Time & Perspective Quote by Roland Joffe

Joffe is quietly defending ambiguity in an ecosystem that punishes it. Movie reviewing, he suggests, isn’t hard because critics are dim or malicious, but because the job’s tempo is hostile to a certain kind of cinema: you watch once, on deadline, then pronounce judgment with the confidence of a verdict. His phrasing, almost apologetic, carries the subtext of a filmmaker who’s seen meaning flattened into a star rating before the audience has even found the bathroom.

The line also smuggles in a critique of critical authority. “Layers” implies that films can be built to reward rumination, that comprehension is not instantaneous and maybe not even singular. When he says it’s “easy to get missed,” he’s pointing at a structural mismatch: the art form can be slow-burning, but the discourse around it is instant-gratification. That’s not just a complaint; it’s a bid for a different contract between maker, critic, and viewer, one where uncertainty is allowed and second impressions matter.

Context matters: Joffe is associated with big, morally knotted historical dramas (The Killing Fields, The Mission) that trade in politics, guilt, and institutional power. These are precisely the kinds of films that can look “obvious” on first pass yet complicate themselves in the aftertaste. His intent isn’t to scold reviewers so much as to remind us that interpretation is a process, not a reflex - and that sometimes the most honest response to a layered film is to admit you might need to sit with it longer than the news cycle allows.