believe me good will come

A while back I read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You (because I kept coming across comments about how it had profoundly influenced Gandhi and, by extension, Martin Luther King, Jr.). The book was long and rambling, but it had some great, stinging passages – a few of which sprang to mind as I was watching The Bourne Ultimatum. The movie touches on issues such as torture, assassination, extraordinary rendition, covert surveillance, “following orders“, and the basic question of whether the end justifies the means (“You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette”, “it became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it“, etc.).

[A] man, otherwise sensible and good-hearted, simply because he is given a badge or a uniform to wear, and told that he is a guard or customs officer, is ready to fire on people, and neither he nor those around him regard him as to blame for it, but, on the contrary, would regard him as to blame if he did not fire. To say nothing of judges and juries who condemn men to death, and soldiers who kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple merely because it has been instilled into them that they are not simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.
 This strange and abnormal condition of men under state organization is usually expressed in the following words: “As a man, I pity him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or soldier, it is my duty to kill or torture him.” Just as though there were some positions conferred and recognized, which would exonerate us from the obligations laid on each of us by the fact of our common humanity. – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, XII

The fourth method [in which governments enslave men] consists in selecting from all the men who have been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain number, exposing them to special and intensified means of stupefaction and brutalization, and so making them into a passive instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them at the youthful age when men have not had time to form clear and definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural and human conditions of life, home, family and kindred, and useful labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines, submissive to the hypnotizer. These physically vigorous young men (in these days of universal conscription, all young men), hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving men. – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life, VIII.

Saw Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) last night. Best movie I’ve seen this year (surprisingly, Transformers would probably be second) and it has what is possibly my favourite closing scene from any movie.

Against all odds, though, the best is yet to come: an ending of overwhelming simplicity and force, in which the hopes of the film—as opposed to its fears, which have shivered throughout—come gently to rest. What happens is that a character says, “Es ist für mich“—”It’s for me.” When you see the film, as you must, you will understand why the phrase is like a blessing. – Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Bits of the movie reminded me of this passage:

The reason for his imprisonment was quite grotesque. At the beginning of the war he had been denounced for ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ by his neighbours who wanted – and were subsequently given – his flat. When the investigation showed that he had not been guilty of any such thing, it was then alleged that since he listened to German broadcasts he would have been capable of carrying on ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’. He didn’t, it was true, actually listen to German broadcasts, but since he was in possession of a radio set despite the ban, he could have done so. Finally, although he didn’t in fact have a radio set, it was alleged that he could have had one, since he was a radio engineer by training, and hadn’t a box containing two valves been found during the search of his flat?
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, Chapter Seventy-Five

The Departed is the Hollywood remake of Infernal Affairs.

It’s directed by Martin Scorsese (The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, etc.). The producer is Brad Pitt. The movie stars Leonardo di Caprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg.

It has received really good reviews (93% fresh on RT), with most proclaiming it a return to form for Scorsese.

See the trailer here. It seems that a lot more violence and sex has been added for the Hollywood version (the original was surprisingly reserved, relying on dramatic tension rather than action or sex):

[Infernal Affairs] emphasised a cool and elegant symmetry between the doppelganger finks, with the storyline indirect, and the violence kept relatively low, Scorsese’s movie dots the is, crosses the ts, stomps the skulls and puts Rolling Stones numbers on the soundtrack.
- Guardian review

Still, it sounds like a good movie. Most importantly, Scorsese can now begin his next film, Silence (an adaptation of the most powerful novel I have ever read).

[The Departed is in New Zealand theatres 16 November]

Infernal Affairs is one of the best movies to come out of Hong Kong in the last decade.

The plot is fairly straight-forward: A triad boss has placed a young, up-and-coming gangster in the police to become a mole. Simultaneously, the police placed an up-and-coming cadet undercover in the triad. Ten years later, both men have risen to positions of authority. The police and the triad realise that someone is leaking their secrets and the race is on as the moles try to expose each other and get out of the game alive.

Infernal Affairs stands out from the usual cat and mouse cop thriller because of its strong dramatic element. The central characters begin questioning of their roles within their respective organisations, subtly illustrating the relative nature of good and evil, blah, blah, blah…

The Chinese title, 無間道, refers to the ultimate level of hell in Buddhism, literally translating as “The Non-Stop Way” (and the English title references Dante’s Inferno). In fact, [if you want to sound pretentious, as I am in this post...] you could say that Infernal Affairs is a morality play and about living (or dying) with the choices we make.

The poster on the left is the original movie poster; the one on the right is from the American release of Infernal Affairs. There’s no scantily-clad girl with a gun in the movie…

[I've got Infernal Affairs on DVD for anyone interested]

Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Cons:

the plot
the script (for the most part)
Keira Knightley
Orlando Bloom

Pros:

Johnny Depp
Bill Nighy
Johnny Depp playing a pirate
Another excuse to dress up as Johnny Depp playing a pirate