Crimes and Misdemeanors

As I understand it, the moral philosophy of the movie is this: it doesn't really matter if there is real justice, if murderers go to jail or Hell or they are tortured by their conscience or anything like it. The inescapable punishment for a murderer is this: either they are punished, or they are not. If they are punished, they have to deal with that. If they are not, they have to live in a world in which there is no justice, in which murder is something one can get away with.

I can claim to believe whatever I want, but for that claim to hold I have to act in a way that doesn't contradict it. I can still hold that things have meaning, an essential and inviolable conscience for instance, as long as I don't violate it. To me, dealing with the level of nihilism that murder entails sounds worse than almost any other hell that comes to mind. I don't know if murder condemns me to hell, or if Providence will cause me to be brought before a jury, or if it will make my soul shatter (and thus provide an opportunity to make a Horcrux) but as long as I don't actually kill anyone, I'm free to believe any of those things. If it's a branch of fiction, it's one I'm not interested in living without.