100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #138: Minority Report (2002)

Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Tom Cruise.

(Note: This essay reveals climactic plot points necessary to our analysis of the underlying themes of the film.)

In the course of time Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the ground,

while Abel, for his part, brought the fatty portion of the firstlings of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering,

but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and dejected.

Then the LORD said to Cain: Why are you angry? Why are you dejected?

If you act rightly, you will be accepted; but if not, sin lies in wait at the door: its urge is for you, yet you can rule over it.

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out in the field.” When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Genesis 4:3-8

In John Steinbeck’s landmark masterpiece, East of Eden, the great American author sets the story of Cain and Abel in his childhood home of Salinas Valley, California. He does this twice in the book with brothers Adam and Charles Trask, and then, one generation later, with twins Cal and Aron Trask. Those who are only familiar with the movie would remember James Dean’s memorable performance as Cal in the excellent 1955 adaptation by Elia Kazan, but interestingly enough that film only covers the last third or so of the book, detailing Cal and Aron’s adolescence. The first two thirds of the book focus specifically on Adam and his relationship with Cal and Aron’s mother, Cathy, as well as a host of other important characters not featured in the film. One such character left out- and considering this was made in 1955 it is no surprise- is Adam’s Chinese cook, Lee, based partially on Steinbeck’s own family cook from his childhood.

Lee may be one of my favorite literary characters of all time since reading the novel last year, next to Samuel Hamilton, another important character left out of the film who actually is based on Steinbeck’s own grandfather.Initially, Lee presents himself as a stereotypical foreigner who speaks a pidgin English, pronouncing his Ls as Rs and not using basic syntax in his sentences. Until one scene where Samuel Hamilton- one of the few people to treat Lee like a person- confronts him on his broken English, and to Hamilton’s surprise Lee responds in perfect English that he puts on the stereotypical persona as an act so that people do not get suspicious of him.

Lee is extremely well-read and hopes to one day open a bookstore, and Samuel and Lee share many great intellectual conversations which are a delight to read. The most important conversation they share is one about a certain word, a Hebrew word:

Timshel.

Lee and his Chinese relatives had spent a good long while decoding a passage in Genesis that had long troubled Lee, specifically the translation of this phrase, as viewed above from Genesis 4:7 -

but if not, sin lies in wait at the door: its urge is for you, yet you can rule over it.

“You can” is a fair translation of the Hebrew here, yet Steinbeck proposes an alternate translation here, to “thou mayest”. This is not the technically correct translation of the Hebrew, yet the author is making a a larger point here.

As Lee explains:

“Now, there are millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou', and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”¹

Cain had a choice when it came to killing his brother, and he chose the wrong path. Yet even in exile, the Lord says to Him that even though he may yet be free to give into his temptations, so too is he- and we, who descend from Cain- free to choose the good as well.

In the dystopian future of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, criminal justice in the Washington D.C. area is now predicated on the idea of thou shalt rather than thou mayest.

Technology has reached the point where crimes can be predicted before they happen: the nascent PreCrime division- which is aiming to expand beyond D.C. nationwide, pending Congress approval- uses the help of drugged-up “precogs”, clairvoyants who can see glimpses of the future to find crimes before they occur.

At the outset of the film, in one of the most intense scenes Spielberg has ever shot, PreCrime chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) works relentlessly in less than an hour to match the vague glimpses of the future given from the precogs to a name and location. Using this system, almost all pre-meditated murders have been stopped, but sometimes a “crime of passion” will emerge that was not pre-meditated, and the team- after receiving a red ball like the one pictured above with the name of the perpetrator- must work fast to find the potential murderer before the act occurs.

This sort of logic is dizzying when you first watch the film, but as the film progresses Anderton faces an existential and potentially jail-inducing problem when his name appears as a perpetrator of a pre-meditated crime, knowing exactly when he will kill a man he does not know. This leads him to kidnap one of the three precogs, Agatha (each of the precogs are named in the screenplay for famous noir and murder mystery authors) to help him figure out the truth and prove his potential innocence before its too late, and before his own division can find him and lock him up.

However, Agatha warns Anderton that he is playing into the hands of those who set him up, and whispers to him:

You have a choice.

Thou mayest.

In Minority Report, Spielberg rejects the notion of predestination and embraces man’s free will. Because of Christ’s redemption for mankind, we are free to rise above our Original Sin and to choose the good for our lives.

In adding the spiritual component of the psychics who gained their abilities as the offspring of drug-addled parents, Spielberg elevates the original science-fiction story by Phillip K. Dick to a modern fairy tale. This is similar to what he had done prior to this film with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, elevating Kubrick’s atheist parable of a boy searching for a non-existent God and giving it new meaning. The inclusion of Max von Sydow as the director of PreCrime is an homage to the work of Ingmar Bergman of which von Sydow was a regular, which also wrestled with such themes of moral choice in a fallen world.

Like most of Spielberg’s films, Minority Report is a film about hope in an increasingly dysfunctional, technocratic world. Like in E.T., it is the innocent and childlike- like Agatha- who will save the world from the adults who have been consumed by the strictly rational. Anderton follows a long line of Spielberg protagonists who are transformed through wonder, like Sam Neill’s Dr. Grant, Robin Williams’ grown-up Peter Pan, and even “Keys” from E.T.

Men who have forgotten that they have a choice.

Adam looked up with sick weariness. His lips parted and failed and tried again. Then his lungs filled. He expelled the air and his lips combed the rushing sigh. His whispered word seemed to hang in the air:

“Timshel!”

His eyes closed and he slept.²

1. Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. (Penguin Classics: 1992), 303.

2. Steinbeck, 602.