99 Homes and the Moral Line

Recently watched the movie 99 Homes. This is a painful movie to watch and it is not the type of movie you would likely watch twice. Spoiler alert if you plan on watching the movie. The story-line is about a young unmarried father (Dennis Nash played by Andrew Garfield) who lives with his young son (9 something) and his mom in a house that gets repossessed. Nash then in turn, because he is so good at so many things and in desperate need of money, joins the real estate company of the slick man (Rick Carver played by Michael Shannon) who repossessed his house. Along the way, he continues to do shadier and shadier things. It was hard enough to evict people from their homes, but then there were the numerous ways they continued to stretch and then outright cheat the system.

At the very end there was a moral line that Nash could not cross. What was intriguing to me was his realization that the line simply carried too much human cost. His mother had moved out with his son and there was another family that would be forever damaged by his action. So he briefly crossed that moral line, confessed it, and the movie ends abruptly. We are left not knowing what happens after that and I think that was intentional.

I had two major takeaways from this movie. First, moral lines are like boundaries. When we keep moving them, the lines get easier and easier to cross and the size of the offense gets greater and greater. Exaggerating leads to small lies, which lead to bigger lies. When you get away with one, it seems easier to break bigger ones.

Second, there are always consequences. Early in the process, the offense was depersonalized. Nash was cheating the "system" or the "government". There are no faces. But as the lying and the moral line got further crossed, there was a personal toll. In fact, every moral offense has a personal toll even if it is just to yourself. That is the minimum. Then it works it's way outward. That is what happened in the movie. The lying and the cheating revealed itself over time and those closest bore the cost.

I have to catch myself in the moment when I am prone to even the smallest lie. I have to nip it in the bud.  It is so easy to start and so easy to continue going. I have even started to tell someone a lie or exaggeration and stopped confessing it on the spot. I do that not because I am so moral (because I am definitely not) or because these lies would hurt the other person, but because I know it will hurt me.