He wanted to know if he was capable of committing an evil act in contradistinction to what his fate and his nature tell him to do; Raymond specifically decides to do the exact opposite of what he would normally do, to go against his instincts.
"The restless but oddly serene camera movement is unnerving because it feels subjective yet we can’t quite identify the subject...In Olivier’s Hamlet, we seem to be watching human behavior, in all its awful futility, through the cold, unblinking eyes of God." - T. Rafferty