| Lately I’ve noticed an interesting trend in mainstream cinema. Movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men, Letters From Iwo Jima and The Lives of Others all offer a critique of fascism or totalitarianism. Set in either the past or a fictive future, these films illuminate current dilemmas we all face in the wake of 9-11. The brutal, dehumanizing reality of societies that have sacrificed too much in pursuit of a nationalistic ideal or to defeat a foreign enemy don’t seem so very far away, and the films offer a timely glimpse of a future without freedom. All but one of the films was made by foreign directors, and each reflects international angst at current values and leadership that could mirror aberrations of the last century. |  |
Fascism At The Movies – Daniel Rothbart
Lately I’ve noticed an interesting trend in mainstream cinema. Movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men, Letters From Iwo Jima and The Lives of Others all offer a critique of fascism or totalitarianism. Set in either the past or a fictive future, these films illuminate current dilemmas we all face in the wake of 9-11. The brutal, dehumanizing reality of societies that have sacrificed too much in pursuit of a nationalistic ideal or to defeat a foreign enemy don’t seem so very far away, and the films offer a timely glimpse of a future without freedom. All but one of the films was made by foreign directors, and each reflects international angst at current values and leadership that could mirror aberrations of the last century.
Set in a rural military outpost during the Spanish Civil War, the story of Pan’s Labyrinth is experienced through the eyes of a child. Ofelia, a little girl with an armful of fairy tale books, accompanies her mother, Carmen, on a country road to join her wicked stepfather Captain Vidal. En route, her mother’s caravan stops and Ofelia discovers a dragonfly, which transforms itself into a fairy that will follow Ofelia to their destination. Upon arriving at the outpost, Ofelia and Carmen meet Captain Vidal who is more interested in his unborn son than in having any kind of emotional relationship with either Ofelia or his new wife. Due to complications in her pregnancy, Carmen becomes bedridden and Ofelia meets the fairy once again who leads her out into the forest where ancient ruins mark the entrance to a nether world inhabited by all kinds of fantastic creatures, fairies and monsters. Ofelia descends a winding stone staircase into this parallel universe where she befriends a faun and begins a series of fascinating and dangerous adventures.
Ofelia’s experiences in the magical underworld begin to reflect, in various ways, the reality of her life in the outpost and pose similar moral questions on the nature of good and evil and appearance versus reality. Captain Vidal shortly reveals his brutal nature by murdering two suspected partisans who turn out to be simple hunters. Ofelia discovers an evil toad who lives at the roots of an ancient tree (of liberty?), feasting on insects and stunting the tree’s growth. Vidal sadistically tortures a captured fighter while Ofelia has a frightening encounter with a sightless monster in the labyrinth. Beside this creature is a stack of children’s shoes, bearing testimony to past victims and alluding to the sinister storehouses of Auschwitz. When aroused, this monster puts eyes into the palms of his hands, belying fascist values of action without the faculty of reflection.
Children of Men, on the other hand, takes place in the not so distant future. The human race has become sterile and the scourge of Muslim terrorism has dragged most of the formerly civilized world into a state of violent anarchy. Great Britain is the only bastion of Western culture left and refugees swarm to its shores only to be rounded up by Homeland Security forces and herded into penal colonies. When the film opens, due to some medical calamity, no baby has been born for 18 years and the human race seems headed for extinction. Theo Faron, a world-weary government agent is recruited by his activist ex-wife to help help protect Kee, a young African woman who has mysteriously become pregnant.
The film begins with a terrorist bombing of a café in London. Theo, who had moments before bought his morning coffee inside reels at the concussion. Out of broken glass and bloody, injured people amble from the wreckage. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the measures the government has taken to protect its citizens from this violence are equally abhorrent in comparison to the terrorism itself. At one point, Theo and Kee are deported to a concentration camp that has been created to house foreign refugees. Guards aboard their bus, make vile, xenophobic remarks about the detainees en route and ,once inside the compound, prisoners are met by vicious German Shepherd dogs. The allusion is to a Nazi concentration camp like Auschwitz, but certain prisoners are made to wear hoods and assume positions like the Iraqi inmates of Abu Ghraib.
Letters From Iwo Jima subverts the war movie genre, offering a human portrait of the Japanese soldiers who fought to protect Iwo Jima during World War II. The film focuses on two central characters: Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the general charged with defending the island (to the last man) and Saigo, a poor young baker and civilian who has close friends among the rank and file soldiers. It soon becomes clear that both men left wives and children who they dearly love in Japan and that both have been caught up in events beyond their control. Kuribayashi had lived in America and was conflicted with regard to Japan’s role in the war. Saigo is drafted into the army to the despair of his pregnant wife, who laments that no conscriptees return alive from the war.
At one point in the film, Saigo crawls out of an underground bunker to empty a latrine bucket only to see the allied invasion fleet positioning itself around the island. Destroyers, aircraft carriers, supply ships and landing craft fill the surrounding ocean as far as the eye can see. The Japanese officers seem aware of the futility of their defense but resolve to fight to the death. To improve morale, radio transmissions of children singing patriotic songs about Iwo Jima are piped onto the island and Kuribayashi exhorts his men to kill ten Americans before succumbing to death. Saigo, who has secretly promised to return to his wife, experiences all manner of horrors as he struggles to survive. The overwhelming senselessness and waste of this battle are experienced at every turn in the narrative, which offers a harrowing critique of “Bushido” or soldier’s willingness to die for king and country.
Set in East Germany in the 80s, The Lives of Others examines the relationship between Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler and Georg Dreyman, the playwright he has been assigned to spy on. Wiesler is committed to protecting socialist ideals in his country but it soon becomes apparent to him that the real reason for his surveillance of Dreyman is that a minister and member of the party’s Central Committee is lusting after Dreyman’s girlfriend Christa-Maria. The minister wants to send Dreyman to prison in order to have free reign with this young woman. Gradually, Wiesler comes to sympathize with the couple and changes the substance of his reports to protect them. As a result, Dreyman is able to write an article on the absence of suicide rate statistics in East Germany, a text that is highly critical of the socialist regime.
Like Ofelia, Theo Faren and, to some extent, Saigo, Gerd Wiesler takes a principled stand against the laws of his oppressive society. Wiesler’s personal morality trumps the collective morass into which his country has descended. After the fall of the Berlin wall, Dreyman asks the former minister why he was never under surveillance, and the man replies that indeed he was and that he should check the wiring of his apartment. Dreyman confirms the wiring and promptly visits an archive where Stasi files have been made public to finds the reports on him and a fictitious play he was to have been writing about the life of V. I. Lenin. The reports had been signed by agent HGW XX/7. Dreyman researched the identity of this man and went in search of Wiesler. He finds the agent working as a postman, delivering mail, and while tempted to introduce himself, Dreyman decides against it. Two years later, Dreyman’s novel Sonata for a Good Man is published and Wiesler happens to see it advertised in a bookstore window. Upon opening the book, he sees it is dedicated to "HGW XX/7 with gratitude." He purchases the book and, when the clerk asks if it should be wrapped as a present, Wiesler replies, “No. It’s for me.”
