Hannah Arendt (2013)

The Banality of the Literati


In 1981 Margarethe von Trotta made an extraordinary film called “Marianne and Juliane” (in German titled “Die Bleierne Zeit” ).  This work captured the angst of post-war Germany through the tumultuous bond between two sisters.  That historical nightmare was used to make a stunning portrait of  the eternal link of family that trumps even the most strident political divides.  “Hannah Arendt”, von Trotta’s eponymous dramatic feature film, continues the theme of magnifying the mass horror through the lens of personal struggle. Arendt’s story seems tailor made for  von Trotta.  Arendt’s rise from star student to refugee to leading intellectual is shaped by Hilter’s legacy. The film might have been inspired by the aphorism: “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon”. Instead von Trotta delivers view of academic egos clashing in 1960s New York. In the parlance of the New Yorker Magazine, an institution that looms large in the story, the film is a segment of “Talk of the Town” not a feature article by Seymour Hersh.  The disappointment comes from expecting a meditation on the nature of evil and being presented with historical gossip; interesting and highbrow... but gossip nevertheless.

The film opens with Arendt and Mary McCarthy sitting in a Midtown office dishing and avoiding phone calls so they can focus on ‘girl’s talk’. McCarthy’s best known novel is “The Group”, a primogenitor to “Sex in the City”. Arendt’s masterpiece is “Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft”; literally translated as “Elements and origins of totalitarian rule” (English title: The Origins of Totalitarianism).  The film is definitely set in Mary’s soap opera but interestingly Hannah seamlessly blends in with the action.  The arc of the story is that Arendt, the legendary German Jewish intellectual, is hired by the legendary editor of the New Yorker, William Shawn, to cover the trial of the recently captured Nazi logistics specialist Adolf Eichmann.  The judicial proceedings are set in Jerusalem. There is strange incongruity between the weight of the matter at hand and the trivial rivalries exhibited. Perhaps the greatest visual representation lies in the abduction of Eichmann by Israeli intelligence operatives in South America. This never meshes with the breeziness of the college campuses and literary salons which the protagonists inhabit. von Trotta wanted to build a bridge between the seriousness of a mass murderer and the public stance of prominent intellectuals. Unfortunately the opposite occurred.  Questions of Eichmann seemed important and underrepresented while the fury of professors and editors hurling invectives grew louder and louder.

There is a cloud that hangs over this film and Arendt’s reputation. It’s name is Martin Heidegger. von Trotta decides to include the fact that Arendt had a passionate love affair with the renowned philosopher when she was a student. This is significant because this intellectual giant was a card carrying member of the Nazi party who never publicly apologized for his affiliation. In addition he was silent about a number of egregious acts he committed while an academic official in the regime. Strangely von Trotta, who feels it’s important to show Eichmann’s abduction, never shows Heidegger actively supporting the Third Reich. On odd omission as so much of the film hinges on his relationship with Arendt. In addition all the discussion of his crimes are through clumsy exposition by other parties.  Most of the scenes with the grand thinker are framed from the gushing perspective of a love-struck student. There is one post war moment in which Heidegger feebly excuses his actions, to a significantly cooler Arendt, with the statement that he failed to be good at understanding politics.  What is completely lost in all the banter about Heidegger: how did this relationship shape her view of Eichmann?

Eichmann is played by himself. One of the reasons to see this feature is von Trotta’s clever use of the actual trial footage. This works against the film as a whole as it steals focus. It is, however, so riveting it begs the question as to Arendt’s primacy in the story.  Her historical view of Eichmann has been vindicated by the ubiquity of her ‘banality of evil” remark.  It is difficult to view footage of the man and believe anyone mistook him for being first rate at anything other than bureaucratic paperwork. He is mediocrity incarnate. He fails to rise to the level of taskmaster - he seems more a task-attender. It is impossible to conceive of someone spending years filling trains with human beings for the sole purpose of having them executed without considering the moral implications. Unfortunately Eichmann gives life to that very unsettling proposition. He is something beyond the worst horror fiction. The incongruity of his being vs. the enormity of his crimes renders him a force of dramatic interest far beyond the pedestrian domain of the rest of the film.

Arendt was pilloried for her reporting on the trial.  She portrays  Eichmann as MERELY a nobody rather than a force of evil. History has shown her to be prescient in understanding the ability of authority to guide ‘normal’ people into committing unspeakable acts of cruelty. Whether or not Arendt read Eichmann’s motives correctly is still a matter of debate. There is also serious disagreement around her stance that Jewish leaders were an integral part of the Nazi death machinery. Her defense of raising this issue stems from an incident at the trial where a holocaust survivor accused another victim of giving names to the authorities. Needless to say her remarks are controversial to this day. This year (2013) the historian Deborah Lipstadt wrote “The Eichmann Trial” which refutes Arendt’s analysis. (interesting overview of the issues in The Forward - ) The debate still rages - but von Trotta never answers the question: how is this dramatic?

The characters in “Hannah Arendt” are locked in their heads with the occasional primal heart rearing up to make love, puff a cigarette or utter a nasty comment.  It must have been difficult for Arendt to lose friends and be threatened due to her firm stance on the trial.  She felt it her ‘duty’ to relate what she believed to be her objective truth. She has very firm answers to all the carping.  She meticulously points out her opponents failures in logic.  She steadfastly denies being sympathetic in any way to Eichmann. She is glad they hung him. She individually responds to every nasty letter with a handwritten response carefully explaining her position. She may be correct but she fails to be sympathetic; neither are most of her compatriots on either side of the issues. Mary McCarthy is the exception. She is likable because she never confuses politics with friendship. Her protection of Arendt is rooted in supporting a friend rather than delineating the veracity an argument. It is about love not logic. Interestingly this is the exact problem that haunts Arendt in her protectiveness of Heidegger. Her friends seem to constantly harp on her relationship with the great master. Is that the root of their disappointment with her coverage of Eichmann? Does the constant refrain of “THIS TIME you’ve gone too far” hint at a collective anger about her dealings with her mentor?

von Trotta has done a great deal of homework. In fact this work has the feel of homework. It’s studied... to a fault. There is no doubt each of the various luminaries stated their positions as represented. The problem is that truth is not the same as accuracy. von Trotta is a leading German director handling the most contentious historical events in her country’s history. Arendt and Heidegger are luminaries with scores of fans and detractors ready to pounce. von Trotta knew she must be very careful in managing the material. Unfortunately cautious factual presentations never make for great drama. It is difficult to understand von Trotta’s view of these people. This is a real problem. She does not love them AS CHARACTERS and neither does the audience. The strength of “Marianne and Juliane” lies in von Trotta’s passion for these people caught in the nightmare of processing the Third Reich’s legacy. The two sisters, in that film, are at opposite ends of the political spectrum... and yet there is a deep love that triumphs. I have not seen that film in 3 decades but there is one scene that still has the power to haunt. One sister is being held in jail for terrorism. The other, a very upper middle class architect, is visiting the prison. The sisters have a bitter argument. The guard enters and says it’s time to leave. Suddenly the terrorist yells something to other about clothes. The two women, who are  in their 30s, metamorphosize into children as they tear off their shirts in an exchange that signals defiance against the grey bureaucratic guards. Despite everything... they are sisters.  von Trotta’s presents none of this magic in “Hannah Arendt”. The former classmate from her days with Heidegger confronts her at the end of her lecture to signal their decades long friendship is over. He thinks she is a Nazi sympathizer. There was no love in that scene... just accuracy. The result is an audience dutifully recording the plot twist rather than crying. This does not belong in a serious drama or light comedy. It is the stuff of educational documentary re-enactment. von Trotta has demonstrated she is better than this film. Unfortunately she never got out of the way of bland ‘truth’.

The real thread of this film is woven in Arendt’s interpretation of Eichmann as it relates to her past romantic relationship with Heidegger. The presence of the ‘real‘ Eichmann and the dramatic re-staging of the kidnapping, although riveting, were distractions. Mary McCarthy’s milieu would have been a perfect place to explore how an ardent intellectual truth seeker is stained by falling for a morally bankrupt professor emeritus. The other characters would have been marvelous foils to delve and discover why it was important for Arendt to contextualize this trial in a manner sure to rile everyone. There are those who are convinced she was a self hating anti-Semite under the Svengali influence of a the demonic Heidegger. Ron Rosenbaum, the author of ‘Explaining Hitler‘ - a Roshomon-like investigation of the nature of the character of the fuhrer, wrote a damming assessment of the two love birds in Slate Magazine (  http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2009/10/the_evil_of_banality.html ). He cites two books published in 2009 which excoriate Arendt’s scholarship and Heidegger’s humanity.   von Trotta, as a director, should have had a firm conviction about the morality of her protagonist. Arendt once said: “the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil”. That might be factually accurate but as a filmmaker von Trotta should have been able to say whether Arendt was feckless or heroic. Drama rises above documenting facts. It has a point of view. A director has to weigh all material and filter it through the heart and the head. Remember “Marianne and Juliane”. They had strong opinions based on ideas. But they were alive on the screen because von Trotta believed in them and let them inhabit the audience’s mind. The director’s opinion might not be the audiences', but the audience is lost without it. This brings to mind a quote by Heidegger: “Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the Shepard of Being”. Substitute “Film Director” for “Man” and it speaks to the problem with von Trotta’s “Hannah Arendt”.  It is not enough to have character’s stiffly recreate history; a film must have characters that are ‘shepherded’ into being. Once again von Trotta walked on eggshells while making this film. She needed to take Mary McCarthy’s advice on creating fiction: “I am putting real plums in an imaginary cake.” Unfortunately for the audience von Trotta’s cake ended up as un-garnished plums.  It is always interesting to witness the gossipy goings-on of historical figures. But von Trotta is more than a record keeper. She has shown a towering imagination in portraying loved ones. In the end she studied these historical characters to a degree it crushed her ability to be passionate and dream about them. von Trotta left us with their actions without imagining their motives. It is understandable that she would waiver from judging, but there is a danger in producing art in the comfortable zone of accuracy. As Mr. Banality said at his trial: "Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think."

New World (2005)

American New World

   
In 1973 Terrence Malick established himself as a great American auteur by writing and directing Badlands – a stunning portrait of a great American invention – the serial killer. In retrospect Mr. Malick, unlike his contemporaries of that era - Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola – never delivered the likes of an ET or Star Wars or a Godfather. In fact he not only failed to deliver a blockbuster – he failed to deliver. Since his stunning debut he has directed three features: Day of Heaven, Thin Red Line and now The New World. Three features in three decades is not what our Puritan work ethic dictates as a “respectable” output. But perhaps Malick, in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, Thoreau, the Western pioneers… is following his manifest destiny.

Let others have a career; Mr. Malick has been strolling  through American history – taking in the scenery and drawing his own conclusions.  He’s spent half his time in the Heartland (Badlands, Days of Heaven) wresting with desperate lost souls – dying in all the innocent beauty east of Eden. He pondered about our Great War (WW II) and drew a portrait of ambiguous soldiers wrestling with themselves as much as the Japanese. The odd thing is that all these films inhabit the American mythology while tearing at its seams. Badlands is a nightmarish foreshadowing of Lucas’ American Graffiti. Days of Heaven might be viewed as Thomas Hart Benton’s Guerinca. The Thin Red Line show’s Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation in their hour of darkness or maybe Speilberg’s soldiers having an existential crisis on their mission to save Private Ryan.

Malick has decided to begin at the beginning. The tale of Pocahontas and Capt. Smith is the bedrock of the American experience. Most Anthologies of American Literature begin with Capt. Smith’s tales about the “New World”. Interest in the story has reached beyond academics with the Walt Disney Company producing an animated feature, Pocahontas, within the last decade. Recently William T. Vollman has dedicated a entire volume of his seven part History of America to Smith’s founding of Jamestown. The element of this story that pulls together academics and patrons of popular culture is the relationship between the swashbuckling Smith and the young Native American princess. That such a relationship existed at the moment of America’s conception vaults the historical into the realm of the mythic.  Hollywood couldn’t have given the country a better script of its beginnings.

The “real” Capt. Smith lived through war, starvation, emprisonment, enemy-capture, enslavement… One wonders however, if he would have survived the 21st century American debate about what constitutes fact and fiction in a memoir. The following is the portrait Capt. Smith paints of himself in “The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles”:

“by his own example, good words, and fair promises, set some to mow, others to bind thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himself always bearing the greatest task for his own share, so that in short time he provided most of them lodgings, neglecting any for himself.”

One can feel the other residents of Jamestown flocking to their blogs to refute the wise Captain in the early stages of his book tour. Malick is unconcerned. The director is smart enough to know better but the Smith-myth is central; not the actual history.  Malick paints a very realistic portrait of the new Americans despite the fact that the valiant Captain might have taken the same liberties as the author of “A Million Little Pieces”.  But in the end isn’t Capt. Smith the great great grandfather of James Frey and Oprah?

Ambition is the driving force in Jamestown.  This group will stop at nothing to get ahead. The internecine struggles over rank and authority will be hideously familiar to any modern American office worker.  Its not that our distant cousins over in Europe wouldn’t be petty and awful – its just that our fore-fathers were, for lack of a better term, the bottom of the barrel. These were in the words of Ross Perot – the people working the third shift at the Dairy Queen. In such an enviroment manners and a sense of civility are signs of weakness.  This was a group that certainly knew the word “Roanoke” – the nearby colony that two decades earlier disappeared with the 90 men, 17 woman and 9 children never to be heard from again. Yet they willingly made the choice to go on this voyage. One senses that their lives in England were less then a bed of roses. The Lords of the manor and the Captains of industry knew better. Capt. Newport, played by a very blue-blooded Christopher Plummer, was on the first boat back home while Jamestown was being established. Given what followed he certainly made the right choice. The new colonists resort to eating their leather belts to stay alive. Maybe Smith was right to implore everyone to stop wasting time digging for gold.

Malick’s harsh portrayal of this world of Joe Shmoes and John Smiths certainly undercuts the primness with which we revere the Founding Father’s fathers. These people weren’t blue blood or even blue collar – they were red-neck through and through. Capt. Smith, however, is a stand-out. He is aware that he is on a journey to, in the great American tradition, re-invent himself. He is our first Bruce Springsteen – a sexy poet repulsed by the grimness of his culture and surroundings but accepting the fact that he is a character in Jungleland. One can hear Capt. Smith rollicking on some boulevard serenading a modern-day Pocahontas with the promise of a new life if she’d just stop listening to her Chief. We can also see the young maiden crying in the back seat of the beat-up Camareo asking the driver “who are you?”.

There is a disturbing asymmetry to The New World.  The young Americans are drawn with precision yet the Native Americans remain elusive. Malick no doubt did his homework and the costuming and set designs are outstanding.  The backdrop is authentic – but not the people. The “naturals” are more akin to fairies in an expensive production of A Mid Summer Nights Dream than actual aboriginal people. The initial reaction to Smith is certainly genuine – they want to kill him. Unfortunately for them they make a series of very bad choices. They spare his life and then adopt him as a tribesman and let him frolick with the Chief’s favorite daughter – the prettiest girl in the tribe. The implausibility of the situation is secondary to the super-human genuineness of the natives. Pocahontas and her father seem implausiblely plausible – people make bad choices and pay the price – but the other Natives and their society appear other-worldly. As the good-captain says “they are without jealousy or malice”. Certainly after months of living with the Jamestown crowd “the naturals” – a successful traditional society living in sync with their surroundings – would appear to be super-human. There is a palatable sense of horror when Smith returns to the world of the violent, mean-spirited, petty, desperate gold-diggers. It would have been interesting to Malick had found a way to paint the Powtans as real – but where would he find a source? These poor people were annihilated. The lack of a record left Malick with all the trappings of the Potans without the Potwans themselves. The father-chief and Pochat are plot devices to further the narrative of Jamestown.  John Smith’s world is grimly real whereas the Potwans “are the stuff that dreams are made of”. In this case Capt. Smith is the dreamer.

The New World takes an extended journey to the old world in the second half of the film. The plot takes on a Shakespearian edge: the princess goes to meet the King and Queen of England and is re-united with her lover. They come to there senses and she then returns to her true love. The comedy turns tragic, however, when the Princess suddenly dies. The banality of the narrative is beside the point. Shakespeare’s forte was language not story. By the same logic assessing Malick’s in terms of the plot-driven narrative is to be deaf to the visual feast. There is a small sequence where the Native American escorting Pocahontas walks amongst the trees in the formal gardens at one of the English palaces. In a sense this small scene of this traditionally dressed native wandering around the formal hedges and rigid tree-lines is a metaphor for the entire film. This exquisite tableaux is a tile in a cross cultural mosaic painting the birth of America. It’s not about “story” or “romance” but the romance of the myth of our founding. Malick, with his usual flair for excellent acting, photography and craft, has given us another one of his American visions. We are a brutal, savage people who touched a pre-lapsarian (in our view) world and beat it down to our level. There is always something tragic/heroic in our quest despite our venal actions. Badlands was successful inspite of the loathsome protagonist. The audience is drawn to the killer in Days of Heaven even though he schemed against an innocent man. The soldiers in The Thin Red Line are are too raw & bloodthristy to be the usual World War II heroes… and yet there is a hallow of innocence surrounding these warriors.

Malick is, at heart, a Texan. This part of the country tends to root for the guys in black hats. Malick has a soft-spot for Cain. Abel was a favored son we are a nation of Cain’s. We the hard-luck second sons busting our asses to do good and seem pretty. We loathe introspection in direct proportion to our love of THE LAW. Rules are made up of isolated facts that create abstractions so we can live with ourselves. On the surface this is a film about a group of marauders who invade and pillage and for good measure trumpet the daughter of the rival king in front of their own. These victims trusted the invaders and were repaid with annihilation. Pocas constant refrain to Capt. Smith is “Who are you?”. The Captain might not know the answer, but he knows enough to know that it isn’t pretty. Malick knows that in Smith’s ambivalence and quest to rise above his station lies the heart of the American experience. We are desperate castaways striving to be better. We’ll kill our brother to get there but what choice do we have? The meek shall inherit the earth – but by that time – who cares? We live in the here and now. We live in a world of conquerors and by God we’ll conquer. We’re not refined as our European cousins. We’re not saintly as our Native American brothers. We’re Americans – ugly, guilty but at the same time mesmerizing and innocent.

Tommy (1994 stage production in Los Angeles)

TOMMY CAN YOU HEAR ME?

   
   
Broadway musicals have survived in recent years by re-staging past hits and recycling old tunes: 42nd Street, Guys & Dolls, Carousel, Jerome Robbin's Broadway, Crazy for You, Show Boat, Damn Yankees… This trend stems from Producer's unwillingness to take risks on untried material due to the exorbitant cost of mounting productions. The 50+ crowd has been eager to spend the $60+ per seat to see elaborate re-enactments of the best of yesteryear. There is a familiar sense of "this is what Broadway should be". The challenge lies in attracting the next generation of theater-goers who are not as nostalgic; to them Oklahoma is just a state near Kansas. What's a Producer to do? Classes in American Musical Comedy might not be very popular. Tommy to the rescue!

Tommy the musical, is based on the seminal rock album of the same name by the group the Who. Most Americans with a cursory knowledge of rock (i.e.the under 45 crowd) would be immediately familiar with at least three of the songs if not the entire album itself. This late '60s so called "rock opera" spawned a cultlike following including a Ken Russell film based on the "story". One can hear the Producer's salivating. A musically based narrative which appeals to "younger" audiences who can afford the price of a theater ticket. There is only one problem - no plot. Well this is a small obstacle in the eyes of a zealous theatrical producer who sees gold. The rationalization for mounting a production might be along the lines of: Classic American Musical Comedies were always "light" on plot; for that matter look at Lloyd Weber's CATS - not much on story either.

Connoisseurs of the theater would question the artistic merits of anything based on a Cats model. Furthermore the "thin" plots of classic musicals were buttressed by the fact that the composer and playwright conceived of the piece as a staged event. Despite the massive amounts of drugs available to  Pete Townsend (the composer) in the late 1960s it is doubtful whether he could have envisaged a set of circumstances which would make Tommy a sought after Broadway Musical property. Tommy is first and foremost a rock album; albeit a revolutionary one. It sought to expand the notions of what could be done within the confines of Rock'n'Roll as experienced through woofers & tweeters and not a proscenium arch. Rock'n'roll is felt and not necessarily understood. It is common to for Rock fans to adore songs without comprehending or even knowing the lyrics (from the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" to Nirvana's "The Smell of Teen Spirit"). This casualness fits well with the carefree ambiance with which the music is heard. It is uncommon for fans to cease all activity and give their full attention to an entire album. In fact such an act might me counter-productive in terms of gauging the success of the work. Theater is the exact opposite. It requires a maximum amount of attentiveness within a set time frame. The challenge of making the transition from album to stage relies on understanding the undisciplined power of Rock and harnessing it to the rigors of the stage.

Aristotle's Poetics, the paradigm work on structuring plays, lists plot as the central element of drama. Although the Greek philosopher might be somewhat out of fashion few could argue his point. Tommy's purported plot centers around an abused boy's life-long search for his identity. In reality the storyline is a series of loosely related moments: Tommy witnesses the murder of his step father by his war-hero father. The former assumed the role of father when it was thought the latter was killed in action. The newly discharged soldier comes home and sees his wife in the clutches of another man. The result is the murder. It seems to have mattered very little to the loving wife. She never misses a beat and falls into a heartfelt swoon as soon as one body hits the floor. Her ambivalence is shared by the audience who also have difficulty distinguishing between the two men. The parents react by demanding the young boy's silence. He is a very impressionable child and takes them at their word: he turns deaf, dumb and blind. Tommy goes on through numerous cruel and inappropriate "treatments" as well as suffering abuse at the hands of his alcoholic uncle and sadistic cousin. Finally his genius is unmasked - he is a pinball wizard. A love interest appears. His fame leads to cultlike religious status and the predictable exploitation by Uncle & Cousin.  Tommy has an epiphany and stops being deaf, dumb and blind. His implores his followers stop following. A reconciliation occurs with his exploiters and his disciples. There is a happy and grand moment when everyone comes together and starts singing for no discernible reason other than the band starts playing the catchy "Listening to You". The play ends. So much for plot.

It is obvious that Tommy is about nothing and makes no sense. Pete Townsend is not to blame. In the context of the original medium Tommy is brilliant. The producers and directors of the stage version have much to explain. Instead of accepting the heartfelt illogic they attempt to force Tommy into being a straight-line narrative with intervening musical numbers. In a sense they are as absurd as any of the strange assortment of miracle cure quacks who attempt to "cure" Tommy's affliction. Tommy needs to be accepted for what it is: a magnificently crafted rock album with a passing nod towards story. Given the undisciplined nature of rock'n'roll it is no surprise that the "plot" fails to translate to the stage. The producers ignore the visceral sense of the music and focus on the non-existent plot. Mr. Townsend, sensing trouble, shied away from writing an extra song which would "tie the whole story together". The producer inspired musical addition is, not surprisingly, forced and forgettable.      

The play is not the thing; the music is. Forget plot just play the songs and stage a series of flashy disconnected stage happenings. Focus on two elements: music and special effects. A sign greets current audiences: WARNING THIS PRODUCTION CONTAINS FLASHING STROBE LIGHTS AND LIVE GUNFIRE. Unfortunately not enough of either to make any lasting impact. The fact of the matter it would be more entertaining if this production gave up any pretense of being a play and instead embraced a Lazerium or rock concert approach. Underscoring this point is the placement of the musicians. The current production, taking its cue from musicals, places the band in the orchestra pit. It only becomes apparent that live musicians are performing when the conductor occasionally bobs his head & arms above the sight-line. All the actors must play instruments in order to fully integrate the music with the show. The sound system should be "Cranked up" and  the smoke machines and the laser guns must be at full throttle. All the songs should be eliminated except. "Tommy Can You Hear Me", "See Me, Hear Me", "Listening to You" and "Pinball Wizard". If the required time-frame isn't met just repeat the songs at a different tempo with a different light show until the crowd feels its received $60+ worth of entertainment. Any Audience member who complains about missing Pete Townsend's imaginative story (with all those delightful characters) should be directed back stage for a live encounter with Tommy's dear Uncle and Cousin. If that isn't enough they should be placed in a sensory deprivation tank where they can experience Tommy's angst.