50 Quotes by Lars Trier

This way of working with actors that I have found now is normally a great pleasure, because it means giving a lot of freedom to some people-and to see them enjoy that freedom and to give to the project is usually very nice.

We had shot very long scenes, and no scene was like the other. The actors were allowed to move within the scene as they pleased, and they never needed to follow any determined action.

Before, I worked with a storyboard, and that meant that the image wasn't good. There was a lot of things that you had to live up to.

The rule means-as I interpret it-that you are allowed to do nothing with the sound and picture after shooting: sound and picture hang together, and neither may be changed or moved afterwards.

I've taken the circuitous path of being interested in people.

Perhaps it sounds pretentious, but in one way or another I hope that you can see that every image contains an idea. It certainly sounds presumptuous-and perhaps it's also untruthful. But as I see it, every image and every cut is thought out. They are not there by chance.

Opera is more like melodrama. And the good thing about opera is that if you can accept that people sing instead of talk, then you don't have to go in and out of it. And that means you can have your emotions with you.

A load of cinematic effects that otherwise seem easy or cheap to me suddenly become difficult again... can't you hear that this is the only right way of doing it?

It was fun having a musician on the set and then having to communicate with him-it was a completely new discipline which I found interesting.