With war and famine and flood and special effects films, when you do somebody under duress, you have to be really be inventive and the risk of keeping it very simple is you might loose some of the audience because it's not overt, it's hidden, not coming at you. Then you might cut through to some of this numbness and reach something profound and tragic.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

It doesn't take any imagination at all to feel awed

The smallest detail can contribute to the whole, I think particularly with emotion, you want it to be as authentic as it can, whether its a artifact or a theatrical event. But the whole is the sum of so many images.

There's such a deep, conservative feeling in 'The way Back.' You go, 'gosh, we've gotten narrow.' So at the moment I think there's a kind of tension, and it's gold rush fever.

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

You can mix in certain sensitivities as a filmmaker.