Climax
Where the DNA of Climax travels
Films that shaped it
-
I saw Dancer in the Dark and I was totally amazed by it. It’s such a strange and original idea, how he mixes fiction with musical sequences, and it’s very intense, I love it. I would say that The Wall, Fame and Dancer in the Dark are the three films that obsessed me as a teenager or young adult. Maybe it’s why I ended up doing a musical.
-
Buñuel did *The Exterminating Angel*, and that was a movie that inspired me when I was a teenager. When people are stuck in a place and they can’t escape. It was just an idea that I had, and I thought, okay, I’m going to use it for *Climax*.
-
For Climax, I think of some of Fellini's Satyricon, Pasolini's Salo, or some of Caligula by Tinto Brass, because it's always been my favourite film.
-
There were some experimental films from the ’60s like Zabriskie Point that were quite powerful with their colors, there was a lot of new lighting, new ways of capturing night scenes. So, of course, all that has influenced me.
-
For example, films by Ken Russell, especially 'The Devils', 'Tommy', or 'Lisztomania', are full of very striking images and performances.
-
Like Last Tango in Paris or Kids or Irreversible are movies that try to show, in the most frontal way, the difficulty of human relationships and how violence is part of human relationships and how sexuality is part of human relationships, and the violence of sexuality.
-
When I saw Taxi Driver when I was 16, I was blown away by it. I had never seen a movie with such an impressive portrayal of an alienated character, or of an urban environment at night.
-
It’s kind of a mix between a documentary and 'The Shining' or 'Dawn of the Dead.' The idea of being trapped in a house, and there’s a kind of paranoia that develops.
-
Lynch for the visual ambiguity, the way he creates uncomfortable dreams, especially 'Blue Velvet' and 'Lost Highway'. I really love that.
-
Wong Kar-wai's films, especially Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together, were very important to me for their use of pop music and how they create a sense of melancholy and urban loneliness. I thought about them a lot.
