“You make us pity him.”

Bobby turned off the projector and flipped the lights back on. He shrugged.

“He looks haunted, pathetic, old,” Mary said.

“He is haunted, pathetic, old.”

“But he bears responsibility for atrocities, and he won’t admit it. He doesn’t even desire our sympathy. You hold the camera on him. You dwell on his shakiness. You let his humanity play on us,” Mary said.

“Yeah, you seem like a tiresome asshole, a bully, and he seems like a victim,” Will said.

“That’s the truth. I showed the truth. The truth is complicated. More complicated than we would like,” Bobby said.

“But are you creating a polemic, a tool, or are you on some ego-artist trip?” Will said.

“Your film makes things complicated, and that doesn’t inspire action, that inspires despair,” Mary said. “Besides, who says that’s the truth? That’s sentimentality. If he is blameless, then who do we assign blame to? Aren’t all individuals human? Can’t you portray Nixon and Kissinger as lonely, misguided men leading lives underwritten by existential desperation? Is that what the world needs right now? Empathy for all the powerful, careless old men?” Mary became angry as she spoke.