The director Jean-Jacques Annaud is the exceptional guest of the Elodie’s World all this week. This lover of the Seventh Art and History looks back on these exceptional moments experienced before, during and after the shooting of his films. If some have defined Jean-Jacques Annaud as a wild director, we think of The Bear (1988) and at last wolf (2015) which highlighted his love of the animal world, others have nicknamed him the roaring director, particularly in view of his commitment and his desire to go a little further in each film, to take us elsewhere .
On the occasion of the release, on Wednesday July 20, on DVD, Blu ray and Blu ray 4K of his latest film Notre-Dame brule, a blockbuster devoted to the fire of the cathedral, we take a look back at the images, with him, over almost 50 years of career.
franceinfo: You are renowned for your perfectionism, your almost surgical precision, your desire to supervise each stage of the production of your films. This is still the case in Notre Dame is burning. Everything is polished, almost real. Is this care taken part of you, of your pedigree?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: I am particularly attached to the acting of the actors, because it is they who will allow identification. They must be brought closer to real situations. It’s my point of view. For example, if you want to do a seduction scene in full sun where the two actors blink, it won’t work. If, on the contrary, you choose a more secret alcove where one can speak more quietly, where the pupils dilate, you put the actor in a situation in which he does not need to pretend. In addition, you finally have a desire on the part of the viewer to trust the story.
You have toured a lot with animals. It is true that there is a colossal love for the animal world. Aren’t you a bit of an animal yourself? Do you only work with your instincts?
I am an animal. Cinema is visceral. What are the great emotions of life? These are the feelings of love, the desires for revenge or on the contrary, to calm revenge.
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
I find myself in the pigeon that changes color when it’s mating season and the pigeon that coos and flies away as soon as the pigeon approaches her. I love it and I say to myself: “Mah, that’s me!“Umberto told me something incredible:”I think your goal would be to tell the story of a stone to make the world cry“. I thought about that with Notre Dame is burning because I know the film is moving.
That’s what happens, moreover, when you see the tears running down the face of the Virgin, that’s what it’s all about!
Yes. Sometimes my throat uses itself and tells me that it’s good, you have to keep it. When I shoot, sometimes I can’t say “Cut!”, because I am moved by the acting. I realized that when I was moved by watching my actors, at the same time, in Japan, in South Africa, in Denmark, people will have this same emotion there.
In 1997, released Seven years in Tibet. A dramatic film inspired by the film by Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer associated with the Third Reich. This film shot in the Argentine Andes will allow you to finally approach the change of European personalities under the influence of European culture. That is really a subject that was close to your heart.
Since childhood, I was quite fascinated by Far Eastern cultures. And imagine that, for years, I refused invitations to go to India, Thailand or China, because for me, to understand a country is to make a film there. When I turned the lover in Vietnam, I was very upset. I had asked my American assistant to go through all the books that talk about spirituality. She offered me, among other things, Seven years in Tibet. I had the extraordinary chance to have on my set the sister of the Dalai Lama who plays the role of his mother, his nephew, as one of my assistants and his Prime Minister, for a year. And I felt bad about China… My hope was that China could love Tibetans and Tibetans could not fear China. But that had been misunderstood by China. I was very surprised afterwards that China came to me to make a film in Mongolia called The Last Wolf, which had made a triumph in China. And I came back to the little government papers. But that’s the quirks of life, frankly.
What’s crazy by the way is that you and Brad Pitt are going to be inadmissible to China for quite a long time.
It was very difficult. They all said to me:We understood through the lover that you loved our regions. When you speak ill of us, it hurts us. But after all, we know that you, the artists, that you are wacky, you have the right to make mistakes and we have forgiven you precisely because we know what is in your heart”.
Which represents Seven years in Tibet for you ?
It represents as usual: an immersion in a world that is ending, both medieval and religious. I love Tibetan singing and since I couldn’t shoot in China, I decided to shoot in Ladakh, in northern India. China threatened India with reprisals if the film was allowed to be made, so I transported my entire team to the Andes with 110 monks whom I had recruited from the various monasteries in India and Nepal.
During the filming of ‘Seven Years in Tibet’, the monks were waiting for me every morning with their prayer wheels. They took both my hands behind my neck and rested their foreheads on mine, looking at me, smiling. And I swear to you that it transforms someone, that.
Jean Jacques Annaudat franceinfo
Heinrich Harrer had built a small cinema for the Dalai Lama and he had noticed that the monks who had crouched down to make the foundations moved the earthworms. It made me scream with laughter except that one of the Tibetans who were there, who was one of the most famous Tibetan doctors in the world, came to see me and said: “We are annoyed because there, you gave us bowls with earth, it is a little dry. Could we have a small bowl of water for the worms?“So I tell him, of course. Well, can you imagine, since when I plant in my garden, I pay attention to earthworms and I carry them in a small bowl in which there is soil and water.