“The End of Summer” - Yasujiro Ozu (1961)

Yasujiro Ozu’s penultimate film, The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke No Aki, 1961),  had several similarities with his previous work, Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960).  We would naturally expect similarities in connection with Ozu’s unique style of visual expression, but the commonalities between these two films also extended to characters, themes, and even the leading actresses. 

Ozu’s visual style is, of course, what stands out when we encounter one of his films.  In this respect there are two main aspects: (a) narrative presentation and (b) visual expression.

• Narrative Presentation.
  Ozu usually tells his entire story by presenting a series of short conversations between the main participants, which, because of their being situated in the layered social context of Japanese cordiality, consist mostly of polite small talk. The pace is leisurely, with many connecting shots showing (a) people simply looking idly into the mirror as they dress, (b) putting on clothes, or (c) walking down a hallway to answer a phone, etc.  This is all part of Ozu’s use of the “slow disclosure” narrative technique, whereby the viewer only gradually discerns the background context of a given situation.  On top of this, Ozu often omits presenting key action events of the story; the viewer only learns about these events when they are discussed later in one of the film’s short conversations.  This at first may sound like intentional obfuscation on Ozu’s part, but it has the effect of drawing the viewer into the important social context that is a key aspect of the story.
   
• Visual Expression.
  Ozu relies heavily on static, low-angle medium shots that cumulatively can have a hypnotic effect on the viewer.  In some of these conversations, the speaking character is shown to be looking straight into the camera, which has the psychological effect of engaging the viewer (who is normally the “invisible witness” to what is happening), directly with the character speaking.  In addition there are almost no moving-camera shots, although there is some cutting on action. Sometimes specific conversational contexts are punctuated by interspersed static cityscape shots that are devoid of people.  These cityscape moments break up the flow and often serve to mark the passage of a bit of time. 

In the following I will use abbreviations to indicate two of the key Ozu technique when they occur in the narrative.  MA means that some “missing action” has taken place off-camera, and the viewer must infer what has happened.  SIC means that a particular character is looking “straight into the camera” when he or she is speaking, which suggest moments when particular sincerity is being expressed. (In this film it seems to me that there is an unusually high percentage of SIC shots – even for Ozu.)

Thematically, Ozu’s films often covered various issues associated with the Japanese family as it was affected by the entire society undergoing significant postwar social upheaval.  These issues included

• Cross-generational issues,
• Tradition versus modernity,
• Individual authenticity versus social role-playing,
• Selfish opportunism versus empathy for others,
• Fatalism versus determined ambition.

What makes The End of Summer rather complicated compared to the rest of Ozu’s oeuvre is that all of these issues are touched on in this film. 

There are nine principal characters in the story, and they each represent a position in this multidimensional social issue context.  So the viewer has a lot to keep track of.  In fact, although the English title for the film is "The End of Summer”, the Japanese title, “Kohayagawa-ke No Aki”, means in English, “Autumn for the Kohayagawa Family”, and what this film presents is a rather wide-spectrum view of how this complicated extended family is dissolving.  The nine key characters are

• Kohayagawa Manbei (played by Ganjiro Nakamura) is the elderly patriarch of the Kohayagawa family and is the owner of a sake brewery.
• Akiko (Setsuko Hara) is Manbei's widowed daughter-in-law. (Setsuko Hara had important roles in many Ozu films.)
• Noriko (Yoko Tsukasa) is Manbei's youngest daughter.  In this film Yoko Tsukasa and Setsuko Hara almost reprise their respective roles and their relationship they had in Ozu’s immediately preceding Late Autumn, as the “younger (modern) woman” and the “older (traditional) woman” both searching for meaningful relationships in marriage.
• Fumiko (Michiyo Aratama) is Manbei's older daughter and is married to Hisao.
• Hisao (Keiju Kobayashi) is Fumiko's husband and works in the family-owned sake brewery office.
• Sasaki Tsune (Chieko Naniwa) is the former mistress of Manbei.
• Yuriko (Reiko Dan) is the Ms. Sasaki’s daughter.
• Kitagawa Yanosuke (Daisuke Kato) is referred to as the “uncle," and Manbei's brother-in-law.  (Daisuke Kato had memorable roles in Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), , and Yojimbo (1961).)
• Isomura Eiichirou (Hisaya Morishige) is a man interested in marrying Akiko.

The wearing apparel of these characters is revealing in connection with their association with modernity.  Manbei, Ms. Sasaki, Akiko, and Fumiko wear traditional Japanese gowns and kimonos, while the rest of the men and women wear modern Western clothing. 

Although the film comprises a sequence of small conversations, we can group them into four phases of narrative development.

1.  Akiko and Noriko

The first part of the film revolves around attempts of the Kohayagawa family in Osaka to find suitable husbands for the thirty-something Akiko and the much younger Noriko.  In fact the film opens with Kitagawa Yanosuke at a cocktail lounge describing Akiko’s virtues as a marriage partner to Isomura Eiichirou.  Akiko is invited to join them for dinner for an “interview”, but her self-effacing politeness conceals whatever true feelings she may have about the proposed match-up.   It is only later that we learn that she declined the dinner invitation (MA).

There are three main theaters of action for the conversations here. 

1. Akiko, her teenage son, and Noriko live together in an apartment.  Whenever Akiko and Noriko speak to each other, they are always shown in SIC shots.
2. There is the sake brewery where Hisao works and Manbei visits occasionally (we soon learn that the sake brewery is not doing well financially). 
3. And there is the household of Hisao and Fumiko (they have a small son), where Manbei also lives. 

Later at the Fumiko home, Yanosuke comes to discuss Akiko’s marriage prospects with Isomura.  It is evident that the Kohayagawa family sees it as their obligation to find a suitable mate for the widow in their family, as well as finding a mate for Noriko. 

Then Noriko is shown at work in a modern office, where she is invited to a good-bye party for a male friend, Mr. Teramoto, who is not the man who has been selected by the “family” (Fumiko, Hisao, and Manbei), but to whom Noriko is romantically attracted.  To Noriko’s further dismay, Mr. Teramoto is about to leave Osaka, because he has accepted a faculty position in far-away Sapporo.  At the party, the assembled friends curiously sing a farewell song that has Japanese words, but to the tune of “Oh, My Darling Clementine”. Perhaps this was a further signal of the encroaching Western influence on Japanese life.

So far, the story interest has developed around Akiko and Noriko and how they will respond to the well-intentioned but coercive family pressure to find them marriage partners.  But at this point the narrative focus shifts to a new concern.

2.  Focus on Manbei
Manbei has been frequently away from the sake brewery running errands, and the brewery’s chief clerk wants to know why.  They soon learn that Manbei has been secretly seeing his old flame, Sasaki Tsune, with whom he had an adulterous affair that began some twenty years earlier.  Although, with Manbei now being a widower, his renewed relationship would seem innocent enough, he keeps it secret, because he knows that others around him will object.  In particular, his daughter Fumiko is highly suspicious of Manbei’s secretive behaviour and feels that he is not acting  appropriately for a man of his age.

When Manbei and Ms. Sasaki are shown alone together, they seem innocently cordial, with plenty of SIC shots when they converse.  Ms. Sasaki has a 21-year-old daughter, Yuriko, who shows up and appears to be Westernized and selfish.  When she sees Manbei, she calls him “Father” and nags him as to when he will give her a mink stole.  Later though, after Manbei leaves, Yuriko asks her mother if Manbei really is her father.  Her mother seems not to be sure, herself, and says it really doesn’t matter, anyway.

3.  Crisis in Arashiyama

Now they all go to attend a memorial service for “Mother’s” (Manbei’s deceased wife's) death to take place in Arashiyama, which is close to Kyoto and about fifty kilometers from Osaka.  We see Akiko and Noriko in conversation and learn that Akiko has already been presented with Isomura’s wedding proposal (MA), but is hesitant about it.  The rest of the family (Hisao, Fumiko, and Manbei) separately sit around a tea table and discuss the merits of the proposal, too.  At the same time Fumiko rudely taunts Manbei about the likelihood of his visiting someone in Kyoto (a veiled reference fo Ms. Sasaki).  Manbei is upset, leaves the room and soon reportedly has a heart attack (MA). 

A doctor is summoned, and various members of the extended Kohayagawa clan arrive from out of town, assuming that  Manbei’s death is imminent.  But miraculously, Manbei quickly makes a full recovery (MA) and seems as cheerful and robust as ever.

Meanwhile Akiko and Noriko privately discuss their further thoughts about marriage and whether they should accept the mates that have been selected for them.  Akiko advises that a girl should marry a man with “character” – “you can alter behaviour, but you can’t alter character.”

4 Kohayagawa Family Coming to a Close
In the film’s final phase, a climactic event initiates change.  This is marked by four conversations that each elliptically refer to offscreen action (MA).

• Manbei has sneaked away from his family again and taken Ms. Sasaki to a velodrome for bicycle racing where they can place wagers on the outcomes.
• Yanosuke and Isomura are waiting again at the same old cocktail lounge for Akiko to show up, and it is clear that Isomura has given up on the hesitant woman.
• Hisao and Fumiko are at home discussing why Manbei has sneaked away again.  Their conversation is interrupted by a phone call from Yuriko that Manbei has had another heart attack.
• Sasaki Tsune and her daughter Yuriko are shown sitting respectfully next to Manbei’s protrate body.  It takes some moments to discern that he is dead. While Ms. Sasaki appears devastated, Yuriko looks bored and attends to grooming her nails.  When her American boyfriend shows up to take her out on a date, Yuriko takes her leave of the corpse by crossing herself before, thereby suggesting that she has become a Christian.

The extended family members arrive again, and a funeral is held.  But it is all surface ceremony, and the inner family members are now more worried about what will happen to the sake brewery. Akiko and Noriko, walking alone in the cemetery, finally come to their decisions. Noriko vows to go to Sapporo and pursue her true love, while Akiko says she prefers to remain unmarried and attend to her teenage son by herself.

The overall message of The End of Summer  is not clear cut, and the roles the characters play with respect to Ozu’s traditional issues are mixed.  Reviewing those issues again, we see some unexpected positions:

• Cross-generational Issues and Tradition vs. Modernity. 
  Youth is normally identified with modernity, but in this film, the oldest person, Manbei, had a more free-wheeling outlook.  His daughter Fumiko, meanwhile, was steadfast in asserting traditional mores.
   
• Selfish Role-playing vs. Empathic Authenticity. 
  In some of Ozu’s other films the men are opportunists, taking advantage of traditional authority when it suits their purposes and embracing modernity when that proves to be the convenient option.  In this film, though, things are a little more complicated. Some of the women, particularly Yuriko, are self-absorbed, while Manbei seems attentive to others. Authentic interactions showing empathy and sincerity are signaled in the film by SIC shots, and these are most consistently associated with Akiko, Noriko, and Manbei.  But we know that Manbei is also selfish – he gambles away family money at the bicycle races and has had at least one adulterous affair.
   
• Fatalism vs. Ambition. 
  When Manbei’s body is cremated, two farmers are shown watching the smoke rising from the cremation smoke stack and reflecting on the transience of existence and the inevitability of change.  This is presumably the traditional Oriental fatalistic perspective, and it is sometimes seen as a virtue.  But Ozu’s perspective doesn’t seem to be so clear-cut on this point.  For the men in Ozu’s stories, a deep concern was the looming horrors of the faceless salaryman’s suffocating existence in modern business life – so movingly evoked in Early Spring (1956).  The salarymen are little more than robots attending to the dictates of what we now term “big data”.  This contrasted with the heroic self-image that most men (in every society) have been traditionally schooled to embrace and embody.  At the end of the film, the workers at the Kohayagawa sake brewery are faced with the likelihood of the brewery being bought out by a larger firm.  They would all then become the eviscerated salary men of their nightmares.

What kept these men from being salary men earlier?   It was Manbei, a spirited individual who took a direct interest in the people with whom he interacted. So with Manbei gone, a vital flame of the Kohayagawa family has gone out. At the end of the film, it is not the men, but two women, Akiko and Noriko, who decide to take control of their destinies. They are authentic and empathic, like Manbei (but hopefully a little more responsible).

Manbei’s reported last words were, “Is this it?  Is this really it?”  These are not the words of a man who is satisfied with his ending.  He is  asking, “is that all there is to it?”  He wants more.  So does Ozu, and so do we.

★★★

The Two Religions

There are two religious streams – call them, “Religion 1" and “Religion 2".  Many severe problems of the world have arisen from mixing and confusing these two streams.

• Religion 1 is founded on compassion and love.  It has appeared at many times and in many forms, but perhaps its purest expression is the tathagatagarbha, which refers to the compassionate “Buddha” (often latent) within all sentient beings.  Sufism [1] and sectors within Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam represent exemplars of this stream.   
   
• Religion 2 is founded on guilt, subjugation, and control.  Inspirational guidelines from Religion 1 have devolved to precepts which have then been conflated with traditional authoritarian, and by no means compassionate, social codes [2]. 

While many of the world’s religions may have been founded as Religion 1, almost all of the religions organizations and their administrative hierarchy operate according to Religion 2.
   
Not long ago former US President Jimmy Carter severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades [3].  A religious man, he had presumably had enough of Religion 2. 
   
Notes:

1. See: "Sufi Soul: The Mystic Music of Islam", The Film Sufi, 2015.
2. See: Alan Strathern, “Why are Buddhist Monks Attacking Muslims?”, BBC Magazine, 2 May 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22356306.
3. Jimmy Carter, “Losing My Religion for Equality”, The Age, 15 July 2009, http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/losing-my-religion-for-equality-20090714-dk0v.html.

"Sufi Soul: The Mystic Music of Islam" - Simon Broughton (2005)

William Dalrymple, a British historian specializing in the history and cultures of South Asia and the Middle East and one of my favourite writers, wrote and presented the material for the documentary film, Sufi Soul: The Mystic Music of Islam (2005) [1].  Dalrymple’s principal thesis, presented here in the made-for-TV film directed by Simon Broughton and photographed by Chris Vile, is that music is a fundamental element of Sufism and a key to its practice.

What I particularly like about Dalrymple is his appreciation for the unique contributions that Indic cultures have made to the world [2]. The fact that he has lived for much of the past twenty-five years in India undoubtedly contributes to his deep understanding of Indian culture. In particular, Dalrymple is sympathetic to suggestions that Indian notions of nonviolence (including vegetarianism), meditation, and oneness-with-god (think of Yoga, Buddhism, Jainism, etc.) have made their way into Western spiritual thinking via Gnosticism and Sufism.  Sufism, then, is the Islamic practice that encompasses this syncretism of Eastern and Western spirituality. 

A key element of Sufi practice is its use of music to bridge the mind-body split that characterizes conventional, orthodox religions.  Orthodox religious thinking uses text, privileged though it may be, to express its knowledge, including esoteric knowledge.  Words evoke abstractions and categories that enable us to build lexical and narrative models of the world.  But words necessarily establish a separation between us and the world “out there”.  Music, on the other hand, temporally unites consciousness and our physical being into a unified embodied presence.  And this, in particular, is what Sufi music emphasizes.  Over the course of this film, Dalrymple outlines this idea in various contexts.

At the outset, Dalrymple wishes to remind the reader that the tensions with Islamic groups around the world today are mostly associated with fundamentalists who disapprove or ban music in their societies.  But, he says,

 “there is another strand of Islam where music is placed at the heart of religious devotion.”
 . . .
 It is love, rather than fear of God, that lies at the heart of Sufism.” [3]

He then moves on to examine Sufi music in various areas of the world.  In all those locations, the film shows local Sufi music that is designed to contribute to a spiritual rapture of the listeners.

Syria
Travelling to Syria, Dalrymple witnesses Sufi music in Aleppo, where the musicians repetitively beat on drums in order to bring themselves to a psychic state closer to God.

Then he goes on to discuss the origins of Sufism in the deserts of that region.  ‘Suf’ is the Arabic word for wool, and the word evokes the image of the “Desert Fathers”, who were early (third century CE) Orthodox Christian hermits who wished to abandon the growing rigidity of orthodox Christianity and find enlightenment and communion with God by being alone in the desert [4]. The Desert Fathers may well have been influenced by the Gnosticism that emerged in Egypt in that era and whose extant documentation is comprised mostly by the Gnostic Gospels discovered only relatively recently in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945.

Prominent among the Gnostic Gospels is the Gospel of Saint Thomas which concerns Thomas the Apostle, who, according to tradition, travelled to India in 52 CE to spread Christianity.  Elaine Pagels, a scholar in this area, has suggested that the Gospel of Saint Thomas suggests the influence of Indian tradition on Gnosticism [5].  She notes three significant differences between the Gospel of Saint Thomas and orthodox Christianity [5]:

Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanity from Its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the gnostics who wrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.

Second, the "living Jesus" of these texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament. Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual understanding. But when the disciple attains enlightenment, Jesus no longer serves as his spiritual master: the two have become equal -- even identical.

Third, orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and Son of God in a unique way: he remains forever distinct from the rest of humanity whom he came to save. Yet the gnostic Gospel of Thomas relates that as soon as Thomas recognizes him, Jesus says to Thomas that they have both received their being from the same source:

Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out.... He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him."

So Dalrymple’s argument tracing influences on Sufism presumably goes along these lines:

1. Sufism was influenced by the Desert Fathers
2. The Desert Fathers were part of the Gnostic tradition
3. Gnosticism was influenced by Indian tradition

The precise origins, instances and modes of influence can be disputed, but there is no doubt that given the travel and trade between the East and West in those times, there was likely awareness of Buddhist and Christian ideas in the Middle East that predates the rise of Islam and were incorporated into Islamic doctrine.  An example of Christian influence mentioned by Dalrymple is  the Lenten Feast that became Ramadan in Islam.  Whereas orthodox religionists always wish to emphasize the exclusivity of their religious message, Dalrymple is the syncretist and wishes to emphasize the commonality among religions.

Turkey
After covering Sufism’s origins in Syria, he travels to Konya, Turkey, the home and tomb location of the 13th century Sufi mystic, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (“Mawlana”, aka “Mevlevî”). There is due coverage of the famous Whirling Dervishes, but the Turkish government’s attitude towards Sufism is problematic.  It is willing to exploit the fame of Rumi’s poetry and the tourist attractiveness of the Whirling Dervishes for monetary gain, but it has outlawed Sufism as a religious practice since Kemal Ataturk banned Sufism in 1925.  Nevertheless, there are still underground Sufi groups today, and the filmmakers manage to film one of their clandestine sessions.

Note that although Rumi is the most famous Sufi poet in the West, the focus here is not so much on his poetry but more on Rumi’s favourite musical instrument, the ney, which is a reed flute.  Dalrymple speaks with and listens to a famous ney player, Kudsi Erguner, as well with a modernist musician, Mercan Dede, who combines his own ney-playing with electronic music, thereby achieving a kind of fusionist rock blend.

Pakistan
Dalrymple travels to Lahore, where he watches the dhol drum players beating on their drums while they whirl madly about in circles.  This is less ritualised than the Turkish whirling dervishes and more a mad, extemporaneous dance.  He also shows some footage of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who was a celebrated singer of the Qawwali, the devotional music of Sufism in South Asia.  Again, we see that Qawwali singing has the extemporaneity of jazz singing.

India
They visit the tomb of Amir Khusrow, a 13th century Sufi musician and the creator of qawwali music. He is buried in a tomb next to his master, Nizamuddin Auliya, a famous Sufi saint.  Their tombs are a place where Muslims, Christians, and Hindus all come together to pray.

Pakistan (again)
On another visit to Pakistan, the film speaks with and shows the performance of Abida Parveen, a famous woman Sufi singer, which is a rarity in that society.  Dalrymple also manages to interview a hardline mullah who, as we expect, condemns all music: “these musicians are wrongdoers..”

Morocco
They finally come to Fes, Morocco, and speak to the director of the Fes Festival of Sacred Music, who believes that “within Islam, Sufism has a role to play today.” This festival features and juxtaposes religious music from any creed or faith.  Among those shown is the popular Senegalese singer, Youssou N’Dour, who remarks,

“Before the recent problems, for the majority of Muslims, Islam was always a religion of peace and tolerance. . . . Music can correct the image of Islam.”

Throughout all the Sufi music played in the various regions visited over the course of the film, there is a commonality to the music, despite its customization to the local musical instruments and cultural modes of the regions.  This common feature I refer to is the relentless, almost trance-inducing, rhythms that are created, both vocally and by means of the instruments.  What this produces is a form of embodied meditation, if you are in the right mind.  The important thing is for the music to conjure up feelings of love and harmony that overcomes reflective thought and critical judgement.  It is by this means that the Sufi soul is invoked.

Dalrymple closes with a parting message:

“We’re now in the middle of a clash of civilizations.  But not one between East and West, as much as within Islam – a battle for the soul of the Muslim world.  Will Muslims opt for the confrontational, Puritanical approach, represented in its most extreme form by Osama Bin Laden?  Or can we hope that they will embrace instead, the peaceful, plural, tolerant aspect of Islam, of which the Sufis form such a prominent part.”

★★★½ 

Notes:

1. It is available for viewing on YouTube.  Try looking here.
2. See, for example: 
• William Dalrymple, "The Great & Beautiful Lost Kingdoms", The New York Review of Books, (21 May 2015).
• William Dalrymple,  "The Great Divide: The violent legacy of Indian Partition", The New Yorker, (29 June 2015).
3. See also: "The Two Religions", The Film Sufi, (2015).
4. “Desert Fathers”, Wikipedia, 23 May 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers.
5. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (1979), Vintage Books, pp. xiii-xxiii, extract cited in “Frontline: The Gnostic Gospels”, The Public Broadcasting Service, (April 1998), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/pagels.html.

"Jules and Jim" - Francois Truffaut (1962)

Perhaps Francois Truffaut’s most memorable film was Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim, 1962).  It was the third feature film for the 29-year-old former film critic, coming directly after his outstanding Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le Pianiste, 1960), and for many people it ranks as the seminal film of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) in cinematic expression.

The story is based on the mostly autobiographical first novel of the same name by Henri-Pierre Roché, which he published in 1953 at the age of 74 and which described his experiences many decades earlier.  Truffaut is said to have run across this novel in 1955 at a used book stall in Paris and had been so enthralled by it that he vowed to make a film out of the story [1].  Truffaut and Roché gradually worked out the script of the film, although the author’s death in 1959 prevented his seeing the finished project.  Nevertheless, Roché did know about and approved the idea of Jeanne Moreau playing the pivotal role of Catherine in the story [2]. 

Actually, Jeanne Moreau’s performance is so electric that many viewers, particularly women, in my experience, feel that the film is really about her character.  Ms. Moreau’s lengthy career was full of acclaimed showings, often as a femme fatale, but most people regard her role here in Jules and Jim as her signature performance. It may well have been vitalized by the fact that she and Truffaut were apparently having an affair at the time of production [2].  The entire cast, though, is excellent and features:

• Jeanne Moreau as Catherine
• Oskar Werner as Jules
• Henri Serre as Jim
• Vanna Urbino as Gilberte, Jim's fiancee
• Serge Rezvani as Albert, a friend of Jules's
• Marie Dubois, who was wonderful in Shoot the Piano Player, has a memorable cameo role as Thérèse, a woman who has a brief affair with Jules.

In addition to the fine acting, Jules and Jim is graced by the dreamy music of Georges Delerue, who wrote the scores for many films, such as Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and several other Truffaut films, including Shoot the Piano Player.  Another key ingredient was the dynamic cinematography of Raoul Coutard, who apart from working with Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player and La Peau Douce) was more famously associated with several films directed by Jean-Luc Godard.  Here his cinematography is particularly enlivened by interestingly-composed long shots, moving-camera shots, and freeze frames.

This inventive mise-en-scene of Truffaut and Coutard is one of the principal virtues of Jules and Jim, because it imbues the film with a pervasive sense of melancholy, even including those early scenes representing care-free enjoyment.  We know from the narrative voiceover that this story is one of recollection, remembrance of things past, but the cinematography accentuates this psychological experience by highlighting (using, for example, freeze frames) those special moments that persist in one’s memories of long ago experiences. This contemplative, melancholy flavouring is one of the things that makes the film special.

The narrative covers the long-standing friendship of two men, Jules and Jim, and how they attempted to accommodate themselves to the love they both felt for the same woman. The two men have distinct personalities, which makes their friendship rather interesting.  Jules is sensitive, giving, and vulnerable.  Jim is gentlemanly, but also more self-sufficient – he plays by his own rules and doesn’t give in so easily to others’ demands.  Nevertheless, they formed a firm partnership, such that they were likened by others to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.  One might first think that the confidant Jim was the Quixote character, and the less dominant Jules was the Sancho Panza.  But recall in that ancient tale that Don Quixote was the idealistic dreamer, while Sancho Panza was the worldly and pragmatic operator.  In addition it appears that Jules is wealthier than Jim.  So I would say that Jules is the Quixote character, and Jim is the Sancho Panza of the twosome.  And yet one could also say that in a certain sense the truly “quixotic” one is Catherine. Anyway, the focalization of this tale is on Jim, whose perspective mirrors the experiences of Henri-Pierre Roché.  Just about everything that we see in the film is from Jim’s viewpoint or what Jim would probably have been told about.  Note that since this is all reminiscence, what Jim remembers could also be scenes that he devised in his mind from what he was told.

As the story of their friendship evolves, it passes through a series of stages.

1.  Jules and Jim Form a Friendship

The story begins in 1912 when Jules, a diffident Austrian, becomes friends with Jim, a bohemian Parisian, because of their mutual interest in culture and art.  Soon they are getting together daily to talk about everything, including their mutual pursuits after women, at which Jim is decidedly more successful.  It is in this sequence that Jules forms a romantic friendship with the capricious Thérèse, who memorably performs her inverted-cigarette choo-choo prance in front of Coutard’s closely tracking camera.

The two men visit Jules’s friend Albert, who shows them some slides of ancient sculpture, one of which, a sculptured head of a woman with an enigmatic smile, so captures the fancies of the two friends that they decide to go and see it firsthand on its Adriatic island.  Later they meet a young woman, Catherine, who reminds them of that statue and similarly haunts their fantasies. 

2.  Jules, Jim, and Catherine
Jules takes an immediate interest in Catherine, and pleadingly whispers privately to his friend, “Not with her, Jim, OK?”.  It is clear that Jules feels hopelessly inferior to Jim on the romantic plane.  But anyway, Jim already has a girlfriend, Gilberte, who loves him without reservation and hopes that he will ask her to marry him.

Gradually the volatile and intense personality of Catherine comes to the fore.  Although she is ostensibly Jules’s girl, Catherine frolics with them equally, in the fashion of a threesome.  In this group, she always wants to be the center of attention.  On one occasion Catherine dresses as a man, and the three of them take to the streets fooling people into believing that they are three men together.  At another point when Jim is helping Catherine with her suitcase to make a short trip, Jim notices that she packs a bottle of sulfuric acid to use against any man who might abuse her.

Later while they are walking in the evening after seeing a theatrical play together, Catherine becomes bored and frustrated with her companions’ intellectual reactions to the play.  Catherine says she liked the girl in the play, because “she wants to be free and live each moment of her life”; while Jules and Jim dismiss her psychological analysis and prefer to discuss the “metaphysics” behind the play.  After hearing them go on about this, Catherine impulsively jumps off a bridge into the Seine river.  The voiceover narration at this point tells how favourably impressed Jim was with Catherine by this act.

Finally, Jules telephones Jim to tell him that he and Catherine are going back to Austria to get married.  But shortly thereafter World War I breaks out, and the two men are conscripted to serve in the armies of their mutually opposed countries.  During the war, Jules writes passionate love letters to Catherine, while Jim manages to see Gilberte on one of his infrequent furloughs. 

3 Jim’s Postwar Visit to Austria
After the war, Jim, who is now working for a newspaper, is invited to visit Jules and Catherine in Austria for a month.  Although at first Jim seems to be visiting a happily married couple, now with a young daughter named Sabine, he soon learns that their marriage is failing.  Jules privately tells Jim that Catherine is unhappy with him and has already had several affairs, “one as revenge for something I did, but I don’t know what.”  He confesses glumly to his friend, “I am not the man for her.”

After hearing this, Jim recalls Jules’s past “errors” with other women.  This reflects more on the character of Jim than on that of Jules.  To the manipulative Jim, a successful relationship depends one’s abilities to perform the “correct” actions towards the other.

After a week, Jim and Catherine become more familiar, and they go for a walk alone in the evening.  Jim is now wrestling with the fact that he has always been attracted to Catherine, and he wonders what he should do.  While they walk, Catherine is amazingly frank in describing her failed marriage. 

“I hoped to heal him [Jules] of his crises with cheerfulness, but I realized that his crises were part of him.”
. . .
“Our last argument and true breakup was on his first leave [from the army]”.  I felt like I was in a stranger’s arms . . . He left.  9 months later Sabine was born.”
. . .
“As a husband to me, Jules is finished.”

She tells him that they now live in separate rooms and that she has only been back for 3 months, after being apart during a 6-month affair.  At the moment, she is having an affair with Jules’s old friend Albert.  In response to all this, Jim tells her that he always knew that Jules would be unable to hold on to her and that he has understood her; but Catherine defiantly answers by saying, “I don’t want to be understood.”

However, Jules still loves Catherine and desperately wants to be a part of her life, no matter how diminished his role might be.  He tells Jim to go ahead and romance Catherine and marry her, just so he will have the chance to see her sometimes.

4.  Jim and Catherine Get Together

The next evening Jim unleashes his passions and makes his approach to Catherine.  In a romantic scene, they kiss, and the voiceover says, “their first kiss lasted all night.”  (I have always remembered that line.) 

The next morning Catherine tells Jules that Jim should live with them.  They become a menage a trois, or perhaps un amour a trois.  It is truly three-way, since Jules and Jim love each other, platonically, too.

However, not long later, boredom for Catherine sets in again.  One Sunday afternoon, she decides to seduce Jules, much to the consternation of the now-infatuated Jim.  The “amour-a-trois” relationship has its limits.   Eventually Jim’s newspaper recalls him to Paris.  On departing, Jim tells Catherine that he wants to marry her and have children.

5.  Jim and Catherine Struggle

Back in Paris, Jim tells Gilberte of his plans to marry Catherine.  Then he writes to Catherine that he will be returning soon, but first he has to make “a few farewells”, a phrase that on receipt angers Catherine.  When he returns to Catherine, she provocatively tells him that she went ahead and made her own “farewells”, too.  They decide to go ahead and have a baby, but when Catherine doesn’t become pregnant straight off, she becomes frustrated with the mechanics off baby-making.  They quarrel, make up, and then quarrel again and finally decide to separate for three months.

Back in Paris and now sick with the flu, Jim receives a letter from Catherine that sets off a message exchange that highlights their mutual mistrust and unwillingness to surrender to love (only Jules and Gilberte in this story could do that).

1. Catherine’s letter tells Jim that she is pregnant, and for him to come immediately..
2. Jim writes back jealously saying he is sick and not coming back.
3. Jules writes to Jim saying they doubt that Jim is really sick and that he should come back anyway.
4. Jim writes back saying, given Catherine’s promiscuity, he doubts that he is the father.
5. But at the same time (their letters crossed in the mail), he gets a letter from Catherine saying that she really loves him.
6. So Jim writes a second letter to Catherine saying that he loves her and is coming.
7. Catherine, meanwhile, has received Jim’s earlier letter, and angrily writes back telling him to get lost.
8. Then Catherine gets Jim’s subsequent letter, and writes to him that she loves him and for him to come.
9. Finally, Jim gets a letter from Jules informing him that Catherine had a miscarriage and that Catherine wants to terminate their relationship.

Time passes. Jim and Catherine are now apart, but there are further occasions over the years when they meet up. Catherine continues alternatively to solicit Jim’s interest and provoke him.  Jim, the earlier avowed risk-taker, meanwhile, becomes more and more defensive and standoffish. For him Gilberte appears to be tactically the safer option.

There are increasingly dramatic encounters between Catherine and Jim, but things are not headed in an optimistic direction, and I will leave it to you to see what happens in the end.  In the final scene, Jules reflects that the relationship he had with Jim had no equal in love.

There are fascinating and attractive aspects of Jules and Jim, but there are weaknesses, too.  The story covers a considerable duration, some twenty years, and yet the passing of time is not well presented in the film.  The film begins in 1912, and by the end of the story we are aware of Nazi book-burnings, which must make it around 1933.  And yet the characters show no signs of aging or acknowledgements that considerable amounts of time have passed since their earlier encounters.  One could perhaps argue that this is the nature of memory – we situate our memories in the past, but we don’t emphasize the passing of time.  Our memories represent snap-shots of experiences that we have simply had in the past, which is “back there in time”, but may have little temporality to them.  We don’t think of ourselves as having changed very much, at least psychologically, it is only the external world of circumstances that has changed. 

What makes the film interesting, nevertheless, is its psychological exploration of love and friendship between men and women.  In particular, it highlights the fact that men can have strong, platonic love for each other that is not necessarily homoerotic. In the current cultural climate, people might accuse Jules and Jim of being “closet queens”, but that would be a misrepresentation.  Men can have this strong friendship, a form of love, without any physical attraction.  And I think this love is very different from that between a man and a woman.  In Jules and Jim we have both of these relationships and an attempt to reconcile the conflicts that can naturally arise in these circumstances.

In this respect we have three distinct, but realistic, personalities. 

• Catherine is willful and spontaneous.  She lives for the moment.  She can be likened to the Anny character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausée, who was always searching for the perfect moment.  This is not an exclusively feminine trait, as attested to by Goethe’s Faust.  But Catherine is also selfish and lacking in compassion.  She wants to be possessed by an “alpha male”, but only for a moment.  Then she wants to break free and look for something else.
• Jim is inspired to be the “alpha male”, but he is concerned about his own dignity and his faithfulness to higher principals.  In this connection, he is conscious of avoiding “mistakes” when dealing with women he wishes to possess.
• Jules is compassionate and giving, but he evinces neither the commanding nature or the mystery that Catherine desires. 

We encounter these personalities and conflicts all the time. The desire to be completely one with another entails a certain degree of possessiveness. There is no way to avoid this conflict when mutual friends like Jules and Jim run into such a situation. The beauty of Jules and Jim comes from its melancholy fatalism in this regard.

To a certain extent, I see both Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard as frustrated romantics.  Though they had different styles of cinematic expression, they both showed worlds depicting romantic possibilities that were thwarted not by bad luck, but because they were intrinsically doomed to be thwarted.  This is the nature of tragedy.  It is to Francois Truffaut’s credit that he could depict this kind of tragedy in a cinematic fashion that, by combining music, temporal sequences, and psychologically-inspired images, showed how far one could go beyond the written word to express these feelings.
★★★★

Notes:

1. Truffaut would later make another excellent film based on Roché’s only other novel, the also semi-autobiographical Two English Girls (Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent, 1971).
2. Chale Nafus, “Jules and Jim”, Austin Film Society, (2014).

"And Along Came a Spider" - Maziar Bahari (2003)

The word ‘evil’ comes up constantly in our social discourse  – not only in ordinary conversation but also in the remarks made by cultural and political leaders of high standing.  Although the word might be assumed to have a specifically religious connotation, it is commonly used by Western secular leaders, too, as philosopher John Gray observed [1]:

“When Barack Obama vows to destroy Isis’s ‘brand of evil’ and David Cameron declares that Isis is an ‘evil organisation’ that must be obliterated, they are echoing Tony Blair’s judgment of Saddam Hussein: ‘But the man’s uniquely evil, isn’t he?’“

And yet there is a widespread divergence concerning how that word is understood across society. Even among my own close associates, there are huge differences in terms of how we each interpret the word. This suggests a paradox: the word is used all the time, but there is little common agreement on what it means.  I would argue that this disparity of understanding about ‘evil’ is not just a trivial one concerning  the precise semantics of a single word, but points to significant cultural differences that have been at the root of many social problems.

In this context Maziar Bahari’s documentary film, And Along Came a Spider (Va Ankaboot Amad, 2003) [2], which on the surface is simply an account of an unrepentant serial killer in modern Iran, is actually much more profound than that – it is an interesting (and disturbing) exploration of how ‘evil’ is understood.

The subject of the documentary is Saeed Hanaei, a resident of Mashhad who carried out a secret campaign of personally murdering prostitutes.  From July 2000 to July 2001 Hanaei killed 16 prostitutes by luring them one-by-one into his apartment while his wife was out and then suffocating them and disposing of the bodies. Because of his procedure of inviting the prostitutes to his home, he was later likened by the press to a spider luring flies to its web and became known as the “spider killer”.

Bahari’s film is mostly “talking heads”, but he definitely got some interesting heads to talk to. In documentary filmmaking it is not so important what goes on behind the camera as what you have in front of the camera.  In this case Bahari, in collaboration with Iranian reporter Roya Karimi, managed to get exclusive and candid interviews with Hanaei, his family, and with relatives of some of the victims. The presentation is further enhanced by the haunting musical score by Payman Yazdanian. (He was listed as “Payman Yazdanian” in the closing credits, but I am assuming that this is Peyman Yazdanian, who composed evocative piano scores for The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad Ma-ra Khahad Bord, 1995), Going By (Az Kenar-e Ham Migozarim, 2001), The Deserted Station (Istgah-Matrouk, 2002), The Wind Carpet (Kaze no Jûtan, 2003), Crimson Gold (Talaye Sorkh, 2003), Friday’s Soldiers, (Sarbaz-haye Jome, 2004), and Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe Suri, 2006)).

The film mostly avoids any polemical or moralistic voiceover commentary and unobtrusively allows these people to speak for themselves.  It is left to the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions.  And depending on one’s moral perspective, each viewer might draw different conclusions concerning what is shown.

There is no real suspense concerning what is shown.  In the first eight minutes of this 53-minute film, the basic facts of the case are already laid before the viewer.  In fact even before the film’s titles are presented, we learn that Hanaei is a convicted murderer and proud of what he has done.  As the film proceeds, it shows that he decided to kill prostitutes after becoming enraged when a Mashhad taxi driver mistook his wife for a prostitute.  But although Hanaei confesses to Ms. Karimi that revenge was a motive for his deeds, he feels that his murders were in accordance with Islamic doctrine.  He felt that he was removing “pollution” from the world in alignment with the Prophet’s teachings.  In fact he mentions that he had lined up 80 more women to kill and would have carried out his plans if he hadn’t been apprehended by the law.

Mashhad, like most large international cities, has many prostitutes.  The film narrator mentions in voiceover that the Mashhad police had recorded knowledge of 5,000 prostitutes in the city.  In addition drug addiction, primarily with opium, is a major social issue in Iran.  I have seen estimates that six per cent of the adult population is addicted, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the true figure was considerably higher than that.  Opium smoking (as distinct from the more intense experiences associated with heroin addiction) has had a long tradition in Iran, and opium can be easily and inexpensively obtained if you ask the right people. The netherworlds of drug addiction and prostitution are connected, and the film mentions that 15 of Hanaei’s 16 victims had been previously incarcerated for prostitution and drug-related charges.  Hanaei says that 14 of his s16 victims were junkies.  As far as Hanaei was concerned, he was removing scum from the earth by performing his murders.

Still in the film’s first eight minutes, the attention quickly turns to Hanaei’s family.  Saeed’s brothers (those that are shown, anyway) feel that he did the right thing.  As one of them says, “but, frankly, a whore doesn’t have an ounce of humanity.”  Saeed's mother expresses similar sentiments. Saeed;s teenage son, Ali, expresses admiration for what his father has done and regards him as a hero.  He even suggests that he would like to emulate his father’s actions someday.  Similarly, Saeed’s wife, Fatemeh, who was unaware of the murders prior to his arrest, also admires him and says,

“When a woman rides on a motorbike with a man she doesn’t know at all, the punishment for this woman is nothing less than death.”

So early on, the most shocking aspects of this tale have been revealed. The remaining forty-five minutes do not reveal much that is new, but they penetrate further into this story, and I found them interesting, anyway. There is more discussion with Saeed in prison, who smilingly speaks of his earlier days and provides more detail concerning how he managed to carry out his murders always when his wife was out of the house. There are interviews with working-class people and shopkeepers, who express moral support for what Hanaei has done, although some felt that he went too far.

Interspersed among this material are comments from the victim side of this story.  One of them is an 18-year-old girl, Mahasti, who was never approached by Hanaei, but is presented as a typical young prostitute. She has been a prostitute for the past five years and is shown only in silhouette. She was forced into marriage when she was 10-years-old and then bullied by her husband into prostitution to support his drug dependence. Her testimony probably epitomizes the experiences of most prostitutes, who are themselves victims of a society that has left many of them impoverished and in servitude.

Also shown are two young daughters of another of Hanaei’s victims, and they sadly talk about their lives and the loss of their mother.

Finally the film comes to Hanaei’s arrest and trial.  The hardliners exonerated him, and one hardline newspaper asked its readers,

“Who is to be judged?  Those who seek to eradicate the sickness or those who stand at the root of the corruption?”

Saeed argues confidently in the court hearing that he was acting to remove what is spoken of in Islamic law as a “waste of blood”. The magistrate at the court, Hojatolislam Mansoori, acknowledge that the “waste of blood” notion was a valid concept for killing someone, but that Hanaei was not in the position to make the correct judgement. Hanaei is sentenced to death and hanged in 2002.

Although And Along Came a Spider tells the story of an implacable murderer, the real issue here is evil.  Depending on how your attitude about evil, you might see Saeed Hanaei as

• a psychopath
• a normal product of a corrupt culture
• a possible product of any culture, since all current cultures have embedded within them the seeds to produce people like Saeed Hanaei

Of course there are many differing views about evil, but we can roughly partition them into three groups [3]:

1. Evil derived from religion (religionists)
2. Evil as an innate psychological concept (many modern secularists)
3. Those who deny the semantic usefulness of the term evil (evil-skeptics)

1.  Evil According to Religionists

The idea of evil as a distinct force in the world (as opposed to just seeing evil as the absence of good) was most clearly articulated in religious form by two belief systems originating in Iran: Zoroastrianism and  Manicheanism. Both of the religions viewed evil as a powerful force, equal in power and opposed to good.  The world was seen as an eternal struggle between good and evil. These ideas were ultimately incorporated into the Abrahamic religions (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, etc.), which are monotheistic and believe in an all-powerful creator of the universe.

But or course the concept of evil brought in serious philosophical problems for these monotheistic religions.  How could an all-powerful creator of the universe, who is supposed to represent everything that is good, allow evil to exist in His creation?  Theologians have struggled with this question for centuries, and about the only answer they have come up with has been that the Lord works in mysterious ways – it’s all too much for our finite brains to fathom.  Nevertheless, the concept of evil is used in these religions and applied to individuals.  A person, like Hitler, can be considered to be evil and a “waste of blood”.

2.  Evil According to Many Modern Secularists
As John Gray has pointed out, even in our modern secular world that is inspired by notions from Western scientific rationalism over the past three centuries,  the concept of evil is widely invoked [1]. Secular modernists, like the religionists, can focus on the individual, but they may not always use the word ‘evil’. Instead they dismiss a miscreant as a “psychopath” – essentially meaning a defective biological organism. Thus people like Hitler and Osama Bin Laden are sometimes said to have been psychopaths.  In many cases, however, the secular concept of evil is applied not to an individual, but to a whole cultural grouping, such as ISIS in the Middle East.

However, there is a significant distinction between modern secularists and religionists besides just naming.  For religionists someone is just evil, and that’s it – there are no degrees to evil. But secularists are often interested in the degree to which one might be evil.  For this task there are differences among them concerning how much relative weight ought to be given to the intention of the killer and the damaging consequences of the evil actions.  Recently Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky, two modern secularist academics, had a lengthy and rancorous exchange of emails over the course of which they discussed their respective moral orderings concerning evil [4]. To get an idea of where they stand, consider the  following two examples of murderers:

• Killer1. He intends to kill his victims
• Killer2. He has command of great destructive power and sometimes out of negligence kills victims as “collateral damage”.

For Harris, Killer1 is worse than Killer2, because he (or she) meant to kill his victims, while for Killer2 it was an accident.  For Harris, evil intention is the dominant consideration. For Chomsky, however, Killer2 is worse than Killer1, because at least Killer1 acknowledges that his victim was human and was a worthy adversary, whereas Killer2 regarded the victim like an ant that one might step on while walking down the sidewalk, i.e. non-human.  For Chomsky evil consequences are dominant, and those who disregard those consequences are more evil. Chomsky thus sees the malevolent actions of Western powers as being like Killer2, such as the 1998 bombing of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which led to the collateral-damage deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Sudanese who suffered from the unavailability of needed medication.  The Western powers (the USA in this case) did not regard the lives of Sudanese as worth considering, because their primary concern was to destroy what they thought might be a plant site for the manufacture of chemical weapons.  For Harris, the 911 attack a few years later was much more evil, because the assailants wanted to kill as many people as possible.

In any case, both Harris and Chomsky see evil as arising from an evil culture.  In Harris’s case the evil culture is Islam, while in Chomsky’s case the evil culture is American Exceptionalism. If they looked at Saeed Hanaei’s actions, they would both probably focus on the evil social circumstances that led to his crimes, rather than on the evil inside his soul.

3.  Evil-Skepticism
A third attitudinal grouping about evil comprises those who feel that evil is a useless concept and ought to be dispensed with. As Todd Calder summarises [3]:

“Evil-skeptics give three main reasons to abandon the concept of evil: (1) the concept of evil involves unwarranted metaphysical commitments to dark spirits, the supernatural, or the devil; (2) the concept of evil is useless because it lacks explanatory power; and (3) the concept of evil can be harmful or dangerous when used in moral, political, and legal contexts, and so, it should not be used in those contexts, if at all.”

To say that someone is evil or is a psychopath is merely to label them with an opaque name, and it closes the door on further analysis.  Indeed, the field of psychiatry has often lived off the practice of merely naming a behavioural malady (such as schizophrenia, depression, ADHD, etc.) and considering that to be an adequate diagnostic understanding.  In this case, to call someone evil is to suggest that they are subhuman and not worthy of empathetic consideration.  It is evident in the film that this is how Saeed Hanaei thought; he considered the prostitutes to be despicably subhuman and even “worse than animals”.  So evil-skeptics suggest that the notion of evil, itself, leads to further harm.
                                              
It seems evident then that these three groupings would view Saeed Hanaei differently

• Many religionists would consider Hanaei to be fundamentally evil, although some of them (the hardliners) might align themselves with Hanaei’s own arguments and consider him to have been doing God’s work by erasing those who are a “waste of blood”.
• Many secular rationalists would likely dismiss Hanaei as a psychopath, although some would see him as a victim of an evil culture.  Note that Sam Harris’s focus on Islamic culture as generating evil is probably not balanced, and it is easily countered by examples from the US, such as Ted Bundy [5] and the My Lai Massacre [6,7].
• Evil-skeptics are likely to suggest that the notion of evil merely causes further harm by legitimising cruelty on the part of individuals who lack empathy and compassion in their efforts to combat what they believe is evil, such as was the case with Saeed Hanaei. We need new and better social mechanisms to nurture more empathy and to guide those who have difficulties or deficiencies in feeling empathy.

Consider the following ladder of killing and where you might place yourself:

1. Killing other humans for the purposes of satisfying one's own selfish material interests.
2. Killing other humans for the purposes of personal revenge.
3. Killing other humans in order to assist God in eliminating those who are a “waste of blood”.
4. Killing other humans in wartime in order to serve one's own country’s interests.
5. Killing and eating animals for pleasure (and because so many other people do it)

Most people would place themselves somewhere on this ladder (probably level 4 or level 5) and regard those who occupy positions higher up on the ladder to be evil.  But the killings performed at one level provide a foundation for moving up to the next level – Hanaei had served in the Iran-Iraq War and mentioned that his subsequent prostitute-killing campaign was merely a continuation of his holy-war-based actions to eliminate “corruption on earth” by killing enemy soldiers during the war.

Maybe in order to deal with the problem of evil, it is time for everyone to get off that ladder altogether. And Along Came a Spider closes not on the image of Hanaei being hanged, but on the smiling, wistful face of one of Hanaei’s victim’s daughters. There is no place for evil in that image.
★★★½ 

Notes:

1. John Gray, “The Truth About Evil”, The Guardian, (21/10/2014).
2. And Along Came a Spider is available on YouTube.  You can find a copy of the film here.
3. Todd Calder, “The Concept of Evil”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (26/11/2013).
4. Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky, “The Limits of Discourse”, Sam Harris, The Blog, (1 May 2015).
5. “Ted Bundy”, Wikipedia, (15/5/2015).
6. “My Lai Massacre”, Wikipedia (15/5/2015).
7. Consider this example of malevolence carried out by a Western society on the Vietnamese village of My Lai (from Jonathon Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, (1999), Yale Univ. Press, p. 58.):
   

   “Early in the morning the soldiers were landed in the village by helicopter. Many were firing as they spread out, killing both people and animals. There was no sign of the Vietcong battalion and no shot was fired at Charlie Company all day, but they carried on. They burnt down every house. They raped women and girls and then killed them. They stabbed some women in the vagina and disemboweled others, or cut off their hands or scalps. Pregnant women had their stomachs slashed open and were left to die. There were gang rapes and killings by shooting or with bayonets. There were mass executions. Dozens of people at a time, including old men, women and children, were machine-gunned in a ditch. In four hours nearly 500 villagers were killed.”