What a terrible man

I watched this thinking, jeez this Otani lad is awful. He steals money from a bar, he takes his wifes money, he has mistresses, he doesn`t really care about his son, he seems to make an admirer of his wife come to his house. What a terrible man. And then I checked the background. The movie is based on a Japanese novel by Dazai Osamu. The book is semi-autobiographical, so many of the things that happen mirror what the author did. The author did try to kill himself numerous times, he had affairs, he became an alcoholic. I guess at that time a womans options were limited and they couldn`t divorce easily.
Also it got me thinking that the bad guys in superhero movies could be shown like this guy. Imagine Spiderman against a super-villian who is bad to his wife.