Justice, American style
Do the ends justify the means?
In some ways, the events surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden brought into question once more the tension between achieving justice and pandering to a base motive of revenge. Similar tensions may be explored in a couple of films set in historic American contexts.
Widely available on recent DVD release is the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit. A more elusive quarry may be Robert Redford's directorial project, The Conspirator. Narrowly released in Canada in May 2011, Redford's film, concerning the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, will likely come to DVD before the end of the year, but exactly when is uncertain.
Both films concern themselves with a quest for justice in post-Civil War America. In the case of the fact-based The Conspirator, it falls immediately on the heels of the Civil War, while True Grit is set in the developing territories of the American West circa 1880. In the former, a mother is effectively put on trial for the misdeeds of her son, while in the latter, a daughter seeks justice for her murdered father. In both cases the audience is left to ponder the nature of justice as it is juxtaposed with the desire for revenge and pragmatic expediency.
Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon top the marquee for True Grit, reprising the roles of Marshall Rooster Cogburn and Texas Ranger Laboeuf originally played by John Wayne and Glen Campbell in 1969. However, it is newcomer Halee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross who dominates the screen in most of her scenes.
Mattie is a beyond-precocious 14-year old who fears her father's murder at the hands of a lay-about named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) will go unpunished. She leaves behind the family farm to hire a U.S. marshall, a man with true grit, to return Chaney from his flight into the Indian territories for trial and execution. Rooster Cogburn has the reputation of the man she wants, but she discovers his hard-drinking and loutish reputation is come by honestly.
Justice, in Westerns, is usually meted out external to courtrooms, and in this case it is no different. It is not, however, for a lack of effort. Mattie is not pacified by the arguments of Cogburn and Laboeuf that Chaney is also wanted for murder in Texas and would hang there; she wants her father's murder to be publicly acknowledged and the perpetrator punished. What unfolds in the climax of the film might be described as poetic justice, but most parties, including the rifle-at-the-ready Cogburn, would acknowledge the importance of due process.
Due process is the key issue in The Conspirator. Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) is a 42-year-old widow who runs the boarding house where it is alleged the scheme to assassinate President Lincoln (alongside the Vice-President and the Secretary of War) was conceived and expedited. As the only woman charged in the conspiracy, the question of her indictment appears linked to the fact that her son is the only conspirator who has eluded capture. Adding to the questions surrounding her prosecution is her status as a citizen while a military tribunal conducts her trial.
An initially reluctant Frederick Aiken (James Macavoy), a Union war hero and lawyer, is assigned to Mary Surratt's defence, and it is Aiken's character arc that drives the film. As he uncovers the tenuous nature of her prosecution and the political machinations behind her trial, his trial defence becomes increasingly spirited.
The core conflict in all of this is the political expediency of convicting the conspirators at any cost to appease a grieving and angry public versus the core values of truth, justice and individual rights. Some critics have seen the film as a thinly veiled attack on the American right for their willingness to suspend civil liberties in the post-9/11 era, but even if this is true, the classic question must still be answered, “Do the ends justify the means?"
A Christian response to that question must necessarily consider all the complexities of different contexts. Ultimately it would suggest that God has called us to leave the ends in His hands. As both films suggest, this is equally difficult for both individuals and governments, but the conversation is definitely worth having.
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