It’s not often that you come across a movie in a documentary format, that too from a very famous director – one such film is Zelig. With Woody Allen both as a lead actor and director, it’s considered an epitome of perfection in the genre of mockumentary.
Contrary to what has been the norm when it comes to discussing with respect to the basic theme of this movie viz. being oneself irrespective of where you are / whom you are with, I will write about a situation that interested me.
More than half time into the story, when one after another person comes claiming the alleged damage and damages Zelig have caused them, public opinion slowly turns against him so much that in one scene a lady expresses a desire of getting him lynched by the court of law.
This brings me to the very concept of the validity of punishment as a reformative measure when a person commits an offense out of ignorance.
Is punishing a person a right choice when he / she commits an offense rather than making him go through the reformation?
Let’s consider Zelig’s case itself as an example: irrespective of whether he’s conscious of his committing crimes / mistakes, he has committed them and is he really culprit of all this? Our answer can’t be in affirmative.
Similarly a kid committing a crime wouldn’t be punished in the same way an adult gets punished because the former is considered ‘ignorant’ as regards the ways of the world.
Let’s now take a famous line from Bible as an example. Said to be the first in a series of seven last sayings Jesus utters from the cross and called famously as “The word of Forgiveness”, the line goes as follows
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”
Now if you take Zelig’s case since he’s suffering from a disorder he can’t be held responsible for any crime that he commits – on the grounds of his being ignorant.
In the same way if one takes the biblical saying into the case and try to contemplate on the nature of ignorance and its spread across the world, it’s very much possible that what we believe as ultimate truth is very much ‘our truth’ rather than it’s really being true-in-every-sense. On further reflection on this lines, I feel, there shouldn’t be any reason to punish a person for a crime he committed out of ignorance. It’s only the reform that he requires in the end.
I will further try to explore on this fascinating biblical line, on ignorance and on innocence in another post.
THINGS ..... 