A problem with this movie, is that you have no sympathy whatsoever with the main character, Eric Love. He is just an ultra-violent idiot, and I wanted him to be severely punished! Another problem was the lack of rules and regulations inside the prison - not safe for anybody! And the way the therapist/teacher operated was strange as well. Good movie, but not great.
...And even though I like Ben Mendelsohn, he wasn't really credible as a prison-toughguy!
shareWell I don't feel like you need to have someone to cheer for in order to enjoy a story. Like a fairytale.
But I did feel it being a bit dumb when they tried to build the tension as they hung love at the end.
Like so what?
But other than that it worked for this movie.
Not everybody would share your perspective. The scene in his father's cell that shows the drawing of their family that Eric sent to him as a kid (which has "I love you daddy" written on it) is poignant. It forces us to realise that at one point Eric was an innocent little kid, and to think about what has happened in his life for him to become who he is when we encounter him.
Through the course of the movie we learn that Eric grew up in a highly dysfunctional environment (his mother is/was a drug addict; his father went to prison when he was 5 and his example presumably taught him that violence / aggression are 'normal'; he was later placed in care during which time he was sexually abused). The movie is asking us to consider how these experiences hardened him and turned him into the aggressive thug that we come to know him as. For me it was clear that aggression was his self-protective mechanism, and an expression of rage at the world around him that has been unkind to him.
While these experiences do not excuse his behaviour, they do help explain it. The fact that he starts making progress in therapy and is genuinely trying to work on himself, shows what a difference it can make when someone is finally looking out for him and trying to set a better example.
For me this movie was incredibly devastating. I have worked with troubled youths before, and I can understand why for most people compassion is difficult to access, because their behaviour can be incredibly destructive and pose a serious threat to society. More often than not though, when you peel back the layers and invest time to understand their circumstances, you see that their life has been trauma piled on top of trauma - first in their family environments, and later by being placed in corrective institutions that are often more about doling out punishment than places that offer a chance at rehabilitation.
The question of where personal responsibility lies and to what extent we need to take into account a person's context is a really complex one, but for me ultimately it comes down to - address the behaviour, but see the human being underneath it.
Great and insightful post. I wish more people would show this amount of empathy or just consider that things are often not as simple as they first seem.
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