Ivan Locke, the eponymous hero in the film “Locke” (2013), is on an hour-and-ahalf night drive towards his destiny, in the sole company of his inexorable sense of responsibility. As a construction foreman, Locke is well aware of the difficulties inherent to the building process: like forging one’s own life or assuming responsibility for a life not yet born, it is a process fraught with formidable challenges and tragic moral choices. Living up to our moral obligations can be so taxing that we risk destroying everything: “Make one little mistake and the whole world comes crashing down”, as Locke remarks. The only recourse we have in dealing with moral choice is to take what Goethe called the “right path”. For Locke, this means journeying through the night, compelled by a sense of responsibility towards an urgent and inescapable moral call that cannot be postponed (as indeed most moral calls cannot). Locke spends the entire journey on his car phone with a series of invisible off-screen characters representing the real or phantasmal interlocutors of his moral life. While listening to these conversations, we come to realize that the process of creation – whether it be of a building or of a life – is not just about producing something ex novo but about becoming aware of our limits and assuming full responsibility for them. The film ends, significantly, at dawn, with some dramatic release of tension. However, it offers no definitive resolution, for as in real life, responsibility is an endless journey, and moral life is a dawn that gives rise to an infinite series of new days.