"It’s another movie that you run into everywhere because it’s so frequently stolen from. Another reluctant hero, and an unsympathetic, morally ambiguous character… Besides its visual triumph as a movie, there’s a constant juxtaposition of an individual versus the fascist architecture, and the way that politics become very personal, and the way this guy, who doesn’t seem to care about anything, ends up caring about everything. It references Casablanca in many ways, and it also feels like it’s got a great sense of irony about politics because he flips over in the end in a second, and I think a lot of people identify with him and the fact that he’s being forced to do something that he thinks he can do easily and doesn’t have the stomach for. It’s image after image of people either in nature or in the civic environment that are part of fascist architecture and it’s a very memorable, evocative movie. Great music, great cinematography, great acting, and it’s a movie that’s a touchstone for me."