“Vengeance is mine, saith the
Lord” is a Biblical saying that is perhaps as well known as it is typically
ignored in the midst of passion. Even the advice that revenge is better served
up as a cold dish rather than immediately when the grill is still hot is
difficult to heed. The 1975 film, The Count of Monte-Cristo,
can be likened to a “how-to” recipe book on how to exact revenge against
multiple people, one after the other until the sense dawns on the avenger that
one’s one life has been utterly consumed by the desire and then feels empty
once the deserved suffering has been sufficiently inflicted. It is admittedly
very difficult to walk away from a grievous injustice if the agent of the harm
is allowed to evade suffering that is deserved. In the film, however, Abbé
Faria, a Christian priest who has been unjustly held in an island prison for fifteen
years, nonetheless urges Edmond Dantes, whose prison cell is connected to Faria’s
tunnel, to resist the temptation to ruin the lives of the four men who had unjustly
imprisoned Edmund, including De Villefort, Danglars, and General Fernand Mondego.
In the end, Dantes, as the Count of Monte-Crisco, pays dearly for having gone
down the road of vengeance. Even if the suffering inflicted on the unjust is deserved
ethically, distinctly religious implications should be considered lest avengers
are left existentially empty rather than as one might expect, finally at peace.
The Christian notion of the Kingdom of God is prominent in this distinctly
religious regard.
Edmund Dantes is a fervent believer
of the religious significance of vengeance. It is, he says, a “holy remedy . .
. an eye for an eye.” He also insists, “Revenge is a sweet thing to live for,
or die for.” So Abbé Faria tells Dantes while both are in prison, “Vengeance
belongs to the Lord, Edmund. Turn away from such unholy thoughts before they destroy
you.” Nietzsche points out that ascribing vengeance to God carries with it the collateral
damage of a contradiction being in a deity that incorporates a vice while still
being omnibenevolent. That conception of God is discredited, and thus tot,
or “dead,” precisely because of the contradiction, but could it not be argued
that God is being benevolent to the victims of unjust harm by subjecting the
culprits to harm? Even so, inflicting any harm, even if ethically deserved, can
be said to exclude the peace that come with forgiveness even and especially enemies.
The distinctly religious
question in the film is whether exacting revenge is a “holy remedy” justified
by the committing of an injustice in the first place, or an unholy thought
because revenge involves the intentional infliction of harm. The first claim is
belied by the obfuscation of “holy,” a distinctly religious idea, with “injustice,”
a distinctly ethical idea. Whereas inflicting harm can be justified ethically
as deserved given the harm from an injustice, holiness itself can be said to
exclude any infliction of harm. Instead, forgiveness goes with the holy.
In fact, Jesus Christ’s conception of the Father’s kingdom can be said to be
filled with compassion in the face of the pain of the human needs of a person’s
enemies and even detractors. That revenge could ruin the life of an avenger may
factor into a utilitarian-based cost-benefit analysis of whether to exact
revenge, but any such negative consequence is not why a person seeking a taste
of the holy via the Kingdom of God as described by Jesus in the Gospels would
not engage in vengeance.
In the film while Abbé Faria and
Dantes are digging a tunnel so they could escape, Faria gives Dantes the map to
a treasure so Edmond could do good deeds rather than seek revenge. Faria’s strategy
fails because although Edmund finds the treasure and promises himself that he
would do good things with it, he actually uses his wealth and self-donned title
of the Count of Monte-Crisco to take revenge on “four unjust, selfish men.” In
fact, after the dual with the son of Mercedes, his former fiancée, Dantes says,
“Providence again! I am the emissary of God. I’ve been spared to carry out his
will.” In addition to engaging in the vice of vengeance, Edmund is guilty of
the sin of presuming to know the will of God with the pride of claiming to be
God’s emissary. It is interesting, therefore, that Edmund does not find peace
after he has exquisitely vanquished the four men. This point is apparent in the
final scene, when Edmund is trying to convince Mercedes to return to him rather
than to move to Africa to be near her son. The religious existential toll that
the series of vengeful strategies have taken on Edmund Dantes is finally
revealed; the Abbé was right all along.
In trying to justify to Mercedes
the vengeance taken on her husband, General Mondego, Edmund lies, “That was simple
justice. Believe me, it gave me no joy.” It did in fact give him a feeling of
satisfaction, which, by the way, if different than peace. Mercedes does not
take the bait; instead, she replies, “Avenging angels may not ask forgiveness
of their victims.” Even if the unjust deserve ethically to suffer, avengers would
find asking for such forgiveness to be humiliating because of the suffering that
they have undergone unjustly. Edmund replies, “I am no longer an instrument of
God. I’ve been plunged back into nothingness. I’m searching for something lost.
My soul; my self.” Unfortunately, she does not point out that he has been no
such instrument and it is impious for him to hold onto that belief. Making this
point would develop the distinctively religious element of the film. She could
even say that even if her husband and the three other unjust men deserved to be
punished for having inflicted severe suffering—ten years in prison!—on Edmund
even though he was innocent, he should have transcended the ethical domain to act
in a pious distinctively religious manner by forgiving the four
culprits. That films shirk back from developing such theological and
philosophical dialogue does not mean that the medium is not capable of doing so
to get viewers thinking (but not to indoctrinate them). Teasing out tension between the ethical and
religious domains is a worthy task of the medium of film. In this film,
however, Mercedes simply replies that he would never find the man he had been
before being imprisoned. “That person died,” she laments. She tells him that
she hopes he will find peace, but she does point out to him that he will not
find peace because he has engaged himself so fully in exacting revenge, for satisfaction
is not the same as peace.
I submit that presuming to know God’s will as if any human being could be omniscient (all-knowing), which is a divine attribute, and to being an instrument of God as if on a holy mission are sins, whereas vengeance is an ethical vice. That God demands that human beings leave the vice to God does not mean that the vice itself is thereby religious rather than ethical in nature. Moreover, that religion and ethics are related does not mean that the former reduces to the latter, or that the latter is itself religious. I contend that it is because vengeance involves the infliction of harm and that is exogenous to being in the presence of holiness that God urges us not to seek revenge. Put another way, that vice is antithetical to the humane compassion to an enemy in trouble and thus to Jesus’s conception in the Gospels of the Kingdom of God. An eye for an eye carried on and on, and the whole world would be blind because none of us act completely in line with what is just; only God is just from the standpoint of omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence. It is from this standpoint, that we should all give each other some leeway at least, that the Creator-Creature distinction is vital to keep in mind instead of merely applying the ethical principle of justice by which avengers legitimately claim that the unjust deserve to be punished. Religion and ethics are distinct domains even though they interrelate. Edmund Dantes may have a point that the four men deserve to suffer for having inflicted suffering on him, but he himself is left empty ironically from having presumed to have been on a holy mission even though inflicting harm is antithetical to forgiveness. Interestingly the name Dantes is very close to Dante, a philosopher and poet who wrote in the Renaissance on the rings of hell. Being plunged back into nothingness, in search of one’s self, and even one’s very soul, seems like a good description of what being in the state of hell must be like.
