Ethical Concerns

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2007)

To begin with, I want to say that this is not really a review of the film. As such, it is one of the better achievements of the year, as it tells a story of ambivalence and context, about a kidnapped girl and the search for a better life. It is however the ethical standpoints of the characters which aroused my sense of "being there" and which ultimately raised the film over the bar of mediocre good films.
The question is as follows: should Patrick give in to common sense morality and not notify the police that ex-copper Jack Doyle has set up a complex ploy so to kidnap a girl from her drug abusing mother in order to offer the former a better life?
"Yes" is the answer which a world governed by laws would deem correct (not necessarily moral). "Yes" is, ultimately, the safer choice. I say this, because abiding by rules is in itself always safer than not doing so, moral dilemmas notwithstanding. But Patrick, as hinted throughout the film, does not take decisions based on their level of complexity, on their consequences, but on his rigid moral code (=trust in the legal system), which makes him a perfect element of the legal system.
Many films have asked this question, of how moral police duty has to be and to which lengths an officer should go in order to convict a person he obviously deems guilty, but lacks proof to substantiate such a claim. Legally, it is wrong for policemen to facilitate justice in such a manner, even if the outcome is a positive one. But once again, this does not mean that the act itself is not moral, because there is no ultimate decider which has deemed the legal system infallible - the fact that it is man conceived states the opposite. The legal system is a system, in the sense that we require systems in order to function as a social entity. If there was no system, most of our concepts about the world we live in would be void of meaning. Ergo, we need systems to survive in a community, the question being whether and how systems should be changed and if undermining the system is fundamentally wrong.
Now, the system is important because usually, certainty is not as easily attainable as it comes in a film in which we are omniscient. Which brings us to the aforementioned issue - is undermining the system something fundamentally wrong? If we are dealing with a system that nurtures our freedom (as is the case here), then we can safely assume that it is a system we need (totalitarian systems, for example, we don't really need). So should this system break down because our act of undermining it, then we have done severe harm to everyone involved. But if it doesn't, then the act could theoretically be considered.
Patrick's choice is certainly not a consequentialist one. It is obvious that the child's mother is far from fit to nurture her, as the mother's own destructive lifestyle shows. Even the hope of redemption on her behalf is more or less squashed in the ending. Still, this does not mean that Patrick has made the wrong choice. He has however made a more difficult choice, from all perspectives: he lost his girlfriend over it, he threw away what probably was a better environment for the child, and he was left deeply concerned about the situation. It's true that he'd have been concerned any way, but given his decision to ensure the kid's return to her mother, Patrick became obliged to guarantee that his sense of morality did not ruin a small girl's life. Therefore, my interpretation is that his act can only be deemed as correct, if he can himself compensate for the mother's inability to take care of the child.
There is one more issue to discuss: does a mother have fundamental moral right to have her child? The answer to this is simple, as there can't be any fundamental intrinsic moral rights in a world of reason as far as anything not relating to the self is concerned. This means that a mother has a legal right to be with her child, but she can't have any God given right to it, just because she was the one to bear it onto this world. There is no moral worth to getting pregnant and then giving birth to a child. It is the manner in which you take care of it that entails moral value.
So as far as I can tell, the film does not sentence Patrick's judgment. Even in philosophical terms, a utilitarian couldn't deem his choice as good or bad, because its consequences are still uncertain. Somehow though it feels wrong to think of morality as something retrospective, that means as something which can only be judged as time goes by. I say this because I can't see how anyone could truly foresee what consequences his actions will have when he takes them. Sure, one could assume, but would a wrong assumption then mean that the person to have taken it is a bad person? No. The decision itself might be bad, so in this sense, morality can be retrospective, but in the end, it is the individual people we want to know something about, not their choices.
I do enjoy films which put my mind to work. I'm not saying "mindless fun" doesn't serve its purpose - and sometimes even when you get wound up by a movie (Deja Vu), this doesn't necessarily mean it is good. Gone Baby Gone is a good film though, with good all around performances. And it also gives you something to think about.