Thursday, May 24, 2007

I loved Red, and I really wish I could have been there for the discussion. I liked its take on morality, and on who judges right and wrong. Particularly the scene in which Valentine was going to tell the neighbor wife that her husband was having a homosexual affair. At first she seems to be in the right, it is good to tell a wife her husband is having an affair, it is the moral decision. Then she gets to the house, and morals are turned upside down. Telling the truth would not be a charitable service to the family, but a selfish act to make herself feel better. Valentine enters believing the generally accepted morals that truth is good and deceit bad, but she leaves seeing that the world is a much more complicated place than that. The family survives on self deceit, as clearly the daughter knows about her father's affair. They choose to live life ignoring its imperfections, so to undermine that structure would be wrong.
I also like the ex judge who spends his retirement questioning whether he deserved the authority to judge. He was put in a position to determine right and wrong, but he realized that his decision is no less biased than that of anyone else, that no judgement is free of fault. The judge may condemn in hatred and the model , one of the most beautiful women in France, is lonely and in an abusive relationship. No situation is straight forward, no person is as they seem, and there can be no single truth.

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