How do you feel your style has evolved over those decades?

Ad content continues below

You know, I have no idea.

[laughs] I think thats a question for someone who can study my films, which I cant.

Every film is a reflection of the state of mind of the director.

Ive changed completely over these 45 years, in my understanding of good and evil, lets say.

When I started, I thought I knew everything about movie making.

All these thoughts a young director can have, because this is a part of ignorance.

Arrogance is a part of ignorance.

But optimism, as well, perhaps?

Optimism as well, but still naive.

I made comedies and tragedies and melodramas and musicals, like in theatre.

So, every time I tried to apply my imagination to a completely different thing.

So, thats why I say I dont have style.

Maybe sometimes people can be very good, but at the same time very nasty and very bad.

That started, maybe, withRunaway Train, written by Kurosawa.

Everything is relative, including freedom.

You cannot be free.

Truth doesnt free you.

As a matter of fact, truth can enslave you, like Wikileaks.

There is one question that is unresolvable: what is life for?

Once, a great Russian actor was asked, What is life?

A carrot is a carrot and life is life.

And to understand such a thing is very simple: life is life, and nothing else.

Man needs a purpose to live.

Why he cant find a purpose just in living and seeing?

He always has to destroy and build something.

So, in that sense, happiness.

Man runs after happiness, but for everyone thats different.

In the end, you understand that happiness is just in being alive.

It sounds strange, but its only now that I understand this.

I think this explains my indifference to the critics, in a sense.

Of course, Im upset when a critic says my film is a piece of trash.

But I cannot say, Oh, my career is over.

For me, the success is to do the next one.

Not this one, but the next one.

Then Im successful, just in making it.

In the 80s, you made the move to America, and madeRunaway TrainandTango And Cash.

What was your experience working there at the time?

The Hollywood film industry needs an enemy.

For a time there were the Nazis, then the Russians, then terrorists, etc, etc.

I dont take it seriously, although it would be good if they could find enemies within.

When I was making films in Hollywood, you should understand that it wasnt as it is now.

The Hollywood aesthetic is making film by committee.

And filmmaking by committee excludes originality.

You either compromise and collaborate, or youre dead.

And it wasnt like this in the 80s.

There are films that are art, and there are films that are entertainment.

The mechanic of entertainment is stimulation.

Thats why you have entertainment like porno.

And thats the big difference.

Im not against entertainment, Im just saying art in film fulfills you.

Entertainment in film, likeRambo, doesnt fulfill you.

You look at it, and forget it.

When you look at a great movie, you never forget it.

Andrei Konchalovsky, thank you very much!

Andrei Konchalovskys Barbican Directorspective season begins on 20 January with his 2007 film, Gloss.