Michael Haneke Quotes - Page 4

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.

It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.

It is boring to have all the answers. Only political people have answers.

My mother as a young girl went out with a young SS officer and she didn't really know what was going on - she just liked the uniform. When he told her about the things that he did, she was disgusted and broke up with him.

That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.

Every form of anti-Semitism, every form of xenophobia plays on the fear of the unknown, and unfortunately there are all too many politicians who know how to manipulate that. The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.

What I like are films that take me seriously, that don't treat me as more stupid than I am.

I never use soundtrack; it is always part of the story.

To be perfectly honest, I think that as I'm growing older, I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people say, 'Michael's grown wiser and softer in his old age.' But we'll have to wait and see what my next project is.

As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

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.

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.

To decide to film a movie again shot by shot, you must be masochistic to a certain degree because it is a much greater challenge.

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.

It's more enjoyable to shoot in a studio on a single location with two actors... if they are good.

What we're doing for another person is more important than what we're feeling for them.

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.

I consider all my films an experiment, at least in my mind.

It's difficult because you can't generalise about these things. But in essence, you deal with children as simply as you deal with actors - you have to show a certain sort of respect. You deal with them lovingly and protect them, but if you protect them enough then they're open to engage with what you want to do with them.

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.

The difficulty, then, is when you create a church, an institution, and you create a dogma. When you create an ideology, that's the danger. Communism, too, is a beautiful idea, but millions of people died when communism became an ideology.

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.

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.

Of course there are many films about the period of Fascism itself but I don't know of any about that period beforehand. But it wasn't that specific fact that they weren't there that got me to think about this in the first place. It's not what led to the basic idea for the film, although it became apparent when I began to think about it.

Even the most elitist director or author who claims that he doesn't care if his works are seen or not, then I have to think that he's either a liar or a hypocrite.