Coppola regresa y rejuvenece

Coppola regresa. En rigor, los dos Coppola. Sofia Coppola estará en Cannes con Marie Antoinette, con Kirsten Dunst, como la célebre reina; pero lo más sorprendente es que Francis Ford Coppola también. El rodaje ya terminó (filmó en Rumania y Bulgaria) y ahora Walter Murch está editando en San Francisco.

aqui va una nota que apareció en EL PAIS hace unos meses, cuando rodaban. Pero lo mejor son las palabras y reflexiones que hace Coppola en su "diario de rodaje" en la página web de Zoetrope. La cinta se llama Juventud sin juventud, pero lo que le interesa a Coppola es volver a fojas cero y experimentar y no "andar tan cargado": nueve años después de un film de encargo como The Rainmaker, Coppola retorna pero con algo chico.

Lo de EL PAIS:

El regreso de Coppola a los orígenes
El cineasta estadounidense inicia en Rumania el rodaje de su nueva película, 'Youth without youth', un filme de bajo presupuesto protagonizado por Tim Roth

EL PAÍS - 11-11-2005

"Yo sólo sé que en cierto momento uno tiene que regresar al principio". Ese regreso a los orígenes le ha llegado a Francis Ford Coppola a los 66 años. El director de El Padrino rueda desde hace unas semanas en Rumania y Bulgaria Youth without youth (Juventud sin juventud), una película de bajo presupuesto protagonizada por Tim Roth. "Lo mejor para mí a estas alturas de mi vida es volver a ser estudiante y hacer cine con los ojos de entonces", ha dicho el cineasta.

A través de un comunicado que emitió su productora, American Zoetrope, y de las declaraciones que el director ha realizado a la agencia Associated Press y a algún medio rumano, se sabe que con Youth without youth Coppola pretende volver a su cine más personal. La película está basada en la novela homónima del rumano Mircea Eliade. Editada en 1988 pocos años después de la muerte de su autor, la obra está ambientada en los años anteriores a la II Guerra Mundial y narra la historia de un profesor cuya vida sufre un cambio extraordinario, un cambio que atraerá la curiosidad de los nazis. "Es una parábola, una fábula, es casi una versión intelectual de Twilight zone", ha dicho Coppola. "En cierto modo, es una película de Hitchcock en la que Tim Roth sería el equivalente a Jimmy Stewart, un tipo normal que se topa con algo fascinante y grande. Me sedujo el descubrir en esta historia los temas claves que yo trato de entender mejor: el tiempo, la conciencia y la base fantástica de la realidad".

Coppola se mantenía alejado de las cámaras desde hacía ocho años. Concentrado en sus negocios de hoteles y viñedos, o en la producción de las dos películas de su hija Sofia (Lost in translation y María Antonieta), su último trabajo como director fue Legitima defensa de John Grisham (The rainmaker), de 1997. Desde entonces, el director de Golpe al corazón ha intentado sin éxito poner en pie proyectos que por una u otra razón se han quedado aparcados o en el camino. El más conocido, Megalópolis, era una superproducción de ciencia ficción situada en el Nueva York del futuro. Coppola también compró los derechos de la biblia de la generación beat, On the road, pero el proyecto de trasladar a la pantalla él mismo la novela de Jack Kerouac finalmente ha quedado en manos del brasileño Walter Salles.

El legendario cineasta asegura que regresa con una película con la que pretende limpiar su mirada. En junio, cuando viajó a Bucarest para ultimar las localizaciones, confesó ante un grupo de universitarios: "He venido aquí para redescubrirme como artista".

aqui van las palabras del propio Coppola, en su diario. Todo lo que dice es fascinante y te reflexionar sobre las carreras de mucha gente, de escritores a cineastas. Una duda personal: ¿por qué Scorsese no puede filmar algo barato?



9-23-05
WITHOUT
Without what? What is missing? What could be the reason that the same person, later in life, is unable to compete with himself as a younger artist? Is anything missing at all, or is the answer simpler — that each person is given only one or two truly worthy ideas, like a couple of arrows in a quiver. When such ideas come on the scene in an exciting work of art, it appears like magic; it's news. Critics and journalists require fresh blood for their own professions, and so it's understandable that a new artist with a new idea is seized up and catapulted into fame . This is true, also, for a series of works from one artist: a trilogy or tetralogy. Aren't the fourth books of The Alexandria Quartet or Mishima's The Sea of Tranquility the weakest of the group? Could it be that the ideas and innovations of the first or second book have already been demonstrated and are played out by time the last are written? Originally, I didn't intend to make more than one Godfather film; yet economic forces at the studio were insistent: "Francis, you have the formula for Coca-Cola; are you not going to make more?" But the first film expended most of the arrows in my quiver or, more aptly, the slugs in my revolver. So, the second film had to stretch into new and more ambitious territory to show a few more; otherwise, it would have been weaker than the first. By the time the third arrived, the basic ideas that made the first fresh and excited were all but used up.



New artists sometimes arrive on the scene later in life, and with their one or two ideas burst into celebrity in their fifties with an intensity equal to that of newcomers in their twenties. Such an occurrence is rare, because usually talent of that quality is more commonly discovered early. I think of the novelist William Kennedy as an example, and I am sure there are many more.

Without conscience? The successful artist has to contend with economic issues and questions of fame that the younger artist can only fantasize about. Should I do it to make the big money or because it will make me even more famous? Those are very dangerous questions not often compatible with doing great work. Especially when there are several ex-wives and children needing to be supported by the alimony check. This is usually not a factor that the younger artist thinks much about. So is the difference between mere mortals and the pantheon of the greats I mentioned earlier, Shakespeare, Verdi, Kurosawa merely that the latter were given more than the customary one or two ideas? Or the issues of money, luxury and family were not so all-consuming? More on this subject will come soon...

9-30-05
YOUTH
I've begun to think that the only sensible way to deal with this dilemma is to become young again, to forget everything I know and try to have the mind of a student. To re-invent myself by forgetting I ever had any film career at all, and instead to dream about having one.

Certainly one advantage of 'youth' in the arts is ignorance, to know so little as to be fearless. To not grasp that certain things one may dream up are actually impossible to do. When I finished Apocalypse Now I of course thought 'If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have even tried..." Certainly old age brings 'experience' and that is not to be discounted, but in the arts, fearlessness is a more desirable genie than experience. Fearlessness is cousin to innovation, whereas experience can be the parent of fear. Once you've fallen out of the tree a few times; felt the pain of those bruised knees and suffered the embarrassment of the inevitable ridicule —it's much more difficult to be as daring in what you do, or even what you attempt to do.



So, for myself at any rate, I've decided the best course is to become an amateur and accept that I know next to nothing and love almost everything. Recently I realized that the favorite decade of my life was 50, a wonderful age for a man — at—he peak of his health and experience, yet flexible enough to enjoy and also temper it. So reluctant was I to give up being in my fifties, that I began to call myself 'fifty-ten' or 'fifty-eleven '. Now I'm 'fiftysixteen'. And so today, like some inflated East European currency that gets two zeros lopped off, I've decided to lose the '50' and just be sixteen. Next year I'll be seventeen, which is exactly the age that I was when I very seriously began to direct plays.