CARLOS directed by Olivier Assayas, written by Assayas and Dan Franck, with Edgar Ramírez, Alexander Scheer, Alejandro Arroyo, Ahmad Kaabour and Nora von Waldstätten. A Mongrel Media release. 333 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens today (Thursday, October 21) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. See Times.
At 55, Olivier Assayas moves and talks like a much younger man, shifting through ideas and themes with the nervous energy of a guy in his 30s, his answers outpacing his facility with spoken English.
The French filmmaker’s English is far, far sharper than my pitiful French. But it should give you an idea of our conversational whirlwind while discussing his new film, Carlos. Produced for French TV, it’s an ambitious look at the life of the international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, played out in three parts running more than five and a half hours.
“You have more time to get acquainted with the complexities of Carlos,” says the director, relaxing into a chair in a suite at the Sutton Place. “And to me, when you deal with politics, it’s the complexity that’s essential. If you lose the complexity, you lose the truth of politics, so that’s also one of the reasons I needed time for this film.”
Assayas’s movie doesn’t lionize Carlos. Assayas views his subject as a swaggering glory-hound who uses revolutionary rhetoric to justify his love of violence and enhance his own image. As the film sees it, Carlos – who currently resides in France’s Clairvaux Prison – was the first terrorist to court media attention with elaborate, camera-ready attacks. He was the first militant superstar.
“He’s the guy who invented the concept,” Assayas says. “I’m not sure we should give him credit for it, but we should acknowledge that he did.”
The film introduces Carlos (Edgar Ramírez) as he pledges himself to the Palestinian cause and depicts several key incidents, including the attacks on planes at Orly Airport and the epic raid on the 1975 OPEC conference in Vienna. At every turn, Assayas strives to be as honest and realistic as possible.
“It’s exactly how it happened,” he says. “For instance, in Orly, we shot in exactly the same places where those things happened. We had the support of the airport to recreate the conditions, because of course now you can’t drive your car and shoot at planes, because they have those huge metal barriers that block access to the runway. The airport agreed to move off the protections so we could recreate exactly the way it was.”
Assayas shows a little revolutionary flair of his own by filling the soundtrack with songs from New Order, Wire and the Feelies to reflect the anarchic headspace of his characters – most effectively in the use of the Dead Boys’ Sonic Reducer to set up the capture of the German nihilist who calls herself Nada.
“It’s a way of just reminding the audience that this is 1977,” he says. “It’s punk rock, a new age. In terms of European politics, this was a very key dividing line. I half-joke about Nada being some kind of forerunner of punk rock. She’s into the no-future ethic from the start.”
Terrorism does seem like the ultimate endgame of the punk mentality, I venture.
“Yeah, with guns,” Assayas says, laughing. “Punk rockers with guns.”
Interview Clips
Olivier Assayas on the movie’s punk-rock soundtrack:
Assayas on casting actors as real-life characters:
Assayas on the differences between 1970s terrorism and today’s terrorism:
Assayas on what he learned from Steven Soderbergh’s Che:
Assayas on his film’s global view of terrorism:
normw@nowtoronto.com
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