does this road lead to the cathedral?

"Does this road lead to the cathedral?"
"No, this is Varlam Street, it doesn't lead to the Cathedral"
"Well what's the point of a road, if it doesn't lead to the Cathedral?"

That exchange comes right at the end of the film. I was reminded by it of a quote from Thomas Nagel, that philosophers are after the truth, even though they know that's not what they're going to get (or words to that effect).

All roads lead away from the truth? Randomly, any old where, skirting round the truth? Or maybe, tantalisingly, they lead towards the truth, but never quite reach it. You would see it ahead of you all the time, like a rainbow - or a mirage - but you could never touch it.

It's a depressing enterprise to be on a road you know will never get there, especially if that is the only point of the road. But worse still than the so-called roads to truth are those to the (so-called) cathedral. Abuladze's point (among others) is that only the cathedral is worth walking towards. I wonder, though - is there any point in walking towards it if we know we can never arrive? Wouldn't it be better - and more honest - just to enjoy the numerous and immediately gratifying pleasures of this world, than to be tormented by a chase you know from the outset to be hopeless.

Because - quite apart from the maze of roads which lead us not towards but away from the cathedral; quite apart from the length of the very few roads that do lead towards it (and how we identify them) - unlike the quest for truth, the hunt for the cathedral - for justice, righteousness, or whatever else it symbolises - cannot even be a solo enterprise, a road we stroll along, enjoying the view as we do so. The road to justice, for one thing, is a hideous one: full of maimed bodies, lives cut short, malnourished and psychologically damaged children. It is a road where all the injustices of the world are concentrated. You couldn't hope to beat them otherwise.

Unlike the quest for truth, which does at least appear to take us slowly, very gradually closer to a fuller understanding (even if it never gets us there) - the quest for justice even appears to be diverging from its goal as time proceeds. Injustices appear to be more numerous and more shocking as the potential for reducing them apparently increases... but the potential for increasing them still further increases at a faster rate. Unlike the quest for truth, the quest for justice can be knocked off course in half an hour of warfare or a 2 hour meeting of the WTO. The road to justice can be bombed, unlike the road to truth.

And of course, the road to justice isn't only bombed by those who have their fingers on the nuclear buttons, although they bear the lion's share of blame. The road to justice, the chance of ever getting close to the cathedral, is bombed at every step - and these are the bombs that right now I am finding it most difficult to sidestep - by those who turn a blind eye, those who never bother to look, and those who preach but do not practise treating people equally, humanely, respectfully.

There are those who give a front page spread to a British soldier's death, and hide a single paragraph about a hundred more Iraqi deaths on page 17, somewhere near the bottom. That is as clear a case of racism as you could hope to see, and in the same breath these same people talk of human rights.

There are those who claim to have a social conscience, but now encourage us to forgive and forget the deaths of 1 million people, to value the sincerity of the warmongers, their good intentions and their charming smiles. And there are those who laugh off the screams of rage and tell us to go out and enjoy life, to go to the theatre or hold a dinner party: the huge mass of chattering classes who simply will not be outraged, who will not shout with rage at what our government is doing and has done. Because, as they will say - we can never fight all the injustices of the world, can never really get to the cathedral.

And the real tragedy is that without their help we never can.