A few years ago, I took my then 11 year old son to dinner. He wanted to watch a movie together later that night, but he struggled to come up with one.
As a dad, I always want to save the day, so I asked him, “Would you like to watch the greatest comedy-adventure-romance movie ever made?
“Yes,” he responded.
As we went home I told him that this might be my favorite movie of all time. It’s full of action and suspense. It has hilarious one liners. And it’s a love story that isn’t gross. I promised him that he would love it.
When we got home, I found The Princess Bride on Netflix and hit play.
I was a little concerned that I overhyped the movie. But my son’s eyes were glued to the screen the entire time. He laughed at the right parts. He was serious during other parts. It was perfect.
I asked him if I hyped it up too much. He replied, “No dad. You didn’t hype it up enough! That is the best movie I’ve ever seen!”
It’s four years later and he still has a Princess Bride poster in his room.
Dad for the win.
I recently came across an interview on YouTube that Mandy Patinkin did with CBS This Morning. He played Inigo Montoya in the film. His most famous line in the movie is:
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
The Princess Bride was released when I was 16. My friends and I would throw that line back and forth whenever we competed against one another. Monopoly. Basketball. Chess. Nintendo. Rock, paper, scissors. It didn’t matter. Like anyone with a pulse during the late 1990s, we repeated that phrase endlessly. It was our favorite line in the movie.
That and “Mawwiage…”
But that’s not Mandy’s favorite line. Twenty years after The Princess Bride became a pop culture icon, Mandy began to hear one of his lines from the movie that he’d overlooked when he spoke them two decades earlier. Near the end of the movie, Inigo kills the 6-fingered man who killed his father. Wesley wants to retire from the pirate business, so suggests that Inigo becomes the next Dread Pirate Roberts. But Inigo refuses, saying,
“I have been in the revenge business so long that, now that it’s over, I do not know what to do with the rest of my life.”
Inigo’s sole purpose in life was to avenge his father’s death. The only problem was that he succeeded.
Once he killed his father’s killer his life had no meaning. The truth about revenge is that it leaves us empty. Sure, there’s a thrill in the hunt, but revenge will either leave us killed or, as in Inigo’s case, leave us empty and without a future.
Mandy adds this important point in the interview with CBS:
The purpose of revenge is, in my personal opinion, completely worthless and pointless. And the purpose of existence is to embrace our fellow human being, not be revengeful, and turn our darkness into light.
Indeed, revenge is worthless, but it is seductive because revenge usually disguises itself as justice.
Revenge seeks to right a wrong committed against us through violent punishment, but revenge doesn’t just stop at righting a wrong – revenge always escalates.
The problem is not with justice. The problem is with our violent methods in pursuing justice. We think violence will solve the violent injustice committed against us. As James Warren points out in his masterful book on mimetic theory Compassion or Apocalypse: A Comprehensible Guide to the Thought of René Girard, humans have always been prone to violence as a way to solve violence. “From the very beginning of the human experience, because of its power both to destroy…and to generate results…violence was seen as both the number one problem and the number one solution” (122).
Violence against an enemy has always been our number one solution because it does provide a sense of justice, but the problem is that violence is always mimetic. We non-consciously imitate the violence of our “enemy” as we mutually pursue justice with violence. Of course, our violence is “good” and justified, while our enemies is “bad” and unjust. Unfortunately, our enemy believes their violence is good and justified, while ours is bad and unjust.
Now, if the purpose of existence is to embrace our fellow human being, then not only is revenge worthless, but violence itself is pointless. Violence seeks to destroy our fellow human beings, not embrace them.
When we use violence in the name of justice, it will always be perceived as revenge, which will lead to an imitative act of revenge, which will lead to an imitative act of revenge…all in the name of “justice.”
What’s the solution? Mandy is Jewish and has talked about his spirituality. One of the most important passages in the Hebrew Bible is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Indeed, the Jewish Jesus quoted that passage from Leviticus, but we don’t usually hear the whole quote of Leviticus 19:18:
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Revenge, of course, is a synonym for vengeance. In Judaism and Christianity, you are not permitted to take revenge “against any of your people.” Rather, you are commanded to love them. So, who belongs to “your people”? Just like the Jewish Jesus, I love that Mandy includes everyone in that category.
