Doubt (2008) Film Review By Ionut Moise One of the hardest graspable issues in the world today is the fuzzy relationship between ‘Reason’ and ‘Belief’. By Reason I mean those facts, or evidence upon which peoples’ belief is laid, while through Belief I refer to that human natural capacity to maintain hope, faith in an idea, however secular that might be. The dysfunctional linkage between the two is so thin and subtle, that I’m not surprised to see it generalised among the most retrograde and fundamentalist religious people (the ‘believers’ Jihadists), as well as among the most secular but infatuated intellectual groups (like the ‘rationalists’ of Charlie Hebdo). The debate is not religious. It stands simply for reasonability. Both groups are reductionist in outlook, in the sense that for the former Belief justifies any crime, while for the latter Reason justifies any licence. ‘Doubt’, a film which I have revisited a second time, made me realise that the blurring line between ‘reasonable’ and ‘believable’ demands a huge effort of reflection. On the one hand we have one person whose intuition, emotions and faith are stronger than facts, proofs and accuracy of her ‘evidence’ (Ss. Aloysius), and on the other we’ve got one person for whom (while faith, emotions fall in doubt) ‘reasoning’ becomes so strong as to blindness at the sight of Truth (Fr Flynn’s inability to see it). One of the hardest tasks today is to see and explain the Truth (on which depends in fact our freedom; and in case of failure, we will all become, as George Orwell put it, gadgets of planetary ‘Big-Brother experiment’). It is because neither Reason nor Belief possesses intrinsically and independently, the capacity to grasp the Truth. Belief is not belief if it doesn’t endure the test of doubt, while Reason will always remain profoundly limited and encaged if it doesn’t abandon at least for a while its deceiving ‘reasonability’, ‘political-correctness‘ and ‘self-justification’. In other words, Reason and Belief will grow stronger and stronger, only when they will be less and less. And only then, will they start to sight the Truth. https://youtube/watch?v=ie4LuDp6HUs
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:08:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015