Quotes About Subjectivity

Of course no documentary is completely 'objective.' Every decision you make - who to interview, how to edit, where to hold the camera - imposes a point of view on the film.

My job as an actor is to just tell the story as best I can from my character's point of view and let the audience decide.

Perhaps I'm temperamentally driven to see things from the point of view of the attacked rather than the attacker.

Cinema is not truth. Even when you make documentary films, you can choose to show this shot and not the other shot - this side and not the other side. In cinema, there's one truth - not 'the truth.' It's only 'my point of view.' Cinema is powerful because of that.

I don't write scenes where one person is right and one person is wrong. It's very much by design that everyone has a point of view that you as an audience member can understand.

I'm just like a photographer or a director. Of course I have an opinion, but I don't think my opinion, or what I want to say... is so obvious 'cause that's not my job. My job is just to give a point of view, not more than that.

I love films where even if you don't like the film, it doesn't matter. It's about respecting a point of view.

I make it a habit of never trying to judge what an audience might think, only because all points of view are too close, because we're doing it every day, I think that the actor's point of view is sometimes too close to what the material actually is.

I want to make films without a single clear message, and films that are as close as possible to what it feels like to be alive. At least to me.

'Once Upon A Time In America' is one of the cleverest films of all time, because you can get out of it whatever you want to get out of it.

I think everyone can have their own opinion. I think that all that matters is how I feel and my opinion, my coaches, and the people around me, like my family.

Common sense to one person might be something different to another.

Books and people are hard to compare.

I don't like comparing projects. I find it too difficult because I can't objectively look at a piece when I'm so subjectively involved it.

Lena Dunham has a very compelling face.

I like stories where there's a center that's mushy and complicated.

No one's conception of art is going to be acceptable to everybody.

Beauty doesn't have to be in accord with prefabricated concepts of 'pretty.'

Condemning art as manipulative is a non sequitur, of course. All art is manipulative.

There is no good or bad cinema, there are films that connect either less or more with audience.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

I don't talk about consciousness. I talk about interiority.

It's very difficult to be objective about yourself and your own circumstances, but one thing I do know about is that I grew up surrounded by storytellers.

The fact is that you're never gonna believe any of the reviews, because the movie is to you what it is to you. No one's ever gonna sway you from what you feel about it.