Michael Knowles

And it also shows you the subtlety of the conversation about freedom here.

Because, and I think we especially see this in our own time,

Freedom sounds all nice in the abstract, but there is a kind of freedom that does enslave.

Not true liberty, but licentiousness.

The notion that if freedom is just doing whatever you want to do and pursuing your basest passions, you're going to end up a slave.

So yeah, maybe D-503 doesn't want to end up a slave to the benefactor autocrat of the totalitarian state.

But is it really any better to be a slave of this, you know, terrifying whore?

Yes.

I mean, the...

I'm glad sometimes when the filming is about to happen, I've got 20 pages left.

I said, I'm going to skim the 20 pages.

I'm really glad that I paid attention to the last pages because I'm dog-earing almost every single page.

D-503 is called in to the benefactor.

He gets, you know, he gets a meeting with Stalin.

And here is what the benefactor says.

As he's luring him in with his kind of logical arguments, he says, if this means you agree with me, then let's talk like grownups after the children have gone to bed, holding nothing back.

I ask this question, what is it that people beg for, dream about, torment themselves for from the time they leave swaddling clothes?

They want someone to tell them once and for all what happiness is.

Sure, Aristotle tells us that.

We've known this forever.