A British director directed 'American Beauty,' an important film about American life, and it didn't matter. What only mattered was everyone's sensibility.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'd like to make really important movies, like American Beauty. I was really proud to be a part of that movie.
European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films.
When I say that I am going to do an American film, I didn't want to suddenly go off into a completely different world that which bears no relation to the style of filmmaking that I'm used to.
The message of the movie is to accept who you are and not to succumb to the pressure of what the media tells you is beautiful and what you should be looking like.
Film is this incredible medium that allows us to feel empathy for people that are very different than us and worlds completely foreign from our own.
Beauty has been democratised. No longer the preserve of movie stars and models but available to all. But while the invitation to beauty is welcomed, it has become not so much an option as an imperative.
When we were making the movie, winning awards for it wasn't the point at all. We didn't even have an American distributor.
We spend so much of our lives not feeling but doing, doing, doing, and movies remind us that we are human. That life is all the things we see, and yet there is beauty there. There's a celebration of life and all of its intricacies. Movies are magnificent.
When I watch a movie, someone's beauty isn't what engages me: it's what's going on internally. And I imagine it's what the audience thinks, too.
I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.
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