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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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Michael Haneke
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Film Actor
Film Critic
Film Director
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Writer
München
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Questions
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Waste
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More quotes by Michael Haneke
I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears with my work. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.
Michael Haneke
I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with an art form.
Michael Haneke
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
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
I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion.
Michael Haneke
It's a fact that people who are in a weakened position, whether physically or mentally, have this perception of the outer world as threatening. Everything that is unexpected or unknown is seen as a potential danger.
Michael Haneke
I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.
Michael Haneke
You become a film critic because you're interested in film. I don't know whether knowing so much about cinema leads you to make better films, but it certainly can't hurt.
Michael Haneke
And if there was one title that could be applied to all my films, it would be 'Civil War' - not civil war in the way we know it, but the daily war that goes on between us all.
Michael Haneke
Of course, we avoid death. To know something is inevitable is one thing. To accept, to truly feel it... that's different.
Michael Haneke
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
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
For me, it's always difficult when a historical film claims to depict or represent a reality that none of us can know, that is always different. It's always the case. We never know what happened then. So my approach with the narrator is to question that, to leave that open, to underline the fact that this is uncertain.
Michael Haneke
I'm interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn't thought about before, films that help me progress and advance.
Michael Haneke
There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recognition - which means seeing things you're familiar with and laughing at yourself. But there's also hysterical laughter - a way of dealing with the things we see that upset us.
Michael Haneke
As a private person, professionally I am invisible.
Michael Haneke
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
I want to be able to control things and that's very difficult to do if you're not 100% in a particular language. It makes you uncertain and it makes you nervous.
Michael Haneke
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
I consider all my films an experiment, at least in my mind.
Michael Haneke