April 2020 | Sight&Sound | 27IS: Yes, but not just in film. From all over.
TS: In terms of film, I’ll tell you one thing that, looking back on
it, is more significant than I thought at the time. I remember
seeing [Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film] Jeanne Dielman when I
was at Cambridge. And having said that I was not particularly
invested or interested in performance of any kind, Jeanne Dielman
did ring a bell with me. I thought, “Now that I’m interested in. I’m
interested in that kind of opaqueness.” It’s such an extraordinary
film because it’s so experiential. It’s really about the experience of
this person and the experience of her time. And that caught me. I
didn’t sit there thinking, “Oh, I’d like to do that one day.” But on a
deep level... I still refer to it for myself. I was referring to it when I
was working with Apichatpong [Weerasethakul on his upcoming
Memoria] last summer. It’s surfacing for me, that film. I refer to it
with Joanna when we’re talking about films that we’re going to
make together. It’s more of a talisman now – a practical talisman- than it ever has been. So it was obviously a deep bell ringing.
I had Salvador Dalí on my wall at school. He’s not someone I
particularly think about since, but he was around. The sense of
fantasy was always very strong and that’s one of the things that I really
appreciated working with Derek: that fantasy was always there.
But listen, we’ve come this far and I haven’t mentioned
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. They were right
there at the very beginning.
IS: Which was the first film of theirs you remember seeing?
TS: I think it was Black Narcissus [1947]. I Know Where I’m
Going! [1945] is still a great – it’s a locket over my heart, that
film. Because the thing about it that’s so particular is that
it is the great Scottish film made by an Englishman and a
Hungarian. They were able to distil this sense of mystique.
I probably saw it in the same Cambridge art cinema where I
remember seeing Tarkovsky. The impact of Tarkovsky at the time is
hard to remember, but it was quite intense. Stalker [1979], in particular.
There’s a scene in it which exactly illustrates a dream I’d had since I
was a child. And that was a
shock. It was like this thing
about collective unconscious.
There’s a scene with a huge
room full of sand, and a bird’s
flying towards the camera and
touches the sand with its wing.
I’d had that dream since I was
quite young. Obviously I’m not
the only one, but as a young
person it was like, “Wow! We
can share each other’s dreams.”
As for writers... Muriel
Spark was a great, from the beginning- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie [1961]
was probably the first, The Girls
of Slender Means [1963], etc. The
Driver’s Seat [1970], which I love.
IS: What was it about her that seized you?
TS: Oh, she’s so witty and wise and black and passionate and
untidy. She’s so wild, Muriel Spark. One of my favourite pieces of
writing by her is a short story called ‘The Snobs’, which is only
about three pages long. It’s vicious and hilarious and messy. It
was the mess that appealed to me, the way she was so abandoned.
I’m not a big one for the idea of national art, or even really of
national identity, but she does write as a person who comes from
Scotland. There’s something about the way she ricochets between
this puritanical, Presbyterian Calvinist, and the passion.
IS: Virginia Woolf was another writer who was a key inspiration for you
when you were young. Was Orlando the first book of hers that you read?
TS: Yes. I must have been 12 or 13 when I read Orlando [1928],
and it’s a great time to read it. And I read it again every five years.
What strikes me now is how it has this reputation that it’s all
about gender and particularly about binary gender, male-to-female
transformation. And reading, I realised that it’s not about gender at
all. In fact, it’s not about any kind of prescription. It’s about sheer
boundarylessness and endless evolution. My thesis is that if Virginia
Woolf had written another thousand words, a thousand pages,
Orlando could have easily turned into a spaniel next or a fly
or a bottle of wine or anything else. It’s about limitlessness,
TILDA SWINTON ON...
HER FAVOURITE PERFORMER BEING A DONKEYWhenever I’m asked what my favourite
performance is, apart from Buster Keaton,
it’s the donkey – or rather the string of
donkeys – that made Au hasard Balthazar
[1966] for Robert Bresson. I’m serious!
I love that performance, and I love
the way the film presents that being
so much. It’s a masterclass for human
performers because you are so with that
donkey at every moment and it teaches
us everything we need to know aboutbeing a donkey, and nothing more. And
not, by the way, being very attention-
seeking. Just getting on with the business
of being a donkey from frame to frame.
And that’s a really great lesson.
The other thing I love about the donkey
is, of course, that it never appears again in
another film. That’s the great thing that I
wish I had been able to do, which is maybe
why I like to switch it up. To be in one
THE DONKEY IN AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966) film and then disappear is fantastic.‘ There’s a scene in
Stalker with a room
full of sand and a
flying bird. I’d had
that dream since I
was young. I was like,
“Wow! We can share
each other’s dreams”’
BOOK OF REVELATIONS
Tilda Swinton in Sally
Potter’s Orlando (1992), a
story she says is less about
gender than it is about
‘sheer boundarylessness and
endless evolution’