The Words: Forgiving the Plagiarist

By Wayne Justine Agramon

The Words is a 2012 film depicting a dramatic tale of intellectual property theft. It stars Bradley Cooper as Rory Jansen, a struggling writer who has not convinced a single publisher to get his works published. In a stroke of fate, he and his wife, Dora, played by Zoe Saldana, went for a honeymoon in Paris where he came across an old, typewritten manuscript. He got it published and received literary success.

The film explores the ethical and moral issues of plagiarism when the Old Man, played by Jeremy Irons, the real author of the book shows up and approaches Rory. He told him the truth about how he wrote the book and Rory was filled with such remorse that he resolved to make everything right by telling the truth.

Rory, however, is a character in a book written by Clay Hammond, played by Dennis Quaid. The film has a multi-layered plot similar to that of Inception but a little more sedate and slow-paced. It is a story within a story with melodramatic proportions that some might find boring even with the enticing cast.

What I find alluring about this film is that it has both condemned and forgiven the plagiarist. In the end Rory got away with it but not before he had to undergo such emotional turmoil as the implications of what he did almost breaks him as a person.

The film is highly relevant to the current plagiarism issue of a student from the University of the Philippines. It delves into the compelling reasons why a person is tempted to pass someone else’s work as his one. I’m not saying that Mark Solis is justified in what he did but that this film somehow explains how he is human and therefore has a proclivity to make mistakes and give in to lapses in judgment. The film’s moral, however, is not in justifying but in realizing the mistake and in living with the consequences. In Rory’s case, he may have gotten away with the world knowing of his crime but the guilt of a liar and a plagiarist will forever haunt him in his lifetime.