R.I.P., Béla Tarr. Here are some quotes from the marvelous filmmaker:

“Our life is happening in two dimensions: one is space, and the other is time. And that’s why I don’t like to go to the cinema, because filmmakers, or let’s say this capitalist film business, ignore time and space. They are just listening for the storytelling. What does this mean, the ‘storytelling’? When you live your life, you are doing the same things every day, almost.”

“When I started to make movies, my goal became more and more to show a kind of totality, something which shows our life in a simple way. I don’t think our life is too exceptional. It’s just going.”

“All the time, we have a kind of strange narrative. When you go to the shop tomorrow morning, when you buy milk, coffee or something, it’s a kind of narration. What does it mean, ‘narrative’? You know what Andy Warhol said? Everybody can be a star for fifteen minutes. David Bowie was a little bit more generous, because he said ‘We can be heroes for one day.’ Just one day. And that’s what people want. They want to be heroes. Of course, we all would like to be heroes, and we all want to be free, wonderful, loved, admired, devoted, but how could we? Life is just life. And you have to go tomorrow to the shop to buy milk and coffee.”

“The length of a movie all depends on what you want to say. I don’t care what is acceptable.”

“I said I have a social sensibility and I am protecting human dignity. And this is my goal and I do not care about anything else. I do not care if I am hurting someone’s interest or not, political or other. I am just telling what I am thinking.”

“I can see there is a big confusion and people are not finding themselves because the market has very strong expectations, and of course, their personal ambitions could be different. And this is what I see now, young filmmakers are really not brave enough. They have to be brave and do not care about any expectations because the expectations are vanishing but the films remain.”

“This what I can say to young filmmakers: ‘Go and be more radical; be more revolutionary than I was.'”

“I have nothing to do with the filming community in Budapest. They don’t like me, because I don’t make conventional films. I can’t talk with them about films, because I live and think differently than them. They are film makers and I am not. I don’t know what I am.”

“I like the continuity, because you have a special tension. Everybody is much more concentrated than when you have these short takes. And I like very much to build things, to conceive the scenes, how we can turn around somebody, you know, all the movements implied in these shots. It’s like a play, and how we can tell something, tell something about life…Because it’s very important to make the film a real psychological process.”

“If you are a real filmmaker you have to have your own style, your own language. Which is depending on your cultural background, your history, and your budget of course, and a lot of things what you already have. Because as I see, what I think, filmmaking is a kind of reaction to the world—you’re just telling people how you see the world, from your point of view of course. But, you know, that’s the reason why I do not listen for the other circumstances, what the other people are doing—because it’s impossible to follow someone, impossible to say, okay, this is a trend, or what we would like to keep it or—it’s definitely fake, wrong way. You have to be yourself, you have to tell everything from your side and you do have to have your own language; and if you have your own language, you don’t care about the world and anything really.”

“Without light in the darkness, you cannot make movies.”

“I don’t care about stories. I never did. Every story is the same. We have no new stories. We’re just repeating the same ones. I really don’t think, when you do a movie, that you have to think about the story. The film isn’t the story. It’s mostly picture, sound, a lot of emotions. The stories are just covering something.”

“As a filmmaker, you have to believe in the people, in their power, because if you do not believe in the people then why do you make the film… for what? If you don’t have hope, you do not do a fucking movie. You don’t do a movie for the money, because the money just comes and goes. It’s not about the money. It’s because you are such a big fucking maniac who believes in people; who believes that people will watch and people will be touched… this is our job.”

“A filmmaker is a nice bourgeois job. But I really don’t want to do it. I’m not a real filmmaker. I’ve always been in it for the people and just wanted to say something about their lives. During these 34 years of filmmaking, I’ve said everything I want to say. I can repeat it, I can do a hundred things, but I really don’t want to bore you. I really don’t want to copy my films. That’s all.”

“At the beginning of my career, I had a lot of social anger. I just wanted to tell you how fucked up the society is. This was the beginning. Afterwards, I began to understand that the problems were not only social; they are deeper. I thought they were only ontological. It’s so, so complicated, and when I understood more and more, when I went closer to the people… afterward, I could understand that the problems were not only ontological. They were cosmic. The whole fucked up world is over. That’s what I had to understand, and that’s why the style has moved. Once I went down, I kept going down. The style became more and more downward, by the end, becoming more simple, very pure. That’s what was interesting for me, to discover something step by step.”

“Who gives a fuck? I’m not prophetic. I was just an ugly, poor filmmaker. I still am. I don’t have power. I don’t have anything… just a fucking camera.”

“What I want is for you to go to a cinema, sit in a darkness, watch it, and when you leave, how are you? Are you better? Do you feel stronger? Did you get something? Or are you just the same as you were when entering the cinema?”

“Twenty-five years is enough time to show you whether something is good or not. So many films disappear. They are like a tissue: used and then thrown out.”