"It's a blundering world out there, and every act of kindness can make it better."
My Linguistics professor Dr. Ricardo Nolasco shared me this comedy film "Monsieur Verdoux" by Charlie Chaplin and I first thought it was going to be a French-speaking movie. In the end, I was able to extract the lesson of the story and laugh out in my seat because of the witty lines in the movie.
1930's. Great Depression in Europe. Jobs, none. Stocks, low. For Monsieur Verdoux, his line of business revolves around "liquidating people of the opposite sex." That is, for two weeks, he sends them flowers, flowers them with utopian words, courts them and marries them all at the same time in different places. A traveller, Verdoux also has a true wife and kid whom he supports by fooling women into marrying him and robbing them of their wealth. For him, it is simply business in the midst of a terrible great depression. He has been pushed out of his job at the bank three years ago and since then, he has been courting women and marrying them and robbing them of their money and incinerating them to leave no proof of bigamy. He has many aliases, no insurance and all money goes to the stock market to leave no trace of his crimes.
What caught me in the movie was the time when he met a young woman who just got out jail and helped her get through the night by offering her dinner and wine. This was the time when he was experimenting on a drug that might cure his sick wife and tried to test it on the young woman. But by the time the woman told him her story, he changed his mind and even gave her money.
"It's a ruthless world out there, and one must be ruthless about it."
"You're wrong. It is indeed a blundering world out there, but every act of kindness can make it more beautiful."
"You better go, before you corrupt me with your philosophy."
And so the courting and the marrying and the liquidating goes on, until one day, the woman he has an affair with suddenly pops out of nowhere in a wedding where Verdoux would marry his next victim. Everything crashes and finally he was sentenced to guillotine with 12 counts of murder and bigamy.
What captured me in the movie is how Verdoux considers everything as a business enterprise, and how he was changed by the woman he helped. Most of the time we overgeneralize bad people but what the can't see is that some of them also have the heart to help people in need and have the guts to face their imperfections and change the world.
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