The movie Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) shows a world that many can familiarize with: a world that allows for seemingly unjustified suffering and reward. Cliff, one of the main characters of the story, notices this aspect of life and points it out to his niece while divulging his words of wisdom to her, “you’ll find as you go through life that great depth and smoldering sensuality does not always win.” He tells her this after relating to her how he is in love with Halley, but she is enamored with Lester, a man that he finds revolting and undeserving of his wealth and fame. Cliff seems to be a pessimistic man and that he has learned his lessons from having experienced life first hand. Ecclesiastes 1:18 perhaps explains his attitude on life, “because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”
Cliff also tells his niece about how although the world is unfair and good people like Ben, the rabbi, suffer without reason, it is good people like Ben that don’t seem to let the world come down on them. Ben doesn’t let on that he is suffering, rather he has a good attitude towards life and Cliff considers him to be a “mensch” – a man of integrity.
Ben is reminiscent of Job from the Bible. Ben, like Job, is a God-fearing man that is struck with a seemingly undeserved affliction that is causing him to go blind. We don’t know from the film whether or not Ben laments the way Job does, “Why did I not die at birth,
Come forth from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me, and why the breasts, that I should suck? For now I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept then, I would have been at rest, but we are given a sense that he does not” (Job 3:11-13), but we are given the sense that he does not. Rather than lament, Ben seems to have the “patience of Job” that is discussed in Journey on page 184. He seems to grasp the overarching meaning of Job, that humankind is not “at the center on the cosmic stage” (Journey, 188).
Come forth from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me, and why the breasts, that I should suck? For now I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept then, I would have been at rest, but we are given a sense that he does not” (Job 3:11-13), but we are given the sense that he does not. Rather than lament, Ben seems to have the “patience of Job” that is discussed in Journey on page 184. He seems to grasp the overarching meaning of Job, that humankind is not “at the center on the cosmic stage” (Journey, 188).
Two men in the film carry the theme of unjustified reward, Judah and Lester. Cliff is obvious in his distaste for Lester. He finds Lester to be an arrogant womanizer that is undeserving of his wealth and fame. Lester seems oblivious of his nature and goes through life as if he is happy and always celebrating. Perhaps he has an outlook on life that can be taken from Ecclesiastes 8:15, “So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his toils throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun.” At the end of the film, Judah seems to take on the same outlook, as he seems to have gotten away with having his mistress, Deloris, killed. Nothing particularly bad had come to him from her death. Another man was punished for the crime, but Judah didn’t feel this was a problem as that man had committed several other crimes of a similar nature and, “what was one more” (Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989).
Judah didn’t always have this attitude though, and it is possible that although he seems to feel that he has gotten away with the crime; his increase in drinking perhaps shows that he still feels guilty and expects to be punished yet. It is as if he knows that “God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14) and is waiting for that axe to fall. Even the fact that he seemingly confesses to Cliff, while giving him a plot for a movie, shows that he is still disturbed and in wonderment of the fact that he has so far gotten away with the murder. Judah would have been wise to follow the words from Ecclesiastes 1:10-19:
10 My son, if sinners entice you,
Do not consent.
11 If they say, “Come with us,
Let us lie in wait for blood,
Let us ambush the innocent without cause;
12 Let us swallow them alive like Sheol,
Even whole, as those who go down to the pit;
13 We will find all kinds of precious wealth,
We will fill our houses with spoil;
We shall all have one purse,”
15 My son, do not walk in the way with them.
Keep your feet from their path,
16 For their feet run to evil
And they hasten to shed blood.
18 But they lie in wait for their own blood;
They ambush their own lives.
19 So are the ways of everyone who gains by violence;
It takes away the life of its possessors.
Perhaps if he had, his conscience would at least be clear and he would not be ever waiting for that axe
to fall.
to fall.
All in all, the messages from the movie seem to accumulate to a common theme that seems expressed best in Ecclesiastes 9:2-3, “It is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous and for the wicked; for the good, for the clean and for the unclean; for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner; as the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards they go to the dead.”
Written on 11/8/11 for my Intro to Biblical Literature class
