A GOOD MAN tells the story of a law lecturer who accidentally witnesses his mentor, father-figure and best friend murder his own wife, but keeps silent about it. Eventually, the ramifications of the murder slide out of control and begin to impact him as well.
The very first scene, a speech the law lecturer gives to an incoming freshman class, sets up the worldview that is going to be demolished in this film. "There is good and and there is evil. Nothing else", he says, not realizing that life will soon severely test him on that view.
Take the murder: after he failed to report what he witnessed, thereby protecting a murderer, is he still a good man?
He rationalizes that he "owed it" to his father-like friend to keep quiet, and thereby convinces himself that he is not evil. Thus, the only other possible option in his Manichean moral universe left is that he is a good man.
Later, after her body is found by a river, they both go to the coroner to identify her, and he finds out that she had just died. Had he reported it right away, she would have survived. Is he still a good man?
Since his view of morality permits no shades of grey, and since he still cannot bring to see himself as evil, he is a good man, albeit it is harder now to convince himself.
Still later, the police apprehends a suspect who is very likely to be convicted of the murder. So, now, his failure to report what he saw is about to land an innocent person in prison for murder. Is he still a good man?
And so the story continues in twists and turns faintly reminiscent of the Coen brothers, escalating the consequences of his initial moral failure so that it becomes ever more difficult for him to continue justifying himself as a good person.
Granted, for some of the turns to work, he and his friend have to do certain fairly dumb things, but overall the story is a well-constructed and relentless indictment of the Manichean worldview.
And it is not just an indictment of that worldview in the abstract: the protagonist is devoutly religious and goes to mass each Sunday. There are several scenes set in the church which leave little doubt that ultimately, the film indicts the institution that propagates this kind of worldview.
The technical aspects of the movie, the acting, cinematography and direction are all fine. A remarkable aspect of the film is that even though it takes a clear moral stand, it does so largely by showing, rather than telling, and that makes it almost devoid of preachiness.
In my opinion, Manicheanism, like organized religion itself, is a tool to help control the masses; one which is especially effective in today's highly polarized world. The film's account of how a black-and-white moral attitude can lead to unnecessary evil is fictional, but there are many real-life examples of people doing evil things while seeing themselves as morally good due to their inability to accommodate anything between good and evil.
We need more films like this.
