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Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Valhalla Rising)

“In each film, the protagonist is forced to have a moral stand. That moral stand then ends with a consequence. You cannot live life without consequences. Whenever you do something, there will be a consequence. Just like violence only works if there’s a consequence. There’s a build-up. You can’t just be violent for violence’s sake, because it’s not emotionally engaging, so it becomes bad pornography.

If you see too much of it, you start to disengage from it, and that’s where violence can become dangerous for the psyche, because it no longer has any meaning. Like people who get addicted to pornography, the sense of empathy and emotion start to deteriorate within them – it’s a frightening effect.” (Interview with Screen Rant, 2011)