I’m sure many seniors have heard me talk about the same two topics at various college fairs and visits: free speech and open discourse. In an effort to avoid edgy conversations and personal discomforts, the internet and higher education has diluted (perhaps intentionally) those two tenets essential to that whole arena, so I was very surprised to see this film on open YouTube access. Why, in this environment, would a film disparaging the limits on speech be freely available?

 One, “Devil-May-Care” was released almost a hundred years ago, so maybe that’s why. It seems harmless. And two, it’s not an easy watch (mostly because of the hero’s very interesting pomade). But way beneath the glitzy Roaring Twenties sensibilities is a not-so-harmless message that’s stuck with me.

“You can’t just cut away true connection, that rare bond to others for which most of us spend our entire lives searching, just because of someone’s politics.”

 The short version (because I’m betting most of you haven’t watched this) is this: post-1815 France, Bonapartists versus Royalists. Armand de Treville, a Bonapartist leader, escapes prison and hides as a footman at a country estate, where he promptly runs into staunch Royalist Leonie de Beaufort. She opposes everything he stands for.

 She also, inconveniently, begins to fall for him. You can predict the rest. Maybe you could say this is a “Romeo and Juliet” try hard, but the fascinating thing about “Devil-May-Care” is, initially, Armand and Leonie aren’t kept apart by their apparent social statuses. But when Leonie — of high status — realizes his true identity and gets to know him, she doesn’t automatically throw herself at his feet. She despises him even though their personalities match well, and she knows he would be a fair match for her. Why? Because Leonie lets politics destroy the genuine human connection she and Armand have.

“We need to be more like Armand: willing to look one another in the eye, even across political lines and have that meaningful conversation anyway.”

 I guess it’s just a film, but “Devil-May-Care” touched me deeply because political division didn’t end with Bonaparte’s demise. You can’t just cut away true connection, that rare bond to others for which most of us spend our entire lives searching, just because of someone’s politics.

 Armand tracks down Leonie the night before she’s set to marry someone else and looks her right in the eye, forcing her to come to terms with the fact that she’s lying to herself.

 Unlike Armand, schools and colleges don’t perform grand romantic gestures, but they do decide whether they’ll engage in or avoid disagreement. If schools are supposed to prepare us for our future, they can’t treat open discourse as a risk. A community that values education has to trust its students to engage in hard conversations and listen to others.

 Else, we risk becoming like Leonie, choosing comfort over the truth and needing someone else to remind us what we already know. We need to be more like Armand: willing to look one another in the eye, even across political lines and have that meaningful conversation anyway.