ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Tom Wilkinson

Burden – Only Love Can Replace Hate

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Jesus told us “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27f, NRSV). We revere those words, but probably in our heart of hearts we say, “yeah, right.” In Andrew Heckler’s film Burden, we see what that means. It is hard. But it may also lead to transformation.

Based on a true story, the film is set in Laurens, South Carolina in the 1990s, the film centers on Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund), a young man who has risen to the rank of Grand Dragon within the local Ku Klux Klan. He is mostly uneducated and get by working as a repo man. He, along mentor and father-figure Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson), opens The Redneck Shop and KKK Museum in downtown Laurens. This immediately gets the attention of a local Baptist minister, Reverend David Kennedy (Forest Whittaker), who organizes daily non-violent protests outside the shop. Kennedy is adamant about keeping the protests non-violent, but Griffin is eager to provoke a riot and wants Kennedy out of the picture.

When Burden begins dating Judy (Andrea Riseborough), a young single-mother, who is opposed to the Klan, his commitment begins to wane. His love for Judy and her son makes him question his place in the Klan, and eventually he opts to leave the Klan. He and Judy are immediately evicted from their home and lose their jobs. Living in Judy’s car and reduced to panhandling, Kennedy meets with them and hears their story. He invites them into his home—much to the dismay of his wife, son, and congregation.

But that marks about the halfway point in the film. The real conflict that fills the second half of the film is about how Burden must learn lessons of repentance, forgiveness, and transformation. As Kennedy says, hate will not go away unless it is replaced by love. Burden’s love for Judy was the starting point that opened the way for more love to flow in. I think the film could have used a bit more of Judy’s story to explain her antipathy for the Klan.

Many will look at this as a great triumph over racism. In some ways it is. The Klan and its hatred need to be confronted and overcome. The personal transformation of Mike Burden is not far short of miraculous. But showing racism in its grossest forms (as many films do) covers over the more subtle systemic racism that fills our society and, if we are honest with ourselves, our own lives. It is easy to look at Mike Burden and know that we were never the kind of racist he was before he was brought around to a new way of thinking. But will we be willing to look to see just how racist we are?

Where this film shines is not so much in its confrontation of racism as in its more subtle look at the power of non-violence and the transformative power of Jesus’ words in the first paragraph above. That teaching goes against everything else in our experience. Reverend Kennedy acted out those words in the way he treated a man who hated him and abused him. To befriend Burden went against Kennedy’s own sense of self-preservation. (And his wife and son were more than clear about their fears.) The fruits that flow from that act eventually led Burden to a new way of seeing the world in which he lived. It also opened him up to the point of confessing his own sins and repenting so that he could more fully appreciate the grace that had been offered him.

Photos courtesy of 101 Studios

Denial – Does Truth Matter?

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Does truth even matter anymore? I receive frequent emails from FactCheck.org that looks at the statements made by political candidates and rates their accuracy. It may not come as a surprise that some statements are blatantly false. Is the truth just an annoyance that gets in the way of what we’d like to say and believe? Standing for the truth is the core of Denial, a true story courtroom drama about a professor who is sued by a Holocaust denier for libel.

Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz), a professor of history at Emory University, has made a name as one who has studied Holocaust denial. In a book she mentions David Irving (Timothy Spall), a British self-taught historian of World War II, as a Holocaust denier and Hitler apologist. He sues her for libel leading to a sensationalized trial in London. Her defense team, led by solicitor Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott) and barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson), sets a strategy that troubles Lipstadt—to not put her or any Holocaust survivors on the stand. Rather, they planned to focus on Irving and his racist, anti-Semitic views that had led him to distort history.

DENIAL

While much of the film is the courtroom drama (and all of the courtroom dialogue is taken verbatim from the trial transcripts), it is also the personal story of Dr. Lipstadt through this persecution. (The film is based on her book, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial.) Often we sense her solitude in the midst of all the media frenzy. Even when with her legal team, she is often alone. They have their legal experience and strategy. For them, her defense is all important, but for Lipstadt the truth is what really matters and that is why she is not willing to settle. She wants to make it clear that fact of the Holocaust is not subject the whim of whoever may not want to acknowledge it. She wants the pain of the Holocaust victims to have voice. For the others involved, the truth does matter, but it seems to be secondary to winning.

DENIAL

Irving, on the other hand, is portrayed as a self-aggrandizing egotist. For him, the truth is what he wants it to be. He relishes the acceptance this trial seems to give to him and his ideas. It is exactly that approach which is the target of the legal defense. Rampton, in his cross examination treats him as totally unimportant. He refuses to even look at him. It is not so much that he is worthy of contempt. They want to portray that he is not even worthy of notice because he cares nothing about truth.

The film does, of course, speak to the veracity of the historical truth of the Holocaust. That, however, is only a minor part of why the film is important. It is not so much about whether the Holocaust actually happened. (We are expected to already know the fact about that.) Rather this is about what credence we should give the various lies that people speak in order to gain acceptance. Which brings us back to the current electoral process. Sites such as Factcheck.org and Politifact.com (which will rate some things as “Pants on Fire) try to help us get a handle on the truth, half-truths, and sometimes outright lies that candidates and their proxies tell us. But often, even in debates and interviews, those half-truths, errors, and lies go unchallenged. Denial reminds us that the truth matters and that sometimes we have to stand up and demand that lies and those who tell them must be called what they are.

Photos courtesy of Bleeker Street