I couldn't agree more that the spectral-victims shot is a problem
in the film, and I don't think its nitpicking to bring it up (although
none of the three people I saw the film with even noticed it). It occurs
at a dicisive moment in the movie and really has to be accounted for.
Also, it is part of a whole final sequence which, in my view, puts
"fairness" ahead of filmmaking. I had a problem, in short, with the whole
flashback sequence (which lacks the restraint you rightly credit Robbins
for elsewhere in the film) which interrupts the fresh and disturbing
economy of the scences around the execution.
        If you don't have a problem with that, though, there's still
plenty of fault to find in the particular shot you allude to. Its a
weirdly sentimental move given the integrity of the rest of the movie.
Its interpretation, though, is kind of interesting to try to work out.
What IS the point? My reading was different from yours. I saw it as a
sort of an assemblage of the victims of the whole structure of violence
the film was addressing rather than an approving witnessing by the murder
victims. Maybe somone can offer a reading that one or both of us might
find a little less problematic in the film's context.
 
Sean Desilets
Tufts University
 
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