A Life Sentence

There’s an odd collection of boys out roaming the streets at night. They are looking for something exciting to do and they come upon an old man lying in a subway station. The leader of the boys starts kicking him. It’s more an entertainment for him than anything. One of the other boys objects. We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says. The leader replies, “He’s a bum,” and goes back to kicking him.

When I saw this movie, probably Between Strangers, I was struck by what a complete answer the leader of that pack of boys gave. It does away with motive entirely. There doesn’t need to be a reason to keep kicking this old man. The old man’s right not to be murdered has been waived, apparently, because he is a bum. So there’s really not reason not to kill him. Several questions that would seem prominent in other settings, such as why this boy might take pleasure in killing him and what right he has to do it, simply do not come up. It is, as I said, a “complete” answer.

This scene has been coming back to my mind for a couple of days now, since seeing The Secret in their Eyes, a Spanish-language thriller set in Argentina. It is a very well-made movie. I would recommend it as widely as I have recommended Invictus if it were not so violent. I’m going to end with Invictus; I will set it as the place where the solution to an unsolved dilemma in Secret is proposed.

First a little plot and two quick confessions. Confession 1: I didn’t see the whole movie. I spent some time staring at my shoes in the dark so I wouldn’t have to see what was going on on the screen. I heard it all, though. Confession 2: I really don’t mind knowing how stories turn out. When I know how they turn out, I can watch how they get there, which I find much more enjoyable and, as in this movie, much less horrible. Still, I’m just about to tell you what the crucial plot twist is, so if you don’t like knowing and think you might see the movie, stop here.

PLOT SPOILER: Gomez rapes and kills Liliana, the beautiful young wife of Ricardo Morales. We see that in the first 10 minutes with, I regret to say, flashbacks throughout the movie. Benjamin Esposito, the investigator of this crime, figures out that Gomez did it and sees to it that he is captured, convicted, and sentenced. Life in prison. A political rival of Esposito’s gets Gomez out of jail and hires him as a hit man. He comes after Esposito almost immediately, but kills Esposito’s partner instead. Esposito has been dogged in pursuit of Gomez and a life-giving support to Liliana’s distraught husband, Morales. And now a merciless killer is coming after Esposito.

That’s all back story. We actually meet Esposito 25 years later. He hasn’t done much with his life since his partner was murdered and he was shipped to the countryside for safety. Finally, he realizes he will have to go back, at whatever cost, and close the Gomez case. But Gomez has disappeared. That happened to a lot of people in Argentina in this period. Esposito goes to see Morales, also hiding out in the countryside. He said his bank transferred him to a rural branch. Esposito tries to engage Morales in remembering the case; the horrible Gomez who raped and murdered Morales’s wife, beat a life sentence somehow, and killed a few more people, and then disappeared. Morales refuses to go back. He gets angry. “That was 25 years ago,” he says several times, louder each time. “Let it go. Move on.”

Esposito leaves, but he comes back that night and hides in the garden. That is when he sees Morales taking a meal out to a shed in the back yard, where he has imprisoned the “disappeared” Gomez for most of the last 25 years. Morales’s life is threadbare. It is desolate and unproductive. But he felt strongly that Gomez deserved life in prison and that is what he is getting. Not death. Too easy, said the much younger Morales. He deserves, instead, an unending life of hopelessness and despair. And that is what Gomez is getting in the prison in Morales’s back yard. “Let it go. Move on.” That was his advice to himself as much as to Esposito, but Esposito takes the advice and Morales does not.

Gomez is getting his life sentence. Of course, that is what Morales is getting, too. The way things are in Argentina, the only way for Morales to make sure Gomez is in prison for life requires that he, too, be in prison for life. Gomez is in prison for the rape and murder of Liliana. Morales is in prison for the satisfaction of making sure Gomez gets what he deserves. But it turns out not to be all that satisfying. His wife is still gone. He is still consumed by his hatred for Gomez. His life is still bleak almost beyond his endurance.

Is that really the best we can do? No. It isn’t. It’s all most of us would be willing to ask of Morales, but it is not the best he can do. It is the best he is willing to do.

Final stop: Invictus. Please see this movie. Take what you learn from it into every deadlocked and suboptimal organization or cause you belong to. Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in prison, becomes President of the Republic of South Africa. He campaigns for his dream of a “Rainbow Nation.” In practice, that means whites, blacks, and coloreds: not really much of a rainbow.[1] He is faced, from his first day in office, with the task of creating a government appropriate to a “Rainbow Nation.”

The first man to be hit squarely in the face with the implications of this commitment is Jason Tshabalala, the head of President Mandela’s presidential protection unit. Jason knows he needs more men to adequately protect the president, but he isn’t prepared for the four really big white guys from the previous administration’s (white administration’s) presidential protection unit. They have an order signed by President Mandela. Jason is furious and bursts into Mandela’s office, his anger visible on his face. Here’s what happens then.

Mandela: You look agitated, Jason.
Jason: That is because there are four Special Branch cops in my office...

Mandela: When people see me in public, they see my bodyguards. You represent me directly. The “Rainbow Nation” starts here. Reconciliation starts here.

Jason: Comrade President. Not long ago, these guys tried to kill us. Maybe even these four guys in my office tried and often succeeded.

Mandela: Yes, I know. Forgiveness starts here too. Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon. Please, Jason. Try.

Jason: Sorry to disturb you, sir.

Of course, forgiveness is Morales’s other option. It is the way he can liberate his soul.[2] It is the only way his own sentence can be commuted. Gomez was sprung through dirty politics by a direct order from the President. No one will spring Morales if he will not. Neither dirty politics nor clean will help him. He had hoped his imprisonment of Gomez would be satisfying. He knows now it is not. He had hoped it would somehow establish forever his love for his wife and his grief for her death. He knows now that it will not. There is no instrumental rationale for what he is doing. If he continues, nothing will be better and everything will be worse.

That is the price of withholding his forgiveness. And it may be the best he can do.

[1] I am reminded, however, of God’s promise to put His “bow” in the sky so Noah will know God will never again destroy the earth by water. This is a bow like a “bow and arrow” bow. God is going to put his six shooter on the table so we can all see that it is not in his holster any longer. Invictus is a story that supports the six gun notion of bow much better than it does the rainbow notion of bow, but that’s the way it goes, sometimes.
[2] In the context of The Secret in Their Eyes, there are additional reasons why Morales can not let Gomez go. One is that if he did that, Gomez would immediately hunt down Esposito and kill him. Another is that there is no way to make sure the government will keep Gomez in prison even if there were a way to return him to the authorities after all this time. In this post, I am considering only the effects of Morales’s decision on his own life. I know it’s more complicated.