When someone watches a Charlie Chaplin film, especially the immigrant, he observes the humor when he is simply a spectator, or the directing when he is an expert. But you must’ve been hurt, or you must’ve been shown pain at close range, in order to understand how semantic are the messages of the creator. Because all of the caricatures of the film actually exist. Not in the same manner of course, but they exist, they are not inventions of the director.
Charlie Chaplin simply assembled the mosaic of poverty and pain. He records in his own style, the philosophy of misery. Some may assume that, he simplifies the issue, but in actual fact he converts it from an abstract, into one understandable to everyone. His work is not a caricature. It doesn’t ridicule the miserables, instead, he protects them with a smile.
Each black and white immigrant could seen through the interpretation of Charlie Chaplin, a part of his life and probably a piece of his soul. Pointing out the immigrant’s Golgotha, the creator explains the evaluation of pain. So through his work, every immigrant, every one in confinement, even every missing person, can live again. It gives life to value. And value can not but please. Because in its own fashion, it manages to give prominence to the substance of one in agony, without forcing him to be expressed in a vulgar manner.
With a tearful look, with a daring move, with a memorable moment, with a picture which tells a thousand words. Every nation should’ve had near it, a Charlie Chaplin, a Charlot, in it’s hour of need. A buffoon, in the etymological sense, in order to protect through the dignity of suffering, everyone’s human rights.
Only then, would every immigrant, every refugee, every one in confinement, even every missing one, be claiming with his rights, his own existence. Only then, every citizen of a wounded nation, would see in his own eyes, the tears which didn’t flow, from shear sensitivity, so as not to hurt his soul. Only then he would’ve known the meaning of need.