Life and other weird things

Who is a 'good person' ?

Who is 'moral' ?

What is 'morality' ?

I can't speak for everyone, but these are questions that pop up in my mind from time to time. Colonel Kurtz's classic monologue from 'Apocalypse Now' comes to mind :

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

This, and watching Stephen Dalry's briliant 'The Reader' today, made me think today. How can we judge people by our moralities ? How can we pass a sweeping statement about an act being right or wrong, or a person being 'good' or 'bad', based on what WE consider right ? Is it possible to pass such a judgment? And is it right ?

'The Reader' is based on the award winning German novel "Der Vorleser', and takes us through the lives of two people, from the mid 1950's to the present decade. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Michael Berg - who appears first in the story as a school student and ends up being a moderately successful lawyer. The second, and vastly more interesting character is Hannah Schmitz, who appears in the story as a lonely tram ticket collector, before one realizes that there is more to her than her present lonely life in West Germany.


Without giving too much away, the gist of the story is as follows. Michael and the much older Hannah have an affair for a summer, during which she makes him read out many classics of literature. Her abrupt departure from the city leaves Michael emotionally scarred, from which he never really recovers. A chain of events after Hannah's departure leads Michael to find out certain startling facts about his temporary flame, which changes his life forever. The facts revolve around Hannah's past in a very different Germany of the 1930's and 1940's, at which time moralities were different, as was the sense of right and wrong.

The movie goes on to show Michael Berg's attempt at personal redemption from the shackles of his own mind, which refuses to let him off the hook from what he considers to have been an immoral affair in his youth.

Kate Winslet, and Ralph Fiennes have come up with stellar performances as Hannah Schmitz and Michael Berg. The pain in their lives is not seen overtly through actions, but is visible in their eyes.

Many times in life, it becomes easy to blame a person for being 'immoral', or 'bad'. Life being what it is, such judgments are never quite that simple. The perceived morality of an action by an observer is almost never representative of the point of view of the actor. This is more true while judging actions taking place in a time frame when the entire society's sense of right and wrong was different from what exists at the time of judgment. Like Colonel Kurtz, or Michael Berg, or Hannah Schmitz, there are people who justify their actions, and are, in their own way, in their own space of events, quite right.

To me, that's what The Reader is all about. A brilliant movie. Must Watch.