저스트 머시Just Mercy (2019)

 

Just Mercy (2019)

 

A movie about the life of a lawyer, Bryan Stevenson who spent his entire life to fight against the Alabama's unjust court system for African-Americans. Working for the Equal Justice Initiative, he visited inmates on death row. There he met Walter Johnny D. MicMillan, an African American man who was convicted of the 1986 murder of Ronda Morrison, a white woman. There was no clear-cut evidence except for one white man's testimony. Stevenson appealed to the local court to grand McMillan a retrial. The judge refuses to grand a retrial, thinking of it as a humiliating act against White Americans. Stevenson did not give up. He uses a social media back then 60 Minutes. With the use of the TV program, he spread how unjust the court system was to McMillan. Pulling attention from the public to the case of McMillan, he appealed to the Supreme Court of Alabama. Eventually the case was dismissed. 

 

          Recently the death of George Floyd, another innocent African-American man, ignited a national protest for the Balck-Lives-Matter. Watching it in a distance, owing to the fact that I am a Korean, neither White nor Black, I re-realize how painful the life of a African American is in the US. From the outset, its life was designed by the traces of Slavery Experience and White's prejudices and biases against its ethnic group. At the same time, I feel relieved that, growing up in S. Korea, I have never experienced helplessness and hopelessness owing to my color and ethnicity. I felt painfully the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Still I am experiencing how it oppresses my way of being and thinking and doing at varying degrees. Nevertheless, it seems pretty clear that the oprresion they suffered from is different from that I am mentioning. In a sense, it is not a matter of comparison because each context needs to be considered in its own unique way.

 

          My clients I am providing psychotherapy have different voices. A client takes it very optimistically, affirming that their violent act can be justified because they have been waiting too long. Another client takes it in a paranoid way that makes her unable to think that she could stay in NY City anymore - now she is thinking of a way to leave her house. Another client is indifferent to it because his life is already full of dangers not actually but psychologically. Another client enjoys watching what is going on around her, making various rationalizations and justifications of her stepping back away from it. Another client, hit by the gravity of the issue, began pondering over his life in his home country before he moved to the US.

 

          Me? I feel inclined to think more about my country, my family in S. Korea and the US. Asking me unconsciously: which is better for me and my family, staying here for the rest of my life or going back to my country. I am not really different from my clients.