As each of the men grapples with his vision of himself and his people, they reveal and discover their blindnesses. Writer and director Nikita Mikhalkov seems to say that we can only see others clearly, when we see ourselves. I cannot comment on the complexities and prejudices of the relationship between Chechnya and Russia, but his conclusion about our blindness is universal. Just as the men testify of their personal doubts to one another, they uncover the fissures in the testimonies and the evidence. They bear witness to the truth of the matter, only because they are prepared to speak their own truth, not the conventions and bigotry of their upbringing. Yet, while they are able to confront the narrowness of the past, they also become open to the wideness of human experience as they share these points of view with the others.
This is also a story of a discipleship to truth. The 12, saved from and by their stubbornness, sift the facts as they are presented and find the way. But personal enlightenment, albeit with the help of others, is not enough. The final juror to convert, the chair, reminds them of the consequences of their mercy. The accused will be set free, but to what? A life on the streets? The chair suggests that they may be right to determine him innocent, but they cannot, with clear conscience, do that without understanding the fate of the boy because of it.
The film challenges us to do the right thing, but it reminds us that there is a cost. The final convert, the chair, takes the boy into his care after the acquittal. As if to emphasize that moral clarity should not be easy, he makes it clear that he, a former secret service agent, and the boy will hunt down those who killed the step-father and framed the boy. From the mercy and will to see, spawns a continued determination to vengeance.
The movie is painfully male. Despite the compassion and vulnerability of the jurors for one another, and for the boy, they laugh, joke, harass, mock, and tussle, like boys. This story, like Alexandra (reviewed here April 17), is just as much about the absence of the female. Whereas in Alexandra the grandmother plays a central role, though she is a stranger in a landscape of war, there is virtually no female presence in 12. The judge is female, but even as a stern overseer, she is not significant in impact or in presence. One of the last frames of the movie is of the accused's mother, who has been murdered, along with her husband, by her fellow Chechens who do not take well to her husband's unwillingness to fight, approaching the camera. She walks confident and she gazes directly at us. Then the screen darkens and a final quote scrolls, ending with words that echo one of the jurors earlier, "I'm blind."
Though surely we are to associate the gentle eyes of the mother with the mercy of the jury, we are also left with the merciless knowledge that the violence of the boy's life will continue, as the one who freed him will help him exact revenge. In some moral universe that may be the right thing to do, but it's a cycle that leaves us all blind.
Ride in Temp 12'C Wind SE gentle
Ride home Temp 14'C Wind calm, rain
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