Anybody in Europe who tries to compete directly with Hollywood will die because they’ll just spend more money on it. But things like Hindi cinema have evolved from a different angle, and they’ve survived because of it. In the west, for example, you don’t mix opera and film. If someone is 44 he won’t play himself as a 12 or 14-year-old, but he will in a Hindi movie. If he’s fat and ugly, people will still call him beautiful. In opera you’d accept that, but you don’t accept it in cinema. In the middle of a really serious situation, a dog can have a flashback in a Hindi movie. It is still played seriously, but in the west you wouldn’t.

—Tarsem Singh