Matthew Modine on 'The Fog of War' | Big Think

Matthew Modine on 'The Fog of War'

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Matthew Modine explains why Errol Morris’ film is such a brilliant piece of work.

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Matthew Modine:

Matthew Modine is an actor who has starred in major films including Streamers, Full Metal Jacket, Married to the Mob, Pacific Heights, Any Given Sunday, and Notting Hill. His recent television work includes Showtime's hit, Weeds. And he recently wrote, directed and starred in the short film "I Think I Thought" about a man who cures himself of over-thinking. He lives in New York.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Who are some of the best documentary filmmakers?rnrnModine: “The Fog of War” is just about probably the most fantastic documentary I’ve ever seen in my life. The way that he gets into his mind, McNamara’s mind, because a camera is reaching into my eyeballs right now and, you know, the scrutiny of the lens, I think, it has a good sense of what, when a person’s telling the truth, unless somebody is just a pathological liar. And to watch, McNamara, you know, watch the camera roll into him and his understanding of the camera and his manipulate… trying to manipulate the camera is fantastic. It’s fascinating. This is a man with a hundreds of thousands of people’s blood on his hands, you know, and trying to set the records straight and trying to justify the war. And a documentary film maker is always going to try to give his perspective, his point of view, you know. They have an agenda, you know. So just wanting to document something, to look at it and scrutinize and allow the audience to make their decision and choice about what’s right and what’s wrong is, you know, it’s very brave. And it’s very hard because people, they’re lazy, you know. They want the documentary filmmaker to kind of guide them and say, “Look, this is wrong,” you know? “This is why I’m exposing this. This is why I’m showing this to you, because this is what we’re doing to other human beings, or this is what happens in a slaughterhouse,” you know.