The film doesn't at all come off as a theodicy, as a justification of evil, of crime, of rape, or of Count F's own actions.
As it happens, at the time this article appeared, I was re-reading that voluminous masterpiece, a gripping portrayal of good and evil, of crime and revolution, of society in its horrors and, sometimes, the human potential for goodness.
He often sang about the evils of crime, of houses broken into and bullets fired, wanting criminals to see their misdeeds through the eyes of their victims.
The plan was to buy cameras and recording equipment and have Dillinger and a fellow gang member named Homer Van Meter lecture on the evils of crime.
Pistorius' fame has meant that the banality of the evil of this crime, the thuggish stupidity of a heedless man's violence, has been obscured by the cheap, shallow glitter of celebrity.
"In some ways, official corruption has to be ranked among the most evil of all crimes," Judge Rakoff said, adding that by its nature, such a crime was "not easily exposed".
National Trading Standards, the consumer protection agency, has previously accused Google – the search engine that goes by the motto "Don't be evil" – of profiting from crime by letting fraudsters pay to place their websites at the top of search results.
There is a quote by Gandhi, it turns out, using the same two words, and I'm sure that if I were to plow through the body of English literature I would find the path littered with crimes of evil and crimes of illness.
Families that break down, criminals that are let loose, borders that are broken and the banality of evil: Scandinavian crime dramas focus on the psychopathology of crime and the dark corners of society that the welfare state forgot, or perhaps never reached in the first place.
It would have been his most elaborate treatment of the themes of crime, evil, and psychological abnormality that recur throughout his novels; a great celebrator of life, he was also obsessed with death.
Simply put, "white collar" crime cannot be viewed as less of an evil than any other form of crime.
