} redemption

something I have been thinking about a lot in the last few days is the theme of redemption.

It probably started with Giri / Haji, a Japanese-British Netflix series that I haven't been able to binge-watch thanks to its sheer intensity. There was a scene where Mori Kenzo, the lead character, talks about what would happen to his brother if he turned him in to the British police, or brought him back to Japan. And he vehemently refuses to have that happen, regardless of what his brother had done.

What kind of fate did Yuto 'deserve'? Kenzo didn't seem to know, but he seemed sure that death was not it. As a viewer, I felt myself wondering about the same question. On the one hand, it seemed unfair that Yuto should escape unscathed out of every single mess he put himself in; on the other hand, the alternative seemed too unforgiving.

I also watched a streamer play The Witcher 3 (Hearts of Stone expansion) -- initially I just wanted to watch the fight scenes, but I ended up watching him play through the ending as well. He played through the endings, and watching the scenes again led me to a mini Google journey on Olgierd and, in one forum discussion in particular, whether he or Gaunter was the "true" "evil" in the story.

It made me think that the story is really not about who is the greater or lesser evil, at all. It is made pretty clear that Gaunter is Evil itself. Olgierd was simply a human being, and the question was whether he deserved redemption after all the wrongs he committed in his life. Does he still deserve redemption after all the ways he had acted so selfishly -- because his actions were undeniably selfish, regardless of his circumstances or reasons or motivations.

that then got me thinking about the criminal justice system in general, and how the constant push and pull between retribution and rehabilitation is essentially the endless unanswered question of whether humans deserve redemption. Especially if you were to think about the death penalty. Saying no to the death penalty means accepting that human beings deserve redemption no matter what - regardless of what they did, even if they are not actually 'good' people. Everyone deserves to continue living and to have the chance no matter how small to change their way of thinking and maybe, hopefully, make something of their time on Eath even if they end up screwing up that second or third or fourth or fifth chance too.

And then I watched Saving Mr Banks, which I only wanted to watch because I wanted something light-hearted after watching the finale of Giri / Haji. I wasn't sure how much I liked the movie after learning how dramatised it was compared to the true story, but I was quite captivated by Walt Disney's (unreal) little speech about.....saving Mr Banks. At least in this adaptation, the Mary Poppins movie was supposed to be a chance of redemption for Mr Banks, aka PL Travers's father.

And what a powerful idea it is -- that every person deserves redemption, deserves to be saved. (I may be truly understanding the idea of Christianity, very belatedly, for the very first time in my life.)

That led me back to Giri / Haji, particularly the final two episodes and the realisation that this entire series has been about the search for redemption, and saving, by each of the characters -- Yuto, Rodney, Sarah, Ian, Taki, Rei and her mother-in-law, and... Mori Kenzo himself.

I was thinking, what had Mori Kenzo done that was so bad to deserve his fate, and most of all the ending in the finale. To me, he remains the "good" brother. Even when I realised what he might have done months before that might have been so wrong to his brother, I questioned if that was enough to deserve all the shittiness that was befalling him.

And I wondered if -- Kenzo's fault lay precisely in trying to be the "good" brother all his life, instead of being true to himself and to others. He kept up the image of a "good" brother, a "good" husband, a "good" father, and even a "good" police officer -- and in doing so he ended up hurting others around him. And perhaps Kenzo himself knew, which made him more desperate to make things up to his brother. It's a complex relationship, though.

Maybe duty and responsibility aren't necessarily the best values to carry around. And to live with a sense of responsibility, over and above living in your truth, hurts others more than you realise, because it damages you. And you feel the need to take responsibility, and the cycle continues.

So there is my take-away thought for now that I may write more about another time... this thought that maybe it is more important to be true to yourself than to be responsible. Or rather, that the former may be the most responsible thing to do.

2020-01-27, 9:11 p.m..
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