Hutchinson-Presumed Innocent

Unlike in The Fugitive, the audience is uncertain of Harrison Ford’s guilt until the very end. Perhaps the title of the film is Presumed Innocent because hey, it’s Harrison Ford and you should always assume that he’s the good guy. However, the title of the film does not actually give you an indication of whether he’s actually guilty or innocent of the murder of Carolyn Polhemus, only that he is “presumed innocent,” which, really, he isn’t, because the whole movie revolves around his former “friends” trying to prove his guilt. So, the answer to this question of “is he or isn’t he guilty?” finally comes at the end of the movie when he finds the bloody hammer used to kill Carolyn in his tool chest. Uh oh. Was it really him the whole time? Did he fool everyone, even the audience? It certainly looks that way as he washes off the blood, but nope, his wife comes down and says “I did it. I fooled them.” The look on Rusty Sabich’s face says it all. Though his wife was referring to the interview from which she had just come, Rusty takes it as a confession to Carolyn’s murder.

As soon as Barbara Sabich realizes what Rusty is holding in his hand, she turns around and walks out of the cellar towards the kitchen. She calmly sits at the kitchen table, and what follows is an exchange so quiet and calm, but so filled with tension, that the audience isn’t sure if crazy Barbara is going to kill Rusty now, or Rusty turn in Barbara, or nothing at all. As she explains in excruciating detail the thought and care she took in planning and killing Carolyn, the scene flashes to Rusty a few times, his face completely in disbelief. However, as the scene progresses, his face changes from disbelief to sadness, to guilt, because Rusty Sabich was not completely innocent. His carnal relations with Carolyn led to his wife going completely crazy and turning into a homicidal nut. And Rusty, being the stand-up, by the book guy that he is, has felt guilty about his relations, even more so because he wasn't completely over them. He knows he turned his back on his marriage. The guilt is present in his eyes and his tears. Barbara ends her recollection by claimed that she "saved" them. Rusty kind of scoffs in disbelief as he mouths "saved" to himself. He can't even get the word to come out vocally. Saved. She believed she was saving their marriage, implying it was dying, dead, all because of what he did with Carolyn. He may not have physically killed Carolyn Polhemus, but he was still guilty of the events that led to her death.

Lazo - Presumed Innocent

Presumed Innocent deals heavily with the guilt of Rusty Sabich. Throughout the film, Rusty is confronted by his wife and by his own memories of his affair with Carolyn Polhemus. As a prosecutor, Rusty values justice and the law. He struggles with immense guilt over breaking the law of marriage with his affair. His suspicious behavior while investigating Carolyn's murder is not due to guilt over murdering her like the other investigators believe, but his guilt from sleeping with her (after all, he knows he is innocent of murder). After the case against him is dismissed, Rusty tries to return to his life, but discovers the murder weapon in his own tools.

Barbara's confession escalates Ruty's guilt

These two scenes are key to understanding Rusty's guilt. First, he seems to quickly realize that his wife, Barbara, must have murdered Carolyn. Curiously, he goes to the basement and proceeds to destroy the evidence. He does not keep the hammer to confront Barbara with, but immediately tries to cover it up. Why? This becomes clear after Barbara admits that she had to "destroy the destroyer." Rusty's final voice over says, "there is punishment." Rusty realizes that although he did not physically murder Carolyn, she would not have been killed if he never had an affair with her. In his mind, it is his fault (at least to an extent) that she is dead. His guilt runs so deep that he blames himself for her murder even though he did not kill her, and also takes full responsibility for the affair when Carolyn had just as much, if not more, to do with it starting.

Torres - Presumed Innocent

Throughout Presumed Innocent there is ambiguity as to who is guilty. Guilt takes on an interesting role in the film, as in the end it shows that although Rusty is not guilty of murder, he is still guilty. After Rusty was acquitted of the murder, he is at home working outside when he comes across a small hatchet with blood and hair fibers on it and realizes that they are Carolyn Polhemus's. When he confronts his wife she appears somewhat demented, referring to herself in the third person (similar to the way Rusty would reenact criminal motives and events in the courtroom). Barbara confesses that, following his affair, she fell into a state of depression and even considered suicide before deciding that it would be better to "destroy the destroyer," Polhemus. She tells him why she felt that she had to kill Carolyn and how she did it. She had bought glasses similar to some Carolyn had and got Rusty's fingerprints on them and saved his sperm in a freezer after they had had sex. After killing Carolyn , Barbara set up other evidence in order to make it look like a man attacked and raped her, making it seem as though someone who she had put away had come back for revenge. She claims that she did not actually intend to frame her husband and did not anticipate he would be charged with the murder; she assumed that he would realize it was her and file it under unsolved cases. After hearing this, Rusty cannot bring himself to turn her in; he cannot bring himself to separate his son from his mother. In a final voice-over he says that the murder of Carolyn Polhemus has been written off as unsolved, though he still feels guilt over his role in causing her death. Although he did not murder Carolyn , it was his affair with her that caused his wife to murder her. This final scene is very important to the movie because it explains to the audience why Rusty has been displaying so much guilt throughout the film; he knew that having an affair was wrong and he regrets it, but now he is forced to live with the fact that his mistake led his wife to murder.

Madere - Presumed Innocent

In Presumed Innocent, Harrison Ford's character Rusty Sabich spends most of the movie attempting to convince every other character in the movie and the audience of his innocence in Carolyn's murder. However, one of the reasons it is hard to believe Rusty when he says he is not Carolyn's murderer is that it is clear that he is guilty of some wrongs related to her death. Rusty's trial is dismissed, however, when misconduct by the prosecution is revealed and there is a lack of material evidence to convict him. It then seems as if Carolyn's murder would go unsolved until the second-to-last scene of the movie reveals that the murderer was actually Rusty's wife.

Despite the fact that Rusty's wife admits her guilt in the murder and explains the great lengths she went to to not only prevent the police from suspecting her, but implicate Rusty, it is clear that Rusty still experiences come guilt, some responsibility in the murder. He feels guilty for the affair with Carolyn (and the resulting obsession it created) as he has throughout the movie as it was a breaking of a rule and Rusty is a strict follower of rules. His wife's confession adds a new dimension to his guilt. Even if he was not the person to actually take Carolyn's life, he feels as though his actions and affair spurred his wife's actions, even that his wife was justified in her actions. In his mind, had he not had the affair and obsession with Carolyn, she would still be alive.

This guilt manifests itself in that he chooses to remain silent about his wife's guilt in the murder. He washes off the hammer, supposedly planning to never say anything to his wife about knowledge of her actions until she confesses to him. Even after the confession, he chooses not to turn her in, saying that it was an impracticality to try two people for the same crime and that he could not take his son's mother away from him. At the end of the movie, he speaks of a punishment, which presumably is a lifetime of guilt over the affair and responsibility in his death, a lifetime of guilt over not assigning blame and punishment to the murderer (which he clearly believes in throughout the movie), and a lifetime of living with a murderer.

Bloo- Presumed Innocent

Presumed Innocent gives several hints that Rusty Sabich might be the killer of Carolyn. However, because of a lack of evidence, and many flaws in the trial, the case is dismissed and Rusty can return to his daily life.

One afternoon, when Sabich is repairing the fence, he is runmaging through his toolbox, when he finds the murder weapon: a small hammer with blood and blond hair on it. His face devoid with emotion, Rusty goes to the basement and destroys the evidence of Carolyn's blood and hair. This scene already shows that Sabich feels guilty and that he knows he is in an indirect way responsible for the death of Carolyn,even though he haven't heard the story yet. His wife Barbar enters as he's cleaning off the murder weapon. ''I did it'', she says. These words have a double meaning: Barbara is speaking of her job interview, while Rusty thinks she is confessing the murder. She looks shocked when she sees the murder weapon and goes upstairs.

In the final scene, Barbara tells her husband what she did and more importantly why. Rusty's guilt manifests itself since he realizes that not only does he feel guilty because of his adultery but also that his adultery caused his wife to kill Carolyn - it was the inexorable consequence.

Rusty feels that he is responsible for Carolyn's death. He now must live with the pain, the loss of Carolyn, the guilt of his adultery, and a marriage destroyed by either his infidelity and Barbara's murder of Carloyn.

Dennis Mosquito Coast and Witness

In Witness and Mosquito Coast, Allie Fox(Mosquito Coast) and Grandfather Lapp(Witness) are the patriachal figures in the movie. The young boys and adults look up to them for guidance and advice also as a idol. In Mosquito Coast, Charlie Fox began to look at his father in a different light after the destruction of Fatboy and the killing of those men. His father was not the same great man that he once was. He had drasgged his entire family into the jungle trying to play God. Another instance that made his father seem like a stranger to hi, was when he made Charlie and some other tribe memeber hike through the forest for two days to bring ice to another village. In doing this Allie hoped that the villagers would be more greatful and have more gratitude for the gift he was giving to them. Charlie had lost respect for his father and realized that he was no longer this great person, that he had made him out to be.
In the picture below, you can see the look of distrust and uncertainty in Charlie's face. It is as if he doesn't even recognize his own father, or the man he has become.This is a personal scene and the tight camera proxemics leave no room for movement.











In Witness, Sammuel Lapp ha a turning point, where he is sitting in his grandfather's Lapp looking at John Book's gun and say's that he would only kill a man, who in his eyes has done wrong. He says this refering to the men that murdered the undercover police officer. Sammuel is in a split bewteen Book and his grandfather. He likes the thing Book tell him, but some of it conflicts with the things he has already been taught. He learns to move past that and sees when he is in desperate trouble, his community will come to his rescue. He realizes that bad people will always get their punishment whether it is lawful or religious.
 In the photo below, it shows the two men together and the different outlooks they have. Book is the city slicker and Eli Lapp is the traditional Amish man. It is a personal scene and the tight camera position leaves no room for them to move.

Roberts-Presumed Innocent

After the trial Sabich is no longer convicted of killing Carolyn so he resumes his semi-normal routine. It is during his return to normalcy that he discovers that his wife is the true murderer of Carolyn. The murder weapon is found among the tools he is using to fix his fence and when his wife returns home that evening he silently confronts her about it. He doesn't need to say a single word his wife knows and details her entire murder plan.
This scene is pivotal because Rusty Sabich has felt guilt throughout the film, but not guilt for killing Carolyn rather guilt for having an affair with her earlier on. It is in this moment that his guilt truly manifests itself . Because of his affair his wife felt the need to "destroy the destroyer," or kill Carolyn, the woman who "bewitched" his husband. Rusty feels like his initial affair set off a chain of events that led up to Carolyn's death. He is not directly guilty of the crime, like his wife is, but he feels guilt for ultimately causing it.