ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

World War II

Burial – Legacy and death

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“Death is nothing if the legacy lives on.”

Ben Parker’s Burial builds a tale around the ambiguity about the death of Hitler in 1945. Some have used that idea to imagine his escape to Argentina. This film takes a different perspective. It becomes a battle for the propaganda value of Hitler’s remains in the days following his death.

In the waning days of World War II, a young Soviet intelligence officer, Brana Vasilyeva (Charlotte Vega), is tasked with a very secret mission with orders from Joseph Stalin himself. She and a small cohort of Soviet soldiers are to bring a crate back to Russia. She is one of only three people that know what is in that crate. Each night when they stop, they bury the crate, so that even if they are found, the crate will not be.

 A few days into the journey, while in Poland, they are attacked by pro-Nazi partisans, known as “Werewolves”. The surviving soldiers take refuge in a farmhouse. It is then that it is revealed that the crate contains the rotting body of Hitler, being taken to Stalin so that he can look his enemy in the eye. It would also be a great coup for the Soviet leader to be have such a trophy of the war.

As the werewolves keep at the attack, with the support of a German doctor whose job it is to do an autopsy to disprove that this is the Fuhrer’s body, the band of soldiers are eliminated in battle. In the end, only Vasilyeva escapes.

For the most part this is a pretty run-of-the-mill war movie. There is a lack of discipline among the soldiers that leads to some of their troubles. There is a sense of doom as the soldiers must deal with not only the enemy, but their distrust of each other and their mission.

What meaning the film has is built into the prologue and epilogue that take place in London many years later. Vasilyeva, now living under the name Anna Marshall (Harriet Walter) is confronted in her apartment by a neo-Nazi intruder who has tracked her down because he has heard rumors that she helped cover up the fact that Hitler survived the war. For that intruder, the legacy of Hitler not being a loser was paramount. We continue to live in a world where such legacies carry on, even when all evidence shows otherwise. Vasilyeva summed up the power of that when she defended their mission: “Men like that don’t die. They fester in the ground infesting everything.” Often even after death, ideas can continue to infest our world with evil.

Burial is in select theaters and available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of IFC Midnight

Syndrome K – Life Saving Disease

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Doctors take an oath to save lives. Sometimes that means making some hard decisions. For a group of doctors at a Catholic hospital in Rome in 1943, those decisions were very hard. It could have cost them their lives. Instead they infected a number of local Jews with a disease. That may sound inhumane, but it was really a way of saving their lives. Syndrome K, a new documentary from Stephen Edwards.

When Germans occupied Rome in 1943, they began the roundup of local Jews to send to extermination camps. This film tells the story of three doctors at Catholic-run Fatebenefratelli Hospital that invented a disease that was very contagious, very dangerous, and very fictional. When Germans came to inspect the hospital, the fear of contracting the disease kept them out of the Syndrome K ward.

The brief documentary gives some brief historical context for the events, but relies mostly on interviews with two of the doctors and the son of one of the doctors who took part in this extraordinary rescue, as well as some of those who survived because of Syndrome K.

The film also brings in some of the context of the Catholic Church in Rome. Vatican City is the smallest independent country in the world. During the war it maintained neutrality, in large part out of fear. Pius XII is the center of great controversies over whether he did enough to try to prevent the Holocaust or if he was involved in trying to save Jews. Certainly, the monasteries and convents of Rome were a refuge for many hidden Jews. Could it have been so without Vatican support. The film includes a identification card signed by Giovanni Battista Montini, who was one of the pope’s closest advisors. (The film doesn’t mention that he later became Pope Paul VI.)

The doctors at Fatebenefratelli took seriously their oaths to save lives. If they had been found out (and they did more than just save Jews) they and their families could have been killed. Instead they chose to do act on behalf of their neighbors. That, of course, is a key teaching of the church.

Syndrome K is available to rent on digital platforms.

My Name Is Sara – A Unique Too Common Story

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“You have to survive. It will be our revenge.”

Steven Oritt’s premiere feature film, My Name Is Sara, is based on a true story from the Holocaust. It is like many other such stories, but it is also different from those stories as well. It is a bit of a reminder that all stories have a unique quality to them, even if we may want to group them together.

Thirteen year old Sara Góralnik (Zuzanna Surowy) escapes from her ghetto in Poland. She settles in with a Ukrainian farming family (Eryk Lubos and Michalina Orszańska). Therman and wife are suspicious that she is Jewish, but she is able to say the Christian prayers and so they take her in—but are constantly vigilant. Sara manages to avoid detection by passing as an Orthodox Christian. When she sees the cracks in the marriage, she stays quiet, mostly because to do otherwise could put her at risk.

What is different about this story is that there is no virtuous rescuer or protector. In fact, if there were any real evidence that she was a Jew, the family would be more than willing to turn her in—both because of the danger and because they, like their neighbors did not like or trust Jews.

The story boils down to a story of survival. The family is struggling to survive the war around them. The Germans and partisans alike raid their farm and take what they want. Sara is also struggling to survive and will do whatever it takes. She even stuffs cloth in her mouth when she sleeps to be sure she does not say a Jewish prayer in her sleep. She goes through all the Christian rituals so that no one will know who she really is. It is only when liberation comes that she can return home. Although in reality, the only home she can return to is her real identity. All her family perished.

This film has come about because one of Sara’s sons, Mickey Shapiro, wanted to tell his mother’s story. The film is done in association with the USC Shoah Foundation, which has collected tens of thousands of video testimonies. The Foundation’s website includes a page with information about the film along with video clips of Sara Shapiro’s taped testimony.

The stories of survivors, such as Sara, as well the stories of those who perished in the Holocaust, constantly refresh our memories of the depths to which humankind can, and at times has, descend to. We must continue to build a world that will prevent such horrors.

My Name is Sara is showing in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Strand Releasing.

Sunken Roads: Three Generations After D-Day

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Coming out in time for Veterans’ Day is Sunken Roads: Three Generations After D-Day from documentarian Charlotte Juergens. In part it is a way of recording the memories of the ever-shrining number of veterans of that era. But more, it is a personal story of a much younger person in trying to understand that time.

Juergens became interested in World War II by hearing an interview of her great-grandfather done by her mother before his death (and before Juergens’s birth). He was decorated for his service with the 29th Infantry. When Juergens learns there is a trip planned for reunion trip to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of the invasion, she attaches herself to the group as a helper for one of the veterans who has Parkinson’s. As she travels with this group of men now in their nineties, she understands that when they stormed Omaha Beach, they were the age she was while making the film. She captures the memories of some of these aging veterans, but even more, the film is very much about her journey.

I’ll admit that for a while, I was a bit put off by the filmmaker’s constant references to herself in the film that I expected to be more focused on the veterans and their histories. But by putting so much focus on her own experience of the trip, it provides a perspective of someone far removed in time for those events. That also contrasts to the local children in the various Normandy towns they visit. Those children are well versed in the history of the invasion, because it had such an impact on the places they live.

The film also touches on the ways memories evolve and take on special meaning. That is especially clear in the story of one of the soldiers and his memory of a little girl who signaled him to be silent just before German soldiers came along. That has become a very sacred memory for him, and one that he has personified in a French woman he met on an earlier trip. That memory and the sharing of it serves as an example of how truth can be present, even if the facts do not back it up.

As one who’s father was a World War II veteran (though not in Europe), I feel far less removed from that history than Juergens. Indeed, World War II for her generation is about the same as the Spanish-American War for mine. Soon there will be no veterans left to return to Normandy for those times of remembrance. The memories this film gathers are an addition to others that have been archived in recent years. But a key question might be, what happens to the history when generations come along that are far removed from such important events? Juergens was able to absorb that history into her own life to keep it alive a bit longer.

Sunken Roads is available in select theaters.

Photo credits: Charlotte Juergens. Courtesy of First Run Features

The Meaning of Hitler – Does History Mean Anything?

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Hitler. A name that for much of the world connotes absolute evil. But that name is burnt into history in such a way that we continue to struggle with the legacy that left millions dead. Petra Epperline and Michael Tucker bring us The Meaning of Hitler, a film framed by the 1987 book by Sebastian Haffner. The film is not so much an attempt to discover the meaning of Hitler in history as it is trying to understand why that worldview, something we see as so evil, continues in many ways in today’s world.

The filmmakers began the project during the time of the UK voting on Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and rising nationalist and anti-immigrant movements in many places. There was a very clear shift going on in the world that reached something of an apex at Charlottesville, and the rally of the extreme right that featured Nazis prominently. Since that time comparisons to fascism and Nazis have flown in accusations (going towards both the right and the left). Trump was often compared to Hitler. Was that a fair comparison?

The film begins with an interview with writer Martin Amis, who talks about the similarities (and the dissimilarities) of the two. It follows Hitler’s life and career through comments by a series of historians (including both the Hitler apologist David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt, whom Irving sued for libel [cf. the film Denial]) who shed light on the history and the present from different perspectives.

Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s THE MEANING OF HITLER. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films release.

The film looks at Holocaust denial, the return of anti-Semitism in various forms, and the ways history is being rewritten so that the very concept of truth is being questioned. The film even questions whether a film such as itself can really find the truth amidst so much conflicting opinions and the rhetoric that fills everything around Hitler and his legacy.

Until a few years ago, I might have thought that the world had moved past that ugly period in our history. But like the filmmakers, I too have been shocked, deeply saddened, and at times angered by the growing sentiments (that I especially notice in my own country) that parallel the kind of authoritarian nationalism that was such a key part of Nazism. And while the filmmakers point out, Trump is not Hitler, they also point out the many ways Trump has used very similar techniques.

The fact that we do makes those comparisons, justly or not, between Hitler and modern situations (that are not limited to the US), is the reason that this film is needed. It allows us a chance to question the rhetoric of both sides. More important, it allows us to see ourselves in an evolving historical moment that may well lead either away or closer to the kinds of abuses of the past. If we associate Hitler with absolute evil, will these comparisons change the way we see that evolving world?

The Meaning of Hitler is in select theaters and available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of IFC Films.

The Dig – Life in the Midst of Death

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“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies, but not everyone lives.” A. Sachs

I’ve never been able to verify the existence of A. Sachs to know if this is a legitimate quotation, but it is one that clearly has true wisdom. In Netflix’s The Dig, directed by Simon Stone, the constant presence of death, in many forms, is what makes the realization that we are alive so important.

THE DIG (L-R): CAREY MULLIGAN as EDITH PRETTY, RALPH FIENNES as BASIL BROWN. Cr. LARRY HORRICKS/NETFLIX © 2021 

As the nation is preparing for the likely war with Germany, well-to-do- widow Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) hires Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), a self-taught archeological excavator to see what is in the ancient mounds on her land. Most people assume they are burial mounds dating back to the Vikings. Both Mrs. Pretty and Mr. Brown have an appreciation for discovering the ancient world in such ways. When Brown unearths the remains of a huge ship that pre-dates the Vikings, the museum authorities step in to take charge (and the credit) for what may well be the most significant archeological find in Britain. It is the remains of a burial ship, which could only have been for a great man, possibly an Anglo-Saxon king.

That is the setting in which more human dramas play out. Edith Pretty is suffering from a dangerous heart condition. Her young son, who has a wonderful imaginary life, worries about what will become of his mother. Edith’s cousin comes to help with the work, and has a mutual attraction to a married woman also part of the dig. The cousin may soon be going off to war with the RAF. Background shots often include soldiers saying long goodbyes to girlfriends or wives.  Death, whether ancient or potentially near, is a constant presence throughout the film. But so too is life.

THE DIG. Cr. LARRY HORRICKS/NETFLIX © 2021

My early expectation of what this film would be was a Masterpiece version of The Detectorists. While there are aspects that fit this, The Dig is really a bit more philosophical than that. It sees a world in which death seems to be all around. In this case, it is even the focus of a massive undertaking into the distant past. In some ways actually holding something from the 6th century creates a bond with those for whom this was a part of their life and death. The question this brings to the surface is if death is the given, what does it mean to be alive—now—this moment?

The Dig is streaming on Netflix.

Recon – Moral Questions of War

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“I have had enough.”

How should we think of war? Is it a romantic, idealized story of heroics? Is it hell, as General Sherman said? Do we accept that “all’s fair” in war? Are there rules of morality that we must follow to maintain our humanity? Recon, written and directed by Rob Port, uses a real event in World War II to ask some of these questions. It is interesting that the film is being brought out for Veterans Day, a day we celebrate the military. While the film is not anti-military, is certainly has a perspective that war is a morally troublesome experience.

The film follows four soldiers as they climb an Italian mountain in search of German soldiers. They are being led by an Italian man who claims to be a partisan, but they are never sure of his real loyalties. The four are haunted, to varying degrees, by having seen their sergeant murder a civilian woman. As they make their way up the mountain with the dangers of landmines and snipers, they speak of life and death, of war and justice, of right and wrong.

They are a diverse group—liberal, racist, Jewish, Catholic, different educational levels, different backgrounds. Their perspectives on the murder range widely as well. At times, their differences threaten to bring them to violence. Only their taciturn leader, Corporal Marson, manages to keep them on focus and working together. The constant danger the squad faces as it seeks the enemy and then must find its way back home give the film a familiar war film tension.

This is not just a celebration of bravery—although there is that aspect as we see these soldiers carry out their mission. It also dives into the questions about the nature of war. It is not just the murder of a civilian that is at issue. These soldiers must also make decisions of life and death. They cannot just turn off their morality or their spiritual life. To kill another human is not an inconsequential occurrence. It leaves a spiritual mark. Perhaps some people can live with that, but not everyone. This film highlights the spiritual and emotional injuries that war brings as well as the physical costs.

As the story plays out, eventually Marson will have to decide just what kind of person he is. Can he kill just because it is war, or must he respond as a human—and as a Christian. That choice will have an almost karmic effect when we read the title card post script to the film.

From the times of the early church, war was seen as problematic. Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas both spoke of Just War—a recognition that war is inherently evil, but at times necessary. There may be questions whether modern weapons and technology make Just War possible. Part of Just War theory is not only the justice of the cause, but also the justice and morality of how war is carried out. Recon taps into that tradition of thinking of war.

Recon show through Fathom Events on November 10 and releases in limited theaters November 13.

Photos courtesy of Brainstorm Media.

The Keeper -Finding Forgiveness

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Based on a true story, The Keeper, from director Marcus H Rosenmüller, is the story of a German POW who in the post-war years becomes one of the most famous football (soccer to Americans) players in England. Along the way the story looks the difficulty of forgiving both our enemies and ourselves. And there’s a love story.

Bert Trautmann (David Kross) is a German paratrooper who fought most of the war in Poland, earning an Iron Cross. Late in the war, he’s captured by the British and placed in a POW camp in Lancashire. Because he volunteered for the German army and was well decorated, he gets some pretty nasty jobs in the camp. After the war, the POWs were kept there for some time until repatriation could happen.

One day when Jack Friar (John Henshaw) and his daughter Margaret (Freya Mavor) deliver goods to the camp, Friar sees Trautmann tending goal as the prisoners play football. He is exceptional. Friar is the manager of a local football club that is in dire need of improvement. He arranges to have Trautmann work for him so he can use him as a goalie in upcoming matches. The team prospers, and just about the time Trautmann is due to return to Germany, the manager of the Manchester City club offers him a tryout. Around this same time, Trautmann and Margaret marry. (The love story takes up most of the first half of the film.)

It is not easy for a former Nazi to be accepted either by teammates or fans. The issue was multiplied when he began playing in Manchester, which had a sizable Jewish population. In time, a rabbi who had fled Germany wrote an open letter saying that we shouldn’t judge on what we presume, but judge each by their merit. That let Trautmann find some acceptance, and his exceptional play led the team to more victories—eventually winning the FA Cup—a match in which Trautmann played the last 15 minutes with a broken neck.

The film, as is often the case with sports stories, deals with adversity, perseverance, and heroics. But it is also a love story, and that adds another dimension. In fact, this is more love story than sports story. But the issues of adversity, perseverance, and heroics are just as important in that part of the story.

Through the first half of the film, the adversity has to do with Trautmann’s past as a German soldier, and the perception others had of him. As one character tells him, “To me and everyone around me, you’re still the enemy.” Margaret was just as set against Trautmann as everyone else. But as she got to know him, and saw within him someone who had dreams and fears like everyone else, she softened to him.

Later in the film, other problems arise that test Trautmann individually, and him and Margaret as a couple. We learn in bits and pieces through the film some of the ghosts and guilt that haunt Trautmann. Just as Margaret, then fans had to come to term with how they viewed Trautmann’s past, so must he. Often it is much more difficult to forgive oneself that to find forgiveness in others.

There is an interesting side note in this film for people familiar with Christian hymnody (at least for non-British people). In the scene leading up to the famous championship game, we hear the crowd singing “Abide with Me”. It turns out that that is a tradition for the FA Cup Finals dating back to 1927. (I’ve yet to find an explanation.) It seems a strange song to sing prior to a sports match, given that it is a song asking for God’s presence at the time of death. The song is sung again at the end of the film. While the song is included mostly for its association to football, it also fits well at the end of the film because death crops up at various times in the film, as it does throughout our lives. It is a nice reminder of our need for God’s presence, not only when “fast falls the eventide”, but always.

The Keeper is opening in theaters (where open) and on virtual cinema through local arthouses.

Photos courtesy of Beta Cinema.

The Tobacconist – Becoming an Adult

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“We’re not in this world to find answers, but to ask qestions.”

Nikolaus Leytner’s The Tobacconist is a tale of looking for love, finding wisdom, and becoming an adult. As with many coming-of-age films there is movement from innocence to facing harsh realities. How one faces such realities has major consequences.

The film opens with 17 year-old Franz (Simon Monzé) sitting on the bottom of a lake. When he sees lightning flashing, he surfaces and runs home through the forest, past his mother and her lover having sex against a tree. Franz climbs into bed to hide. His mother’s lover decides to take a dip in the lake and is struck by lightning and dies. (A bit Oedipal?) His mother sends Franz off to Vienna to apprentice with Otto (Johannes Krisch), her former lover who runs a tobacco shop.

Otto, who lost a leg in World War I, is cynical, especially now that the Nazis have occupied Austria. Otto’s shop is welcoming to all, even Jews and Communists. (Although Otto is somewhat cold to a Nazi customer.) Otto begins to teach Franz about business, and dealing with people. The first lesson is that the shop is more than a place of business, it is a “temple of pleasure and spirit”. He also begins to help the naïve Franz see what is happening in the world around him.

One of the customers in the shop is Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz). When Franz asks the renown psychologist about love and women, Freud admits to being as confused about that as Franz. But he tells Franz you don’t have to understand water before you jump in to a lake. So Franz heads off to meet a girl and chooses Anezka (Emma Drougunova), a beautiful Bohemian who is a bit older and experienced. When she abandons him after a fun evening, he tracks her down to discover she lives in squalor and is a fan dancer. He tries to kindle a relationship, but it never quite takes off.

Meanwhile, the Nazi are beginning to crack down. Everyone is faced with choices to make for how they will survive. Otto is arrested. Freud’s family wants him to emigrate to London. Franz wants to have Anezka run away with him to some place peaceful. Suddenly Franz must take on maturity. But what will that mean? And what will it cost him?

An interesting part of this film, in light of Sigmund Freud being one of the key characters, is possible psychological images: begin underwater, dead animals, a spider that lives in the tobacco shop, and Franz’s many dreams, which Freud encourages him to write down. It might make for an interesting project to watch the film with Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams at hand. But in this film Freud never psychoanalyses Franz or his problems. Rather he serves, along with Otto, as a mentor to a young man who must grow up quickly.

The film tracks Franz’s growing maturity in a variety or ways. One subtle way is through clothing. For the first part of the film, Franz is always wearing short pants or knickers. After Otto’s arrest, when he must now run the shop himself, he begins to wear trousers. But the real coming-of-age moment is when Franz has taken Freud a gift of Havana cigars, Freud shares one with Franz who has not smoked prior to this. In that scene, Freud recognizes Franz as an adult, and perhaps Franz recognizes that for the first time.

As Franz makes his journey from naïveté to maturity, he grows through the wisdom imparted by his two mentors: Otto and Freud. Wisdom is something valued in scripture. But it is never seen as an easy path. In Proverbs, we are reminded that many follow after the siren call of Folly. In Ecclesiastes, the biblical cynic philosopher calls his search for wisdom “an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.” In his time in Otto’s “temple of pleasure and spirit” Franz learns many new things. Through the words and actions of his two mentors, Franz begins to see that he must put away the childish part of his life. The world needs him to be involved and to act properly and courageously.

The Tobacconist is available on Virtual Cinema through local art houses.

Photos courtesy of Menemsha Films

Greyhound – Shepherd in the Midst of Wolves

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Open sea. No air cover. U-boats hunting in a pack. 37 merchant marine ships taking supplies and troops to the war in Europe. A handful of destroyers trying to protect the convoy. The man in charge is a first-time captain. Greyhound is primarily an action movie, but it is also a subtle character study of a man facing his self-doubts, fears, and responsibilities. The film is based on a C. S. Forester novel, The Good Shepherd. Forester is best known for the Horatio Hornblower series.

Commander Ernest Krause (Tom Hanks) is a career naval officer, but has never had a command of his own before. With the war going on, he is given a ship, and because of his seniority, he is the leader of a convoy of merchant ships and four destroyers. The task it to get as many as possible safely through the dangerous seas—a five day ordeal. When the U-boats begin their attacks, Krause must rise to the occasion.

Almost the entire film takes place on the bridge of the USS Keeling (codename: Greyhound). During the ongoing battle, there is a sense of both order and chaos as orders are given, repeated, relayed. The continuous threat and cat-and-mouse nature of hunting and being hunted creates a tension that remains throughout the film.  The tension is heightened a bit by the technological challenges of rudimentary radar and sonar, and the lack of easy communication, either between ships or onboard Greyhound.

Through watching this developing battle, we slowly discover the depth of this captain’s character. Hanks (who also wrote the script) is an expert at such roles. He does not tell us about who Krause is; it is all done through his actions and demeanor.

Krause is a devout man, kneeling in prayer before getting in his bunk, or eating (even when meals are bought to him on the bridge). His personal motto is “Yesterday, today, and forever”, taken from Hebrews 13:8. Even in the midst of a battle, he occasionally mutters scriptural phrases to himself. But perhaps the best window into Krause’s character happens after their first encounter with a U-boat.  They manage to sink it with depth charges. When the oil slick appears on the surface, Greyhound’s crew celebrates that they’ve gotten rid of fifty Nazis. Krause, however, is somber, recognizing the loss of fifty souls. That solemnity is seen again when, during a pause in the fighting, he must read the office for burial at sea for crewmembers killed in a battle. We can tell that the worlds of resurrection are important to him, but also a sense of failure at having lost the lives.

What the film isn’t able to do quite as well is share Krause’s introspection. In the midst of battle, he seems well controlled, but we also know that he’s afraid he isn’t doing enough. As I read through production notes, I learned a good deal about Krause (as he appears in the novel). Some of that backstory could have helped us better understand his doubts about himself.

I’m a bit intrigued about not using the novel’s title, because I think that title in itself would have told us about how Krause saw himself as he herded this convoy through wolves seeking to devour them. (And when we hear from the U-boat commander, he is very overt in that metaphor.) It would have also played well with the way Krause understood the Hebrews text. He is a follower of Jesus, and as such sees Jesus as a loving and faithful shepherd in his life. He is also striving to be just as caring and constant for the souls that have been entrusted to him.

Greyhound is available on Apple TV+ July 10.