Film Context Quotes

'W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

All films speak to their times. It becomes obvious only after.

Obviously, 'Lincoln' is not about the telegraph operator. There's a whole other movie before and after the two isolated scenes that I'm in.

It can be a fictional character and yet relatable... It always depends on the content of the film and what you are doing.

There's a fashion, or maybe you could call it a necessity, in French cinema to make social films, which is to say films in which the characters are defined by their social context.

I'm finding now more and more that nudity is so rarely serves the story in any film.

That's the problem with the Internet: You do a naked scene and then it's taken out of context and put on websites that have nothing to do with film.

I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.

I did my first nude scene in Mildred Pierce, and that was absolutely terrifying, but it was for an important part of the film and for a reason, and it's incredibly powerful. It's not gratuitous. I think the stuff they show on MTV is so much worse.

Most of the films that I've ever really responded to are ones that I feel were really involved in their times.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed doing was taking raw sound from locations during the film, like the candy machine, and writing pieces of music to go with them, which is totally unnecessary within the context of the film, because they have their own logic.

The two real leads in 'Children of Men' are Clive Owen and the social environment. You know, this same movie without the social environment maybe is just like a generic chase movie.

It's great that the story [Allied] is set in the '40s because the '40s feel to it is completely appropriate.

Dalton Trumbo actually was [ a hypocrite], because he liked his wealth, which was against the grain of being a Communist. I put title cards at the head of the film that explains the context.

In 'Road,' my character is linear and uni-dimensional. It was more of a reacting character. I am a foil to the other characters in the film. It is the most normal character in the most abnormal, extraordinary film.

'The White Ribbon' had to be in German because of the subject matter, that was clear. But in the case of 'Amour,' it could have taken place in any country.

The sexy moments for me, I wasn't thinking of them as sexy. I was thinking of them as more specific to my character. So it was necessary for my character's development in the movie, so that's how I played it.

It's cruel to compare two actors working with two different filmmakers on two different characters.

I was never apposed or sought out nudity, but it was necessary in the Where the Truth Lies. If they didn't have the nudity, but they still had the scenes - because sex is used as a power tool in this movie - I feel it would have felt self conscious and I think the scene is meant for you to feel uncomfortable.

Most of my stuff was sort of of-the-time. 'The Crazies' was, basically, we were angry about Vietnam, and it had a reason for being.