By Ali Moosavi.
It’s an important personal lesson to myself to learn to prepare myself to die with dignity. The others cannot help you and I think you have to know the truth.”
—Costa-Gavras
I first became aware of Costa-Gavras, and quickly became a fan, in the Seventies after watching some of his politically charged movies such as Z (1969), State of Siege (1972) and he continued this in the Eighties with movies Missing (1982), Hanna K. (1983). I interviewed him for the first time in 2019 at the San Sebastian Film Festival (Film International, Vol. 18. Vo.4), where he had the film Adults in the Room and also received that festivals highest honour, the Donostia Award.
A 91 years old Costa-Gavras was back in the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival with Last Breath / Le Dernier Souffle, which tackles the somehow timely issue of death; a subject which was prevalent in the festival with films such as The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodovar), The End (Joshua Oppenheimer), When Fall Is Coming (Francois Ozon), We Live in Time (John Crowley), and The Marching Band (Emmanuel Courcol).
Last Breath is mainly set in a palliative clinic for terminal patients. A famous writer (Denis Podalydes) when going for a medical check-up becomes obsessed with the idea of death and euthanasia and visits a palliative clinic where a doctor (Kad Merad) introduces him to a number of the patients there and the ways in which they have chosen to die. At his age, it obviously brings up the question whether death is also on Costa-Gavras’s mind. Costa-Gavras sat down to answer this and other questions.
In the clinic in the film you show both the vulnerability of the patients and also the fact that have a say on the way they’re going to die; very different to being in a care home.
The doctors in that clinic give the patients complete power to feel comfortable, to feel like they are in their own home, and that’s very important. This doesn’t happen in a care home. Because there the doctors are very severe and give orders but in this clinic there are no orders and the patients drive pleasure from saying what they want. So it’s completely different from a care home, because here the patients need to feel good.
Did this film give you a new respect for doctors and the way they work with patients?
I’ve always had a big respect for the doctors and for what they are doing. The doctors in palliative care section are completely different because they have accepted that their patients are dying. I have a brother who is a doctor in Boston. The film is a kind of homage to him. When I say to him that when I am very old and in very poor health, come and give me a shot, he says no, I’m here to restore people, to make people better and not to assist them to die. But the doctors who accept to go into palliative care, they’ve accepted death and I think it’s very important for them. They are very nice people and are quite like how I’ve portrayed them in the film. Kad Merad, who portrays the doctor in the film is mainly known for comic roles. I told him in this film, when the patients are feeling down, you have to be respectful to them and be like a father figure and he did beautifully.
Do you agree with euthanasia?
Yes.
Was it difficult to convince actors such as Charlotte Rampling, Hiam Abbas, Angela Molina to appear in very small roles in the film?
I have known Charlotte for a long time. When casting, I saw her photo in a magazine; it was great, very straight looking and with no shoes. I thought she is going to be this character. I called Charlotte and said I have this small role for you, possibly the shortest in your life! Could you read the script? She read the script, she called me and made a lot of compliments about the story, about the characters and I was thinking during those compliments that she won’t accept it; it’s what we do always, give compliments and then say I cannot do it because of this and that. But she said she would do it and it was fascinating and very gratifying to see that she accepted to come for one day only to play this character and I think she’s really good in the movie.
In this and other recent festival festivals we’ve seen a lot of films with the theme of death, like Almodovar’s latest film. Do you think that it’s a coincidence?
In the last century Freud spoke about eroticism and its problems and this century and in this film we speak about death, not the death of masses of people but about the death of one human. Because it deals with us directly. I think we need to speak about it as nobody talks about that. In television they don’t show dead people, it’s prohibited. They speak about thousands of deaths but not one death unless it’s been an assassination, or very violent and very barbarian. Death doesn’t exist. So it’s important to speak about it and for us to learn how to die, which is not easy but it’s important.
In the movie the doctor says we don’t tell lies to patients but we don’t tell them the complete truth. Would you like your doctor to tell you honestly and truthfully or you prefer him to say don’t worry Costa, we can do something about it?!
I don’t know! But I will push myself to know and to have to accept the truth, that’s important. It’s an important personal lesson to myself to learn to prepare myself to die with dignity. The others cannot help you and I think you have to know the truth. Truth is important, it’s stronger than the lie because the lie makes you think it is worse, that’s my feeling.
Yes, there’s a way to make much money from all the people in specialized hospitals. But I believe that in general and philosophically you have to be free to die when you want to die….”
Why do you think there is so much heated discussion about euthanasia and having the choice how to die in our society today?
I want to be able to decide how And when to die but there’s no possibility in our society to allow us to make these decisions. I would like to finish what I do and then maybe decide to go. I think in our society there should be a place where you go there and say I would like to end my life, give me a shot or something. I think it’s necessary. We have the hospitals, we have the palliative care clinics like the one in the film, but we also have people who would like to end their own life.
But why people don’t accept that?
Because the society has said for thousands of years that you cannot choose when to die; you die when someone says you have to die. Goddard decided that he wanted to die. So he called the people in his country, Switzerland and half an hour later he was dead. But you cannot do that in France, Germany or England and other places because all the religions, even the barbarian religions say you cannot die. Death has to decide this! You have to suffer if you are sick and your children have to suffer. But why do we have to suffer? I would like to die but I don’t want to suffer. Because I’m too old and I feel that I cannot have a good life.
But do you think that people always think there might be a miracle cure and I will miss it if I take my own life now?
There’s always hope but there is no hope in some cases. People can hope that they can live as long as they can.
One explanation could be that there is a strong pharmaceutical companies lobby behind it because they so make much money if people have to live with uncurable ailments. Specialized medicine, chemotherapy and so on are extremely expensive.
Yes, there’s a way to make much money from all the people in specialized hospitals. But I believe that in general and philosophically you have to be free to die when you want to die and I think the doctors should help you to die when you ask for an end.
In the 60s and 70’s you were making very politically charged films and you’re still doing that now but how difficult is it to keep making such films these days?
It’s difficult to get the money to make these movies. That’s the most difficult thing because people are staying away from films with difficult subjects.
In the films you made in that era, the cinematography and editing resembled a cinema vérité style and now it’s a lot more smooth. What has prompted this change?
It’s completely and absolutely linked with the story and the script. It’s not possible to make the kind of films I’m making now that way. They need to have their own style. it’s automatic to me. With long shots without cutting the movie would be very short.
More than 40 years ago you made Hanna K. which I think was the first mainstream movie with a big name director dealing with the Israel-Palestine issue.
Hanna K. was speaking about today. At the time that issue was very small but it got bigger and bigger. Sometimes the cinema can look into the future to see what’s going to happen. It’s not prophetic, it’s completely analytic. It was enough to go there, to see both sides, to see how it was on one side and how it was on the other side. The only one who could have changed things completely was Yizhak Rabin. When he shook hands with Arafat and the others, if he had lived and continued that process, we would not have what is happening today. But they killed Rabin, who was a great man. He was a general who knew Israel very well and wanted peace and he was assassinated.
When you are filming, do you feel more energetic and lively or it’s just another hard working day and tiring? How’s Costa-Gavras on a film set?!
I don’t know, I don’t watch myself! When I start a film, I have the will, the imagination and everything but the problem with old age is that the energy is not always here. But when I start shooting the energy comes immediately.
Do you believe there is an afterlife and you might come back in the form of another human or animal or another director?!
I think a lot of people believe in that. When I say to people that I don’t know what will happen after death and whether there is a paradise, they say no there is, because people are very afraid to be against that notion and I respect what people believe. It is respectful because it gives them a kind of easy life and they kind of try to be better every day. But when I was very young, I was born in a very Christian family who believed in paradise. The main religions which we know, all of them believe in paradise. It’s a way to exist, it’s a way to comfort people. I wouldn’t want to criticize them but they exist because of that. So later I searched to see where the paradise is and what form it would be. Around the earth there was no place for the paradise because there were human beings everywhere; so quickly I understood that we are born, we live and then we disappear. That’s normal for people, for animals, for trees, for everything. I also respect the those who decide to die at their own will because death is to accept that you disappear, everything you have done here disappears completely and forever. It’s very difficult to accept but you have to accept it because there’s no other way.
But your films will be forever so in a sense you are immortal.
Forever? What’s forever?
If you were to reincarnate as another director, who you would like that director to be?
A better one than me!
Ali Moosavi has worked in documentary television and has written for Film Magazine (Iran), Cine-Eye (London), and Film International (Sweden). He contributed to the second volume of The Directory of World Cinema: Iran (Intellect, 2015).