I believe the feeling that one can live without
writing is enough to ban writing. I wanted the film
to start with this very sentence which defines
clearly what is the point: Rilke does not give any
room to posture, pretense, or the occupation of
a writer. He never tried to make his poetry
likable, entertaining or comforting. It is always
about one and the same: life and one of its
parts–death. Due to his refusal of any "literature,"
his voice sounds to me as one of the most radical
in this century. I let fragments from elegies from
Duin and Rilke’s life bounce against, shine at and
dim one another. I wanted to shoot a film
without any embellishments–pretense images,
picturesque "postcard" views of the country
which Rilke passed through during his wandering
life and about which he said he had "thrown
behind undiscovered." I wanted to shoot the film
without any music, and without anything
interfering with what is important. I made this film
so that we can hear Rilke, so that people sense
what he can give us today.