“Sin City” Speaks to Our Truth-challenged Age

It’s never fun to be sick. When I was struck down by a virus some weeks back, I decided to take the time to see one of the greatest pulp action movies of 2000s.

“Sin City”

The film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novels is one of the most visually stunning movies ever made. Directed by Miller and Quentin Tarantino collaborator Robert Rodriguez, it contains plenty of sex and violence—but it’s done with style and story, which makes it feel more artistic than gratuitous.

Among a star-studded cast that includes Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Rosario Dawson, and Elijah Wood, it’s still Mickey Rourke who stands out above the rest.

The onetime pretty boy of the ’80s plays Marv, a tough-as-nails hard case who exacts revenge against the crime lords of Sin City who murdered a young prostitute. Marv’s murderous methods of revenge are unjust, and he pays the ultimate price for his actions.

Rourke excels as a street tough who fights against the evil men of Sin City: corrupt politicians, and a wicked police force.

Here is where I found something new. “Sin City,” A movie that I hadn’t seen for at least a decade (probably longer).

Senator Roark’s Speech

Powers Boothe, who died in 2017, played the role of corrupt Senator Ethan Roark Sr. Though he’s the primary antagonist in the Sin City comics, Senator Roark isn’t seen much in Sin City the movie, unlike Roark’s son (‘That Yellow Bastard,’ played by Nick Stahl) and the senator’s brother (Cardinal Roark, played by Rutger Hauer).

The film’s villains both experience unceremonious endings. Senator Roark is not the case. Marv kills Cardinal Roark after discovering that the religious leader was killing prostitutes and consuming them.

Roark Junior, a criminal and pedophile is castrated in Hartigan (Bruce Willis), an ex-cop who wrongfully kept him behind bars until he signs a false confession.

Though he’s featured less prominently than his evil relatives, Senator Roark makes an even larger impression in some ways. He may not be as sexually depraved as his son or as barbaric as his brother, but he’s just as bad and more real.

He’s a politician that cares for nothing but power, and in an epic monologue to Hartigan—who’s lying in a hospital bed after saving a little girl from Roark Junior—Roark explains the source of his power.

“Power don’t come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big, and gettin’ the whole damn world to play along with you … Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain’t true, you’ve got ’em by the balls.”

Hartigan is then told by the senator that he could. “pump you full of bullets right now” You won’t be held responsible.

“Everyone would lie for me, everyone who counts,” Roark tells Hartigan at gunpoint.

Do not live by lies

Roark’s speech didn’t make much of an impression when I first watched “Sin City” In 2005. Seventeen years later, in 2005. “The Gulag Archipelago” Other great works by Russian writers Aleksandr SolzhenitsynNow I understand the meaning of the monologue.

It scares me.

Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to many years in the Gulag for making a joke about Stalin in private letters to friends. He understood that lies and violence go hand in hand. In “Live Not By Lies,” He said that violence is not possible without lying, as it exhausts itself quickly.

“When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me — I will crush you.’ But violence quickly grows old,” Solzhenitsyn wrote.

“After only a few years it loses confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence.”

This is how violence changes. It can’t sustain itself for long, so it pivots.

“It demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.”

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Roark is referring to this when he says it. “Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain’t true, you’ve got ’em by the balls.” True power is the ability to get the rest of the globe to join in the deceit.

Solzhenitsyn in his 1972 Nobel speech urged people to do something extraordinary: not engage in falsehood.

“The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.”

Although the first sentence receives the most attention, it is not the only one that deserves it. Solzhenitsyn admits that lies will be out there, and may even come to the rescue of innocent people. “reign supreme” For a moment. However, he calls for individuals to refrain from participating in these activities.

This was Solzhenitsyn’s message to all brave men and women, and it’s the key to defeating the Senator Roarks of the world.

I have no idea if Miller or Rodriguez ever read Solzhenitsyn, but it’s clear they understand political power and violence are intertwined with falsehood. When I see the decay of truth today, it scares me a little.

This article first appeared on the Foundation for Economic Education.

Jon Miltimore manages Fee.org.

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