"The re-enactments in The Thin Blue Line were never used to make you think you were looking at the real world. In fact, they were ironic re-enactments, re-enactments that were in conflict with each other, re-enactments that were demonstrations of falsehood, re-enactments of beliefs, re-enactments of what people claimed that they had seen rather than what I thought they had seen. And the purpose of them was to bring you deeper and deeper and deeper into the mystery of what actually happened. And to heighten the conflict between the claims made by the various witnesses and the reality of that world out there. Because, after all, there is a world out there in which things happen or don't happen."