Dostoevsky famously railed against Turgenev not for attending an execution, but for being unable to watch the final, grisly moment when the condemned's head was chopped off. "No person has the right to turn away and ignore what happens on earth," Dostoevsky later fumed to a friend, "and there are supreme moral reasons for that."
I am reminded of this Russian literary dispute whenever I watch the films of Michael Haneke.
