Only when the soul is redeemed can death be meaningful! (ZT)

Karlie 2021-12-10 08:01:26

The original text is reproduced from http://groups.msn.com/COGod/

The film is adapted from the nun Helen. The true story of Prekin (played by Susan Sarandon). At the request of the death row inmate Matthew Ponchette (played by Sean Penn), she began to correspond with him, and later went to visit him in prison, and gradually became his spiritual sustenance. She also discovered that Matthew had killed a pair of young men. Unusual truth about lovers. In the face of public anger and the grief of the victim's parents, Helen asked them with the utmost courage for their forgiveness and forgiveness for Matthew's sins. Before the execution, Matthew, who had always refused to repent, finally broke through his defense and sincerely repented, and walked to the death line with peace of mind. Director Tim. Robbins used a deep and smooth technique to capture the mental state of a criminal in the depths of his heart. It also allows people to see the noble sentiment of the clergy, and the wonderful and exquisite performance of Susan Sarandon and Sean Payne. Under the interpretation, this serious film exudes a moving force. The original English name of this movie is "Dead Man Walking", which means "death row on the road". It is what prison guards usually yell when death row inmates go to the execution room in American prisons. The Chinese world generally translates this movie as "168 hours on death row". I think it is a relatively rare and vivid translation: 168 hours is a week. However, the title uses a specific number of 168 hours to freeze every moment when a life is about to disappear. They hit the depths of people’s souls one by one, allowing the audience to have an unforgettable look at life: death not far away is indeed The one who is decided is also the one that is waited for, but for a condemned person who is about to leave this world, does he run out of life, or regain the recognition and understanding of the value of life? The main story of the movie is that a nun named Helen became a volunteer to help death row Matthew Poncelet. She made every effort to help him find a lawyer, apply for hearings, appeals and polygraphs, and acted as his spiritual adviser. In the end, she influenced him with her words and deeds, making him confess his crimes and apologize to the victims’ families, thus calming and dignified. To leave this world. The story of the film is actually very simple. As a legal subject film, it does not have a complicated narrative about the case, and there is no fierce and complicated debate between the prosecution and the defense in court. It cuts the perspective directly into the spiritual chronicle of a death row prisoner who is about to be executed within 168 hours before his death, a process of how stubbornly resisted, struggled and struggled in his heart, and finally how to gain peace, and it is the name that guides all this. The nun called Helen. But it seems to be condescending to say "guidance". In fact, in this process, the same mental shock and baptism also happened to Sister Helen, every participant in the story, and the audience. I extracted four questions from this film. They concern the basic meaning of human body and spirit, life and death. Maybe we don't have the answer, but once we start to face these questions, we begin to get closer to the meaning itself to some extent. 1. Why did he not plead guilty? Matthew has always refused to plead guilty. Why? The most direct reason why he did not plead guilty was that he believed that he had not been treated fairly. At the time of the case, he and the other principal culprit, Vittro, jointly committed rape and murder. Although in fact he also participated in the rape of the girl and killed the girl’s boyfriend, all of this was instigated or even threatened by Vittro. It was Vitello who finally murdered the girl cruelly. However, during the trial, the accomplices hired good lawyers because they had money, and finally convinced the jury that the evidence against him was "reasonable doubt" and was sentenced to life imprisonment, while he himself was going to be executed. He believes that in the country’s judicial system, all death row prisoners are poor. However, behind this direct reason, there is a more fundamental reason for refusal to plead guilty. That is, he cannot treat everything around him with equality, but with a prejudice. He is an extreme racist. When Helen met him, he provocatively asked her: "Have you never been so close to a murderer? But there are a lot of black people in the place where you live, and they are always fighting each other." He was about to lie down for himself. He complained loudly on the execution platform where the blacks lay. What is the reason that he has such a deep racial prejudice to exclude blacks from society? Under the questioning of Sister Helen, he said that he could not understand the laziness of most blacks and wasting taxpayers' money. But he had to admit that he admired Martin Luther King, a black fighter, and also disliked lazy whites. His reason for discrimination does not appear to be sufficient. Poncelet’s prejudice is so deep-rooted, there seems to be another reason, that is, he himself has always been a discriminated person. He was unfortunate since he was a child. He lost his father at the age of fourteen and worked in a poor area. He and his wife divorced, and it was his ex-wife who reported him. He was regarded as a murderer, a beast, and a natural demon, and was condemned. How can a person who is constantly ostracized by this society view society with equanimity? Therefore, in despair, he said "I have no feelings for this government". In an interview with reporters, he utterly said that Hitler was right to massacre Jews. He claimed that he would join a terrorist organization and would blow up government buildings. The nuns were shocked: "How could I help such a person? I must be crazy." These reasons all seem to explain Matthew's denial of his crime. But the question is, can such a reason become a reason? Does a person's misfortune give him the right to impose misfortune on others? When you meet a so-called "lazy person" or "wicked person", can you belong to a type of lazy person or evil person? Does being ostracized by society necessarily mean excluding society? What's more, when Matthew has such concepts as misfortune, evil, and indifference, he actually has the standards of happiness, goodness and love invisibly. These things have not disappeared from his experience, such as the nuns' help to him, such as his mother and brothers' care for him, but all these things are forgotten because of his obsession with his misfortune. The more he refused to plead guilty, the more he proved that he was unwilling to be rejected by society, the more he proved his desire for something in human dignity, which happened to be an opportunity for him to confess his guilt and gain dignity as a human being. 2. Why did he finally plead guilty? At the end of the film, on the day when the death row was about to be executed, the most touching dialogue appeared. Matthew finally confessed his crime: "I killed him..." Sister Helen: "You will be responsible for their death. Death row prisoner: "I'm willing to... I knelt before the bed last night and prayed for them. I have never tried before..." Sister Helen: "Some wounds can only be healed by God. You have caused a tragedy, but you Now that you regain your dignity, no one can deprive you. You are a child of God." Death row: "No one ever said that I was a child of God. They all said that I was a bastard. I hope that my death will make the other parent feel better. Sister Helen: "All you can do for them is to pray for peace in their hearts." Death row: "I never got true love, never loved a woman or anyone, now I'm dying, but got love... …Thank you for loving me…" It’s indeed a deeply moving glory to change from a person who is extremely hostile to society. But this transformation is not accomplished by a purely religious or moral preaching. It has gone through fierce struggles and competitions. When he saw Matthew's extreme hatred of society, even the nun was angry: "You fool, make them more willing to start. Have you ever thought about the victim's parents? Their children were shot, knifed, raped. Abandoned. Wilderness. What will happen to your family if this happens to you?” However, judging from the previous attitude of Matthew’s refusal to plead guilty, it is extremely difficult for Matthew to sympathize with the relatives of the deceased, because in his opinion, the only relatives of the deceased are The wish is to let him die quickly, so the so-called scolding alone is not helpful. Pure hatred and compassion cannot make Matthew confess his sins and restore humanity. It seems that only love can make people have a conscience. It was Helen's belief in "love" that made Matthew finally confess his guilt. But it must be remembered here that the foundation of love is equality, and the meaning of love is human dignity. She told Matthew that the death of Jesus was a kind of true love. It was through his own love that those who were neglected, such as prostitutes, beggars, and poor, understood the value of survival, so that they could finally find someone who respected and loved them. "Jesus changed the world with love, but you saw two young people being killed." Not only that, in my opinion, what is more important is that the power of love and the impact of spirit cannot stay at the persuasive level above, but must rely on concrete and external performance and actions. Let the frustrated death row know that there are such people in this world, and they have real human dignity in them. And the nun Helen that Matthew met was just such a person. The director's treatment of Helen was very successful and did not make her an image of a hollow preacher. When she arrived in prison, she did not wear nun uniforms, and even the warden said, "These people rarely see women. Maybe you wear nun uniforms and they will respect you. If you despise authority, they will only follow the gourd." To Matthew's frivolous provocation, she solemnly said: "I am not here to entertain you, please respect me." "Why? Because you are a nun and wear a cross necklace?" "Because I am a person, everyone is He deserves to be respected.” In fact, Helen gradually won Matthew’s respect by this attitude, so that he even told her bluntly: “I don’t believe people here, but you didn’t preach or preach to me. So I Respect you. You have the courage and you live in a black community where everyone is armed with guns." The crux of the problem is that once the prejudiced death row finally learns to treat the world with respect for others, it will not be possible to confess and gain dignity without him. It's far, so we finally saw the touching dialogue in the previous scene. In any case, our dignity and reason must play a role in ordinary life. As Cohen said, the universality of dignity shows that no one is a tool to accomplish a certain higher purpose. So the important thing is to make him truly realize that he is guilty in his heart, and not to impose sin on him by others and society. It is precisely because of this possibility of the unity of inner spirit and outer action that Helen’s "persuasion" to Matthew is effective, and the other words Helen said to Matthew before that touching conversation can be used to motivate him. The best interpretation of confession: "Matthew, atonement is not a way to go to heaven for free. Only Jesus is responsible for paying the price. You have to bear the burden for your own salvation, and you have to work hard to atone for your sins. The Gospel of John tells us: "Know the truth , And the truth will set you free. '(Jn 8:32)...If you want to die, you have to die with dignity, if you want to do so, you have to be responsible for the deaths of Walter and Hope. "Three, what can I use to save you?" In order not to reduce the "confession" process to the result of vague preaching, we must also ask a more general question: What can I use to save you? Of course, the subject-object sentence of "I-you" here makes people feel a kind of "condescending" at the beginning of this article, which seems to contradict the equality and dignity I discussed. In fact, "What can I use to save you" is more often expressed as saving yourself, but this confusion and questioning about the meaning of life finally manifested itself in such a self-reflection way. At the same time, the rescuer and the rescued belong to different subjects, which does not mean that the rescued is spiritually prostrate. The key is how to save and for what purpose. The world is difficult, and it is easy to get trapped in it. We are inseparable from this society. In the world, there are some things that we cannot choose and cannot complain about, such as our birth, but for other things, we can make choices, so we can fall or be reborn, such as our spirit. In the movie, this spirit is the last rescued prisoner on death row. Only in the spiritual sense, "to live or die" becomes a question. As a nun, Helen is certainly a role to save others. But her rescue is rather looking for her lost self. Mother told her that when she was a child, she had bruised her mother by yelling when she had a fever, but the embrace of her mother finally comforted her. Now, facing the death row Poncelet, she seems to have become a mother. However, the rescue process was so difficult, because the first thing she faced was Matthew's questioning: "Why are you a nun?" The meaning of these words, to be exact, is, on what basis do you save me? Helen’s answer is helpless on the surface, but actually powerful: “This question is difficult to answer, just like why you are a criminal.” This answer actually means: for things that are decided, such as being a nun, it’s like things that cannot be chosen. , We happen to have no right to question, but because of this, what we can really think about is the things that can redeem our spirit, and only if you start this thinking can you open the door to salvation. Helen's salvation of Matthew must of course also start from the possible depth of religious understanding and moral speech representing the spirit and soul. The film has shown her and Matthew's debate on Bible understanding and moral conscience more than once, such as the interpretation of the meaning of Jesus' death and possible sympathy for the families of the victims. But being limited to this is not enough. As we have already mentioned, Helen is a religious career, but her career must be rooted in this world full of contradictions and fights. She recognizes God and saves others. It can only be a living action. Therefore, salvation must on the one hand listen to the call that you do not realize, on the other hand, it must be transformed into a "heavy flesh", just as the mother warned her: "You are looking for true fraternity, and you have to face all kinds of risks. Angel reports It is common, but the incarnation is rare. Helen, you are not a saint." For Helen, this means that she must accept all kinds of misunderstandings and even humiliation. The family of the victim couldn't understand why she wanted to be with that murderous demon until the end; her colleagues in the "House of Hope" in the community didn't understand why she wanted to stay close, because the community wanted her to help many people, and so on. We must emphasize that it is precisely under the bondage of the heavy physical body that what Helen did not do to achieve nobleness, she just listened to the call. All her efforts are aimed at allowing Matthew on death row to hear this call before death. In this sense, everyone is a person who needs guidance, even if we don’t know whether we can be saved. Helen eagerly said in her heart: "Lord, help me. How horrible this place is. There are many deliberate attempts to kill people like this. Don't let him collapse, help him be strong with me. Help us be strong." Is she saving others or saving Own? It is this spiritual salvation process that has been transformed into a secular action that prompts us to re-examine the seemingly neglected role of legal salvation in the film. In the film, the law's sentence against Matthew does not seem to give him a chance to reflect on his soul, but to find a reason for his hatred to vent; the whole film seems to be for the legitimacy of the death penalty, or to transcend the judicial system Carrying out the salvation of people provides religious arguments. However, we must not forget that if we leave the "sentence" of a legal system, can all our salvation happen? Our spirit has intervened in the body, but it should go deeper and intervene in the social system that determines our physical existence, that is, we must find how to save people under the conditions of the actual political and legal system. If you break away from the institutional conditions, you are trying to achieve salvation in a way of dividing society. This is actually a logic with the mutual exclusion and hatred between Matthew and society. Therefore, although the salvation effect of the law is not emphasized in an obvious way in the film, it just illustrates its unique importance. The role of the law is to unite society. If the law does not achieve this, it may be because the system machinery has problems, or there are problems that it cannot solve, such as its embarrassment on the death penalty. But in the final analysis, when we design a system like law, the starting point must be to unite society. As for the extent to which this effect can be realized, it is also related to our rational choice of the direction of operation of such optional things as the law under specific conditions: the existence or abolition of the death penalty is an important aspect worth considering. 4. Should the death penalty be abolished? The legal system’s provisions on the death penalty have brought the method of killing dispersed among private individuals into the political system of the system. This is a constraint on indiscriminate killing in any case; the development direction of the execution method of the death penalty from cruel to humane also shows that the law is constantly changing. Improving and maintaining human dignity; the continuous reduction in the application of the death penalty is also witnessing the further realization of the value of life by mankind. However, this movie does not abstractly think about whether the death penalty should be abolished, it just shows the complexity of the death penalty issue. As a prison guard said in the film: "It is very easy to comment on the execution procedure. What seems unreasonable or unnecessary on the surface actually has a deep rationale and long experience." Maybe this is the case. What the film intends to reveal: Under a legal system, there will always be differences in the cognitive level of different people, and the system cannot expect everyone to have the same understanding of life. Sister Helen’s attitude towards the death penalty is actually not clear. Although her efforts are to defend and save lives, she is more concerned about how a person should die to realize the dignity of life; as for the death row inmate Matthew, he did not plead guilty. Before, it can be said that the death penalty did not punish him. It was not until his spirit restored human dignity that he calmly faced the death penalty, hoping that his death would provide some comfort to the victim’s family, but of course this cannot be said to be true. The role of the death penalty; the film clearly stated that it is the ordinary people represented by the families of the victims who support the death penalty. Here are three fragments of their attitudes in the documentary: Fragment 1: A local newspaper published a picture of the grief of the victim’s parents, a family full of laughter disappeared, and the headline of the news was: "Parents’ Sadness Never Ends"; Fragment Two: One person told that before one of the victims’ uncle dentists put his hand into the victim’s rotting mouth to confirm the deceased’s dental record, he had been opposed to the death penalty, but after that day, he fully supported the death penalty. Fragment 3: After the death row apologized, executed the death sentence, and held a funeral, Mr. Dai, the victim’s family member, came to the cemetery and had a conversation with Sister Helen: Mr. Dai: "I don’t know why I came here. I’m full of hatred. I don’t have your faith. Sister Helen: "What I have is not as simple as conviction. Maybe we help each other to eliminate hatred." Mr. Dai: "I don't know. Probably impossible. I should go." Of course, the law requires rationality and humanity. Yes, but as a system, the law also has to pay attention to the feelings of specific individuals and pay attention to their love and hatred. Most people under the rule of the law are ordinary people. They cannot go beyond the feelings determined by certain time and space conditions to rationally criticize the gains and losses of a system, and to judge whether their behavior has sufficient rationality and dignity. After all, the law is a tool to achieve justice, so the core proposition of the law is whether justice is done; how justice is done. Neither of these two propositions can be separated from individual existence and individual feelings, which often determine the limits of people's thinking. However, after all, the film provides a direction for rational thinking beyond discrimination, prejudice and hatred for the injustice of the death penalty itself. That is what Matthew said before his sentence: I hope I don’t die with hatred, and I hope my death can be achieved. Bring them some comfort, "I just want to say... Killing is wrong, no matter if the killer is me, you, your government..." Yes, don't kill. Maybe no one has the right to kill, especially deliberate killing. The above four questions may be boiled down to a final question: how to live to death. The scenes at the end of the film are constantly interleaved, which are different moments of death: the face of the death row, the clock on the wall, the activation of the automatic injection machine, the murder scene at the crime scene, the corpses of two victims, and so on. No matter what kind of death, natural disasters, man-made disasters, suicide, homicide, selectable or unselectable, all are forcing people's souls. Our attitude towards death may be the mirror that shines on our souls. Sister Helen made the best interpretation of "life toward death" with love and perseverance. After a spiritual baptism in which death row prisoners and herself experienced the same, Helen returned to her place of work. She saw the children writing on the wall: "We love you, Sister Helen. Death row: Sister Helen, I'm going to die. . . . . . (Kneeling on the ground) Sister Helen: You know the truth and get liberated from death row prisoners: God knows the truth about me. . . I go to a more peaceful world and I am not worried. Are you alright? Sister Helen: I'm fine, Jesus is here on death row: I am not worried about Sister Helen: I think the last thing you see is the face of love. . . You looked at me during the injection. . . Looking at me. . . I am the face of your love******************************************** ******** Continue to the death penalty room Death row: Can Sister Helen ride me? Guard: You can sing with a female voice (it feels like a church choir) Guard: DEAD MAN WALKING! (Chinese translation: Dead man on the road) Slow motion close-up of the death row’s feet and hands, the face of Sister Helen shackled, the hand that Sister Helen put on the death row’s left shoulder (Slow motion close-up) Sister Helen: Don’t be afraid, because I have accepted you and called you , You belong to me, if you save the sea, I will go with you, if you step on the flames, you can avoid burning, I have accepted your soul. . . Priest: "Because of the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit..." Prison Guard: Sister, stay here. Death row: Would you like to visit my mother if you have time? Sister Helen: Yes, I assure you that Sister Helen sat down in the small room outside the death penalty room; saw the victim's parent. On the other side of the glass wall is the death penalty room****************************************** ********** The clock on the wall The death row was tied to the torture instrument. The needle pierced the blood vessel of the death row’s arm. The clock curtain was opened. The death row and the people on the other side of the glass wall could see each other and the prison guard asked. Does the death row have anything to say about the death row. "Mr. Dai... I don't want to end with hatred... I beg you for forgiveness for my behavior... I have caused you to lose a child, and the sins are serious... Mr. Pei, Mrs. Pei. I hope that my death will bring you comfort... I just want to say... Killing is wrong, no matter... The murderer is me, you, your government... On the bed, turn your head to look at the face of the death row of Sister Helen. Death row: I love you. Sister Helen: (mouth shape) I love you. The second hand of the clock goes to 12 and the minute hand coincides with the hour hand. The guard turns on the automatic injection machine. We can hear the sound of the machine running and the breathing of the death row. The lens cuts to the crime scene. The indicator light on the machine lights up. The boy at the scene was shot in the head from behind, the face of the death row prisoner, the nun, the crime scene repeatedly appeared with syringes ************************************************** ** The death row Sister Helen: Mr. Dai Mr. Dai: Sister Helen Sister Helen: Welcome to Mr. Dai: I don’t know why I came here. I am full of hatred. I don't have your faith. Sister Helen: What I have is not as simple as faith. Maybe we help each other to eliminate hatred. Mr. Dai: I don't know. Probably impossible. I should be going. Mr. Dai turned and left Sister Helen and came to a black family (in the community where she worked). There were pictures drawn by children on the wall with the words: We Love You, Sister Helen.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002BGP/qid=1114866889/sr=8-3/ref=pd_csp_3/103-8600558-9426238?v=glance&s=music&n=507846 movie Screenshot: http://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1pOW9TjlmZr42bfNzPu1qAtX7WcVf233a9xlrmpnlf5aai6RtSGJzRMIF3tq5yF8e1yTKmhXrKBeA http://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1pOW9TjlmZr43OG3W2rqL3ps4SWpLZJEwQZ8pIC_z9Kz5Tzq6iFq7TjmHtnNa8R2wyl2K98LpLQBw

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Extended Reading
  • Hayden 2022-04-21 09:02:09

    Another topic on the death penalty. Death should not be a violent punishment...

  • Ethan 2021-12-10 08:01:26

    "A mother's arms are strong when her child is in danger." "Nobody ever called me no son of God before. Thank you for loving me." "I want the last thing you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at me when they do this thing. I'll be the face of love for you.」

Dead Man Walking quotes

  • Earl Delacroix: My wife filed for divorce this afternoon. We just have different ways to deal with our son's death. Until death do us part.

  • Prison Guard: Tell me something, Sister. What is a nun doing in a place like this? Shouldn't you be teaching children? Do you know what this man has done? How he killed them kids?

    Sister Helen Prejean: What he was involved with was evil. I don't condone it. I just don't see the sense of killing people to say killing people's wrong.

    Prison Guard: You know how the Bible says "an eye for an eye."

    Sister Helen Prejean: You know what else the Bible asks for? Death as a punishment for adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, trespass upon sacred ground, profaning the Sabbath, and contempt of parents.

    Prison Guard: I ain't gonna get into no Bible quoting with no nun, 'cause I'm gonna lose.