The Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu said today at the Tribeca Festival that watching a movie on a mobile phone is “like seeing a postcard” of it, since The image and sound “are not appreciated” in the same way.
In one of the talks scheduled for the festival, the winner of four Oscars was interviewed by the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic, with whom she talked about her latest work, her way of making movies and the impact of new technologies in the industry.
“If you’ve seen ‘The Revenant’ on your cell phone, then you have not seen the movie,” said Iñárritu, who believes that the new generations are “not accustomed” to the latitude of sound and image offered by a movie screen.
However, the director spoke of the “astounding possibilities” offered by technology to make cinema, in particular of virtual reality (VR), which in his opinion is not a mere “extension”, but “everything that cinema does not You can reach”.
“Cinema is a framework, and everything that is outside of that framework has to be recreated in our minds … There is 90% of that reality that we do not see,” he argued.
In this sense, he highlighted his new virtual reality short film entitled “Meat and Sand”, which will be presented at the next edition of the Cannes Film Festival, inspired by the real histories of Mexican and Central American migrants crossing the border to seek refuge in the United States.
“I thought it would be incredible to be able to document the experiences they are experiencing during their travels in the desert. Doing it with RV was a different way of exploring the narrative space,” Iñárritu explained.
“It is scientifically proven that our brain often does not distinguish between fiction and reality. That is why religion has survived thousands of years,” the director joked.
Asked about his early days in the industry, Iñárritu said that he is currently moving away from the realism of his first films, as he tries to “juxtapose” images and combine atmospheres and atmospheres so that viewers can evade and perceive different emotions.
About “The Revenant,” which earned him an Oscar for best direction last year, said he did not choose a happy ending for this revenge story because people are “incomplete beings.”
“The pain is on the road to happiness. They say that if there is no mud, there is no flower … One thing without the other could not exist, they are complementary,” he said.
In this sense, he recognizes that he likes when a film or a work of art makes him “feel something”.
“I always hope there is someone who is able to put together all the pieces (of the film) and draw from it some reference or meaning,” he added.
Iñárritu explained that in the 1970s, when he was a child, in his native Mexico there was no national cinema as it is known today, since the government controlled the cultural industry completely and there were “few people who were allowed to” make their own Productions.
Thus, he confessed that he used to watch American or British films like “Melody” (1971), a film about the first childhood loves.
However, he acknowledged that the “drama” of telenovelas have also influenced in a certain way his cinematography.
“That’s where the representation of pain comes from (in his films),” he said with a laugh.
Iñárritu told a public in New York that making movies “is not summed up in a moment of inspiration”, but that it is about making mistakes and “trying again and again”.
“When you lean only on your intuition, sometimes you can give yourself a moment that you can capture with your camera with perfect light and a good performance, but usually that does not happen,” he said.
