Polish-American filmmaker Lech Majewski has been hailed as a modern master. By combining his other artistic interests-painting, writing, making installation, and more-Majewski's work demonstrates a rarely seen artistic ethic that merited a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In preparation for his Sept. 23 visit to Duke, recess' Andrew Hibbard spoke with Majewski about his art, the state of modern cinema and more.
How have your different artistic interests affected your filmmaking?
Because I'm a painter and a poet, it's much more natural for me to work an image. I think the image should be more of a contemplative nature than it is now in the cinema. I feel as though the cinema now has this TV aesthetic or anti-aesthetic. The image has to be full-functional. You have to see the taste. I think if you go back to the movies from the 30s and 40s, you'll see a level of very interesting incarnations coming from the image that are not just information.
How do you feel about modern cinema?
I don't get the idea of "modern" or "postmodern." I have to say I am much more happy watching the old movies and the movies that dealt with much more respect of the cinema language and the creation of images going with the film. I lived in L.A. next to a [Producers' Guild of America] screening and every second day I saw a new movie coming and I just couldn't differentiate between those movies. They were strictly starry action vehicles. I don't remember them. They were like the stream of the same shot. And from now and then you get an outstanding movie like Barton Fink which is unusual, carefully crafted and everything seems to flow.
With The Garden of Earthly Delights, did you find it difficult to adapt your own novel into your own film?
When I wrote the novel, I didn't think it was a movie. But The Garden of Earthly Delights came from my own analysis of personal experience. It had nothing to with writing a movie. But once the novel was published, somebody was pointing out to me, "Why don't you make a movie out of it?" I said I didn't write it as a screenplay and then I stopped to think and I thought maybe subconsciously I sort of included the main character to make the movie.
In some of your films, your main focus is artists. Is this some sort of self-exploration on camera?
It's a hidden value. It allows me to speak about myself. But in general I think an artist or a person who writes or who plays an instrument is a more interesting character than a cop and a robber and someone who knocks people down and brandishes a gun and shoots at everything that moves. Kinetically, the other character seems to be more watchable but I don't think they have anything to do with life. The best-paid cinema is of the escape. But I believe in a cinema that is going towards yourself or meeting yourself or meeting other people. So I know I would be paid much more money and my films would be much more watchable if I allowed people to escape from themselves. My direction is opposite. I want people to go into themselves.
How has your background in Poland and the United States affected your art?
By this time, I am no more Polish than I am American. I am in between. It allows me to be kind of a stranger in those places and watch from a distance. It's not a bad situation. It goes to objectivity.
What are you working on right now?
I never speak on what I am working on. That is a taboo in my life. I don't think one should say a word about what one works on until it's done.
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