Word: evil
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Because Gandhi lives in the movie as a force or principle rather than a person, he lives only in his opposition to those antithetical forces which confront him--the injustice, degradation and blunt evil of colonialism and racism. Since these afflict millions, first in South Africa, where Gandhi wages his nonviolent war against the racism of Jan Smuts's regime, and then in India, Gandhi and his battle necessarily take place on the national and international stage. And here the movie wins its audience even if it loses much of its humanity...
...sense of largeness which permeates the film is enhanced by the plain good versus evil struggle. Attenborough achieves in the film a significant, if somewhat unsubtle, portrayal of the sins of colonialism--sins which may have slipped from contemporary consciousness with the political polarization and generally awful governance of the Third World over the last 20 years. (This too is the bitter legacy left by colonial powers.) There is an unwillingness to see beyond the grossness and malice of a mine owner who sends mounted troops out to beat protestors or the cupidity of a flaccid land owner...
Administration of the death penalty perhaps cannot be made fair enough. As a deterrent, it is probably not necessary. But public passions are inflamed by the inevitable monsters. Civil reason is suspended in the face of what looks like evil incarnate. "It's an emotional issue. It's not a rational issue." Says who? Lawrence Bittaker, an emotional man, whose life is very hard to save...
Cordier's duty is to protect the innocent; the trouble is, as he ruefully observes, no one is innocent any more. In the circumstances, the policeman's unhappy but bitterly logical lot is to help people accomplish efficiently the evil to which they aspire. In the course of this process, many will manage to do themselves in; the rest will find themselves in such a weakened condition that they will be easy prey for even the laziest lawman. In Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate), Director Bertrand Tavernier has had the good sense to cast Philippe Noiret, the underplayer...
Such hospitality toward secrecy is doubtless widely shared. To consider it evil in and of itself would be a considerable inconvenience to the human species. Everybody, after all, has things to hide; the mind, psychology teaches, even conceals information from itself. It is probably the very naturalness of concealment that tempts people to carry it to excess. There is, in any case, no end of secrecy...