“An artist should be able to create his own autonomous world, but making a film depends on so many extraneous factors that I don’t really think it’s an authentic form of art.”
“What I try to do, with the actors' consent, is to create something by beginning with a set situation that we can deviate from in the course of the shoot. ”
“I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ”
“I look for very strong visual unity by using a type of framing and camera movement that is very simple. Everything
must come from inside. It mustn’t be superficial. I hate weird camera angles and distorting lenses.”
“I show true things using fictional techniques but maintaining truthfulness — that's where my approach differs from Ozu. He wanted to make film more aesthetic. I want to make it more real. He aspired toward a cinematic nirvana. When I was his assistant, I was very opposed to him, but now, whilst still not liking his films, I'm much more tolerant. As for me, I'd like to destroy this premise that cinema is fiction.”
“Theatre is interesting as a catharsis for actors because it's the only way you can be idiotic and get away with it. I really, really don't like theatre and I feel so far from it.”
“A lot of people cry at the end of the movie. Some people come out and smoke a cigarette. Some people go for a walk or a cigarette in the middle of the movie. Each person handles the movie as he wants...”
“It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.”
“The body always plays an important role in my films. You could say the body is the most beautiful thing we have or you could say it’s the ugliest thing we have. We can sell bodies, we can adore or worship bodies.”
“What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in…”
“...our wars of machines and technology make 'progress' ever more impersonal and deadly - a 'progress' that has not guaranteed man's human, moral, and civil growth.”
“I think that the main impact on my work, on the making of this film, came from the intensity of the similarity I felt to Edvard Munch as a man, as an artist, as someone who struggled throughout his life.”