When the Maestro Bertolucci welcomed me into his big house on Via Lungara in Rome, I noticed he was wearing a T-shirt of Mars Attacks, and my nervousness to meet with a director that won 9 Oscars with “the Last Emperor” was then gone. From psychoanalysis to Buddhism, the encounter with Bertolucci made me realize that there is something more than technology when it comes to 3D and special effects. Creating parallel and virtual worlds we create what we are.
To begin with, I asked him to recall the circumstances and style in which the famous sequence between Buddha and Mara in "The Little Buddha" was built.

Meanwhile, let's see why we decided to use this digital technology. There is a moment in the history of Siddhartha, when the enlightenment is about to happen, I was thinking about it for a while.. Finally I made a sort of discovery. I said, "Look, the enlightenment is just the invention of special effects, in the way that tells Asvaghosa, which is Buddhacarita, in acts of Buddha published in Italy by Adelphi . He describe the enlightenment in a way which is nothing but a special effect. Then we have the first pictures of Siddhartha who is meditating, then the images of these beautiful girls who come before him to try to attract and seduce him, and they don’t achieve anything. Finally, these girls discover that in fact the matrix of what is happening is Mara, and Mara is the god of evil. Mara attacks Siddhartha in different ways, first as we said with the beauty and then with real armies of monsters, like an army. Finally, there is the last battle. There was no other way it could have been done except with special effects. I was “profane” of these techniques so I asked for help from a special effects supervisor, Richard Conway, an Englishman who had already made Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen here in Rome. A man of great talent. We shot only part of the scene at Pinewood because in reality the movie was filmed at different times. Some scenes, like that one of fire arrows were shot from another unit in Nepal. The second unit, was ran by my brother Giuseppe at that time. And, I think, with no more than thirty soldiers. Then we had the multiplication of fish and bread that was made with digital , they had become hundreds and hundreds of soldiers. Then came the balls of fire, even those were made in digital. The work was done in short, a bit 'in Nepal, a bit in the laboratory in London and a bit at Pinewood. Now I tell you what we did at Pinewood and I'll explain why we also used the studio. At the end of this fight, I reflected with the rimpoche, my expert Lama very important, young ...

Was he also in the movie?

Yes, his face is in the movie when the lama Norbu is dying and the baby's father is there watching him die, and a young monk is walking in explaning how the passing away of a Lama happens.

And what were you reflecting about?

Speaking with the rimpoche I asked, "What really is the evil for you? '. The rimpoche thinks a bit and then he said: "The evil in my opinion is represented by the ego. The ego is our real enemy. " The Self that is so developed especially in the West, but in the East, because there is a habit of collectivism, individualism is much less. And then I thought that the last battle, after the girls, after the army with fire arrows, after the balls of flame. The last battle should take place directly with Mara. I thought about the ego and I thought that Siddhartha looks in this small body of water, this puddle and sees himself reflected, and sees his image as a sign of himself being pulled out, but puts forward his hand and takes it away, and we see that the reflection of Siddhartha pulls himself out and materializes in three dimensional view.

So to visualize this double image, I first had Siddhartha overlooking the pond, stretching out his hand, with some camera movement and then I was shooting Siddhartha coming out. All this is done with a camera system that you know: Motion Control Camera. The two shots of Siddhartha leaning , and Siddhartha coming out of the water, were made with the same camera movement so using the Motion Control Camera we had completely identical sequences with same movements in space. In fact, it came out very well because we had first Siddhartha looking , then the Siddhartha reflected that comes out, then the pool of water.

  Then when Siddhartha came out, the ego, there is a morphing and Siddhartha becomes this image instead of this evil deity, Mara. And Siddhartha, watching his ego tells him this mysterious sentence that we understood later on, "Architect, this time you will not be able to rebuild your home." And this is the phrase that Siddhartha says to his ego and that means : '' dear ego, I have defeated you this time and you will not be able to make me live by your rules, because enlightened Siddhartha reached Nirvana and in Nirvana there is no more ego''.

One gets the feeling that this film has changed your way of seeing the film and reality, because in your later works is evident the search for absoluteness. For example, I think of The Siege.

The Little Buddha was an experience of almost living together, cohabitation with a personality like that of rimpoche who had a big weight on the way I work and on certain aspirations. So when you say absoluteness it is true. There's like a targeted research, more focused. Definitely an experience stronger than many others. I never thought that this film made me become a Buddhist: I always said I am an amateur Buddhist. Because even as a neophyte, Buddhism is so rich, moreover, we live in a time where you can find an infinite series of links between the Buddhist view of life and many recent discoveries of science and culture. For example, as I am fond of Freud's thinking, I see a close connection between Freud and Buddhism.

More than between Jung and Buddhism?

The relationship with Jung is only more apparent, because Jung has made a sort of transhumanation in the East and was like being reincarnated as an Oriental person. But I've always been more fond of Freud. In my opinion, although Jung is interesting, Freud's point of view of therapy is most effective. And anyway Jung comes from Freud.

About Freud, I can think of'' Spellbound'' with Hitchcock's famous dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali. In your opinion, these days Hitchcock would have have used the techniques of 3D animation?

The 3D technology is expressed in our time. During the time of '' Spellbound'' technologies that were used to make films like Harry Potter or Titanic did not exist. It is hard to imagine the days of Hitchcock: the technologies are in harmony with their time. The trip to the moon of Melies with the spacecraft, the rocket that reaches into the eye of the moon and the dancers were just there for those times. If I think of a Hitchcock movie, I think Rope, made all in sequence shots filmed in real time. All shots from the afternoon until ten minutes after sunset, well it was so beautiful. That was the kind of special effect that you did in those days. There's this great artist, I think his name is Whitlock , which has done scenes for Marnie. Also there is a port that you see when Marnie is brought by Sean Connery into the house where she saw her mother kill a sailor, when she was a child.

At that point the film is a real psychodrama with a lot of memories of trauma, of catharsis!

Yes Marnie regresses and does the baby voice when she sees the red blood ... At that point in the film we see how Hitchcock loved certain backgrounds, such as the harbor, which were animated. For example, in Rope you see the time passing,from the light of the afternoon to darkness of the night. Sometimes there are even seagulls flying which makes this picture very beautiful. It didn’t want to be realistic. It was obviously a backdrop but had poetry. A little simple special effect. In fact, in Little Buddha, because I knew I had this digital sequence, I did some drawings. This is the only sequence for which I have done a storyboard. I hate storyboards.

Storyboards never made, really?

No. I am an enemy of the storyboard, then the film becomes an illustration of four vignettes, Instead I like to improvise . Anyway we needed it. Otherwise I would never be able to plan the work that I had to do. But with the storyboard we planned it and I also enjoyed it, because for me it was a novelty.

In an interview, you said that with advanced means you wanted to evoke the flavor of old film and not just “wow” the crowds.

In fact, for this film I wanted moments of old-fashioned special effects. The ones that are made on the set are the most poetic. For example, the small Siddhartha was born, the mother Maya gives birth to him hanging from a tree that begins to bend; Immediately the child is talking and walking. We have made the child walk and with every step the lotuses are popping out from the sand. That was very important because in some ways it was balancing the high-tech stage lighting. Because those were just the old fashioned special effects, those that were made with the shots “coming and departing”. At every step there was a certain enchantment.

What was the influence of Storaro in all this?

Of course a certain type of lighting had its importance. But we were both being guided by the director of special effects.

Would you use digital actors instead of real actors, as now it seems possible according to the latest experiments?

Sure, there's always a sort of fascination of inventing little Frankenstein creatures. Instead of being an actor, Boris Karloff would be a virtual being. It might be interesting to address the problem. It's a bit like being with a cloned person. What is the way to address this new type of race and above all, what is the way this race sees us? This is a new gender: after the man and woman is the clone. Among these creatures there can be a Pinocchio or the brothers Karamazov: endless possibilities.

The process involves capturing movements from real people to the three-dimensional model. A process that seems the antithesis of a film like yours, which enhances the expressiveness of the face of the actor even in silence.

Look, when De Sica asked me to play a part in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis I was taunting myself. Eventually he told me: "Well Bernardo, why not? Everybody knows that I am able to let act even the stones. " So it's a little 'this: the challenge of let act a stone. And then I do not think that behind the shell of this face there may be someone who really gave their own expressiveness. I believe however that the “model” will have its own expressivity, perhaps in being not expressive. What interests me is the very unpredictability that is outside the control of Dr. Frankenstein.

Do you believe that the new digital technologies will lead to new forms of expression, beyond the cinema as we know it?

Fortunately, the cinema is being transformed. There is a great change and I am very excited. Every time the cinema is changed, from silent to sound or from black and white to color or now with new languages, each time the cinema caught its breath and left for unpredictable itineraries.

What are you working on at the moment ?

I'm working on a ten-minute film that has been done in the most primitive way possible, in black and white. It is part of an episodic film and it's called Ten Minutes OIder, produced by the British. With me there are interesting names: Wim Wenders, Almodovar, Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Kiarostami ... The film will go to Cannes or Venice. Then I have a movie to make this spring in which there will be clips from films of the '60s and the use of advanced technologies.