Richard Kelly's "The Box" - how much is a human life worth? (videos)

November 6, 2:29 PMCharlotte Episcopal ExaminerAngela Boatright-Spencer

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I wanted to know the answer to one of life's greatest questions -- how much is a human life worth? -- so I asked someone who has all the answers: a teenager.  The question I put to this particular soul was the situation in the new movie, The Box:  Would you end the life of a total stranger by pressing a button if it would get you a million dollars?  The answer: "That would be the easiest million I ever made."  But, I asked, what if you were the person whose life might be lost if someone else pressed a button? The answer: "I wouldn't hold it against them. I'd understand."

Answers like that are dismaying.  I don't know when it was that we lost track of the question Jesus raises in Mt. 16:26  - what do we profit if we gain the world but forfeit our lives?  - but we seem to have forgotten it.  The Box reminds us as director Richard Kelly runs Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as Norma and Arthur Lewis through a catechism on Good and Evil. 

Some points to remember...

1. Evil often seems delicious, but it's also corrupt.  The agent of evil, Arlington Steward, is played by Frank Langella, whose honeyed tones and innocent wide eyes convinced us decades ago that getting bit by Dracula was a good thing.   Steward's face is badly disfigured -- we're caught between being politically/compassionately correct and horrified and put-off.   Something in his manner, not to mention the proposition he raises, ought to tip us off that this is not goodness heading our way.  We ought to trust our intuition. But he is well-dresssed, has nice manners and such a gentle and almost reasonable way of presenting his material.   See what I mean:

 2. Evil catches us in an ever-tightening spiral. Its first request is generally innocuous.  Okay, murdering someone by remote control isn't exactly innocuous, but it feels that way.  If we never see the face of our victim, never see the blood, hear the screams, see the agony of mourners left behind - then is the murder real to us?  The proposition comes with the guarantee that we won't know the victim of the button pushing, but does that make killing any less a crime?  A similar question is raised by the use of drones in modern warfare.  When we don't directly experience the impact or consequences our actions have on others, do we become desensitized to the violence we create? While saving soldiers from unnecessary harm is a noble ambition, protecting us from the consequences of our actions may not be.  Isn't the awareness of the impact our actions have on others at the root of good stewardship -- of "love thy neighbor as thyself?"  Just how serious we take that instruction is at the heart of the decision to press or not to press.  Is the financial relief the money will bring (and we all can empathize with that) worth the loss of another's life? 

3. Evil may bear wonderful gifts, but it does not love.  Nor is it loyal. Arlington Steward is a poor steward of creation.  Like evil itself, he leads only to corruption and destruction, even of those who do his bidding. As the movie unfolds, the Lewises learn that a million dollars may cost more than its they're worth.

 

4. We can't have it both ways -- we either serve goodness or the beast, and the mark of the beast in this movie is $.  If we take the mark, we must be willing to live with its consequences.  Goodness offers redemption through true repentance, but evil really has no mercy.  Listen to this conversation between Steward and  Norma Lewis:

 So...would you press the button?  What does your conscience tell you? 

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah....I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest..."   (Jeremiah 31: 31, 33b-34)

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The movie opens today.  For movie times and locations, click here.
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