New Delhi: Evil is beguiling, evil geniuses more so. They excite us like tantalising puzzles that we want to examine and solve.
Writers, film directors, theatre owners and audiences are almost like law enforcement officers in their pursuit to understand psychopaths and that’s why they keep revisiting terrorists, serial killers, rapists — for yet another peek into their minds, their homes, their rage, and their crimes.
But, psychopaths are also cliches.
Almost every exploration of a criminal mind that’s been mounted on the big screen or split into episodes for OTT platforms is a trek down a familiar road. En route there are absentee or overbearing parents. Some physical or emotional abuse. There’s unease in mundane, social situations. Solace in solitude. And there’s almost, always, sexual frustration.
Given this template, there is nothing exceptional in the story of Theodore Kaczynski, or as he is better known, Ted Kaczynski, America’s Unabomber. And yet,…