ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

based on true events

I Am the Night – TV Noir

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“Some stories you can’t tell. Some stories don’t want to be told. Some stories will eat you alive.”

TNT’s limited series I Am the Night is a large dose of noir for the small screen. It is moody and ominous, but with a certain moral light flickering amidst overwhelming darkness that envelops the story. It is the kind of story that will eat the characters alive. Produced by Patty Jenkins (who also directed three episodes) and Chris Pine (who also stars), it is based on the true story of Fauna Hodel with ties to Los Angeles’s most notorious unsolved murder. Perhaps because I saw the first episode on a big screen during AFIFest, I note a cinematic quality to the series that makes it seem bigger than expected for a TV series.

When sixteen year-old Pat (India Eisley) discovers that her mother (Golden Brooks) has lied to her about where she came from and that her real name is Fauna Hodel, she sets off to L.A. to connect with her “real family”, her mother Tamar Hodel and her grandfather Dr. George Hodel (Jefferson Mays).

At the same time, we meet a washed-up journalist, Jay Singletary (Pine). Singletary is trying to prove himself worthy of a job, but his alcoholism, drug use, and PTSD and moral injury from his time as a Marine in Korea compound to make it hard for him to cope with life. He is haunted by the story that destroyed his career and by the ghosts from his past. Singletary is in many ways a broken man, but he also has an idealistic approach to his job, looking for the truth, even when facing corruption and power. (While the series is “based in real events” as told in Fauna Hodel’s memoir, Jay Singletary is a composite character.)

As the story progresses from week to week, Fauna and Singletary discover that each can help the other in their quests—her for family, him for redemption through the truth that everyone refuses to see. They are not so much partners in their endeavors as two people who use each other to accomplish parallel goals. Yet in the end, what connects them is their survival in the face of monstrous evil.

Set in 1965, we see an LAPD that is corrupt and violent. (This is the year of the Watts riots, which we see briefly later in the story.) The truths that both Fauna and Singletary seek to uncover run afoul of the powers behind the corruption. Those powers are far more concerned with maintaining the way things are than the truth that could tear them apart. Issues of racism, truth, and identity play out over the course of the series.

Noir often sees the world as a place that is generally filled with evil. That is true of I Am the Night. At the end of the first episode we hear a warning about Dr. Hodel. As the story progresses from week to week, he becomes an ominous presence. We quickly see him as creepy, but step by step he becomes the embodiment of darkness that deepens each week. Each episode brings a new revelation and new depravities to keep us involved and a bit off-balance as we await the next installment.

Just as Dr. Hodel keeps darkening, we begin to feel more hopeful for Singletary, who in spite of his many flaws, continues to hold to an ideal of goodness. We may well understand him as a knight in very rusty armor. He is relentless in the face of physical beatings and his own emotional demons grow from his belief that the evil that fills his world must be defeated. It is the goodness that comes from such flawed characters that brings hope into the dark world of noir. Eventually a character can say, “I think there is grace here… if you can find it.” The grace that is to be found in I Am the Night is not warm and fuzzy, but as is often the case in life, the ability to see the small bits of goodness in an evil world.

The Innocents – Faith and Doubt in War’s Aftermath

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“Faith is twenty-four hours of doubt and one minute of hope.”

The Innocents is one of my favorites from the Newport Beach Film Festival. Set in late 1945 Poland, Mathilde (Lou de Laage), a young French woman doctor, is summoned to a Benedictine convent to aid in the birth of a child. She discovers that there are several pregnant nuns there, the results of rape by first German and later Soviet soldiers. The Abbess (Agata Kulesza) is adamant that this not be reported—it would mean shame and the closing of the convent—but she agrees to allow Mathilde to return and care for the nuns.

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Films in recent years have often treated nuns as something of a dark force within the church. The Innocents treats them with respect, even in times when they may do things that we would deem as inappropriate or even sinful. The film gives us a chance to consider what life within a cloister is like. It shows us the daily rhythms built around prayer. We get insight into what it means to take a vow of chastity and maintain that vow even in extreme circumstances. For example, some of the pregnant nuns do not want Mathilda to touch them even to examine them or deliver the baby because it may go counter to their vows. Even the greatest sin that we observe, we are not asked to judge harshly because we know that there is a reason (although we may question that reason) for such action, and also because of the guilt that weighs so heavily on the one who does it.

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The setting for the film in the aftermath of World War II, shows us a world that is still very broken and in need of healing. There are orphans running uncared for in the streets—even playing atop a coffin sitting in the road. The convent was not spared the horrors of war. Even as the story plays out, the presence of Soviet troops continues to be a threat to the convent—and to Mathilde. The war, although technically over, continues to play out in the lives both inside and outside the walls of the convent.

Mathilde is very much an outsider in both worlds. Within her Red Cross mission, because she is a woman, she doesn’t have the same prestige as a male doctor would have. She is relegated to being an assistant. Within the cloister, where she doesn’t speak the language or understand the religious life, she is very off-balance, but soon learns to adapt.

Much of the film involves a contrast between the sisters and Mathilde, an unbeliever. Mathilde has many conversations with Sister Maria (Agata Buzek) who serves as her translator with the nuns. Mathilde discovers that these nuns, some old, some young, all have a devotion to God, even as they struggle with doubts, especially in the face of the evil that has been visited upon them. Some have lost faith, others hold to it strongly. Mathilde seems fascinated by the faith they hold which is so different from her own approach to the world. Yet she also sees that they may well be happier with their lives than she is with hers.

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The film touches on the question of how God can allow such evil to exist, but without dwelling on it or trying to answer such and unanswerable question. Rather it focuses on how one moves on in the aftermath of such devastation—whether personal or societal. Mathilde struggles within her non-religious worldview just as the nuns struggle with their faith. Yet both must strive to find ways to move forward and to heal the deep wounds within themselves and the world.

Photos courtesy of Music Box Films.

 

Septembers of Shiraz – Revolutionary Backlash

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“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” (Jalal ad-Din Rumi)

Revolutions can bring great advancement, but they often bring pain and chaos in their wake. Septembers of Shiraz is the story of an Iranian Jewish family that must cope with the uproar of the Iranian Revolution. The film opens with a wonderful celebration of family and friends shortly before the Revolution. Isaac (Adrien Brody), the patriarch, is a prosperous jeweler. They are preparing to send their son to America to boarding school. Soon, however, the situation deteriorates. One day Isaac is arrested and taken to prison where he is questioned, tortured, and held without trial. His family has no idea if he is alive or not. His wife Farnez (Salma Hayek) must protect herself and her daughter. In time the family must sacrifice all they have to escape from Iran. (So, of course, there is a tense mad dash to get to the border.)

While we often think of the cruelty of these events as tied in some way to Islam, what we see is not based in religion. Rather it is class warfare. That plays out a bit in the relationship between Farnez and her housekeeper (Shohreh Aghdashloo). Farnez has considered their relationship to be one of friendship, but we see that the role of servant is not the same as a friend. The persecution Isaac faces is not because he is a Jew, but because he has prospered in the system under the Shah that has been done away with.

I think it needs to be noted that this is not an Iranian film. This is a film made by American filmmakers about a country with which we have a history of trouble. That is not to say I think the film sets Iran in a bad light. What struck me in the film is not how barbarous the Iranian Revolution was, but how similar it was to so many other revolutions. The ones that especially came to mind were the Russian and French Revolutions. In both, after deposing the ruler, it soon devolved into a kind of mob rule which took on the trappings of equality. In France, everyone was “Citizen”; in Russia, “Comrade”. Here everyone is addressed as “Brother” whether they are oppressor or victim. The goal here (and I think this is true of the French and Russian Revolutions as well) isn’t some ideological standard, but vengeance for past inequality—punishing those who profited from past oppression, even if they were not an active participant.

Always these kinds of revolutions claim to be acting in the name of justice. Yet often the new order, as it tries to right past wrongs, ends up creating its own injustices. Perhaps that is why the filmmakers open the film with the quotation from Rumi above. It is calling up to look beyond those things we believe are right or wrong (or even of righting wrongs) and meet not in a battle, but as community.