The Counselor
The Counselor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counselor
Men are attracted to flawed women too of course, but their illusion is that they can fix them. They just want to be entertained. The truth about women is that you can do anything to them except bore them.
Reiner
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Yeah, well, I don't mean to sound cold, I just mean that where women are concerned, they've got their own agenda. I always liked smart women, but it's been an expensive hobby.
Reiner
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Greed really takes you to the edge, doesn't it?
That's not what greed does. That's what greed is.
Malkina and Reiner
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The truth has no temperature.
Malkina
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I'm pretty skeptical about the goodness of the good. I think that if you ransacked the archives of the redeemed you would uncover tales of moral squalor quite beyond the merely appalling. I've pretty much seen it all, Counselor, and it's all shit. I could live in a monastery, scrub the steps, wash the pots, maybe do a little gardening. Why not?
You're serious.
Very.
Why don't you?
In a word, women.
Westray and Counselor
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I suspect that we are ill-formed for the path we have chosen. Ill-formed and ill-prepared. We would like to draw a veil over all the blood and terror that have brought us to this place. It is our faintness of heart that would close our eyes to all of that, but in so doing it makes of it our destiny... But nothing is crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining.
Malkina
The Counselor
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Counselor: Will you help me?
Jefe: I would urge you to see the truth of the situation you're in, Counselor. That is my advice. It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world where the mistakes were made. You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There's only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago … Are you there, Counselor?
Counselor: [distraught] Yes.
Jefe: I don't mean to offend you, but reflective men often find themselves at a place removed from the realities of life. In any case, we should all prepare a place where we can accommodate all the tragedies that sooner or later will come to our lives. But this is an economy few people care to practice.
Jefe: When it comes to grief, the normal rules of wealth do not apply. Because grief transcends value. A man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart and yet, you cannot buy anything with grief, because grief is worthless.
Jefe: Machado would have traded every word, every poem, every verse he ever wrote for one more hour with his beloved. And that is because when it comes to grief, the normal rules of exchange do not apply, because grief transcends value. A man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart. And yet, you cannot buy anything with grief, because grief is worthless.
Counselor: Why are you telling me this?
Jefe: Because you continue to deny the reality of the world you're in. Do you love your wife so much, so completely, that you would exchange places with her upon the wheel? And I don't mean dying, because dying is easy.
Counselor: Yes! Yes, damn you!
Jefe: Well, that is good to hear, Counselor.
Counselor: What are you saying? Are you saying this is a possibility?
Jefe: No. It's impossible.
Counselor: You said I was that man - at that crossing.
Jefe: Yes. At the understanding that life is not going to take you back. You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, this world that you have created will also cease to exist. But for those with the understanding that they're living the last days of the world, death acquires a different meaning. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass. And then, all the grand designs and all the grand plans will be finally exposed and revealed for what they are. And now, Counselor, I have to go, because I have to make other calls. If I have time, I think I'll take a small nap.
[hangs up]