vulgarity, excess materialism, excess corruption, excess exploitation. And the central location of the film is the restaurant of cannibals coloured Soviet Red.
Q. What are you working on currently?
A. We are trying to finish a feature film about Brancusi鈥檚 walk across Europe from Romania to Paris in 1905 鈥 called indeed Walking to Paris 鈥 when Brancusi was too poor to afford the train fare but found it absolutely imperative he should be in the centre of the art world.
Q. What can people expect 鈥 and what do you hope they take away 鈥 from your talk at the 麻豆传媒 Festival of Words?
A. I have been invited to talk about The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover but I suspect we shall talk about much else besides 鈥 like, for example, the death of the cinema 鈥 although I believe I will be excused from watching the film (I have seen it a few thousand times already). I hope that new audiences will enjoy it and be thoughtfully entertained, with a lot of emphasis on the 鈥渢houghtfully鈥.
