Land of the Blind (2006)

Ralph Fiennes: Joe

Quotes 

• Joe : How far does a man have to go to be thought so dangerous that he needs to be locked away, physically separated from the rest of the world, behind stone walls and iron bars? Clearly, it is a last resort.

• Joe : You could be Prime Minister in a year, sir.

  Thorne : [laughs]  Do you really think that Junior would ever allow that?

  Joe : Well, he can't stop the people from voting, sir.

  Thorne : If voting could ever really change anything, it'd be illegal.

• Joe : [Narrating]  When I think of the lazy afternoons of my childhood, of the bruised skies, the blank faces of the women with dirty bare feet by the side of the road, I wonder if I should have stood by and done nothing. Which, in some ways, is precisely what I did. I know that I've done questionable things, but my role in the assassination of the president is one that, even now, I cannot say that I entirely regret.

• Thorne : You're a soldier, Joe. I assume you believe there are things worth dying for? Killing for?

  Joe : Yes sir, I do. But we don't kill innocent bystanders.

  Thorne : Nobody standing by is innocent. I didn't come to violence casually, you know. But you get to a point when you have no choice but to take up arms against your oppressors. It'd be very hard for a thinking man to deny that. Well, actually, I should ask you: Joe, is it hard?

  Joe : Sir, are you calling me stupid or are you calling me a coward?

• Joe : Don't do this to yourself.

  Thorne : I didn't know it was self-inflicted.

• Thorne : Every day I sit here, the revolution creeps closer and closer to victory. Sacrifice of one man's life is a small price to pay.

  Joe : And you think that one man can make that much difference?

  Thorne : The name "Rudolf Hess" ring a bell?

  Joe : German figure skater?

  Thorne : He was Adolf Hitler's right-hand man in until the Second World War...

  Joe : Yes, I know he was.

  Thorne : ...When the war was over, he was put on trial at Nuremburg with the other Nazi bigwigs. Sentenced to life. And in the city of Berlin, there was a penitentiary. Spandau Prison. That's where they put them. Forty years, he was there. Twenty one of them on his own. Twenty one years, all alone in Spandau Prison. So powerful was the spectre of this one man, that after he was dead, they tore down Spandau. They wanted no trace of him left behind!

  Joe : Nice role model. A Nazi...

  Thorne : I'm just saying 'one man'! One man in his cell, one man in power, one man in the right place at the right time...

• Joe : [Watches Thorne writing a paragraph on his prison wall]  Long slogan today.

  Thorne : I had a big meal last night.

  Joe : Who said it?

  Thorne : Carl Morales. "Second Critique of Oligarchy." You should read it.

  Joe : I'm waiting for the movie. So, he was a friend of yours, the famous Professor Morales?

  Thorne : My mentor

  Joe : I heard he fled. Self-imposed exile, they say.

  Thorne : Well, some say he was dumped into the sea from a helicopter in one of those mid-air interrogations.

  Joe : And what do you think?

  Thorne : Doesn't matter.

  Joe : Doesn't matter what you think, or doesn't matter what happened to him?

  Thorne : Doesn't matter!

• Joe : This wasn't my first choice.

  Thorne : You wanna go fight terrorists?

  Joe : Yes, sir.

  Thorne : You don't approve of what we do?

  Joe : Officially, sir, I have no opinion.

  Thorne : Then you should look into getting one.

• Joe : When Junior fell, it was like the first spring after a thousand winters. But I didn't know then the price that I would pay for the revolution. That we would all pay! The wife that I would lose, and the daughter, Daisy, that I would never really know.

• Joe : I thought you said you'd never live in this gingerbread monstrosity.

  Thorne : Tell me about it. But I'm working all the time, it was easier for me to live here.

  Joe : Running a revolution keeps you busy huh?

  Thorne : You know it's nearly a full-time job. Give me just a minute will you?

  [Goes onto the computer at the desk] 

  Thorne : You know I don't know how anybody wrote anything before there were computers. Can you imagine the struggle that Dickens or Tolstoy must have gone through writing those nine hundred-page novels with a pen?

  Joe : As far as I recall, you once wrote with even less. Doesn't seem like something the revolution would embrace, what with the uh, vegetarian laws and the book burnings... but you didn't bring me here to talk to me about word processors.

  Thorne : No, I didn't bring you here to talk to you about word processors. You refused to sign the loyalty oath.

  Joe : It's an insult.

  Thorne : It's a piece of paper!

  Joe : Exactly.

• Joe : From the start, Junior ruled in the shadow of his late father. Papa Max had been a Grade A son of a bitch if ever there was one. Who would have thought we would look back on his reign as the good old days?

• Joe : For all his brutality, Papa Max was clever enough to make us believe that his tyranny was for our benefit. Junior, on the other hand, had been born day-old stupid and had been losing ground ever since.

• Thorne : We all gave up something for a better world.

  Joe : You gave up your son.

• Thorne : D'you ever hear about the Oracle that warned Papa Max that one day his wife was gonna give birth to a son who was gonna kill him and destroy the empire?

  Joe : Yeah. I heard that.

  Thorne : And they wonder why Junior is a psychopath! You would be too if your father tried to stick a coat-hanger through your head when you were a fetus.

• Joe : [Narrating]  Thorne's political movement had started as a coffeehouse movement. No one gave a shit. But as Junior cracked down, Thorne's followers turned to violence. Or maybe it was the other way around.

• [repeated line] 

  Joe : Nothing better than a big, juicy steak.

• Thorne : Ah, you're having second thoughts about the revolution... We are content to let history be the judge!

  Joe : We? Is that the royal we or you and the frog in your pocket?

• Joe : How do you remember it all like that, word for word?

  Thorne : My entertainment options are kind of limited.

  Joe : Have you memorized anything else?

  Thorne : Shakespeare, books of the Bible...

• Thorne : Hello Joe.

  Joe : I didn't think you'd remember me, sir.

  Thorne : Look at you, they made you an officer.

  Joe : Yes sir. And I got married too.

  Thorne : Congratulations.

• Joe : They say I am a war criminal, but everything I did, I did for my country.

• Doc : So are you going to do yourself a favour and sign the loyalty oath?

  Joe : No.

  Doc : I 'm a man of science Joe, and all this revolutionary mumbo-jumbo; I was hired to employ the scientific method. My job right now is to uncover the root of this conspiracy based on the evidence.

  Joe : You have evidence?

  Doc : No, that's how I know there's a conspiracy.

  Joe : What?

  Doc : If there wasn't a conspiracy there would be evidence, that's how effective the conspiracy is.

• Joe : I know that I have done questionable things, but my role in the assassination of the president is one that even now I cannot say I entirely regret.