At the Fnac in Nice for the promotion of his film (and book) “Our Friends the Earthlings,” Bernard Werber opened up to the journalists present, including Nice Premium.
Nice-Premium: Why not make several short films like a collection of short stories. Have you done this before?
(Watch “The Humans”) Why venture into a feature film like this one?
Bernard Werber: Because there are no savings in short filmmaking, and I did it in one week. Regardless of the result in a festival (since there are only festivals), a film cannot live (or else with DVD sales, but even that’s not offered, even in Fnac stores). The only way to make a film that has an economy, a life, and thus the means (since we had scenes with expensive special effects, over 200 extras on set, four cameras), we couldn’t have that with a short film. Or else I would shoot a short film every week, store them in my refrigerator, and then show them to friends on Sundays. But I believe the purpose of art is to be universal, to be seen worldwide, to be broadcast, to be discovered, and what interests me is that the film is seen, and it can only be seen if it is shown in theaters.
N-P: The format is quite short. Feature films are much longer now with digital. 1h25 feels more like a documentary. Do we draw a parallel? Is it a science fiction film? Is it an ethnological documentary?
B.W.: I’ll answer both questions. Why 1h25, because it’s the most comfortable format for a movie theater. I have a two-hour version of the film in which I can tell you, you don’t get bored at all. It’s just that for the life of the film at one point, we realized that the format of 1h28 (1h30 with credits) is the easiest format to distribute in theaters. It’s solely for format reasons regarding projection rooms.
Then the second question, whether it’s a documentary or a feature film, it’s obviously fiction. The documentary is a tone, a style, because part of the film, we shot it with a long focal length from afar, as if we were filming gorillas in the jungle, as if we were filming lions and we had fun with that imagery.
N-P: You said that all themes were addressed…that you’ve seen everything good and bad in man, but did you set limits on the themes addressed. Themes like wars, diseases, you didn’t talk about them?
B.W.: I started from the principle (as you know, having written a book on ants), of filming ants. When I arrive, I find an anthill in the forest. I film. Why would I happen to stumble upon a war, why would I happen upon the Depardieu of ants. There’s very little chance of stumbling upon a war. The aliens arrive, there’s very little chance they land on a war! We only talk about that in the news […] But they see us as we are. For example, if they land in Paris right now, they won’t land on a war […] There’s little chance of landing on a battle! With the whole land surface, landing exactly on the battlefield, on the Baghdad attack at the moment it happens, you’d really have to be incredibly unlucky. That’s why I don’t talk about it. The code is: “I start, I discover earthlings, what do I see.” It’s not: “I start, I discover earthlings and I’m going to talk about the same things that happen in your 8 pm news.”
N-P: No limits set, then?
B.W.: At least not the intention to tell the same stories as the 8 pm news with “I’m going to talk about elections, I’m going to talk about war, I’m going to talk about the economy,” because the aliens don’t care about those.
N-P: Has your vision of humans changed?
B.W.: My view of humans will shift on April 18, because I will see if humans are curious to know who they are. Especially the French human. Do they consider that they always want the same thing? I’ve invested so much in this project, I’ve put so much heart into this thing… This project was born from a real friendship between me and Claude Lelouch. He’s an extraordinary human and this meeting made this film possible. We are both, him as a producer, me as a director, the parents of this project. My opinion will depend a bit on this thing in which I’ve been immersed for so long. But you are here and that means you’ve seen it, that you’re curious. You have a double curiosity. First to go see, then to find out what I wanted to do. You guys are okay! But now, are you representative of the whole herd? Or are you pioneers, adventurers? I don’t realize that. I do realize, however, how many curious people there are on the planet. I hope there are many, because if everyone is content with their life, if everyone is content with the drabness offered by television and the French film system…
N-P: Two scenes are striking and it’s done on purpose in the film. The first is the chicken slaughter, but we understand why. The second is the childbirth. Why is childbirth shocking for a human watching this film?
B.W.: Because our cinema is a morbid planetary cinema. Look at the average number of deaths in a film. One death is no longer enough, there need to be fifty and always in increasingly atrocious stuff. I saw the latest Mel Gibson, if you want to know if cinema is morbid, it really is ultra morbid. We’ve become so accustomed to morbidity that now when life is shown, that seems shocking. We live in a reversed world. Likewise, we’ve gotten so used to mediocrity, that when something is done that isn’t mediocre, it appears mediocre! It’s not that it looks mediocre, it looks bad, because they’ve found a reading grid which is: “everything has to be in this mediocrity, otherwise it doesn’t exist.” Everything has to be morbid otherwise, if we show life, that’s disgusting. At the limit, we’re almost lucky not to be banned for under 16s. Because we show a birth, whereas we will show scenes of torture that go on endlessly and there it will be allowed for under 16s. It’s the world upside down, now I’m surprised to be one of the few to show it and say it! It seems so obvious to me, that what’s most beautiful is life! Indeed, we see the mother’s face at birth. She is happy and fulfilled, as will be the three young ladies around me when they are (laughs) if it’s not already done.
