I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
" We have a word for that in Japanese," he said. " It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally." ... He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, ... If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb." . . . " The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over," . . . " What really matters is the underlying emotions - that you never let go of those."
~ Hayao Miyazaki, in an interview with Roger Ebert
