A good day today - I didn't go into work at all. :)
***
I don't know what you can do about someone who does wrong, but has convinced themself that they haven't. I think that you could definitely see that happening in some of the people interviewed in the Enron documentary, and you could see it again in Sisters In Law, a documentary about various women in the Cameroon legal system and the first successfully prosecuted case of spousal abuse. There was one man who raped a ten year-old, and first claimed the she'd asked him for sex, but he'd been studying his bible and sent her away; and then, that she had solicited sex for money; and then, when the court found him guilty, admitted that he needed to be punished, but asked the court to be merciful because he was an orphan and had no-one. (He was sentenced to ten years hard labour, and then to be deported back to Nigeria, from whence he had illegally immigrated.)
What do you do with people who ask forgiveness merely to evade punishment, rather than because they acknowledge that they have done wrong? Those that are so self-involved that they don't seem to understand that other people can feel pain, let alone that they're the cause of other people's pain? That it's not okay to beat your wife if you're angry, or lash out at those around you?
Even more insidious - what about the people who have genuinely convinced themselves that what is good for the wealthy is good for the country? That if they don't see people starving on their doorstep, that no-one is going hungry? That work-for-welfare schemes work, because they give grounds for disqualifying people from welfare, and so it can be said that they cause welfare numbers to fall? There were plenty of people in the documentary Guilani Time who seemed quite honest in their belief that randomly stopping black youths and searching them for guns, then finding a reason to have searched them after the fact, was a good idea, regardless of the number of innocent citizens who were harrassed, and the damage of trust in that community that was created, or the fact that this policy was directly responsible for an unarmed man to be shot 41 times by four officers.
Or take the Rogernomics advocates who, it was stated by a former employee, have left the Treasury and are now in the Ministry of Fisheries. If they provide advice for the Minister that tends to be favourable to the commercial fishing concerns at the expense of locals and sustainability, the Minister opens himself up to personal attack through the courts if he chooses not to take that advice - and the commercial interests certainly have both the motivation and the bankroll to do that if they feel their interests are at stake. However, for all the sense that big money and the national and local government are failing Kaipara, there is a feeling of hope in The Kaipara Affair - the way that the different parts of the community have come together, and the respect that even those who disagree on approach and detail have for each other, is quite special.
One thing that I'm not sure how I feel about that was brought up in this documentary was the encroachment of Auckland suburbia/holiday homes into the area. It feels weird to me to think of gated communities with their own private helicopter landing pad, pool and gym in NZ. I mean, the kind of disparity of wealth that I'd imagine drives gated communities seems kind of alien, and the idea that it has it's own "private beach"... well, isn't that what all red-blooded patriotic NZer's are meant to despise? I guess it's okay if someone paid cash money for it, rather than inherited it... argh.
Anyway, to back up a bit - I enjoyed Sisters in Law, and while some of the situations they showed were quite worrying, the overall tone was funny and hopeful. I thought Guiliani Time was excellently made, and reinforced my intention not to live in the US. (They opened with Guiliani talking about how, immediately after he heard about the planes hitting the Twin Towers, he turned to his chief of police, clutched his arm, and said, "Thank God Bush is our President." Funny, yes; but very, very scary too.) The Kaipara Affair was slightly oddly structured, but it worked quite well; I felt like I had a better understanding of the issues, as the locals saw them, and while I don't think I'd like to know the most radical of the guys they focused on, I did get a feeling for his point of view.
The other movie I saw today was Look At Me, a French drama about a self-absorbed writer/publisher and his only slightly less self-absorbed daughter. It was quite a bit lighter in subject than most of what I've seen so far, and I think I liked it for that reason; it was good, but not startlingly so.
***
I'm starting the old "bump into the people you see at the Film Festival", though disappointingly, I haven't seen Morgue's mum and dad yet. Ah well, only the third day. I'm back to work tomorrow, since I don't have a film until 9pm; I've also got to get the car to the garage for a tune-up, so tomorrow is promising to be pretty busy, even sans movies. :)
Posted by svend at July 18, 2005 12:58 AM