Response To "Seven Pounds"

423 Words2 Pages
It can be said that I have different feelings about the movie we watched,"Seven Pounds". In this movie Will Smith's character, Ben Thomas, is determined to pay for a past fault in a very definite and harsh way:he plans to redeem himself by sacrifising his life and sharing his organs and posessions with seven people, the same number of the victims of a car crash he caused some time before. But I am not sure if this is a generous act coming from a contrite soul, or just an attempt to gain back control of his life and to prove himself he can modify other people's lives, this time with good results. I agree it must have taken a great deal of courage and cold bloodedness to decide the course of action he would take; the preparation of the setting, the choice of the "rigth "people, but I cannot help thinking that the desition of commiting suicide shows, in a way, his impossibility to face the consequences of his actions. If he wanted to be forgiven through suffering, living with a guilty soul would have provided enough of it. Besides,if he had decided to live, a long life of good deeds can be more helpful for even more people than seven.The secon idea I'd like to discuss has to do with the selfishness and omnipotence of the character; it seems that he wanted to be very careful with the "chosen ones". An example of this is when he rejects the person in the retirement house, for the marrow bone transplant. He thinks he doesn't deserve his gift, what's more, he feels he was almost cheated on. On the other hanbd, when he phones the blind man in the middle of the nigth to apologize and to tell him he was going to receive a present, he insists on telling him he realized the blind man deserved it.My question is: who gave Ben the right to decide who was or not suitable?Does previous suffering give people the authority to decide on other's lives? In my opinion, it doesn't.

More about Response To "Seven Pounds"

Open Document