It's A Kind Of Honour

I Believe We Have Two Ideas About How Movies Are Made In Our Heads. Idealizations. Platonic Ideals. One Of Them Is Of A Movie That Is Completely Uncontrolled, And Another Is A Movie That Is Completely Controlled. The Auteur Theory Vs. Cinéma Vérité.

Like All Great Documentaries, The Act Of Killing Demands Another Way Of Looking At Reality. It Starts As A Dreamscape, An Attempt To Allow The Perpetrators To Reenact What They Did, And Then Something Truly Amazing Happens. The Dream Dissolves Into Nightmare And Then Into Bitter Reality. An Amazing And Impressive Film.

You Can Think Of My Films As Cautionary Tales, But You Might Even Think Of Them As Despairing Tales, Because At Least In A Cautionary Tale, You Have This Idea That By Listening To The Story You Can Assure A Better Outcome. Whereas I'm Not At All Convinced That's The Case. In Fact, If Anything, I'm Convinced That It's The Opposite.

Forty Years Ago This Country Went Down A Rabbit Hole In Vietnam And Millions Died. I Fear We're Going Down A Rabbit Hole Once Again - And If People Can Stop And Think And Reflect On Some Of The Ideas And Issues In This Movie, Perhaps I've Done Some Damn Good Here!

I Used To Work As A Private Detective Years And Years Ago.