From Giving to Forgiving—A Bridge Too Far?

Reviews the film, Beyond Right and Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness directed by Roger Spottiswoode and Lekha Singh (2012). Reconciliation and forgiveness have been in the political air in recent decades in such hotspots for violence as South Africa, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere, and in light of the recent death of Nelson Mandela in December 2013. In psychology and psychiatry, forgiveness has broken out of its religious trappings, and science and education have entered the picture. A new science of forgiveness has developed, and education for forgiveness and forgiveness therapy has been proposed (Enright, 2001). The film takes the viewer through an emotional roller-coaster involving terrible personal tragedies and confrontations of victim and perpetrator. Forgiveness is often sought by the latter and given by the former. The vignettes are all heartbreaking stories of individual lives being profoundly affected by terrible violence and of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, with the evolution of forgiveness depicted for some of the victim–perpetrator relationships. This film is about real people coping with unspeakable tragedy and loss. It is not fictional Hollywood. It is raw humanity up close, a treatise on humanistic psychology far beyond the laboratory or the clinic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)