Since you liked that book, try the Polish film Katyn. It came out three years ago, and is available on Netflix instant viewing if you have that. It’s about that terrible incident where the Soviet Union massacred thousands of Polish army officers and intellectuals after invading and conquering the country at the beginning of World War II, and the chilling effect it had its people after the war ended. The film is riveting from the first opening minute. Not a light movie, and you have to be in the mood for a punch in the stomach.

Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DrgSHIJXAQ

To me, there is a sense of being deeply moved by a thing which, though about loathsome ideas and inhumanity, is as immovable as a mountain, as subtle as a breeze, as pure as mountain water. And yes, devastating – deeply devastating.

I doubt I’ll read the book – despite feeling quite attached to the characters, I don’t feel a need to delve more deeply right now. I need to decompress.

I can try. The message of the film, as I see it, is that our sense of justice in the world is only what we individual humans make of it. God isn’t judging us. No one is. We’re alone, and when we face other humans who do terrible things, the only justice is what we’re willing or able to inflict upon each other. And, that as we fool ourselves into thinking that justice is a thing larger than us, we will find age and disappointment, inevitably.

It strikes me as a particularly atheistic movie, and in a way that doesn’t condemn atheism but rather requires us to confront the emotionally painful consequences of that philosophy.

That may be my particular take on the movie, and that’s ok. I’ve already heard a couple convincing arguments that the movie is actually Biblical in the tradition of Ecclesiastes.