Virtue and Vice in Dirty Pretty Things

"There's nothing so dangerous as a virtuous man."

UK quad poster

I remember how jarring it was hearing those words the first time I watched Stephen Frears' thriller, Dirty Pretty Things. The line, spoken by a friend of the film's protagonist, struck me as profound if only because it seemed so out of place in our modern postsecular world. Not because the film had something to say about virtue; on the contrary, any film, really, has a standpoint on virtue. But what sets Dirty Pretty Things apart is how this notion of virtue is applied. In the context of the film, the virtuous man is Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a former Nigerian doctor living in London as an undocumented worker and the man whose story we follow. Okwe works multiple jobs, a cabbie by day, a hotel attendant by night. He lives platonically with a Turkish Muslim émigré named Senay (Audrey Tautou), who also works at the hotel. The plot thickens when Okwe discovers a human heart clogging one of the hotel's toilets, and the spellbinding mystery that unfolds leads him right back to the hotel's manager (Sergi López). Okwe and Senay soon find themselves embroiled in a dark, unsettling world where human organs are trafficked.

Dirty Pretty Things is a serious movie about serious things. There are moments of levity that permeate the darkness that aren't one-liners or offhand jokes, but instead arise from characters whose dispositions are given more to virtue than vice. The film's subject matter is grim, and it deals with the darkness straight-faced and without pulling any punches. There's no sentimentality here. A freak occurrence leads to sacrifices having to be made, and those sacrifices hurt. The circumstances surrounding Okwe and Senay are ones that many of us would look at and deem unfair, but in reality are circumstances that all of us face at one point or another, to varying degrees. Things happen beyond our control. We find ourselves in situations we did not ask for or seek out, but now we have to deal with whether we like it or not. It's never easy, and there is often unfathomable hurt. And sometimes the decisions we make in those circumstances are the difference between life and death, hope and despair.

Films like Dirty Pretty Things are a rarity. They come along once in a blue moon, a dirty little gem of a thing that plays like a diamond in the rough. It is careful, measured, nuanced in how it portrays good and evil. There is a strong moral center present that is so frequently lost amidst the sound and fury of more expensive films. This is the kind of feature that operates with conviction, the kind of small-scale movie-making that classic films are known for, that doesn't need a huge budget and filming locations that span the globe in order to be bigger and more important than most other films out there. More importantly, this is a film that understands virtue and the real value of moral integrity. Dirty Pretty Things is an antidote to the kind of thinking that says, "Until you've experienced the darkness for yourself, you have no grounds to talk about it." This kind of rhetoric is absurdly popular today, and is patently false. One does not have to be a pathological liar, or have been lied to, in order to understand that lying is wrong.

Whereas so many other films would be tempted to drag its main characters into the seedy underworld and have them indulge in heinous acts themselves to make some vague point about "morally gray" areas, Dirty Pretty Things presents Okwe as a force to be reckoned with not because he is physically imposing or possessing off-the-charts intelligence. Instead, he is a dangerous man because he has moral fortitude, because he has integrity, because he is a virtuous man. Okwe is a curious kind of Christ figure, because he represents a facet of Christ's person that is so often overlooked in modern cinema: morality, a strong conviction concerning what is right and what is wrong beyond mere social cues. And the fortitude to never waver from that certainty is what makes Okwe a threat to all that is wrong with the world he inhabits. It is a positive point, made from the negative. A means of pointing out the light by first establishing the darkness. This is a poignant, effective storytelling technique, one that drums up time and again throughout Scripture. Even the Bible introduces us to God by first introducing the dark, chaotic substance that was present in the beginning, and then demonstrating how God brings order to that chaos, and out of this darkness creates his perfect vision of the world.

Our vices may be glittering, and our sins hued in seductive crimson. But Dirty Pretty Things rightly orients our perceptions so as to render our vices dull and boring, as they are in reality, and to paint our sins as black as the darkness they impose upon our spirits. The film demonstrates that the measure of a man is not found in the darkness, nor is it found in the force behind his punch, or in the quickness of his tongue, or even in his redemption. Rather, it is found in the strength of his character, in his integrity. And in his conviction to live rightly, no matter the cost. To stay the course along the straight and narrow and to never once stumble from the path of righteousness. This is a lesson worth learning, in a way it is the lesson that all good men and women seek to pass on to the ones who come after them. It is the lesson of the New Testament concerning the times between Christ's first and second coming, it is the admonition of the wise old Christian to the brash young one.

This film's title was chosen as the namesake for this blog precisely because of its thematic value, its strong moral center, and its convictions about good and evil. The way in which Dirty Pretty Things has its virtuous characters interact with the world, unflinching and with a strong sense of justice, is a good indicator of what this blog hopes to accomplish in bringing theology to bear on popular culture. Dirty Pretty Things is not for the faint of heart, to be sure. But it is a good, serious movie that encourages us all to be good, serious people in the face of overwhelming darkness. It reminds us that it is possible to suffer well, and that virtue is the most dangerous weapon any of us can wield while we still walk on this side of eternity.