Le Choix

 

Man is condemned to be free; because once he is thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
Jean-Paul Sartre 

The Joseph portrayed by Vincent Lindon is neither a hero nor a martyr. He is an ordinary man, defined by recognizable roles—father, husband, professional—who at a certain point decides not to evade a decision. His choice does not stem from denial, but from an act of acknowledgment: answering for what has been done. It is here that the film locates its most complex existential core. Responsibility does not appear as an abstract or consoling value, but as a concrete weight, capable of dismantling what has been patiently built over time: a solid career, a familial equilibrium, a social reputation. 

The night journey thus becomes a threshold zone, an existential limbo in which every word spoken over the phone does not repair but fractures. Every choice exposes one to precariousness. The film lucidly suggests that doing the “right” thing does not necessarily coincide with doing the “useful” thing, nor with preserving order. On the contrary, authentic responsibility is often what shatters the architecture of identity we have constructed in order to survive. 

In this sense, La scelta di Joseph does not simply portray a moral crisis, but a conflict between temporalities. On one side stands the present, with its urgencies and incessant calls; on the other, the past, which continues to exert a silent pressure. Origins, family, Joseph’s emotional and social upbringing are never spelled out didactically, yet they are felt as an underground current. His decisions do not emerge from nowhere: they are the result of a history, of a learned way of inhabiting the world, of an idea of duty that precedes the event itself. 

The film makes it clear that we never choose from a neutral position. Every decision is already inhabited by who we have been, by the lacks we have received, by internalized rules, by family examples—or absences. The past does not mechanically determine choices, but it orients them, tilts them, makes them more or less bearable. In Joseph, this inheritance manifests as an inability to escape—not so much because he could not, but because he would no longer recognize himself. 

The film further suggests, with almost cruel precision, that a single night, one brief suspension of control, is enough to place the entire architecture of a life under permanent judgment. The error here is not the outcome of habitual deviance, but of a human distraction, a momentary vulnerability that breaks the illusion of moral continuity. And yet, precisely because it is isolated, that error becomes absolute: it does not dissolve over time, but crystallizes as a mark. La scelta di Joseph thus interrogates one of the deepest asymmetries of adult existence—the fact that years of discipline, coherence, and sacrifice can be erased, or at least radically diminished, by a single gesture. Life does not always punish the repetition of error, but sometimes its uniqueness, transforming one night into a sentence that extends indefinitely over time. 

Vincent Lindon lends the character a solid physical presence, a restrained voice, a face that gradually loses control over its masks. His performance works through subtraction, returning a man in search of coherence. And this may be the most radical form of responsibility the film brings to the screen: not saving everything, but accepting loss as the inevitable consequence of a choice fully assumed. 

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Abraham Lincoln