Olivier Assayas photographed in Toronto.The Globe and Mail
The 55-year-old filmmaker Olivier Assayas has been one of the most influential and versatile figures in French cinema in the past 30 years, known for the fluidity of his style and sensitivity to modern dislocated global culture. Among his dozen films are the acidic movie-business satire Irma Vep, the costume drama Les Destinées Sentimentales, thrillers such as Demonlover and Boarding Gate and the Chekhovian drama Summer Hours.
After Assayas was approached with the idea of making a television movie about the 1994 abduction and arrest of the international terrorist known as Carlos, he offered a counter-proposal: A biography of a mercenary terrorist in the context of the last 20 years of the Cold War.
How did you manage to make a 5 1/2-hour film with all these logistical demands - countries all over Europe and the Middle East, actors playing their own nationalities with period detail - all for $18-million?
The bottom line is: It is undoable, I wouldn't do it again and I have no idea how we got away with it. The only answer I can give you is so many people worked so hard and basically for much less than they should have been paid. I think they responded to the fact that it was so challenging, with this sort of screw-you attitude, because we had no support from our producers. During the Lebanon part of the shoot, they didn't even show up. These were TV guys who had no idea what they had on their hands. Their attitude was, basically, just don't go over budget.
There was some controversy about Carlos being shown out of competition at Cannes because Carlos first showed on French television before it went to theatres. Is it still reasonable to talk about a hard distinction between cinema and television?
If you go to film producers and say, "I want to make a 5 1/2-hour film about an international terrorist," well, it won't happen. But if you go to television and say, "I can deliver three TV movies for the price of 2 1/2," they'll be happy.
The DNA of the project isn't the money but the creative approach. Since the start, I had the notion that I was extraordinarily lucky that I had a shot at making a project that was way longer than a movie audience can usually swallow, and I could do it all behind the mask of a TV mini-series. My reference points weren't whatever HBO or Canal+ do but Bergman's Fanny and Alexander or Visconti's Ludwig.
In one of your French interviews, you mentioned that, in spite of the compression of events, it was important to you to treat the audience as adults. Could you explain that further?
This is not a political film - it's a film about politics and if you simplify it, you cheat your audience and give them a child's perspective. The truth of politics is that it's Machiavellian and terrorism only makes sense if you see it as one layer of modern geopolitics. In the case of Carlos, it was the extraordinarily complex geopolitics of the Cold War. If you don't understand, for example, that the so-called "Arab world" involves shifting moments of unity and conflict between the different parties, you don't understand anything at all.
Carlos has the quality of history on the fly. How did you achieve that sense of urgency?
Very simple. I was obsessed with the notion that it was way too long and I thought it was out of control, so with every little scene I kept cutting it down to the minimum, minimum, minimum. Also, I made one long film before ( Les Destinées Sentimentales) and I had learned one thing: When you are making a long film, the action has to move twice as fast.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Carlos is playing in Toronto at TIFF Bell Lightbox. It opens in Vancouver Oct. 29, and in other Canadian cities throughout the fall.