As I’ve been making my way through the films of F. W. Murnau, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vittorio De Sica, Yasujirō Ozu, Elia Kazan, Satyajit Ray, Jean Renoir, and the plays of Eugene O’Neill, I’ve begun to notice a thread connecting them all.
These artists are not primarily interested in deciding who is right and who is wrong.
Instead, they ask a different question:
What happened to this person?
That small shift changes everything.
Judgment creates distance.
Understanding creates compassion.
To understand someone does not mean approving of every choice they make. It does not excuse cruelty, dishonesty, addiction, betrayal, or violence. Rather, it means recognizing that every human being has a history, a wound, a fear, a hope, a love, or a loss that shapes the way they move through the world.
Jean Renoir expressed this beautifully when he said:
“The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.”
At first, this sounds almost unsettling. If everyone has their reasons, where does responsibility fit?
But I don’t think Renoir meant that every reason is justified. I think he meant that almost no one sees themselves as the villain of their own story. Each of us lives inside a story that makes sense to us. Every action, even a misguided one, usually grows from something deeper: love, fear, pride, loneliness, shame, hope, or pain.
The greatest artists don’t ask us to admire their characters.
They ask us to recognize their humanity.
Umberto is not simply a stubborn old man.
The hotel doorman is not simply a man who lost his job, nor is he weak or unimportant.
Antonio is not simply a failed father.
Mary Tyrone is not simply an addict.
Jamie is not simply destructive.
Noriko is not simply obedient.
Bruno is not simply a child.
They are people carrying invisible burdens, loving imperfectly, trying to preserve their dignity, and finding their way through life as best they can.
As I was reflecting on this, a memory returned to me.
When my daughter Irini was about four years old, she was playing quietly with a handful of little figurines. Two of them were fighting.
I asked her what was happening.
Without hesitation, she answered,
“They’re fighting because each one thinks they are the good one and the other is the bad one.”
I remember looking at her with wonder.
How had a four-year-old understood something that many adults spend a lifetime trying to learn?
Years later, while watching these films, I realized she had already grasped what the greatest storytellers keep trying to teach us.
Each person believes they are the hero of their own story.
That does not make everyone right.
But it does invite us to look more deeply before we judge.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts of art.
It slows us down.
It replaces certainty with curiosity.
It asks us to wonder,
What burden might this person be carrying?
And perhaps, every now and then, to ask the same question of ourselves.
Maybe compassion begins not when judgment disappears, but when understanding is allowed to come first.
Kiki's Memos 