Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Martin Bergmann: Professor Louis Levy
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Quotes
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[last lines]
Professor Levy : [voiceover] We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included, in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.
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Professor Levy : You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.
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Professor Levy : We must always remember, that we, when we are born, we need a great deal of love, in order to persuade us to stay in life. Once we get that love, it usually last. But, the universe is a pretty cold place. It's we who invested with our feelings and, under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn't worth it any more.
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Professor Levy : The unique thing that happened to the early Israelites was that they conceived a God that cares. He cares, but, at the same time, he also demands that you behave morally. But, here comes the paradox: what's one of the first things that God asks? That God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son, to him. In other words, in spite of millennia of efforts, we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of God. This was beyond our capacity to imagine.
