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.
Errol MorrisTruth exists independent of style. It involves all kinds of issues. Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vรฉritรฉ is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong. And the fact that people still talk about it as though they're really talking about something... it puzzles me greatly. A moment of reflection about it tells you that it makes no sense!
Errol MorrisI don't think that anybody really makes films quite like mine. That's maybe true of any filmmaker.
Errol MorrisThe way I go about making a movie... even the ones that are interview-driven, I go into them not knowing what's going to happen, and feeling my way through.
Errol MorrisThe perfect war is started for obscure reasons, is hopelessly murderous, and accomplishes nothing.
Errol MorrisThe very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."
Errol MorrisRobert Nozick [a Havard philosopher, famous for his book "Anarchy, State and Utopia"] defined revenge as delivering the message that you know what someone has done, and it doesn't involve hurting them or doing anything to them beyond that. It's just delivering the message that their crime has been noted not just by its victims, because the victim might be dead, but by another who has a different moral view and will challenge the perpetrator's view.
Errol Morris