Anderson's work is based on the assumption that art is real', and that cinematic art is 'poetry'…. What is meant by 'poetry' … is a fusion between style and content, between the thing said and the way of saying it, that makes the two inseparable and at the same time creates something new. His poetry begins with realism, with images drawn from the everyday, that are also so charged with the artist's particular vision that they acquire a deeper meaning, intensifying reality and becoming in themselves an experience. (p. 12)

But if Anderson always wanted art to show a belief in humanity, a mistake that people make is to regard this as a simple notion. On the contrary a belief in humanity, intelligently held, becomes increasingly complex the harder you look at humans. It was a belief in humanity that led Blake to write 'Cruelty has a human Heart,/And...