The head is a big cooking pot in which all ingredients are haphazardly mixed: everything you have experienced, read, seen in films. Then you ladle it out with what I hope is some kind of logic. For instance, blue-gray is my basic set design color, and that is from Melville, and then I may add some red because a red teapot looks good in Ozu’s films. I just use a fire extinguisher because our tea ceremony is so underdeveloped.

Maybe my films are not masterpieces, but they are documents of their time. That’s enough for me. Masterpieces I can’t do—even though I try.

—Aki Kaurismäki