Today I found myself with very little to do. Lassitude drove me to the painting of my toenails, flipping through endless websites devoid of meaning as if they were the pages of an unimaginative farce, until I found myself in a very familiar position: in front of the television, begging the machinery for something to watch. My indolent search yielded the typical: bad reality shows, terrible Norwegian advertising, (leaps and bounds above what I am accustomed to, I'll admit, but mind numbing all the same) until at last I stumbled upon something of merit. Something that, like my insatiable boredom, drove me to a piece of machinery from which I expected entertainment. I found a film that has encouraged me to write.

"Quills" was filmed in 2000 and stars Geoffrey Rush, Michael Cane, Kate Winslet and Joaquin Phoenix. I don't mean to rewrite the back of the movie cover, but I shall lay out the premise, so that my dearest readers- as the addled employee thanks those he scorns, and as the obsequious courtier smiles up to the parents he so despises, I duly note that they have abandoned me- will understand my underworked but brilliant line of thinking. The opening scene finds us in Napoleonic France, and introduces us with a brilliant monologue carefully delivered by Rush, who plays the Marquis De Sade. Sade is an inmate in the insane asylum which houses others like him and the movie of which I speak. Based on the factual individual Marquis De Sade- who's impression has been left on any who have seen this movie or have even muttered the word "sadism", which was birthed by his own moniker- the movie unearths the once-notorious landmarks that Sade created, namely his most famous, "Justine" and "120 Days of Sodom". France conjointly fought him and cherished him, and his scandalous novels soaked the country as the leadership fought to purge France of his traces. Some say he was a martyr who valiantly died in the name of artistic expression, but today I will choose the route taken less often by myself, and characterize him with minimum description: he was a pornographer.

The film documents part of his time at the asylum. The marvelous performances procure the laudability while the interaction between the explosive characters forms the intrigue. The film is a multifaceted one. I, however, am easily bored. I will therefore focus on the exchange that sparked my interest the most: that of Sarde and the pious director of the asylum, Abbé Coulmier.

The beginning brings us Sade in a cell. Coulmier, pious and dutiful, ceaselessly attempts to run the asylum with the necessary efficiency and the affection his religion pontificates, but, predictably, falls short of success. The asylum is run by the inmates, and Sade easily slips his debauched imagination to a publisher. Many times throughout the film Sade refers to his naughty penmanship as his convictions, his morals, his beliefs. The character we view is governed and molded by prurient thoughts that saturate every sentence he mutters. His flame of fornication never flickers, but burns blasphemously up to his death and valiantly through it. He never surrenders, but rather he thinks and writes his thoughts persistently, almost piously.

Coulmier does the same. As a man of God, and apparently as an ardent humanist, he treats Sade kindly, despite the consequences Sade's kinky exploits wreak on his position as director of the asylum. His religious convictions stand so starkly different next to Sade's gluttony that a gamut is formed by the two extremes they hold so dear to their beings. Coulmier fights to cure Sade of his "madness", but in the end sade's persitence drives him to hatred. When the Marquise' dirty words bring the demise of Coulmier's love, the chambermaid Madelaine, Coulmier turns to the violence he previously avoided. He has Sade's tongue cut out, but acts in the name of God all the same; he tells Sade that Madelaine died pure, though she lived an admirer of Sade's provocative tales. Coulmier is tortured by nightmares of fornicating in front of a weeping statue of the Lord with the deceased Madelaine, and he is shown whipping himself while reading his bible.

The crusader is anything but silenced, however, and when Coulmier is informed that Sade persists by writing his stories on his cell wall in his own filth, he dispenses the last rights in preparation of Sade's death.

In an act both brilliant and suicidally immortalizing, Sade ends his own life by biting the cross off of Coulmier's rosary during the last rights, swallowing it, and choking on the salvation of the cross. A defeated cry rings throughout the asylum, reverberating the mourning of Sade's victory.

The dark scene fades and a cheerful young man expresses the gratitude he holds in taking the position of director of the asylum. The new Abbe is taken on tour through the structured, well disciplined institution. The inmates earn their keep in the asylum by working in print shops, laboring away to produce nothing other than the works of the late Sade. The doctrine now preached in the halls of the edifice is no longer the dire Christianity of Coulmier, but rather the raw profanity of Sade.

The last prisoner the new Abbe is shown is one who resembles the introductory Sade; hair matted and skin pale he lies in his dank cell. He begs the Abbe for a quill and some paper, he screams out for the opportunity to release his passions and convictions onto paper. He is the imprisoned Coulmier.

The knee-jerk reaction is to assume that Coulmier writes the same material produced by Sade. What a clever parallel, one thinks, to pose the abbe in the exact same state as his nemeses, how shocking to see him become Sade. Yes, his hair is long and he lies in a cold cell, but the definitive facet, the words he begs to be able to write, aren't necessarily the same pornographic tales that eventually wrought his collapse. One hears Rush's voice once more, speaking of the tales Coulmier spins, and you hear disgust in his voice. Do not turn the page, dear reader, he warns. I do not think that the Abbe writes of sexual escapades; he piously declares his conviction, his morals, his beliefs. Hence the disgusted warning Rush delivers against the dangerous literature of the Abbe, the dangerous rantings of blind religion he finds to be so malevolent. In an asylum that serves as a printing press dedicated to Sade's tales, Coulmier's Christian oration has become the people's pornography.

Rush's first monologue is brought to mind as he delivers his second and final discourse. His earlier words ring through the mind of the viewer as his warning is spoken in his latter: "How quickly the predator becomes the prey".