Bush does the explaining at his living funeral. As it turns out, the party is an opportunity for him to unburden himself of a terrible guilt (although he refers to it as shame) that he has been carrying all those year. I will now briefly summarize his story. Do not read on if you want to see the movie with all its suspense.

Forty years ago, Bush was Mattie's (Spacek) boyfriend. They "had a go" as he puts it. One day, he runs into her married sister and is smitten. So is she. They also have a go. The husband gets wise to what's going on and kills her with a hammer, just as Bush arrives for a tryst. The husband had already set fire to the downstairs before swinging the hammer upstairs in what appears to be intended as a murder-suicide. Bush is unable to rescue his lover. At the last minute, his instincts of self-preservation make him leap out of the window, alone. The moment before he leaps he realizes that it is all his fault.

This is the backdrop of 40 years of living as a hermit in the woods. Bush says he built his house as a jail that would keep the memory fresh and the pain strong, that would not allow him to forget and let go. The living funeral is a climactic scene of catharsis and attempted redemption. The idea is that the burden of guilt can only be removed in a ritual of public confession, atonement, and forgiveness.

The movie dramatizes a cultural theme that I questioned in my last post, trying to channel Nietzsche. The burden of guilt that Bush shoulders is cruel. What is the point? Has he become a better person? Has it been ennobling to feel crushing guilt for 40 years, to waste a life that could have been productive and joyful? If there is a positive theory of guilt it has to be able to handle the Bush case. It has to be able to handle it without hedging, that is, without suggesting that guilt is basically good, but Bush just had a bit too much of it and for a bit too long. What then is the right amount of pain? What is the right length of time for the suffering?

Do I have to declare that I do not endorse behavior that hurts others? I hope not. On that note, let me point out that the movies have given us a contrarian exemplar. In Woody Allen's 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors, anti-hero Judah Rosenthal has his lover killed for fear she might tear up his marriage and social status. His is torn by guilt-for a while. Then it somehow passes. Go figure.