Wang Yi (pseudonym: Wang Shuya)
There are three most representative works in the history of film about the subject of the jury. The best reputation is the American director Sydney Lumant's "12 Angry Men", which won the Berlin Golden Bear in 1957. This is a heroic portrayal of the Anglo-American legal system, and it is also one of the most wonderful group plays in the history of film. There are 12 jurors, almost all the shots are in a small closed room, full of the tension of a stage play. All 11 people believed that the defendant was guilty, but Henry Fonda turned the tide and persuaded the entire jury one by one. Another lesser known film is French director André Cayette's "The End of the Referee," which won the Venice Golden Lion in 1950. Shortly after World War II, France began to adopt the British and American jury system. The film shows the waves of this judicial reform with a death penalty case.
My third place is the remake of "12 Angry Men" which lost to "Lust and Caution" in Venice this year. It's a classic remake, and it's a classic in itself. Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov, his "Poison Sun" used to be one of my favorite films. In terms of performance, the group play of this film is no less than Lumant 50 years ago. In terms of grasping the rhythm, starting and turning, it is also exactly the same. But the director's ultimate concern and institutional reflection are obviously higher than Lumant.
Lumant's pattern, no matter how good it is, is a courtroom drama. What is impressive is the intricate evidence and details. Under the passion of reasoning, the justice of the law is shown. But what Mikhalkov made was not actually a legal film. To put it bluntly, he made a film about legal philosophy and theology. Or to put it another way, Mikhalkov became the second Kievlovsky. On the movie hard drive in my head, the first friendly link was Kee's "Ten Commandments" and "Red, White and Blue."
A Chechen orphan accused of murdering the Russian military officer who adopted him. His Russian was poor and he refused to speak in court. Two witnesses said they saw what he looked like. 12 jurors for court renovations -- just like us, the whole society is doing renovations; their phones were taken away and taken to a sports room at a nearby school. Everyone is casual, waiting to raise their hands to vote, to go home for dinner, to go on a date. But when 11 agreed that the defendant was guilty, the last one suddenly said, "Because you all agree, I don't agree".
In this sentence, the whole movie has since left the world of Lumant. This guy said, it can't be that simple, and once I agree, he'll be in jail forever. "Forever," he said, and you think about what that word means. Then he told stories and parables.
The story is his own. When the marriage failed, he began to drink heavily, from morning to night, drinking to the point where he was not afraid of death. But he said, "One day I was on a train, drunk and stinking among a group of people, and saw a woman sitting opposite, leading a little girl about five years old. The little girl asked her mother if the man opposite was crazy. , I heard the woman say, he's not crazy, he's just very, very sad."
He went on to say, I later married this woman. Our son is now four years old. I should have died in the gutter, but this woman, she gave me a chance to be reborn.
Your story is touching, one person said coldly, but now we're talking about a murderer.
So he said another analogy, have you ever bought a watermelon? The boss said it was sweet and crunchy, but you can't cut it first, buy it back and find it's wrong, at most throw it away. But we're not talking about killing, we're talking about sentencing.
This analogy at least worked for me. Because I have bought hundreds of watermelons in my life, every time I don’t want to buy them, I feel a headache. If someone sentenced hundreds of people to death in this life, he must have more headaches than me.
The dissident said, let's do another secret ballot, and if 11 of you still agree, I'll give up. I tried to convince myself that I would forgive what would be done to that child. As a result, in the second round of voting, someone quietly changed their opinion. This is how the story of 1:11 begins.
The brilliance of Mikhalkov is here. He had each juror in the argument, telling his own story. About the wounds of Russia and Chechnya, about the tension of life and the changing times. They approached the world of Chechen orphans again and again, and they were also closer to the times they lived in and their own sorrows.
In fact, the Chechen background is just an introduction. The director looks at the power of justice in an era of turmoil and reconstruction with a strong Russian spirit, that is, the spirit of the Orthodox Church. Why do people judge people? Why should the law pronounce on a person's unalterable end in this life? "Forever" is a word so heavy that many people do not want to think about it, but it has become a role that jurors drawn from ordinary people must play. It is in the name of "forever" to put a conclusion on a person's body. Who has such courage.
After a day and a night, in the end, the other person agreed. The plot took a sharp turn again, and he said, I always knew this child was innocent. However, he was clearly safer and lived longer in prison than outside. If we decide to send him back outside, we have a moral duty to help him. This shocked everyone, and they all said that they were very busy. Some people said angrily that after we made a decision, the rest is the government's business. What is it about us.
Yes, at the institutional level it may not matter; but morally, when a system links one person's actions to another's outcome, the responsibility is not entirely on the system. A person who has no love for the object of his judgment, but sits in the seat of the judge, can this in itself be called a crime?
I took the words of the 12th-century canon law thinker, Gramsci, as an answer to this film. Gramsci was a pioneer of the "Roman Law Revival" era. Christ said, "Love God and love your neighbor" is the general outline of all commandments. Gramsci used this to determine his understanding of the law. "Without love, neither faith nor justice can exist," he said. Only love can unite between righteousness and mercy. As the Bible says, "Love does no harm, so love fulfills the law."
The common view sees love as a hindrance to justice. But Gramsci's view of biblical jurisprudence has given the world a very enlightening definition. He said that justice is explained in terms of love, "whatever is necessary and beneficial to the care and salvation of the soul must be just in law".
Finally, before the dissident left the gym, a bird stopped in front of the famous Orthodox statue of the Black Madonna and Child, and he picked it up and kissed it. To the bird, and to Russia, he said, "If you want to stay, stay, and if you want to fly, fly away. You have freedom, and no one can choose for you."
Mikhalkov's final words once again examine the modern legal concept with the light of faith. The screen reads, "The law is a beginning, but what shall we do when the higher, benevolent law is abandoned"?
2007-12-5
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