I don't buy it because of the neutrality of the tone in this film. I don't think the director gave a perspective at all on the characters, he just put the camera on them and lets the audience decide. That shows he had no real intention and any perceived reaction is as valid as any other.
Since when is putting the audience in the position to have to analyze the layers of the characters (and their corresponding importance to the movie's themes as a whole), instead of just telling them what they should think, a bad thing? It has always seemed to me that it takes much more talent, and shows a higher opinion of the audience, to do the former. And this film does ask quite a bit of its audience in that regard, often with quite challenging/troubling subject matter.
From your other posts (and I'm inferring here, so I'm sure my opinion is completely wrong), it seems like one of your main issues with this film is, on one hand, probably a very common one, and yet is also quite central to the point of this film. Your statement quoted above, along with a statement in your first post to the effect of "is this film actually trying to make us consider a pedophile as a complex human being?", start to just read as... I hated this film and reject it as disgusting because I was not presented with the black & white characterization of a pedophile as irredeemably subhuman, with which I am comfortable.
Is the fact that this character acts on his urges presented sympathetically? Umm, no. His family is humiliated and torn apart, his son has clearly been psychologically effected by it, even HE knows it's wrong and appears sickened by himself in the scene where he's in bed with his wife. You're not expected to be ok with the idea of child molestation, but there is the expectation that maybe you'll sit and think to yourself "Huh, maybe all people with pedophilic urges aren't running around wide-eyed, psychotically grinning, constantly trying to ravage every small child they see, and just might have other facets to their existence that don't center around preying on our children." It's not comfortable to be forced to look at them as actual humans, because that means looking at them the way we, well, look at ourselves.
The characters in this movie have flaws on a much more grand, shall we say, scale than do most people, but they just serve to illustrate the overarching theme. If you look at each character's story line individually, even Bill's when he asks his wife if she still loves him no matter what, it all boils down to the notion that there is no "true" happiness. All the characters begin the movie refusing to really look at themselves, and they, along with everyone with whom they have a relationship, are not happy. Is being left by your spouse in your 60s pretty devastating? How about finding out the husband with whom you have 2 kids has molested children? Feeling miserable because you're constantly comparing your life to those of your sisters that you envy, or being successful but a complete phony, a bit of a downer? Absolutely. And finding out the truth can sting for a long, long time. But, in the end, I'd wager your chances for finding what makes you, personally, happy are much greater once you admit that, regardless of what you thought was supposed to make you happy, you were wrong.
Everyone has flaws. Everyone wants to feel loved and find their own happiness. MAYBE the director's intent, and reason for not putting any perspective on the characters, was to get the audience to realize that, no matter how differently it seems to manifest in any given person, we're all basically searching for the same thing.
p.s. Give it a rest with the "I know child molestation is bad, so why is there any value in considering those that do it just to reaffirm that I know it's bad." stuff. I'm not a particularly big proponent of gassing Jewish people by the thousands, but I have read Mein Kampf on multiple occasions and would even argue it to be a necessary part of every person's education. The best way to find a solution is prooobably to spend a bit of time trying to understand the problem, which strikes me as hard to do if pedophiles are evil, disgusting spawns of Satan and we shouldn't even look at them. Might be harder to spot potential future ones, too, that haven't acted on their urges yet, but I'm not very good at seeing things without looking at them.
That'll do donkey, that'll do.
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