When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.
One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.
Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.
I've always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it's the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia's passion to get lost in a faraway place.
