In the post-9/11 world, some among us -- particularly in Hollywood -- have taken to treating evil with proper sensitivity.
Interviewed about Syriana, which stars and is executive produced by Best-Supporting-Actor nominee George Clooney, director and Best-Original-Screenplay nominee Stephen Gaghan says of Osama bin Laden and his fellow thugs: "I was just curious. Why are these people so angry?"
A strangely impassive, but sensitive, response to barbarity and murder.
While many in Tinseltown are quick to paint the United States as sinister, when characterizing our enemies, more nuance is apparently in order. "It's not black and white," says Clooney. "It's complex."
Searching equally for "complexity" is Best-Director nominee Steven Spielberg, who says of Best-Picture-nominated Munich, about the Israeli response to the murders of eleven of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics: "I just wanted to put empathy in every direction, because the situation is not cut and dried." Best-Adapted-Screenplay nominee Tony Kushner adds that "you can't approach this situation with a notion of simple right or wrong."
No simple right or wrong either for Hany Abu-Assad, director of the Best-Foreign-Language-Film nominee Paradise Now, which sympathetically portrays a suicide bomber who murders Jews. What motivates such people, he explains, is "the feeling of impotency, literally and figuratively. It's human nature."
Human nature? I don't know anyone who hasn't felt powerless. But I know none who, as a result, was compelled -- even tempted -- to walk into an ice cream parlor filled with mothers and children, strapped with a bomb packed with rat poison and nails.
"Human nature" cannot explain this:
On a Sunday afternoon, May 2, 2004, terrorists lurking by a road in the Gaza Strip machine-gunned a station wagon in which rode 34-year-old mother of four Tali Hatuel, eight-months pregnant, and her daughters Hila (11), Hadar (9), Roni (7) and Merav (2). The thugs then approached the car and shot Tali in the belly and each of her terrified children in the head.
That crime was reminiscent of one that took place on November 15, 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas, the subject of the chilling Best-Picture nominee, Capote. The film recounts writer Truman Capote's research for his book In Cold Blood, which described how petty burglars Perry Smith and Richard Hickock pointlessly murdered each member of a farm family of four in their beds with a shotgun blast to the head.
The film reveals Capote's desperation to restore the killers' humanity. "If I leave here without understanding you," he says to Smith in his cell, "the world will see you as a monster. I don't want that."
Capote's quest to understand, though, was futile. Even a guilt-ridden Smith couldn't provide an explanation. He tells Capote that he actually liked his first victim, the father Herb Clutter: "I thought he was a very nice, gentle man. I thought so right up until I slit his throat."
But the true explanation -- as Smith's own feelings of remorse attest -- was not hard to discern. He did what he did because he chose to. No external circumstance forced him to kill four innocents in their beds. Like the Gaza killers and like Abu-Assad's murderous protagonist, he exercised free will, thereby demonstrating, apparently even to himself, that there are indeed monsters among us.
The people of Kansas didn't try to explain the evil of Smith and Hickock. They just recognized it, proved it, then hanged the two men until dead. Maybe some special award is due for treating evil as simply and unsympathetically as that.
Interviewed about Syriana, which stars and is executive produced by Best-Supporting-Actor nominee George Clooney, director and Best-Original-Screenplay nominee Stephen Gaghan says of Osama bin Laden and his fellow thugs: "I was just curious. Why are these people so angry?"
A strangely impassive, but sensitive, response to barbarity and murder.
While many in Tinseltown are quick to paint the United States as sinister, when characterizing our enemies, more nuance is apparently in order. "It's not black and white," says Clooney. "It's complex."
Searching equally for "complexity" is Best-Director nominee Steven Spielberg, who says of Best-Picture-nominated Munich, about the Israeli response to the murders of eleven of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics: "I just wanted to put empathy in every direction, because the situation is not cut and dried." Best-Adapted-Screenplay nominee Tony Kushner adds that "you can't approach this situation with a notion of simple right or wrong."
No simple right or wrong either for Hany Abu-Assad, director of the Best-Foreign-Language-Film nominee Paradise Now, which sympathetically portrays a suicide bomber who murders Jews. What motivates such people, he explains, is "the feeling of impotency, literally and figuratively. It's human nature."
Human nature? I don't know anyone who hasn't felt powerless. But I know none who, as a result, was compelled -- even tempted -- to walk into an ice cream parlor filled with mothers and children, strapped with a bomb packed with rat poison and nails.
"Human nature" cannot explain this:
On a Sunday afternoon, May 2, 2004, terrorists lurking by a road in the Gaza Strip machine-gunned a station wagon in which rode 34-year-old mother of four Tali Hatuel, eight-months pregnant, and her daughters Hila (11), Hadar (9), Roni (7) and Merav (2). The thugs then approached the car and shot Tali in the belly and each of her terrified children in the head.
That crime was reminiscent of one that took place on November 15, 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas, the subject of the chilling Best-Picture nominee, Capote. The film recounts writer Truman Capote's research for his book In Cold Blood, which described how petty burglars Perry Smith and Richard Hickock pointlessly murdered each member of a farm family of four in their beds with a shotgun blast to the head.
The film reveals Capote's desperation to restore the killers' humanity. "If I leave here without understanding you," he says to Smith in his cell, "the world will see you as a monster. I don't want that."
Capote's quest to understand, though, was futile. Even a guilt-ridden Smith couldn't provide an explanation. He tells Capote that he actually liked his first victim, the father Herb Clutter: "I thought he was a very nice, gentle man. I thought so right up until I slit his throat."
But the true explanation -- as Smith's own feelings of remorse attest -- was not hard to discern. He did what he did because he chose to. No external circumstance forced him to kill four innocents in their beds. Like the Gaza killers and like Abu-Assad's murderous protagonist, he exercised free will, thereby demonstrating, apparently even to himself, that there are indeed monsters among us.
The people of Kansas didn't try to explain the evil of Smith and Hickock. They just recognized it, proved it, then hanged the two men until dead. Maybe some special award is due for treating evil as simply and unsympathetically as that.