Mani Ratnam Quotes

Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't sustain silence without losing energy, whereas film can go into a silent mode and stay there for minutes at a time.

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

I find movies rely upon dialogue too much sometimes, and you lose the power of what really the most basic cinematic language is, which is the visual language.

You know, things that might work in a book just do not work in the visual medium of movies.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.

Professional cinema image-taking should integrate, serve, interest, and enhance the story. I judge cinematography not just for a story well told but for what the story is.

Cinema is a visual medium one has to communicate through visuals, and therefore, dialogues should be less.

When you're making a film you're thinking about how to tell the story visually.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

Images have a unique power to impart that which is beyond words.

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.

Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.

I realised that there's a more muscular approach to film-making that I found very inspiring.

I think there's a connection with 'Nightcrawler' and 'Blowup' and other films where visual imagery is integral to the story. It allows you to play with images.

Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

I live, therefore I make films. I make film, therefore I live. Life. Movement. I make home movies, therefore I live. I live, therefore I make home movies.

As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.

I think cinema has this beautiful component. It's a universal language.

I've never made a film using dialogue or speech.

We work very hard in all of the Pixar films to not make anything in the imagery that causes people to think of something other than the story.

It takes more drawing to tell a story in pantomime.