The return of Martin Guerre -
Le retour de Martin Guerre

(1982) Nathalie Baye, Gerard Depardieu

Curiosus nemo est quin sit malevolus 
"Those with too much of an inquisitor's mind tend to be ill-natured"

download button
(French audio version - optional english subtitles included)

As you know, a woman can be literally "stoned to death" in what the Canadian government previously referred to as "Barbaric practices designation to such acts" in countries in the middle east, most notoriously in Saudi Arabia or even Iran fer crissakes - we don't ever seem to raise this issue with them while considering them "best friends" in what aims we seek to impose on our ideas of harmoniously "getting along" with oil suppliers we happen to choose to take this approach with in our minds as to who deserves our business it seems. And we always seem to choose wrongly it seems..

This movie looks at whether the sanity which prevails or did so at the time in France against a man and a woman accused of pretending to be each others spouse, the man being accused of being an imposter despite his relative greater appeal to her than the man who later shows up declaring himself her true husband.

What harm was actually done, and to whom, and what say does the church rightly have to impose ideas of merit on one or the other based on a simple reading of verses at a ceremony which may have no relevance on actual real issues of merit with the passage of time. Some cultural practices of peoples who are so designed in their minds on such matters as to only accept complete commitment to just one person for life, regardless of what transpires between them or how things generally turn out - such folks are likely to accept notions that one is always wrong to walk away from any such commitment they made to any first person they might have made it to. I put it to you this is irrational a way to act and believe as it leads to much tragedy and irrational outcomes which cannot be actually justified as being good in respect of Christianly spirit of what real merit is in what are moral and ethical and romantic decisions we must ultimately live with instead as best suits the situation as life goes on. 

Michael Rizzo Chessman
michael@moviesbyrizzo.com

Mainpage