Rachel Morrison Quotes

If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.

I think of 'Mommy' as very simplistic or not simplistic, but I wish for the style to actually work with what you see onscreen and what you feel in that very moment. I hope we did not disrespect the characters by being too flamboyant when it's not necessary.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

In film, you can't go into analytical explorations because the audience will reject that.

The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories.

Hollywood films are alienating to the spectator because they use too much dialogue, too much explication and leave no space for the viewer. They depress me.

Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film.

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.

Connection is what one is after in probably most media, but certainly in film, which is an immersive medium.

It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke.

For each movie that I do, I like to find a specific language to tell the specific story.

'Piku' was driven by subtleties. Most films come with the padding of the sound, the visual, the drama.

My position was that the film begins with the first frame and that the film should be doing a job at that point.

I've often been asked why my shot-taking is not stylish, why I don't think about visual statements. The truth is, style is irrelevant. I never think of the shot as much as I think of the characters and what they are saying and doing.

I don't think 'Lootera' is slow paced; it's finely paced for its setting and story.

The intention behind 'The Witch' was to be very restrained. I think that story, while it sometimes annoys me, needed to take itself incredibly seriously.

A movie like 'The Apartment' is beautifully directed, but you can't put your finger on why it's such a good movie. It just is, because of all these things that Billy Wilder is subtly doing. That level of filmmaking is something I aspire to.

I love dialogue, but I'm also terrified of it. In all my movies, I've done my best to cut out as much dialogue as possible. I love the spaces in those silences. Even in 'Pete's Dragon,' I was so happy that the first twenty minutes have about five or six lines of dialogue.

Great visual effects serve story and character and in doing so, are, by their very definition, invisible.

Theatre is more metaphorical where you have to be louder and larger than life, whereas film is more subtle and more real.

Sometimes it feels as if the artist hasn't done the real work of engaging with the material. Film noir can't just play off looks and attitudes. A thriller needs a dose of genuine suspense. It does not have to be literal, but it does have to feel genuine. Otherwise the artist is just leeching off the form.

I'm very interested in cinema that explores emotional journeys and where you can use everything at your disposal cinematically to locate you inside someone's head and their emotional landscape.

I love films that are many things at the same time while being simple.

A film should always at least be about something.