ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

World War I

6.15 Stepping into 1917

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In our first episode of 2020, writer/director Sam Mendes wants to take us back to 1917 where he immerses the viewer in the Great War and tells the story of two young soldiers who are given the impossible task of reaching another unit to warn them of a trap that could potentially wipe out hundreds of their men. Depicted as though a single take, the film includes stunning visuals and offers modern insight into our historical understanding. This week on the show, we welcome back Seeing and Believing’s Kevin McLenithan to talk about the nature of honour, the importance of individual stories and our Top 3 Movie Moments of 2019.

You can also stream the episode above on podomatic, Alexa (via Stitcher), Spotify or Soundcloud! Or, you can download the ep on Apple Podcasts or Google Play!

Want to continue to conversation at home?  Click the link below to download ‘Fishing for More’ — some small group questions for you to bring to those in your area.

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1917: Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne

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Director/co-writer Sam Mendes used stories his grandfather told about World War I, plus others’ stories from the Imperial War Museum archives, for the foundation of 1917. It is the story of friendship, loyalty, determination, and courage. But it also touches at times on the futility that is inherent in war.

The film opens with Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) relaxing during what has become a lull in the fighting. Blake is summoned to report to the General and to bring someone with him. The two report and Blake is tasked with delivering a message. The Germans seem to have withdrawn. Another battalion, thinking the Germans are on the run is planning a dawn attack to try to finish them off. However, it’s a trap. If the attack happens it will cost the lives of 1600 men. Blake was chosen because his brother is in that group, and so Blake will have great motivation. The difficulty is that to get there they must navigate through No Man’s Land, and then a few miles through enemy territory that may or may not still have enemy soldiers waiting to kill them.

Mendes, working with lauded cinematographer Roger Deakins, strives to let us see the journey step by step. The film is seemingly one continuous tracking shot of the two soldiers and the landscapes they travel through. This is truly a technical challenge to accomplish, and it is worth noting that it is achieved.  Personally, I find that a bit distracting because I start looking for the seams of where different takes have been blended to each other.

This method creates an atmosphere of constant tension. From the first steps into No Man’s Land they are targets. They must work their way through barbed wire, the various craters and rotting corpses (both equine and human), never knowing when something might happen. When they reach the enemy’s abandoned trench, there is still no safety. There could be other threats to deal with. There is little time to relax. Even in open country, any building could be dangerous.

While there are other characters they encounter (the cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, and a number of others in what are essentially bit parts), this is really the story of Blake and Schofield and their mission. They are comrades, but not especially close. They have different outlooks on the mission. Blake, with the motivation of saving his brother, wants to start immediately; Schofield is more cautious. Schofield is a bit more experienced, having been awarded a medal from an earlier battle; Blake looks forward to doing something that will get a medal. Blake is open about talking about his family; Schofield is more compartmentalized, knowing he may never see his family again.  Their relationship grows through this mission, but that is not the real focus. Instead, as we see these two soldiers risking their lives to complete the mission, we note the wartime virtues that they embody.

I have to admit that I’m nearly always conflicted about war movies. I view war as evil. Even a just war (if such a thing exists) is inherently evil, even if it must be entered into to stop greater evil. Yet, in the midst of that evil, we are able to find examples of people acting valiantly. This can often lead to an idealized and romanticized view of war and those who fight. That is a danger that 1917 flirts with at times. Yet, Mendes also includes bits and pieces that point to a more balanced understanding. For instance, when Blake asks Schofield why he doesn’t wear the medal he earned, Schofield tells him he traded it to a French soldier for a bottle of wine. He was thirsty. The practicalities of life sometimes are of more value than the trimmings of glory.

An interesting, seemingly throwaway line, struck me when I heard it. I think it gives some insight into how to understand the film. When the two are about to set off, they ask the general why they aren’t taking more men with them. He quotes a line from a Kipling poem: “Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,/He travels fastest who travels alone.” (How very British to answer in such a way!) But this journey is one that is indeed a walk through Hell. Perhaps it also is an ascent of the spirit as the soldiers find within themselves qualities they had not known they possess.

Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures

The Millionaires’ Unit – The Path of Honor and Glory

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“For God, for country, and for Yale.”

The First World War is often seen as the end of the romantic view of war. Many people entered the war with visions of honor and glory, only to find the reality very different. The Millionaire’s Unit, a documentary by Darroch Greer and Ron King, is a return to celebrating the virtues of a group of young, affluent American college students who understood that their privilege required responsibility, and became some of the first American aviators in the war.

The film chronicles the First Yale Unit, a group of Yale students who decided even before the US entered the war that they would become aviators when the time came. They formed a private militia and in time were brought into the Navy as a unit. Having learned to fly (only a few years after the Wright Brothers) they were among the earliest involved in Naval aviation. They went on to take part in World War I in a variety of roles. Some were killed as a result. But the unit as a whole helped to establish the military air power that grew through the years.

It should be noted that one of the directors and two producers are descendants of some of the members of the unit (as is narrator Bruce Dern), so this is something of a burnished family history. However, the accomplishments of those we learn about—both during and after the war—are real and impressive.

What gives the film its heart is the personal stories of some of those Yale students and flyers. Much of the narration comes from letters written home to loved ones or the originator of the unit, who ironically was injured in training and was never in the war. Those letters remind us that these were well-educated young men from important families. They were articulate and reflect a time when communication was much more formal. But the letters also serve as windows into their thoughts and emotions. They were quick to speak of honor as one of the key motives of what they were all doing. And the film treats the subjects as those who served honorably, and in some cases continued to serve with honor in the post-war world and into World War II.

The editing of the film keeps our interest by shifting between still photos and some of the actual letters being read, a few talking heads (including historians and descendants), and some reenactments made with vintage planes. But through it all, it is the personal story that comes through.

This is indeed a story about virtue in a time of war. We are very used to a more cynical view of war. We often see films in which high ideals are crushed by the reality of war. We also have grown much more cynical about those of privilege who often find ways of avoiding military service. It almost seems antiquated to hear these young men talk of their sense of honor and duty. That probably says more about our own mindset and shifts in ideas of patriotism, service, and duty than of the world a hundred years ago. That gives us room to reflect on not just their ideals, but on why ours are so different.

The film makes its VOD debut on February 15, marking the 100th anniversary of the death of the first of these pilots to be killed in action.

Photos courtesy of Humanus Documentary Films Foundation

The Promise – Love in a Time of Genocide

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“Our revenge will be to survive.”

The modern concept of genocide did not begin with the Holocaust; it started with the attempted extermination of the Armenians during the early years of World War I. The Promise tells the horrifying tale through the story of a love triangle (or perhaps quadrangle). It is a story of heroism, but also of flawed people who are face dire circumstances. They must not only seek to save themselves, but to try to save the identity of their community.

In 1914, at the dawn of World War I, Michael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac) leaves his village in Southern Turkey to study medicine in Constantinople. Turks and Armenians live and study side by side. Michael is staying with his well-to-do merchant uncle. There he meets the beautiful Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), who is from a village near his, but she has been traveling the world for many years. She is with an American journalist, Chris Myers (Christian Bale) who has come to cover the Ottoman Empire’s place within the war. Although Ana and Chris have a life together, there are certainly sparks between Ana and Michael. But Michael, too, has someone in his life. In his village awaits his fiancée Maral (Angela Sarafyan), whose dowry he is using to study medicine.

When the Ottoman Empire allies itself with Germany, they begin trying to destroy the Christian Armenian population. Many are jailed and slaughtered. Whole villages are destroyed. Michael is arrested and used for slave labor, but in time escapes, returns to his village and marries Maral before going into hiding. Meanwhile Chris and Ana are trying to help an American pastor smuggle orphans out of the country. Later Chris runs afoul of the authorities, is imprisoned, and expelled from the country. The dynamics of the Michael/Ana/Chris relationship shift throughout the story.

The love story serves to humanize this story of an atrocity. The promises that are made between them (some spoken, others not) sustain them in difficult times. But sometimes those promises are not kept. And sometimes those promises are ripped away by the circumstances.

Even though the story is set over a century ago, it is extremely timely. There continue to be those who flee persecutions and genocides. Director Terry George has previously dealt with genocide as the writer and director of Hotel Rwanda. Many of the scenes in the current film ominously reflect what we have seen on the news the last few years: swimmers in the Mediterranean seeking to escape to freedom, piles of dead bodies—even a dead baby beside the water.

This film serves to teach us history (because the Armenian Genocide really gets little attention outside the Armenian community. (The US and UK have never officially recognized the genocide because Turkey is such a strategic ally. Turkey refuses to acknowledge it at all.) But it also speaks to events happening in the world today. European and American politics struggle to respond to the refugee crises, especially dealing with people from the Middle East—the same region that this film is set in. This film reminds us that saving others is a courageous act. It may not always be safe, but it demands to be done.

Photos courtesy of Open Road

Frantz – Is It Ever Right to Lie?

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“Don’t be afraid to make us happy.”

François Ozon’s Frantz is set in the aftermath of the First World War. It is a wonderfully visual film. (It won a César Award (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for Best Cinematography. That may surprise some since most of the film is in black and white (but some of the best looking black and white you may see), with portions of the film shifting to color. There is a sense in which this reflects the moods of the film. The heavier black and white reflecting the post-war gloom, and the scenes with color representing a bit of a return to life and joy.

In a village in Germany, Anna (Paula Beer) mourns her fiancé Frantz who died in the trenches. She still lives with his parents who are also in deep mourning. One day she sees a man named Adrien (Pierre Niney) at Frantz’s grave. She discovers that he is French. He tells her that he was Frantz’s friend from before the war. They spent time together in Paris where Frantz studied.

Adrien faces opposition from the townsfolk who are still hurting from having lost the war. As one local put it, “Every Frenchman is my son’s murderer.” But the stories that Adrian shares with Anna and Frantz’s parents begin to bring joy into their lives yet again. It is almost as if Adrien is a substitute for their lost loved one. Perhaps Anna may even find a chance for love again.

The foundation of the story is the devastation that war brings. Everyone in this story suffers from the war. Anna and Frantz’s parents (and many of the townspeople) grieve the loss of the young men killed in the war. (This is a loss felt in France as well when the story moves there.) For the Germans in general, the loss of the war was a terrible blow to their national pride. Adrien has his own sense of pain that comes from the war that eats at his sense of self even though he was on the victorious side.

But at the half way point of the film there is an important revelation that puts everything into a new light. From that point on we begin to think of the lies that have been told, and the new lies yet to be told. In a world in which “alternate facts” seem to be acceptable to some, we may wonder if there might be a place for lies in the world or if only truth is to be considered valuable. When the truth comes out, it then becomes a question of if that truth should be shared or if the lies should be continued—perhaps even built upon—for the happiness of those who have found comfort in those lies.

Can happiness and peace be built upon a lie? Even Frantz’s grave, we learn, is a bit of a lie. His body is actually in a mass grave somewhere. But for his family, this little plot in the cemetery gives them a focus for their grief and a way to honor him.

When Anna discovers the truth about Adrien, she must decide whether to share that truth with Frantz’s parents. The “alternate” truth that Adrien represents has brought joy into Frantz’s family. Anna is placed in the position of knowing the truth, but knowing the consequences if that truth is known. Should she, for the sake of her family, withhold that truth and let the lie that has been spun continue. Should she make that lie even more elaborate in order to bring even more happiness to those who had found peace in the lie? And what is the burden  on Anna of carrying the truth and the lie as she seeks to move on in her own life? It is easy to say that truth always is better than a lie. But is it?

Photos courtesy of Music Box Films

The Man Who Knew Infinity – The Mathematics of Faith

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“An equation has no meaning to me unless it expresses a thought of God.”

Theoretical mathematics may not seem a fertile ground for a movie, yet there have been some very popular and acclaimed films grounded in that discipline (A Beautiful Mind and The Imitation Game come to mind). It may seem even less likely to use that field to speak of the nature of faith.  The Man Who Knew Infinity is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

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This is the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematician without formal education who is “discovered” by G. H. Hardy, a Cambridge professor. Ramanujan goes to England at the start for World War I, leaving his wife and mother in India. There he strives to have his work published, but Hardy demands that he provide proofs for his very complex (and exciting to mathematicians) equations. Ramanujan must put up with the racist and classist prejudices of the others at the university (which includes dietary issues) and with Hardy’s personal coldness. Can this brilliant mind (called miraculous by one professor) find its way to not only great discoveries, but the recognition of his genius?

In the film math serves as the medium that allows the characters to talk about not just numbers, but about existential meaning. For Ramanujan, mathematics is an aesthetic. He explains it to his wife as a painting with colors you cannot see. Mathematics is not about the practical, but about beauty. He is obsessed at finding and sharing the wonders that he finds in the numbers he works with. But Hardy is not willing to accept the beauty without understanding how it is found. His demand of proofs, a key part of any mathematic work, is really a reflection of his own view of reality. Hardy is an atheist because he refuses to accept what cannot be proved. They come from two different world views, yet in the language and processes of mathematics they can come to understand one another.

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Hardy’s atheism is not incidental to the story. It becomes the way the film is able to talk about ultimate ideas. What is impossible for Hardy to believe is essential to Ramanujan. In one sense this may reflect the way many people expect that science and religion are by their natures incompatible. But the film moves beyond that to try to show that they blend together in seeing the world through clearer eyes than either can see alone. At one point Ramanujan even claims that the source of his insights is his god. The discussions about faith and doubt don’t strive to convert, but serve to help the two men to understand each other. Hardy is not moved to leave his atheism, but he does get insight into what it means to believe something or someone. Ramanujan finds meaning in his proofs that provide even more beauty to his painting of invisible colors. There are indeed many ways to see the beauty of the world around us. Atheist, Hindus, Christians and others all appreciate that beauty however we may describe or ascribe it.

Photos courtesy of IFC Films