Interpret This

The recent film The Interpreter managed to generate a fair amount of controversy on its first day of release. Certain prominent national critics praised it on account of its sympathetic treatment of the United Nations, while Seattle's own Michael Medved castigated it for that very same reason. However, to evaluate the film on that basis alone misses its more subtle, and more sinister, implications. The Interpreter's positive portrayal of the UN merely acts as a facade for its true agenda: the promotion of a perverse understanding of justice which inverts the proper relationship between government and citizen, to the detriment of the latter.

The plot of The Interpreter involves a genocidal African dictator who intends to appear before the United Nations to defend his policies. An interpreter played by Nicole Kidman overhears discussion of a plot to assassinate him. When she alerts the authorities, she finds her credibility strained because she participated in a movement to forcefully overthrow that leader after her family perished at the hands of his minions. She claims that she has since disavowed violence, and that she joined the UN to contribute to peacefully resolving such conflicts.

Kidman’s character illustrates her notions of justice and vengeance by speaking of a fictional African tradition in which a murderer is bound and cast into a river on the first anniversary of his crime. If the family of the victim lets him drown, they will have their vengeance, but they will endure a lifetime of mourning. Conversely, if they rescue him, they will not have their vengeance, but they will experience peace. To sum up her view, she declares, "Vengeance is a lazy form of grief." For the afflicted citizens to kill or violently remove the dictator would thus constitute vengeance, and vengeance, by implication, is wrong.

Her naive parable completely confuses forgiveness with elimination of punishment. The aggrieved family members might well benefit from forgiving the killer in their hearts, but the society would still need to punish murder. Kidman’s interpreter more sophisticatedly applies her perspective to her present situation. She believes not that her countrymen ought to suffer the dictator to remain in power, but rather that they ought to remand his case to the International Criminal Court. The ICC could presumably impose a penalty identical to that of her former comrades, but only the ICC has the authority to do so. In her mind, the distinction between justice and vengeance hinges solely on the identity of the adjudicating body. Since she automatically equates vengeance with injustice, right and wrong themselves hang in the balance.

Such a conception of vengeance markedly departs from the commonly accepted definition. Vengeance has traditionally been defined as an act of retribution motivated by personal anger or grief as opposed to a desire to satisfy an abstract principle of justice. This distinction involves the motivation, not the identity, of the punishing body. Governments have been known to take revenge with a ferocity that the limited power of private citizens could never allow. Furthermore, even vengeful motivations do not automatically imply unjust punishments. Personal anger or grief can in fact motivate people to satisfy the abstract demands of justice, and provided the punishment remains proportionate to the crime, it involves no inherent injustice. The Interpreter’s grave concern to associate injustice with individuals and justice with governments reveals that its primary target is not vengeance at all but rather vigilantism.

Developed countries do prohibit taking the execution of justice into one's own hands, but not because it would inherently involve injustice. Quite to the contrary, the individual’s right to execute justice forms the basis of the government’s right to do so. The classical liberal tradition which birthed American democracy offered a theoretical justification for government which began with the rights of the individual. That school of political philosophy envisioned a hypothetical society with no formal government. Those living in this “state of nature” would have the right to life, liberty, and property, and the right to defend those rights against encroachment and punish those who violated them. However, humanity’s fallible nature would give rise to conflicting claims of violation and excessive punishments, which individuals would attempt to enforce against each other. An anarchic state would prevail, prejudicial to the interests of the community as a whole and to its individual members. To preserve order and promote progress, the people could, by mutual consent, create a government and assign to it in a “social contract” their right to enforce their rights. This government’s judicial authority would thus be derived from the governed, who alone possess such authority by nature.

The Interpreter, however, has no concept of natural rights. It regards the United Nations much as medieval monarchs regarded themselves. The UN, by its decisions, solely determines what constitutes justice. To undertake a course of action not endorsed by the UN is to commit a vengeful injustice. The governed thus enjoy only those privileges the government deems fit to bestow. While the nations and peoples of the world receive their authority from the UN, the exact source of the UN’s authority goes unaddressed. In John Locke’s era, kings used the doctrine of original sin to assert the essential unfitness of commoners to govern themselves. In response, Locke demanded to know that if all humans are sinful, what makes the king more fit to rule than anyone else? A similar question be asked of The Interpreter: what makes the UN more fit to govern than a national assembly, an indigenous movement, or a single citizen? The only answer given is the only answer that can be given: nothing. The concept of natural rights, however basic to human dignity and responsible government, has remained a thorn in the side of those in every age who believe themselves possessed of an inherent superiority which entitles them to dominate their contemporaries.

Ultimately, The Interpreter does not so much endorse the UN as attack natural rights. In doing so, it undermines the foundation of the most effective system of government the world has ever known. Ultimately, the filmmakers probably did not intend to produce such an explicit polemic. Far from offering a cohesive ideology, they have instead presented a convoluted pastiche of ideas. But if taken seriously, and taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas herald the collapse of modern civilization. From a purely cinematic perspective, The Interpreter lacks much distinction at all. Hopefully, audiences will not find its political notions any more compelling than its artistic merits.