Often the relationship of parents and children, the closest friendship, marriage can withstand serious adversity, but cannot withstand gratitude. It becomes a burden for those who cannot express it, says documentary filmmaker and poet Helga Olschwang-Landauer.
Helga Landauer brought her new film «Arcadia» to St. Petersburg for an out-of-competition screening. Helga is the author of films about Dmitry Shostakovich and Anna Akhmatova, she has published five books of poetry (including «Three», New York, Ailuros Publishing, 2015). She was born in the USSR, married at the age of 27 and moved to the USA, where she has been living permanently since 1996, but she writes in Russian and makes films in Russian (she signs her poetry books with her maiden name Olschwang, films and other works — with her husband’s surname Landauer ).
Our conversation, which began with a discussion of the means of self-expression, suddenly turned into the field of relationships …
Psychologies: Which language is easier for you to speak: Russian or English, the language of poetry or the language of cinema?
Helga Olschwang: Whether it is a verbal language or the language of art, we hardly choose it consciously. We don’t think about how we’re going to do it before making a statement. It happens in a different way. And it’s not a matter of convenience or habit, there is another reason, creative. I would say that language is a vehicle. In the sense that when you finish a film, a poem or a drawing, you find yourself in a different place through this film, poem, drawing than where you started. With the help of language, advancement is carried out in the inner world, in thought, in an attempt to understand something. Films and poems are different artistic means, polyphony, the combination of sound and image, is important for me. In poetry, this is also important, but sometimes a different degree of concreteness, literalness, which cinema provides, is required. But whatever I do, for me it is always a way to understand something, in the end — to understand myself. This is what Vladimir Gandelsman says in my film, and I agree with that.
How important is it for others to understand us? In the old movie «We’ll Live Until Monday» there was a phrase that was often quoted later: «Happiness is when you are understood», do you agree with this?
H. O.: There is no contradiction here, one closes with the other. Only what is deeply interesting to you can interest another. If a person makes a film or writes a text, the more specific, the more personal this text is, the more painful the topic, the more likely it is that in this authenticity another person will be able to discover his own authenticity. Marketing research helps in the sale of shampoos or cars. But attempts to calculate what might be interesting to the viewer… in art it is impossible to calculate. One can only somehow live and do what torments, does not give rest, what deeply excites — then the possibility of understanding arises. The more the narrative is permeated with the author’s own experience of thought, the more likely it is that another person, when meeting with this work, will respond to his experience. This is not about the coincidence of specific facts, but about the coincidence of the depth of experiences.
- Chulpan Khamatova: “I am grateful for my life”
Are your works perceived in the same way in Russia, in the USA and Europe, do you notice the difference in the reaction of the audience?
H. O.: The difference is related to the context of perception: it is, of course, different. For example, my films about Shostakovich and Akhmatova — these people are known in Russia, and after watching the questions from the audience were existential, about life in general, or, conversely, with a request to clarify some specific biographical details. And in the West, these same films turned out to be rather enlightening: the audience received completely new information and asked questions about the newly discovered facts. I had the feeling that they were trying on a completely alien experience of suffering or fear, creativity in such difficult circumstances.
What topics excite you the most?
H. O.: Not very original: the finiteness of human life, the living of this life, the presence in what you do, and some separate aspects of this presence. For example, lately I often think that the most difficult thing for a person is gratitude.
- What’s stopping you from living today?
Why, after all, we are all taught to say thank you from childhood?
H. O.: Because to say «thank you» means in a sense to cancel it. And to live your gratitude, to make it a part of communication with this person, to include it in a relationship with him — this turns out to be incredibly difficult for both sides. I’m not saying you shouldn’t say it, but it’s the first step. And in most cases, that’s where it ends. This, perhaps, is correct if we are talking about a service: that they passed the salt and held the door. But when one person owes another a change in his fate, for example, if this is an adopted child at a conscious age or a person who forgave something to another … Often marriage, parent-child relationships, the closest friendship that can withstand serious suffering and misfortune, cannot stand gratitude. It turns into a burden for those who do not know how to express it and include it in their lives. His own gratitude causes him discomfort when communicating with the person who helped him, causes a feeling of his own inadequacy. People do not like to experience this, and therefore they seek to eliminate the one who makes them feel like a failure, failure, and the relationship falls apart.
- The insignificance and grandeur of life
It must be really difficult to live with the feeling of an unrequited debt, if everything that we have, we owe to someone. Do you know how to avoid this?
H. O.: I think one of the ways to deal with this is to look at the change of fate itself differently: you can’t attribute it all to one person. It is impossible to double the reality, thinking about what would have happened if we had not been helped. This «what would be» does not exist — there is what is. Instead of focusing on our responsibility to respond to what has been done for us, we can recalibrate the event, evaluate it in the context of human time. Gratitude must be recognized, but one must try to find its scope in the context of human life, because in the end you choose not the circumstances of life, but yourself in these circumstances. And to choose, albeit difficult, albeit each time newly invented and advancing gratitude as an integral part of the relationship — this is also a choice, also a spiritual practice. But at the same time, it is not necessary to think in terms of “owe everything,” because it is impossible to be indebted to “everything” to one person.
While I was talking now, I determined something for myself about my film about Vladimir Gandelsman, with whom I have been friends for many years and whose poems I love very much. This film is an act of gratitude for the conversation that took place between us, and for the fact that in principle such a conversation is possible between people. In this sense, Arcadia is the state in which you are understood, it is a heavenly experience of life, a heavenly space, a space for human communication and understanding … Because, perhaps, happiness when you are understood, but when you understand another person, it is even better.