(A Sunday Reflection, In Bruges)
Of course I loved this movie. It’s a mix of dark comedy, philosophy, and humanity, which is literally the Maison 129 specialty.
Ray spends almost the entire movie believing that because he did something terrible (even accidentally) he no longer deserves to live. He’s carrying guilt as though it’s a life sentence rather than an emotion. Ken sees something different. He sees remorse. He sees someone capable of change. Harry, meanwhile, sees only the act itself.
The ending is fascinating because Harry becomes trapped by the very code he prides himself on.
You’ve got to stick to your principles.”
In his mind, there’s no room for context, growth, mercy, or even new evidence. Once his rule is triggered, it overrides reality. That’s the tragedy. I connected it to the idea of
don’t marry your beliefs.”
There’s a difference between having principles and treating them as immovable laws regardless of circumstance.
Healthy principles guide you.
Rigid principles can imprison you.
Harry’s code gives him certainty, but it also makes him incapable of adapting when reality becomes more complicated than his rulebook. Even when the situation changes, his identity is so wrapped up in that principle that abandoning it would feel like abandoning himself.
Ray, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. He’s imprisoned not by a principle but by guilt. He believes one irreversible mistake defines his entire existence.
Both are trapped.
One by guilt.
One by certainty.
Sometimes we hurt people by mistake. That’s an uncomfortable truth. If someone lives long enough, they’ll almost certainly hurt someone unintentionally. They’ll disappoint someone. They’ll say the wrong thing. They’ll make a decision that has consequences they never foresaw. The question becomes: what do you do next?
Remorse has a purpose. It teaches. Guilt, once it has taught you everything it can, eventually becomes repetitive.
If you keep replaying it forever, it stops being a teacher and starts becoming a jailer. That doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or pretending it didn’t matter. It means allowing yourself to become someone who would act differently now. That’s growth.
This really resonated with me now, because I’ve been doing something similar in my own life (not about a single traumatic event like Ray), but about letting go of old ways of thinking. Here, at Maison 129, I’ve talked about changing my views on relationships, work, privacy, success, even what kind of life I want. None of that is hypocrisy. It’s learning.
There’s a quote often attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes:
When the facts change, I change my mind.”
Whether or not he said those exact words, the sentiment is valuable. Changing your mind in response to new understanding isn’t weakness. Sometimes it’s intellectual honesty.
That’s one reason In Bruges has stayed with people for so long. Beneath all the profanity and absurd humor, it’s really asking:
Can a person be more than the worst thing they’ve ever done?
Ken answers yes. Harry answers no. The film never gives an easy answer, but it definitely shows the cost of Harry’s answer.
Harry’s downfall isn’t violence. It’s inflexibility. A lot of people watch that ending and think,
It’s about honor.”
I watched it and thought,
It’s about the danger of refusing to update your beliefs.”
For more media analysis and cultural reflections, you may enter the Tarantino Trying to Focus reading room.