Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.
Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.
When we are looking for validation, that will never satisfy us. When we are looking for affection, for love, a little bit of that will be enough to be complete.
I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.
The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.
To make a film is easy; to make a good film is war. To make a very good film is a miracle.
Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it.
When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it's absurd. But it's tragic at the same time.
I have a notebook, and I know what decisions will be made in pre-production. Everything is pre-determined in the pre-production period. I visually design the whole thing, and I know when things will happen.
To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.
In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.
I'm neurotic. I complain all the time. I'm a workaholic. And I'm never satisfied.
Filmmaking can give you everything, but at the same time, it can take everything from you.
'Babel' is about the point of view of others. It literally includes points of views as experienced from the other side. It is not about a hero. It is not about only one country. It is a prism that allows us to see the same reality from different angles.
When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.
That incredible bubble and high expectations built at festivals can work against a film.
'Amores Perros' is three stories that interconnect in one moment, which is the car accident.
I have ADD. I can't pay attention to one thing too long.
Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment.
'21 Grams' is only one story told by three different points of view, but they are really physically connected - literally, with the heart.
You can better embrace life, you can enjoy it more, when you are conscious that it will end. You bite life.
Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.
It's famous that comedians have a very dark personal state of mind. I think, in my case, it's the same. The only way to get deep is to have a balance, or a counterbalance.
Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood.
Trump doesn't know it yet, but he will become one of the guys that he hates very soon. Soon he will be a loser.
When you taste a mango in the United States, it's just tasteless.
I think Jenny Beavan is a masterful costume designer and very deserving of the Oscar for 'Mad Max: Fury Road.'
My cinema is an extension of myself. A sort of life-testimony of my vital experience, with my few virtues and my numerous limitations.
I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles.
I love Sam Mendes, but I went to see 'Spectre' with my kid, and the opening scene of the Dia de Muertos party, with this kind of tropical music, in downtown Mexico City, with all these people dancing like it's the Rio de Janeiro carnival... I had to laugh.
Innocence can be more powerful than experience.
You have kids studying master class visual arts who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically; that's what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression.
Everybody is looking for validation, no matter who you are, and I think that's a need of the human condition - to look for affection or recognition or validation.
When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe.
Good directors don't answer questions with their work. They generate debate and create discussion.
'Ikiru' is existential but with a lot of tenderness.
I don't like the ironic tone that our pop culture, in the world, has taken. Everything is 'ironic.' Everything is 'cool.'
Everyone's terrified of being mediocre. Everyone wants to be special.
As a Third World citizen, I always feel that I need to express my point of view. Sometimes the points of view of Third World countries are never expressed. We don't have that possibility, sometimes, to spread what we feel and how we see things.
I have never met a superhero, but why are we so obsessed with superheroes?
I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.
Really, Mexico City has always been this big, complex monster of a city that has always had real problems and needs, and I've always found my way through it in different ways.
I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there's no music. Without rhythm, there's no cinema. Without rhythm, there's no architecture.
Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.
Look, I'm no purist - there are good superhero films, and there are bad ones.
Too much knowledge and analysis can be paralysis.
The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.
If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally.
I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.
