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!!)