The role of the artist is to not look away.
Interpretation
Artists have a responsibility to confront reality and showcase the truth without avoidance.
This quote by Akira Kurosawa highlights the duty of artists to engage with the world around them, especially its harsh realities. Instead of ignoring difficult truths or turning a blind eye to the suffering, artists are called to observe and reflect these experiences through their work, provoking thought and inspiring change in society.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of contemporary artists in social issues.
Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favourite author, and he is the one - I still think - who writes most honestly about human existence.
I can't afford to hate anyone. I don't have that kind of time.
For me, filmmaking combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.
A truly good movie is enjoyable too. Thereβs nothing complicated about it.
but ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.
The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.
I want my audience to be constantly captivated, bewitched, so that it leaves the theatre dazed, stunned to be back on the pavement.
When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.
The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a camera or when you're on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting.
All my work is much more peaceful than I am.
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.
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