If Thirteen Days' is a picture that President Bush, USofA, praises as an example of good warring and political enterprise, and Traffic' is a film that the rest of us think can help resolve an American drug addition problem, then The Widow of St. Pierre' must certainly be the film that toys with issues of capital punishment, human rights, and the prison system in general.<br /><br />There was a line in the script, spoken by Le Capitaine at a point when his fate is pretty much sealed as he takes a moral and compassionate stand in a challenge to those that govern this French island. That line stands out in my mind and goes something like this: "The person we send to prison is never the person that we execute."<br /><br />The point therein is a pestering contemporary topic and social dilemma of this wonderfully written and directed film: should prisons be a tool towards rehabilitation as a primary task, with punishment as something much lower on the list of bureaucratic to-do's? Or is it the opposite or something in between that gets adjusted at whim in an attempt to be politically polite to those in power who can demonstrate being 'hard on crime'?<br /><br />Those are the thoughts that I took with me after today's morning screening (actually across the street from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills which I think appropriate!!)