'The Killing' has a really great combination of qualities: Even though it's very sad and deals with mourning and grief, it's still exciting. It's about real people and it doesn't shy from the painful points of life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I like death. I'm a big fan of it.
Death is an absolute mystery. We are all vulnerable to it, it's what makes life interesting and suspenseful.
TV has a three storyline structure, but 'The Killing' takes on that structure with such ambition.
A lot of the qualities in 'Killing and Dying' is sort of a response to work I'd done previously. I wanted to push myself in some different directions.
I've done about four deaths in films now, and I think it's quite good because then it's sort of a memorable moment in the film.
When someone dies instantly, then I think the well of grief and disbelief all mixed in with it is unfathomable. And when murder is involved, that just takes it into a whole new place. There is an extra dimension you just can't compute or deal with.
When I started writing the third book, 'The Kill,' the intention was just to write a thriller, a crime novel for myself, really, in which there would be no body, no solution - where you would look at an event from different people's perspectives.
To put it crudely, 'The Act of Killing' would blast open the space for the more delicate film, 'The Look of Silence,' to do its work.
Killing characters on television has become an easy short cut to cathartic emotion.
Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.