Introducing non-cinephiles to film

I believe that today, in the cinema, when we open a door, it's always quite false, because it says to the spectator: ‘Enter this film and you're going to be fine, you're going to have a good time’, and finally what you see in this genre of film is nothing other than yourself, a projection of yourself. You don't see the film, you see yourself. Fiction in the cinema is exactly that: when you see yourself on the screen. You don't see anything else, you don't see the film on the screen, you don't see a work, you don't see the people who make things, you see yourself, and all of Hollywood is based on this. It's very rare today that a spectator sees a good film, he always sees himself, sees what he wants to see. When he begins, rarely, to see a film, it's when the film doesn't let him enter, when there's a door that says to him: ‘Don't come in.’ That's when he can enter. The spectator can see a film if something on the screen resists him. If he can recognise everything, he's going to project himself on the screen, he's not going to see things. If he sees a love story, he's going to see his love story. I'm not the only one to say that it's very difficult to see a film, but when I say ‘see’ it's really seeing. It's not a joke, because you think that you see films, but you don't see films, you see yourself. It's very strange but I assure you, this is what happens. To see a film, that means not crying with the character who cries. If we don't understand that, then we don't understand anything. This is why I spoke of doors which close themselves. There are certain films, for me, which are like doors, even if there are no doors in them. They resemble doors that don't let you enter as the protagonist of the film. You are outside. You see a film, you are something else, and there are two distinct entities. There are certain films, for me, which make this separation, for example the films of Ozu, Mizoguchi or Naruse, or many others, but here I will cite the Japanese. This door is absolutely necessary. It's not a piece of private property, that is to say, it's not closed in an authoritarian manner. We can open it, we can close it, it's your choice. It's always your choice in the cinema, it's always the choice of the spectator. If you decide to go see The Last Samurai (2003), you're going to see The Last Samurai, you know that it's going to be painful, you're Japanese, but you go and see it, I'm sure that you go and see it. It's like junk food, like cake, it makes you want it, and you go for it, and you know it's bad for you, but you go for it. This is what I call the open door films. Commerce is like that. The door to McDonalds is always open. So, a film like Late Spring (1949) or An Autumn Afternoon (1962) is not completely open. In a similar way, Ossos is a film that slightly closes the door. It hides certain things, it tells you that you can feel pain, but not everything, and so that suggests a bit of trouble.