{"id":117548,"date":"2017-11-02T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=117548"},"modified":"2017-11-02T14:15:47","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T18:15:47","slug":"evil-venerable-otherwise-interview-barbet-schroeder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/02\/evil-venerable-otherwise-interview-barbet-schroeder\/","title":{"rendered":"Evil, \u201cVenerable,\u201d and Otherwise: An Interview with Barbet Schroeder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em>When you meet the film director Barbet Schroeder, whose distinguished career has spanned more than five decades, and you ask him about his next project, you should not be surprised to hear a response like the one the intrepid auteur gave me two years ago, at a New York City cocktail party: \u201cNext week, I plan to fly somewhere far away and do something dangerous\u2014too dangerous to talk about with anyone until it\u2019s finished.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Born in Tehran, in 1941, to a Swiss father and German mother and raised mostly in Paris, Schroeder has been one of world cinema\u2019s most protean figures, changing forms and themes and settings relentlessly, so who could divine what he\u2019d do next?\u00a0 Given Schoeder\u2019s talk of far-flung travel, this new clandestine project of his didn\u2019t sound to me like a big-budget thriller in the vein of his <\/em>Single White Female. It surely didn\u2019t sound like his wonderful documentary about Koko the sign-language-using gorilla, either. Could Schroeder\u2019s new work be akin to his French-language <\/em>Obscured by Clouds, in which he led his cast and crew deep into the jungle of New Guinea? Or would it delve into a new subculture, as he did with the drug-drenched underworld of Ibiza (<\/em>More), the S\u00a0and M subculture of Paris (<\/em>Maitresse), or Charles Bukowski\u2019s down-but-not-entirely-out Los Angeles (<\/em>Barfly)?<\/em><\/p>\n

Now that the fruit of Schroeder\u2019s sub-rosa labors has screened to acclaim at this year\u2019s New York Film Festival, I have my answer:\u00a0<\/em>The Venerable W is the final installment in Schroeder\u2019s Trilogy of Evil. The first film in the trilogy was 1974\u2019s <\/em>General Idi Amin Dada, a \u201cself-portrait\u201d of Uganda\u2019s colorfully bloodthirsty despot. The second was <\/em>Terror\u2019s Advocate (2007), which focused on Jacques Verg\u00e8s, the Parisian attorney who represented international terrorists such as \u201cCarlos the Jackal\u201d and Nazi murderers like Klaus Barbie. <\/em>The Venerable W completes Schroeder’s rogue\u2019s gallery with a portrait of the title figure, a monk in Myanmar named Ashin Wirathu\u2014or \u201cW,\u201d as Schroeder refers to him. <\/em><\/p>\n

Labeled by <\/em>Time Magazine as \u201cThe Face of Buddhist Terror,\u201d the deceptively sweet-faced and gentle-cadenced Wirathu has, since the start of this century, preached hatred against his nation\u2019s Muslim minority, the Rohingya. The Rohingya, whose ancestral home is Bangladesh, constitute only\u00a04 percent of Myanmar\u2019s population. Economic boycotts, riots, house burnings, mass rapes, internment camps, and murders\u2014there\u2019s little that the Rohingya haven’t suffered. Worse, Myanmar\u2019s\u00a0military leaders and its Nobel Peace Prize\u2013winning figurehead head of state, Aung San Suu Kyi, have exacerbated rather than eased the widespread oppression. First they overlooked it, then they permitted it, and now they\u2019re actively excusing and encouraging the tragedies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Schroeder was wise to try to keep his work in Myanmar a secret: the military authorities would not be pleased with him if they noticed him and his filming. Unfortunately, they <\/em>did notice\u2014and <\/em>weren’t pleased. Schroeder was able to leave Myanmar with life, limb, and footage intact, but he is banned from returning there.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, just before Schroeder left New York for the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico, I spoke with him (not at a cocktail party this time, but by phone) about <\/em>The Venerable W and its place in his filmography.\u00a0 Despite the grim subject matter, or perhaps to counteract it, Schroeder was congenial and charming. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

When did you hatch the idea for your Trilogy of Evil?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

With Idi Amin Dada, the results were so fantastic\u2014I couldn\u2019t believe\u00a0the material I was getting. I immediately wanted to go on doing the same thing with different people. The next situation that came along was with the Khmer Rouge, who were then ruling Cambodia. It would not have been a movie about a bloody dictator but about a utopian dictatorship. At the time, the Khmer Rouge were surrounded by the Vietnamese, and everybody thought they would be eliminated. Through a contact in Thailand, I had the possibility of speaking to them. The project would have been a film in French in which their leaders would talk about their memories of their time at universities in Paris\u2014which caf\u00e9s they went to, what were the anti-colonialist movements of the period. But I couldn\u2019t find the money to do that movie, and I haven\u2019t recovered from it yet. I will mourn it forever.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What lessons have you learned from making your films about evil?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

I learned that evil can\u2019t be separated from humanity. Just today I was speaking about this with my friend Fernando Vallejo, the great Colombian writer whose novel Our Lady of the Assassins<\/em> I made into a film. He said, Evil is the soul of man and civilization seeks to control it and does not succeed.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Were there noticeable similarities between Idi Amin, Jacques Verges, and Wirathu? Personality quirks, I mean\u2014\u201ctells\u201d that they had in common?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

That would be saying that evil marks everybody the same way. No, the evil in each of these three men was only part of their personality, part of their humanity, and that was a terrible discovery for me, terrifying. It implies the death of God. Also terrifying was my realization that you can meet evil people every day and fail to notice them. It\u2019s not as if there is a big flashing light next to their heads. Everything looks pretty normal. It\u2019s only when you dig deep and try to understand the implications and effects of their words that you discover the reality. Or a part<\/em> of the reality, because I don’t pretend that I can discover the ultimate reality of people.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In the trilogy, you let Amin, Verges, and Wirathu profess their toxic opinions unchallenged. You never contradict them during the interview process, you never argue or ask embarrassing questions, although you do feature other interviewees arguing strenuously against those views. Obviously you\u2019d rather let your subjects condemn themselves with their own talk. But are you also concerned that, if you challenge them, they\u2019ll clam up or moderate what they say, or simply walk away?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

Yes, and this was especially so with Wirathu, who has been frequently attacked by journalists. He knows all the bad things that one can say about him. So if you attack him, he\u2019ll know where you\u2019re going.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Was your nonconfrontational interview policy in place from the beginning of your work?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

Right off the bat with Amin, yes. I just don\u2019t like to judge. Even with my fictional movies, I don\u2019t judge the characters.\u00a0 I\u2019m like the Friends of Christ, who never judge! I believe this so much in my life that, if you asked me to be on the jury of a film festival, I would refuse it. In America, the jury system would give me trouble.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Did your experience with the real-world villains of your trilogy inform how you would conceive and shape the antagonists in your narrative films?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

Absolutely. One person who could have been a trilogy subject was Claus von B\u00fclow, in my film Reversal of Fortune<\/em>.\u00a0 There you have a character who could<\/em> be evil, or could be totally innocent. This ambiguity is fascinating to me.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In The Venerable W,<\/em> you intriguingly mention \u201cthe cronies\u201d\u2014wealthy Burmese citizens who apparently finance Wirathu\u2019s campaign of hatred.<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, although journalists have tried to find out more about these cronies, it\u2019s very difficult. Normally you should \u201cfollow the money,\u201d but in Burma there is no way to do this because their money always comes via donations to the temples, and the temples need these donations to exist. So the money flowing in and out to Wirathu cannot be traced\u2014it\u2019s more efficient than Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts about Aung San Suu Kyi?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

When I first arrived in Burma, she had just been elected, and it was a very festive country then. They had just discovered democracy. Pretty soon they discovered Facebook, too, and seventy percent of the population\u2014even people who can barely read\u2014is now on it. Like so many others, I was, of course, in favor of Aung San Suu Kyi. I thought she was a very clever politician, navigating around the military, and I believed that eventually she would succeed.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the truth has come out. She\u2019s made a compromise that\u2019s too big\u2014like P\u00e9tain, when he tried to \u201csave France\u201d by working with the Nazis but eventually had his police rounding up France\u2019s Jews. Instead of trying to save a country, you put it under water, beneath any moral standard, beneath any respect. \u201cThe Lady” has done exactly that. She took a leading part in the propaganda machine destroying the Royingha. She personally supervises a Facebook page that claims the stories of rape against Royingha women are fake, that the Royingha are burning their own houses. For me, this is the red line.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Have any prominent Buddhists spoken against Wirathu?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

The Dalai has definitely been a voice against. Unlike the Tibetan Buddhists surrounding him in India, the Tibetans in Lhasa don\u2019t much like the Muslims near there, but they never engage in any genocidal talk.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are there anti-Wirathu Buddhists within Myanmar itself?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not in the Buddhist temperament to push back vocally against anyone. They are careful not to offend people. They might say things in private, but to attack a fellow monk in public is generally not done. Still, there is<\/em> the beginning of a movement\u2014a group of monks who seem to intend to tone down Wirathu a little bit. They have sent a question to the Supreme Council, which has the ultimate authority over the monks. This council, by the way, is controlled by the military. The monks want an answer from the council on whether Wirathu is acting according to the words of the Buddha\u2014yes or no. The council has been put on the spot.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What percent of the population holds anti-Royingha sentiment?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

I would say that it\u2019s about thirty percent. Of course, that’s the famous thirty percent.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Like the thirty percent or so who are pro-Trump, no matter what?<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

You had thirty percent of Chileans for Pinochet and you had thirty percent for Hitler\u2014you always have thirty percent.\u00a0 This is the problem. And there are usually thirty percent that oppose them, and thirty percent in the middle who \u201cdon’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Who \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d or are totally apathetic.<\/p>\n

SCHROEDER<\/p>\n

Right. But the bad thirty percent are everywhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gary Lippman is a lapsed lawyer and former <\/em>Fodor\u2019s travel writer. His play\u00a0<\/em>Paradox Lust\u00a0appeared off Broadway, his\u00a0fiction has appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Open City, and his heart is in the Highlands.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you meet the film director Barbet Schroeder, whose distinguished career has spanned more than five decades, and you ask him about his next project, you should not be surprised to hear a response like the one the intrepid auteur gave me two years ago, at a New York City cocktail party: \u201cNext week, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[31435,31438,12820,31428,27778,1114,31429,30767,31433,31434,31439,4279,31440,31437,31432,31436,31430,9893,31431],"class_list":["post-117548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-ashin-wirathu","tag-aung-san-suu-kyi","tag-bangladesh","tag-barbet-schroeder","tag-carlos-the-jackal","tag-charles-bukowski","tag-gary-lippman","tag-idi-amin","tag-jacques-verges","tag-laus-barbie","tag-morelia-film-festival","tag-nobel-prize","tag-reversal-of-fortune","tag-rohingya","tag-terrors-advocate","tag-the-face-of-buddhist-terror","tag-the-vulnerable-w","tag-time-magazine","tag-trilogy-of-evil"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEvil, \u201cVenerable,\u201d and Otherwise: An Interview with Barbet Schroeder<\/title>\n<meta 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