"Stop. Don't do this to yourself"

[jchrisobrien]

Tonight there's an office party, and today I got my new phone.  The weekend was more of the usual, so no need to get into details there.  The dinner party was pleasant last night, even though my (out of context) quote raised some hackles.  Hey!  While I'm on a roll, let me dive into another controversial subject. 

I didn't find this film as hard to sit through as Mishak did.  I did start to get annoyed with Ellen Page after a while (in a much better roll than she had in X-Men: the Last Stand), but that was mostly rooted in my wanting her to "get ON with it, already".  Small criticisms, really.  The premise is a man brings an underage girl home to listen to music and photograph her.  She ends up drugging him, and tying him up.  The rest of the film is spent with her interrogating and torturing him, to get him to confess to the rape/murder of another minor.  The film is not graphic, everything is left to your imagination, and the acting conveys the horror much more than simply showing it to you would.

I had a conversation with Heatray once, when we talked about how torture is wrong, regardless of who does it, and for what reasons.  Whether you're interrogating villagers in Chad, or terrorists in Gitmo, torture is an evil thing.  The movie doesn't make a moral judgment on what Hailey (Ellen Page) does to Jeff (Patrick Wilson).  Hailey clearly believes that what she is doing is just, yet she is by far the more brutal character on the screen.  Jeff's initial actions are very sketchy, and bringing home an underage girl is pretty inappropriate.  If Hailey is correct, then Jeff has done some horrible things. 

What he does is only hinted at, and suggested.  In a more mainstream movie, you would have more direct evidence of what Jeff did, but that would change the entire feel of the movie.  It would make it easy to hate him.  Hard Candy unfolds in a way where you learn about Jeff's character piece by piece, sympathy and fury overlapping as each new clue is presented.  It's only at the very end that you learn all the information, and even then you are left wondering about some things.  One thing is clear to any Firefly fan:  Hailey has definitely read her Shan Yu.

The movie doesn't make any attempt to defend Jeff's actions, and Hailey shoots down his excuses and comments one by one.  What it does show is that even a "monster" is closer to being human that you'd think.  It's easy to paint a picture of a psychpath, or a serial killer.  They're crazy, evil, they must be put down.  What Jeff does is evil too (whether it's pedophilia or murder), but he seems human.  It's only after all his lies and delusions have been stripped away, that you get to see the Real Jeff.  You get a brief glimpse on the roof, then one last plea, then back to the Real Jeff.

I highly reccomend this movie, and also The Woodsman with Kevin Bacon, though perhaps not together in the same sitting. 

Comments

[mishak.livejournal.com]

Whether you're interrogating villagers in Chad, or terrorists in Gitmo, torture is an evil thing.

Geopolitical Digression:

I don't have that much a problem with nation-states torturing people, long as you say this is what we're doing to these people, and here's why. What I have a big problem with is a government that says it's bad for others governments to torture people, but it's ok for us to torture people. Turns us into a nation of hypocritical douchebags.

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I can't quite grasp how you can't have a problem with nation-states torturing people. I mean, I can in the sense of "it happens all the time, I'm not going to worry about it night and day because it's happening".

A regieme that says "yes, we torture people" is being honest. They are still torturing people.

[mishak.livejournal.com]

I have this theory that torture, like some other unpleasant behaviors, is self-correcting in our modern age if nations and their citizens are up front about it. Like, if every night on prime time TV we showed videos of the torture we're inflicting on the people we assert are terrorists – show U.S. soldiers pulling these guys fingernails out, electoshocking their genitals, waterboarding them, whatever, I think the public disgust at our actions may have an effect on the policies of our government. The pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib, those should be required viewing for every American citizen, and if we can say that we're fine with doing that, and we're also totally fine if thousands of American citizens are kidnapped and disappeared into prison camps run by the Iraqi or Chinese or Russian governments, and tortured for years with no legal recourse or appeal, well under those conditions I might say that the torture policies of this government are not inconsistent or hypocritical.. That's what I mean by saying I don't have as much a problem with governments torturing people, as long as every citizen of that country is willing to be tortured as well. Maybe it's my roundabout way of saying that if we're open and honest, take responsibility for the actions of our government and apply all rules fairly to ourselves as much as everyone else in the world, then torture would not happen.