TRUTH TO POWER

by Chris Dashiell

The calamities of politics and history are rarely a popular theme for filmgoers. In the U.S., where unexpected vulnerability to attack has recently created a kind of shock wave in the national psyche, it might seem strange to recommend films that broach the subject at all. But if, as I believe, we often seek human truths from art - as opposed to the mere distraction we think we are seeking - then we might very well be drawn to films that ask questions about our relationship, as individuals, to the wider world. How should we act in times of crisis? What should we believe, and how should our beliefs manifest in our day-to-day lives? Questions like these, concerning human striving towards a right or just ordering of communities and states, and human responsibilities in the midst of the conflicts that have plagued our history, sometimes seem intractable. But they are still asked by poets and thinkers, in ever changing ways. To not ask at all is to abandon the better part of our humanity.

Lumumba, a film by Haitian director Raoul Peck, is a portrait of the newly independent Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who held office for less than three months before being deposed and then murdered. The director, with excellent location shooting in Zambia and Mozambique, effectively recreates the tumult of the Congo in 1960 despite the limitations of his budget. The film opens moments before Lumumba's secret execution, and then shows two drunken Belgian soldiers hacking up his body and burning it a few days after the murder - his killers were afraid that the grave would be discovered. We then flash back to the beginnings of Lumumba's swift rise to prominence. Peck plunges us into the maelstrom of colonial and tribal politics, intent on describing each phase of the process that led to the tragic end.

Most political biopics depict the personal life of the main figure while flattening out the historical details in order to make them more understandable, or palatable. Lumumba takes the interesting, practically opposite approach of focusing on the political machinations in all their complexity, with very little attention paid to personal moments. We are shown the negotiations and compromises that led to Lumumba's election, the revolt by the army against their white commanders (there were no Congolese officers), the bitter feud with Tshombe, the warlord of Katanga province, the eventual secession of that province, which led to Lumumba's downfall, and much more. The reward of this approach is that it allows us a stirring (and frightening) glimpse into the political atmosphere of a nation suddenly emerging from colonialism and facing the perils and pressures of the Cold War in the early 60s. The film graphically demonstrates how difficult it was to govern in such a volatile time, and how ideals are inevitably distorted by realities. Most importantly, Lumumba is not dry or pedantic - it is a dramatic story, told with great skill and suspense, and with fine performances from the actors.

The drawback of Peck's approach is that, even in two hours, it is impossible to convey the full range of events - and at the same time the lack of emphasis on Lumumba the person makes it hard to understand him. The title role is played by Eriq Ebouaney, who does marvelous work, projecting an air of dignity and idealism, while also showing the uncertainty and lack of experience that made it so hard for Lumumba to deal with the forces arrayed against him. Still, scenes of Lumumba falling asleep at his desk or playing with his daughter don't give us enough of a sense of the man, despite Ebouaney's charisma. He does get good support from the other performers, especially Alex Descas as Mobutu, the erstwhile friend and ally who eventually betrayed him and became the despotic ruler of the Congo.

With Lumumba focusing so exclusively on the year 1960, the novice in African history can be forgiven for feeling confused during some of the film. Belgian tyranny is represented early on by a scene of Lumumba being beaten in prison, but it would help to know that the Belgians were arguably the most vicious of Africa's colonizers, committing horrible atrocities in their greed for rubber and ivory. Along similar lines, we are shown how Lumumba started out as a beer seller in Stanleyville - but how he came by his political convictions and oratorical skill, or managed to gain a huge following so quickly, we are not told.

The movie portrays Lumumba as heroic. Certainly he showed great courage, and a devotion to the cause of the people that was undeterred by threats from great economic and international forces. The film also shows him as an inexperienced idealist, who was ill-equipped to handle the demands made upon him in a crisis. This is in itself remarkable, as it adds a certain depth to a story that could have been pure hagiography. What Peck doesn't show us, however, is that Lumumba could also be maddeningly unstable in his emotional outbursts, impulsive and reckless in his actions, and that he closed avenues that could have helped him and his country - notably from the UN and its secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld. In fact, Hammarskjöld's efforts are not mentioned at all in the film. Perhaps it would have taken another half hour or more for that element of the drama to be explained. It would also have made Lumumba less sympathetic, and in this respect Peck softens his portrait as so many biopics tend to do.

No matter what you may think of Lumumba as a man or a leader, there was no excuse for his brutal murder. Peck depicts the details of this shameful act with complete adherence to the known facts, including the complicity of Belgium and the United States. This is actually the most powerful sequence in the film. As Lumumba sits handcuffed in the back of a car, bloody from numerous beatings, awaiting imminent death, his voice-over expresses faith that freedom will eventually prevail in the Congo. That faith has not yet been fulfilled. The final image of fire - we are back to the burning of Lumumba's remains in a trash can - offers warning as well as hope.

Can ideals of social justice and self-determination be made real in the world without succumbing to despotism of one sort or another? What compromises must a person make in order to govern effectively, and what compromises must never be made? Can we somehow transcend greed and the drive for power, or will continuing violence always be our lot? At film's end, the questions still burn.

The gray area between public and private is the setting for Sydney Macartney's A Love Divided. In an Irish village in the 1950s, Sheila (Orla Brady), a Protestant, marries Sean (Liam Cunningham), a Catholic, and she makes him promise that no outside force will ever come between them. Although she signs the pledge to have her children raised as Catholics (necessary for the Church to bless the union), she balks at the village priest's meddling in their affairs when the time comes for her eldest daughter to go to school.

The issue is a woman's right to have a say in the way her children are raised. Sheila wants Sean to include her in the decisions without outside interference. When he caves in to the priest without consulting her, they argue and he strikes her. Her resulting feeling of betrayal causes Sheila to suddenly flee the town with her children, ending up in Belfast, where she employs a lawyer to mediate the conflict. Meanwhile the fanatical priest (Tony Doyle), believing that all this is a plot, initiates a Catholic boycott of the Protestant townspeople and their businesses, demanding that they reveal the whereabouts of Sheila and the children. This, of course, leads to increasing persecution and violence.

I never know what to think when I am told that something is "based on a true story." This is one of those true stories, it would seem, but since I'm unfamiliar with it, I can only judge its merits by the artistic treatment. The film is concerned with religious bigotry and intolerance, and it certainly demonstrates their destructive effect in dramatic fashion. However, as is so often the case in such stories, the creators seem afraid to allow their characters much complexity. The priest and his superiors are outright villains who are set up so that we can eagerly wish for them to fall. I don't doubt that such narrow-minded people exist, but it is wiser to represent them in recognizably human form, rather than in the framework of melodrama, which sweeps us along while absolving us of the duty to think. (For the sake of balance, Macartney briefly shows us a Protestant fanatic, but the deck is stacked all the same.)

Orla Brady radiates passion, intelligence, and warmth, and she has an old-fashioned Hollywood type of beauty that is very rare these days. Her performance is so appealing that it tends to obscure the rigid aspects of Sheila's character. Her actions are understandable, but not completely laudable - yet it's hard to tell from the tone of the film whether Macartney and his screenwriters are even aware of this. A little more subtlety in the treatment would have gone a long way towards making A Love Divided a more interesting and provocative film.

As it is, it's not a bad film. Brady and Cunningham project a convincing attachment, and their portrayal of the grief and loss they experience in their separation adds some flavor to the picture. The reliable Peter Caffrey is also on hand as a bar owner and IRA veteran who scorns the boycott. He is a spirited actor, and things liven up quite a bit when he's on screen. Still, the questions that should be aroused by A Love Divided (How do we balance religious traditions and personal freedom? Is it possible for women to gain more autonomy within those patriarchial traditions? How do we reach across boundaries and live together in peace without at the same time weakening our traditions and values?) tend to be muted by the simplistic dramatic framework and faux-Irish Masterpiece theater type production values, so that the film reinforces the complacency of our good beliefs instead of challenging us on a deeper level.

With Jan Hrebejk's Divided We Fall showing alongside Macartney's film at our local art house, there were two movies playing with the word "Divided" in the title. The resulting confusion meant that ticket buyers felt the need to specify whether they were paying for the "Irish film" or the "Czech film." As it happens, the Czech film is an altogether more thoughtful, interesting and successful piece of cinema. But since it has subtitles, fewer people paid to see it - such is the reality faced by art houses.

Divided We Fall tells the story of a couple named Josef and Marie (Bolek Polívka and Anna Sisková) who hide an escaped Jewish refugee in their house during the war. Their difficult situation is exacerbated by the friendship of Horst (Jaroslav Dusek), a crude opportunist who has joined the Nazi party and also has his eye on Marie. Josef finds himself having to appear as a collaborator in order to protect the refugee and allay the suspicions of Horst, while Horst's designs on Marie lead to convoluted (and comic) plot developments.

The director attempts something very difficult here - a film with a comic flavor dealing with very serious issues evoked by the calamities of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The wrong emphasis here or there would venture into bad taste or (worse) the minimizing of real horror. Hrebejk, who also wrote the screenplay, finds the right touch. He knows when to be pull back and be serious. He is good at conveying the extreme danger and tension of the situation. And yet the film has a genuine wit - wry, tinged with sadness, or sometimes just laugh-out-loud funny - that highlights the emotionally moving elements of the tale without undercutting them. Polívka and Dusek are excellent, creating multi-dimensional characters that continue to surprise us.

Although the director is too young (34) to have been a part of the great Czech New Wave of the 60s, he has succeeded in capturing some of the style and tone of that movement. The ironic humanism, the vision that includes everyone (even Nazis) in a fallible and familiar human family, reminds me of Ivan Passer and Jiri Menzel. In Divided We Fall, the evil that people do seems to spring more from an appalling ignorance and selfishness than from the dark and implacable force we so often imagine. More significantly, the good that people do - up to and including the heroism of the married couple who risk everything to protect a young man from the Nazis - is accompanied by all the doubts, petty defects of character, and self-centered fears that we are all prey to. Real courage, the film tells us, is not the kind we see in the superheroes of film and fiction - but is achieved in spite of, or even in some paradoxical way because of, our inherent limitations as struggling human beings.

Hrebejk weaves many strands together in this gentle, inspiring and humane comedy of crisis. He holds out the hope that even the least bit of kindness, by someone who might otherwise inspire our contempt, creates the possibility of some sort of spiritual salvation. He also explores a great tragedy of modern history - the almost total extermination of Jewish life in Europe - in personal terms, with a deep sense of sorrow and loss, while at the same time symbolizing (through an amusing complication of narrative) a continuity between past and present, between the dead and the living, and between parents and the children who embody our future.

How do we respond when world catastrophe visits our doorstep? Where do we find the will to do the best in spite of our fear? In the midst of violence and hate, is forgiveness still possible? What can I, a single person, do? These are just a few of the questions inspired in me by Divided We Fall. That the film manages to be funny when dealing with matters of such great importance is, for me, a sign of the best kind of art. Laughing in order to escape seems like a strategy of avoidance - understandable, but not a response that heals. To not laugh at all is to give up. But to laugh in the awareness of the worst parts of our nature, to laugh in the midst of suffering as a way to embrace ourselves and each other, in all our aspects, is to endure and to affirm our humanity.

©2001 Chris Dashiell
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