Movie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall.

The resistance to black-and-white is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.

There's always been this strand of filmmaking in Britain which is like socialist neo-realism. That's always been there. I've never been part of that, really; I've been much closer to fantasy.

All art is fundamentally subversive, because it upsets people's perceptions, their notions about society. Therefore, art is dangerous, but good art is always making us reassess our thoughts and feelings about how we relate to other people. There are always people who fear that and want to suppress that.

I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It's a contiguous world; it's like ours but different.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.