Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux: A Comedy of Murder

"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.

Reflections on 100 Days to Heaven

My dad. Drama mode.

Aside from watching Spongebob Squarepants and Mr. Bean, I've finally got to like a teleserye that truly feeds the minds of kids like me, with ABS-CBN's 100 Days to Heaven (directed by Malu L. Sevilla). It seriously makes me cry, laugh like a mad man, and learn the practical approaches in life like "you should manipulate the world first before it manipulates you and buries you alive."

Sofia's (Jodi Sta. Maria) father Andres (Joel Torre) truly moves me to tears, given his situation as a physically disabled man struggling to do his job as a financially-supportive father. With his son Kevin (Louis Abuel) unfortunate enough of having leukemia, he could not sleep at night just thinking about how he could provide for his son's medical needs.

I remember my father every time Andres stays late up at night and pours out his frustrations, saying he feels like a worthless father because of his physical misfortune. I always cry whenever I see him selling rags out in the streets, with all his efforts to earn money for Kevin's treatment. I see my dad in him thinking how caring and emotionally vulnerable he is as well, with his determination to make us successful citizens of the world by always working overtime.

On the other hand, there are a lot more lessons I learn from Madame Anna Manalastas (Coney Reyes) and Anna (Xyriel Manabat). 100 Days to Heaven not only makes me want to love and understand my dad more, but also helps me understand the "art of being the bad guy". Anna shares a lot of reasonable viewpoints about life and its cruel reality we've all overlooked and we take as unreasonable.

In yesterday's episode, Anna was trying to prove to Sofia that she did a big favor to her employees by scolding them and simply telling the truth that they were a bunch of failures. I remembered how my strict teachers back in high school scolded us and I tried to understand their intentions that after all, they simply cared about us, for if they didn't, they wouldn't even bother wasting their time reprimanding us. Maybe it was just the same way Anna did.

I've always loved villains, because they're not bad guys after all. Like what Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) said, "We've all got light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we chose to act on." Anna Manalastas may be that annoying, unreasonable toy empress, but she sure teaches me to look into the other side of bad guys--their good side.

His dreams behind the cowboy suit

Sometimes you have to analyze the nature of others to analyze yours.


A mob boss and a shrink. One engaged in mafia schemes, the other in ginko biloba and ibuprofen overdoses. Without a doubt, both had completely different worlds, but actually shared the same story of loss: the death of their fathers--their heroes.

The comic movie Analyze That (2002, directed by Harold Ramis) seriously confused me whether my tears were brought by crying over Paul Vitti's (Robert De Niro) tragic story, or by laughing off my seat on how he comically hugged his therapist Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal) while crying, looking like 10-year-old kids who just lost their teddy bears. This is the very first movie I watched which taught me how to analyze deeper, that the conflict in any story is not about the entrance of villains, but about their own stuggles with their identities because after all, bad guys never wanted to be one.

Convicted mob boss Paul Vitti (De Niro) itched to get out of Sing Sing Prison, with the Rigazzi mafia trying to kill him. He ended up with a brilliant plan involving West Side Story songs, a catatonic behavior and his therapist Ben Sobel (Crystal). He got his runaway ticket and stayed in Ben's house for everyday therapy.


Paul's story reflect on the Nature vs. Nurture principle. When he was a kid he'd wanted to be a cowboy because his father, also a mob boss, bought him the whole outfit and even made him ride a pony. But then when he was 12 he saw his father murdered right in front of him. All his father's dreams for him as a hero, and not as a mob boss like him, had vanished, with Paul joining the mob since then.

Ben, on the other hand, was freshly grieving for his father and struggled to "reform" the mob boss. As he was "staring into a big hole that he can't fill up", he realized the "assignment" wasn't really a burden; but an eye-opener showing  the effects and implications after one loses a father.


The movie did not only entertain because of its smart and hilarious lines, but also taught a lesson that bad guys, once upon a time, got their own heroes and dreams, too.

"There's a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're half way there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there
Somehow,
Someday,
Somewhere!"

Thank you to my mentor, Ms. Josephine Bonsol, for teaching me how to analyze that.

The making of villains 101

The world creates its own enemy.


A father, a son and a heart transplant. Not one father would ever bear the thought of his child's death to happen long before his, especially when there's still a chance. John Q (Denzel Washington), unfortunate enough to lose health insurance, money, and eventually his son, was a desperate man in a desperate situation.


The making of villains doesn't only exist in Walt Disney movies. The script writer designs the ugliest violet-painted monster he can imagine, sets him up with the classic hero-beats-enemy scene, and his noble death is next to garbage, left with no legacy to be remembered as the selfish, unreasonable guy who justified the existence of heroes.

But such bad guys--sketched villains in the least--won't be too unreasonable if they don't have their own reasons to be. Desperation, survival, family, blind justice--reality proves it. Unlike any scripted existence, or story, John Q was forced to be unreasonable just so he could save his son.


The movie basically portrayed how far a loving father would go to prove his determination that he'll never bury his son. How a father is more than willing to lose his life so his son could live in return. And so the enemy had his own reasons nobody even cared to understand, because we didn't want to.

"I am not gonna bury my son;
my son's gonna bury me."

It also proved how the world creates its own enemy. Even though it's worse in the Philippines, the unattended health insurance of thousands of American citizens justifies enough why a lot of people want to bulldoze the White House and Malacañang Palace. If not for the fake HMO insurance company and his son's fake diagnoses over the years, John would've not even thought of buying a gun.


Hostage. Fear. Understanding. The movie portrayed a chunk of the science of human behavior as well, showing the nature of Stockholm Syndrome. Hostages primarily aquire such syndrome, where they develop great sympathy over their hostage taker. John Q's hostages had, for once, understood why he took such radical action, and even saved and defended him from the police.

John Q's hostages

To some extent, they're not really bad guys; they simply justify their unacceptable actions with the unacceptable situations they've been exposed to.

When heroes retire and villains miss the normal life

The day couldn't be safer and more secure with Metro Man (Brad Pitt) looking out for despicable villains. One day he's there; one day he's not.


Dreamworks also got out of the box and let the villains conquer the big screen. Megamind (Will Ferrell) finally deciphered the hero's Achilles' heel, and managed to incinerate him to the bones. What's next? He takes over the city, feel the power and ends up getting bored without any more hero to fight to.

And so he invents one to keep the story alive, but ironically ends up being the hero of the city instead. And the story itself is merely about villains abruptly changing into heroes; it's more about how both parties eventually get sick over their pre-destined lives.


WHEN HEROES RETIRE


Our heroes grow old, too. I was taught that when one gets old, he tends to look for simpler things in life. Nevertheless, there has been no record of any Walt Disney or Marvel hero growing old still wearing that silly cape and hovering above the city. We've seen Metro Man contemplate about the importance of life before getting killed. He realized he had missed a lot of things and focused much on saving people who didn't even teach him about life.

And so the hero just retired, and left the apathetic people to fend for themselves. It's true among us anyway: we get bored everytime and itch to try something new. Change is our nature, that's why it's stupid to be disappointed when things wouldn't be the same again.


WHEN VILLAINS MISS THE NORMAL LIFE


I honestly found it corny that Megamind was emotionally changed by a woman. Nevertheless, this made our blue-painted villain to enjoy the simpler life and fall in love.


After all, he was not really born a villain--he was made one through years of staying at a local penitentiary with prisoners teaching him bad guys are good ones. He was always humiliated at his school as well.

It's mainly about being sure about the things we really want in life while we're conscious at the moment. We may want something just because we're influenced by others to want it, but it won't obviously make us happy and contented. In this part of the story, Megamind the villain managed to choose to change, telling us we can, too.

The walls, the cellmate and the chair

ACADEMIC LEARNING FROM A FUGITIVE
Part III

All he had said was a big understatement.



Remembering "how they used to talk", I learned to appreciate the word "understatement" more. All throughout the four series, Michael talked and wrote in riddles, while the rest of his team were left to crack them up.

Inverted reading of bloshoi booze produces
numbers which are actually coordinates

BEHIND THE SISTINE CHAPEL TATTOOS


Cute poison, Ripe Chance: Woods, and bolshoi booze. Michael had seriously considered designing codes and scientific jargons to slip past the guard's suspicions and to divert and confuse the FBI's equally smart acumen.


1. His whole body tattoo obviously hides the penitentiary's blueprints, and their escape plans after breaking out.

2. Cute poison is actually a chemical equation he needed to produce a corrosive substance to destroy the infirmary's drainage path, their last door to open to get to the infirmary and escape through the windows.

Ripe Chance: Woods

3. Ripe Chance: Woods is not a storage facility in Oswego as what the police had thought: It should be read as RIP E. Chance Woods. This is the graveyard where Michael hid their clothes and passports to escape to Panama.


4. Bolshoi booze is not a place; it's a series of coordinates of a desert where Michael would meet Spanish colleagues he made a deal with in exchange for their escape plane.

First origami message sent by Michael
Rendezvous: Sundown Hot

HOW MICHAEL AND SARA USED TO TALK


1. Michael had also left Sara with Origami cranes bearing the message of their rendezvous after she was also chased by the Company. Michael used dots to keep the message hidden, which actually correspond to the letters of a cellphone. The message was: Rendezvous Sundown Hot, El Gila NM 6-3, meaning Sara should stay at Sundown Hotel in Gila, New Mexico at meet him at a certain place on June 3 (6-3).


2. In season two, chapter 15 entitled The Message, Michael and Lincoln sent a videotape to the FBI saying they're innocent, but deliberately used body languages elaborating a bad liar to keep the FBI distracted. Michael also left a message for Sara in the video in understatements, mentioning words from Sara's medical book leading to a place where she needs to hide and where Michael would call her.


3. Sara had announced a call for a "Michael Crane" in the receiving area of the hotel Michael had told her, referring the word "Crane" to the origami cranes he'd sent to Sara.


4. In season three, Michael had also called Sara and reminded her of "how they used to talk". Sara mentioned words giving clues as to where she was being held by the Company with Lincoln's son LJ. She said it was a "lost cause", which actually refers to the statue in Panama known as "The Lady of Lost Causes".

The Scylla card

BAD GUYS USE CODES, TOO


1. In season four, the Company were as equally smart. The General had codenamed the datacards as Scylla, and in the Mythology archives, Scylla is a six-headed monster Odysseus had to pass through his journey home and needed to sacrifice six of his men. When Michael and his team had already stolen a datacard in less than a day, they found out it was incomplete and realized Scylla actually consists of six cards.


2. The General had also sent an e-mail to all cardholders the team had hacked into one of the cardholder's (Tuxhorn) PDA. It was about an arrival in London but the team didn't found any meeting in Tuxhorn's schedule, and Mahone suggested the message was a code spelling the word SCYLLA, meaning the Company would have a meeting about Scylla.

The Scylla device

3. Michael had overheard the General talking about "power" in Chapter 6 of season four (Safe and Sound), and the word "bargain" when he went under (because of his terminal brain tumor). Bargain is actually a compilation of chemical element symbols B (Boron), Ar (Argon), Ga (Gallium) and In (Indium). Michael had told Sara about a certain theory that when one combines these elements in a specific way he would be able to produce a revolutionary solar power technology.

The Art of the Deal: Michael and Company agent Gretchen 

THE ART OF DEALS, SENSING FOES


One thing I also learned from Michael is the art of making deals, or better yet the art of acquiring heavier leverage to win the deal. The team had encountered a lot of business negotiations involving life-or-death decisions, some even required little time.


1. Breaking out a Company asset from the Panamanian prison (Michael had been imprisoned in Panama in season three) in exchange for Sara and LJ


2. Obtaining the Scylla device with little time to spare or else they would all back to prison


3. Sometimes they were able to lead the deal and at one point asked the General to let them go unharmed from the Company building or else they would kill his daughter held by Sara in another place.


I also learned to identify foes because of Michael's--and especially Lincoln's paranoia. They would often eye on suspicious-looking people and immediately identify if the civilians were actually Company men.

THE CLOUD OF POLITICS


It just occcured to me GMA had done the same strategy during her regime.


In Prison Break's season two chapter 14 (John Doe), one of the General's "pawns" ordered his liaison officer to set Florida on fire or make any important event on scandal just to cover up for the video made by Lincoln and Michael exposing the Company's secrets. 


I then remembered Ms. Josephine Bonsol saying GMA was the smartest president of the Philippines, and my Filipino teacher telling us how GMA lit the Sandiganbayan and Mindanao provinces on fire and explosions just to cover up her NBN-ZTE deals and Hello Garci tapes and Le Cirque expenses.


These serve me right: we can learn a lot more from villains, from motivated people, from fugitives who didn't actually want to be one in the first place.

Stealing the moon for my mamma

"There is only one problem. YOU."

"I just want my mamma to be proud of me."


Who's any better audience than our parents? Somehow desperately getting his mom's attention made despicable Gru take the last despicable resort: to be a world-famous (yet amateur) villain.

Too amateur, but smart enough to recruit naïve orphans selling oatmeal cookies. The plan was perfectly insulting for his fellow thug: his girls would safely knock on Vector's door--sharkless and torpedo-less--unknowingly sneak out Gru's robot cookies and help him steal his slice of fame.


And inevitably after stealing the moon and marking his global popularity as the worst villain, he'd had finally made his mamma proud.

Young Gru: Look, Mom, I drew a picture of me landing on the moon.
Gru's Mom: Eh.
Young Gru: Look, Mom, I made a prototype of a rocket out of macaroni.
Gru's Mom: Eh.
Young Gru: Look, Mom, I built a real rocket based on the macaroni prototype.
[Fires rocket]
Gru's Mom: [holds her breath in amazement for a moment] ... Eh.

Despicable Me is certainly one of those "nurture" upbringings, where would-be-delinquents-and-crooks were initially molded by negligent parents, rated and horror movies, and an equally despicable environment. Gru's last resort was rational enough: we saw him as a kid, and did all remarkable scientific breakthroughs and made his good dreams come true. But then thinking his mother could never say more inspiring words than "Eh", maybe doing exactly the OPPOSITE would help.

Maybe being a villain would help him gain the affection he longs for.


THE STORY OF GRU'S SHADOW


I would never forget what kuya Cho-u (son of Ms. Josephine Bonsol) told me one day: we can never really say a person is too angelic and good-hearted, or too horrid and repugnant he's better off not being born at all. He said a person's character is like the principle of light and shadow: when one steps closer to the light (proving his 'good side'), his shadow (bad side) is equally sustained.

Same thing for villains closer to their "shadows": they inevitably acquire a better side and better heart. Kuya Cho-u said our state of being good and bad are equal: how good we are is likely how bad we are.


Therefore it is of no surprise bad people may at one point dramatically gain a change of heart, also considering they had their own harmless and desperate reasons why they've become one.


Ol' Mr. Gru was despicable enough, stealing smaller versions of the Statue of Liberty and eventually the moon. He was practically an old dog too invulnerable for new tricks.


But the trick perfectly worked for him, all right.

"And now he knows he can never part
from those three little kittens that changed his heart."

Three little kittens sure changed the big unicorn's heart, and Gru never even thought being a father was a more perfect way to make his mamma proud and say better words like, "I'm proud you became a good father to them. Maybe even better than me."

Prisoners of our own identities

Dev Patel as Prince Zuko

Honor. Glory. Redemption. HOME.


It's not a surprise that Avatar fans first hit the spotlight to evil Prince Zuko in M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, knowing very well that once-deprived face of Slumdog Dev Patel.


But on the Nick series alone, we've all perceived the one-good-eyed Prince of the Fire Nation as the obsessed, desperate, undying villain of our young airbender Aang. And at some angle, practically led the Avatar series to reproduce into four books.


This is not a new eye-opener concept anymore: villains are/were also victims themselves. They are jailbirds of notorious felons, namely negligent and despicable parents, hereditary and defective genes, and inevitably influential natures.


Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, a rapist, a fugitive and a life-for-six-counts-of-murder convict in my favorite series Prison Break once said, "We are prisoners of our own identities." He never thought how right he was.


Fire. Anger. Grit. HIS FATHER'S LOVE.

These kept him going.


What the rest of us tend to let go are their stories. Until then we can never really say we understand and accept bad  and mentally-troubled people unless we've known what they were reallly made of.

Violent. Hopeless. Condemned. ALONE.


At some point, maybe they've also asked themselves. Maybe they still undergo some "confirmation period" whether they are inevitably a big mistake of the world or not. Maybe they've also desperately looked for someone to clarify this madness going on within them.


Maybe they've also wanted someone to save them.


We may never know, because we don't want to.

Just because he's a bad guy...doesn't mean he's a bad guy

I'll post a review for this. Gru made me fall in love with change.

Out of villains we worship heroes: So who's the real hero?

We learn better things from villains, because of villains and through villains.


Have we ever wondered if our childhood favorites like Superman or Spongebob or Avatar didn't endure enemies like the criminal Lex Luthor or the evil Zuko or the unfriendly Squidward, would we even idolize them? If such villains didn't stand up for what they selfishly believed, our heroes would be nothing but show-off, extraordinary people possessing useless in-born powers. I believe from villains--even from problems and conflicts--we find our own heroes.

To be appropriately dressed for the recent occasion, I studied and reread about Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Charles Dicken's epic A Christmas Carol. I thought about the irony of grumpy Grinch and cold-hearted Ebenzer Scrooge portrayed to be the spotlight for both stories. It's true, nevertheless--I believe villains are way beyond what heroes could ever be.

THE GRINCH


One can really blame Dr. Seuss for making the Grinch's heart "two sizes small", making the latter all grouchy and isolated and evil. But then we all know the story is not mainly about his wicked attitude and his insane plans of robbing the Who's Christmas paraphernalia.

Mainly it was about his redemption to descend from his 10 000-feet-high cavern and be not cold-hearted anymore, and about his conclusion that Christmas--and the happiness of having Christmas--is not defined by material things, but by pure love, acceptance and the act of giving whole-heartedly.


Dr. Seuss could've made the Who family the main characters. But he didn't. A sweet hug from a child, a thoughtful greeting from a stranger and a warm welcome can be easily portrayed by rather human-looking protagonists with powerful or humbler characters. But instead, Dr. Seuss made us learn something real from an ill-tempered, green-painted but motivated creature named the Grinch.

EBENZER SCROOGE


Charles Dickens was equally smart. His character was worse off and more serious, though. In his A Christmas Carol, Ebenzer Scrooge despised Christmas, loathed poor people saying the world's better off without them, strictly kept to himself and developed to be a workaholic.


And for rational reasons. Apparently disastrous tidings always came during the holiday season: his father left him in a boarding school as a child; his fiancée Belle left him for a less-workaholic man, and his closest relative and sister Fran died. These just made him more anti-sociable and apathetic to all the people in the world.


But then good fortune of Past, Present and Yet to Come spirits guided him and showed him the consequences of his grumpy actions. In the end, he decided to change, repented and finally knew "how to keep Christmas well".


And this might just be the biggest lesson for us: the power of change. We might never know anything about it if there aren't villains.

Through villains, we exclusively learn and understand more. We consider our bad-tempered teachers our worst enemies, but then we learn to be highly motivated to do what they said we cannot and prove to them what we got. 


We loathe criminals, killers, wayward children and the delinquent. But if we're open-minded enough we learn they've become who they are because of the Nature vs. Nurture phenomenon, and we can later conclude it was not their fault.


Russell Crowe once said: “I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person -- they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.”


Heroes are made out of villains. If there are no villains, there are no heroes. We just might never know how much we could learn from them.