Come to the Dark Side, Charlie

As a society, the actual concepts of goodness and evil are fairly clear-cut. For as long as religion, philosophy, and people in general have existed, there has been somewhat of a consensus on what constitutes a good act and what constitutes an evil act. Despite this general consensus, there exists a great controversy when one takes into account perspective.

For instance, when a country goes to war with another – neither country believes that they are fighting for an “evil” cause. Both parties are fighting for their own personal “goodness,” so as an unbiased third party, who is “good”? No one.

In the movie “Seven,” we follow two detectives (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) who are on a relentless search for a serial killer that chooses his victims based upon the Seven Deadly Sins. Through the vast majority of the movie, we see the perspective of the two detectives. This, combined with society’s collectively negative view of murder leads to the viewer quickly taking the sides of the detectives when it comes to who is doing good; however, in the end of the movie we begin to see that the serial killer has an ulterior motive to his killings, which is to expose the evils of society through his killings, which he makes very public. While this may be confusing, it is extremely thought-provoking and displays the fact that perspective plays a massive role in deciding who is actually doing good and bad in the world.

(I highly suggest watching Seven. You will not regret it.)