In Bruges: Exposing Morality in Film Yasser Owino College

In the very first line of the script to In Bruges, the writer, and director Martin McDonagh describes this medieval town with its Gothic churches and narrow canals as otherworldly. This is our first hint to the kind of presence that Bruges will impose on the characters of this morality tale about two Irish hit men. The hit men in question are Ken (Brendan Gleeson), a seasoned pro and Ray (Colin Farrell), his brash, juvenile young partner who's just screwed up his very first job by accidentally killing an innocent child. Their boss has sent them both to Bruges to hide out and await judgment. In this way, these two events; the crime and the judgment bookend the film. For the duration, were stuck with Ken and Ray in purgatory. For McDonagh, Bruges as purgatory, purgatory as Bruges is the perfect and the only kind of place for this story to be staged. Like much of his previous work in theater, McDonagh is concerned with investigating morality in a post-modern world. A world that finds it exceedingly difficult to invoke traditional measures of right and wrong. Indeed, it's usually those characters with rigid inflexible moralities that McDonagh portrays as the cruelest of all. They also happen to be the ones who like to talk about it...