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I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug.

Michael Haneke

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Michael Haneke
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Film Actor
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More quotes by Michael Haneke

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Never say no. It always depends on what's possible. I don't care so much where it is it's what I want to do that matters.
Michael Haneke
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What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.
Michael Haneke
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It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass.
Michael Haneke
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I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.
Michael Haneke
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You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic.
Michael Haneke
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A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.
Michael Haneke
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It's impossible to consider living without ideals. However, when ideas lead to ideology, that's a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image of an enemy, and it leads to the murder and massacre that we've seen since the beginning of time.
Michael Haneke
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If you do an original film and you want to cut a scene out you do it. But when you do a shot by shot remake you don't have that option and every scene has to work again.
Michael Haneke
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It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.
Michael Haneke
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Personally, I can't stand violence. In any standard American mainstream movie, there's 20 times more violence than in any one of my films, so I don't know why those directors aren't asked why they're such specialists for violence.
Michael Haneke
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In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.
Michael Haneke
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People have been educated to expect answers, even before the questions come along. It's the TV principle. You offer three possible answers before the questions come to relax and calm the audience.
Michael Haneke
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I always seek to mobilize, to call on the imagination of the spectator. It's well-known that the images that are created by one's imagination are far stronger than any that I can show. In fact, it's an error, a widespread error in mainstream cinema, to always want to show things and to depict things.
Michael Haneke
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If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.
Michael Haneke
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Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself
Michael Haneke
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Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.
Michael Haneke
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That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.
Michael Haneke
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Because in the feudal system of that period at least 80% of people lived in villages, so it's very simple to get a cross-section of society in a single village. You get the microcosm of the social macrocosm.
Michael Haneke
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If I'm reading a book that doesn't leave me with questions, moving questions, that I feel confronted with, then for me it's a waste of time. I don't want to read a book that simply confirms what I already know.
Michael Haneke
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I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.
Michael Haneke