Ruben Östlund: "We have to abandon the dichotomy between boring auteur cinema and stupid popular cinema"

• 'Triangle of sadness' Trinfadora in Cannes

• Criticism Commotion in Cannes

"The first Palme d'Or may be an accident, but the second..." Ruben Östlund (Styrsö, Sweden, 1974) joked on Saturday

and who knows if in the points suspensive gestures of victory towards his critics, many of them obviously and ostentatiously angry."Criticism is part of the debate and when someone gets angry about a movie I interpret it as a good sign. That means that what you do matters , that cinema matters", he commented days before in an interview after the presentation of Triangle of sadness. With it, he has not only entered the select club of filmmakers with two palms but the even more exclusive one of those who get them with two films in a row:

.

It was strange to see so many people laugh at a film from the festival of auteur film festivals.

How do you interpret it?

It was Michael Haneke who, after the presentation of

, said that the only serious and responsible way to portray reality is in the form of a farce.

Look what's happened for the movie

.

My intention is to make a cinema that helps to discuss and think about reality.

We must abandon the dichotomy between boring auteur cinema and stupid popular cinema.

That is a wrong approach and condemns the cinema.

Do you understand that cinema is experiencing a kind of crossroads? I believe that European cinema has forgotten some of its authors.

I am thinking, for example, of Lina Wertmuller or Luis Buñuel.

I don't think it's crazy to combine, or at least try to, the best of auteur cinema and the best of American commercial cinema.

The connection with the audience is not something that can be neglected.

You have to give people a reason to leave home and go to the movies, not only to have fun but to discuss things that matter... which is a way of having fun.

Could we define your politics-spectacle cinema?

The cinema that I try to make is a reflection of what I lived all my life at home.

My mother considers herself a communist.

She cemented her ideology in the leftist movements of the 1970s. My brother, on the other hand, is a right-wing liberal man.

Every meal at home is a heated debate about the divine and human... What is your position in the discussions? I'm Swedish, be careful.

An economist once compared equality to the law of gravity.

In order for both a stone and equality to be maintained, you have to intervene, you have to organize yourself, you have to distribute the wealth for the benefit of all.

That said, even Marx and Lenin found virtues in capitalism.

I think the left has somewhat forgotten Marx.

Not all rich people are petty and selfish;

nor all the genuine poor,

generous and kind. I lose myself. What I want is to vindicate the value of politics and discussion;

the need to think things in common.

The greatest obsession of the human being is equality.

But we cannot make it an individual matter.

If we see a beggar on the street, we think we have to do something, but simply giving him a few coins is not going to help much.

If a billionaire finds himself in the same situation, what should he do?

Give him all the money from him.

I don't think he helps either.

It is clear that the problem is social. The whole claim for dialogue comes at a particularly tense moment throughout Europe with the irresistible rise of nationalism, insults and the extreme right. Indeed.

The extreme right in Sweden was very successful in responding to a kind of general dissatisfaction of the people.

A simple and false answer to a complex problem.

The serious thing is that this way of understanding politics has spread to all the other political parties that are prisoners of winning elections no matter what. A constant in his films is the exchange of roles.

He has specialized in turning a pleasant situation into an uncomfortable one.

His characters are summoned again and again to discuss their identity...Yes, I'm interested in talking and that we talk about identity politics.

On the one hand, I think they have opened a debate and fight for equality, we return to it, which is necessary.

I believe in quotas and in the need for new social models, for example.

But on the other hand, exaggerating them leads to nonsense such as victimizing certain groups characterized as predators only.

I don't think it's very suitable.

Also,

It seems to me that a good part of these policies have been hijacked by certain economic forces to the point of being something like cynicism disguised as optimism. To reassure us, the huge scene in which everyone vomits is special effects, right? Half and half.

The thing got out of hand.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Articles Luis Martinez