Fate As An Inevitable Twist Of Justice

When war comes into a town, a city, or a country, it doesn’t only lead to devastation of every aspect of life, but it paves the way towards the transformation of society. As happening in the environment of war, the succession of events in the storyline of this episode follows a similar effect. Since in a war everything can happen, from the very first encounter between the two main characters of this episode we can infer that war isn’t only the background and essence of the environment, but also can serve as a parable to the relationship between these two characters. From hate to love to persecution, these two survivors of war encounter themselves in a paradoxical situation where their war past and tendencies (being from two antagonist nations at the recent war), overlap with their present and their future, notably featuring poetic justice as an ironic twist between the first and second halves of the episode.

As definition states, “poetic justice does not merely require that vice be punished and virtue rewarded, but also that logic triumph. If, for example, a character is dominated by greed for most of a Romance or drama, he cannot become generous” (Wikipedia). The film evokes nor punishment nor reward as a direct influence of the events. The two central characters encounter themselves in a total transformation which could easily be interpreted as a romance since the very beginning, taking into account the constant attraction and curiosity that lies between both characters’ destiny. This destiny is totally ironic taking into consideration the whole context of the story and logic itself. Several events in the story demonstrate that the episode is an expression of pure poetic justice. For example, the fact that everything that happens to the man will happen to the woman and vice versa. At the beginning we can see how the man tries to kill the woman and is rather unsuccessful, leading to the same happening with the woman trying to kill him and resulting in the same effect.

The fate of both characters seems to be a correspondent variable to that of the poetic justice moving within the episode’s boundaries. The relationship between both evolves to a romantic feeling as the man calls the woman prekrassnyi, which in fact is Russian for pretty, and later the episode twists the story line for the woman to call the man “pretty”. These constant repetitions lead us to predict a rather obvious ending, result of many foreshadowing clues within the episode’s action (i.e. the wedding dress). Towards the end of the episode, the two characters’ love for each other becomes an inevitable faith. Their lives have already intersected in every manner since the very moment they see each others’ face for the very first time at the restaurant. The only part remaining is love, and for both to travel down life’s terminal road towards the same fate.