Most (The Bridge)

Most (2003), “The Bridge” in English, is a Czech film (with English subtitles) that expresses most poignantly the classical ethical dilemma widely recognized as the “Trolley Problem.”

In the Trolley Problem, you are asked to imagine you are on a runaway trolley that is speeding toward a bus with ten children that suddenly becomes stuck on the track. The only action available to you is pulling a lever that will divert the train onto a different track just before the bus. The problem is that, on the other track, a child has his foot stuck in the rail. The dilemma is this: you must decide whether you will not pull the lever and allow ten children plus the bus driver to die or whether you will pull the lever and kill the child. The ethical part of the question is: what should you do? what is the right decision?

Most ups the ante on this classic problem and forces its protagonist to make the agonizing decision of saving dozens of people on a passenger train or his own son. I won’t spoil it, but the film leaves you gripping your seat and stomping the floor while he decides.

My favorite aspect of the movie is how the writers handle the scenes following the decision and its ensuing consequences. Though the images provide some justification for his decision, it is not heavy-handed. It leaves ample room for reflection and makes it perfect for a classroom.

Another great aspect is how the life of a troubled young woman (left) is woven through the story without connecting directly with the protagonist or his son. There is a great analogy here with how human lives entwine and connect. The audience is encouraged to think outside their own lives, to reflect regularly on those parts of the big picture we can’t see. There is a great case here for selflessness and grace.

Many of our actions have consequences we will never see. Are we morally responsible for these consequences? Are we morally responsible for at least recognizing that those consequences will ensue?

These questions along with the final scences also raise the question of whether there is something at work in the universe apart from human intentions. If so many results of our actions have moral implications, is something, or someone, responsible for guiding, directing, allowing, or preventing them?

Most is only 29 minutes long, but it is well worth engaging over and over.

Network

With literary dialogue, Oscar-winning acting, and one of the most memorable catch-phrases in film (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”), Network (1976) is one of my five favorite movies. A bonus is that it raises hard questions about moral commitments, the meaning of life, journalistic integrity, and the moral implications of entertainment.

Here, I’ll just note two interesting problems the film raises about the meaning of life. A recurring theme is the comparison between Diane Christensen’s (Faye Dunaway) life and the life of the characters in the TV shows she produces.  There’s a startling monologue near the middle, where Max Schumacher (William Holden) describes to his scorned wife, with all the flat calm of someone reading a physics book, his adulterous relationship with Diane. Schumacher says, of Christensen:

“She’s television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality she knows comes to her over the TV set. She’s very carefully devised a number of scenarios for all of us to play, like the Movie of the Week. My God, look at us, Louise. Here we are going through the obligatory middle of Act 2, scorned wife throws peccant husband out of scene. But don’t worry, I’ll come back to you in the end. All of her plot outlines have me leaving her and coming back to you, because the audience won’t buy a rejection of the happy American family.”

Two questions come to mind: First, what does a person want to know (what question is she asking) when she asks whether “life has meaning”? Second, if all the great plots have been written (as literature professors tell us), what is left of life beyond a simple script, a Movie of the Week?

With respect to the first question, “meaning” surely refers to something different than linguistic “meaning,” that is, the meaning of life is something different from the definition of “life.” It typically refers to something like “purpose” or “goal” or “reason.” But people usually don’t care about something as abstract as the “purpose of life in general,” though this is possible; they typically want to know their purpose, “What am I here for?”. There might be an answer to the former question. The author of Ecclesiastes, after espousing the vanities of work and play, love and lust, right and wrong, writes, “The conclusion, whan all has been heard, is: fear God and keep his commandments, becaues this applies to every person” (NRSV).

Are there other candidates for life’s purpose? Probably. But this is probably not detailed enough to provide an answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” Rather than one general meaning or purpose, people typically want to know their purpose: What am I doing here? What am I aiming for? What’s my motivation? These are, of course, much more difficult questions, and I am in no way equipped to help you answer them in a blog post. But the film Network raises the question in a way that might start us out on the right foot. There typically comes a point in all our lives when, like Howard Beale, we’re “sick of all the bullshit.” We want substance, not facade; reality, not television; relationships, not acquaintances; enjoyment, not money; satisfaction, not pleasure.

The irony in the film is that what Beale suggests as a solution is simply more facade, more television bullshit window dressing, and does not address the problem. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Okay. Good for you. Don’t take it. Stand up, get mad, shout! But about what? What can you change?

Many of us, when faced with this crisis, pick a script to play, like an actor on stage. We champion a cause, become a talking head on YouTube, or write a blog (that no one will ever read) “denouncing the hypocrisies of our time.” I think this is as good a strategy as any: recast yourself into the mold of the virtuous prophet–spend your talents wisely. But this leads to our second question: if all these great scripts have been written and if the evils of our world have not been eradicated, why play the part just to become forgotten?

 In Herman Hesse’s famous novel, Steppenwolf, the protagonist Harry Haller finds a biography of himself that says, to some men, ”the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature.”

More to come.