THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/05/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 14
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@excite.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
Crisis of Faith (Comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Wartime Films at the Toronto International Film Festival
(Film reviews of ENIGMA, TO END AL WARS,
TAKING SIDES, and FOCUS by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Crisis of Faith (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I consider myself to be fairly liberal and also more libertarian than
not. I am a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
But I have to say that I also consider myself a pragmatist and there are
times that I do stray from the purist adherence to those beliefs. I
have crises of faith with a few of the supposedly liberal stands.
People who follow my editorials know that I have some problems with some
of the extreme actions and extreme opinions some people have in the name
of feminism. This week I want to talk about a couple of others.
In general I am against any form of killing for any purpose except
survival. I do not believe in hunting for any purpose except to
preserve ones life. I believe in hunting is all right for food and in
very cold climates hunting for fur. I think that beyond those two
purposes, there is no such thing as a moral right to bear arms. In
general the National Rifle Association should consider me an opponent.
I certainly oppose them. But I also oppose the stand of the ACLU on gun
ownership. More accurately they agree with my viewpoint on gun control
and I am paying them to oppose me. It is like having a dentist
recommend a brand of rich candy bar.
The ACLU has a position to defend Constitutional rights and some of the
ones they defend are much more tenuously connected to the Constitution
than the right to bear arms in well-ordered militias. I think that the
Founding Fathers did not foresee what problems the second amendment
would cause. Nevertheless the ACLU should be as protective of the
second amendment as they are of the other nine. I still support gun
control, but I while I do that I would like to think the ACLU is looking
out for the Bill of Rights in case I go too far. But I do not have a
lot of confidence in the consistency of their viewpoint.
The other issue, and another one where I would differ from the ACLU's
viewpoint, is racial and ethnic profiling. For a couple of years now we
have heard a great deal about police who racially profile motorists. I
admit on the surface it sounds like a bad thing. But all along deep
inside I know I don't know. That will probably infuriate some people,
but hear me out. I can see circumstances in which racial or ethnic or
gender profiling makes sense. Let's take an extreme case. Suppose the
police are looking for a rapist and the victim can not identify the
rapist. Should they be detaining equal numbers of men and women? After
all very few men are rapists. But still you are 100% (or very nearly
100%) sure the person you are looking for will appear to be a man.
Let us look at an example in which it is not so sure? There currently
is a hunt on for terrorists. I am almost certain that profiling is
going on and people who get special attention are Muslims of Middle
Eastern origin. Do all terrorists fit this mold? Certainly not. There
are terrorists who are anarchists. There are some who are just
unbalanced. Are most Muslims of Middle Eastern origin dangerous
terrorists? No, only a very tiny percentage. Is there a correlation
between terrorists and Muslims of Middle Eastern origin? You better
believe there is one. Pick a terrorist threatening the United States
and the odds are really good that he or she is a Muslim of Middle
Eastern origin. There are certainly more than you would find by pure
chance. And the reasons are obvious. So the investigators are giving
special attention to Muslims of Middle Eastern origin. Is that fair?
Under the current circumstances I would say it is. It is never a good
thing when the innocent are inconvenienced, but the alternative is
worse. It is one of the prices people pay in society.
So what about the police giving "special attention" to motorists of a
particular ethnic background? It superficially seems wrong. But
whether there is a correlation with the actual perpetrators or not, I
don't know. And if the police only racially profile that will certainly
skew the results since only people who fit the profile will be accused.
It is easy to see that racial or ethnic profiling could be misused and
give rise to great injustices. It could easily be misused. Perhaps it
is being misused and abused. But its accusers are stating without proof
that it definitely is being abused. It is not intrinsically wrong,
however easy it would be to abuse. Accusers have the burden of proof
that it is being abused. I think ethnic profiling in looking for
terrorists is valid. But leave it to the professionals. Don't try it
at home, kiddies. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Wartime Films at the Toronto International Film Festival
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper)
While we now attend each year the Toronto International Film
Festival, certainly this will be the one that will be best
remembered. Essentially this was the one where the US went to
war. There was inevitably a lot of introspection by everybody,
certainly every US citizen, on what would be the effects on people
of this new kind of war in which we suddenly found ourselves.
Several of the films focused on the reaction and behavior of
people in the war between fascism and democracy that was the
greatest event of the last century. Films that fit into this
category were ENIGMA, TO END ALL WARS, TAKING SIDES, and FOCUS.
ENIGMA
CAPSULE: Dark and complex espionage thriller based on the Robert
Harris novel. March 1943 the British lose their former ability to
decode German messages to their submarine fleet. They must either
get it back or lose an important shipping convoy. An intelligent
thriller perhaps a little too reserved to be thrilling. Rating: 7
(0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
For thirty years after the end of the World War II Britain's most
secret weapon remained secret. Like the US had done with the
Manhattan Project, Britain had put many of their best minds onto
their own scientific wartime project. What they found could well
have saved the war for Britain. At minimum it shortened the war
by at least two years by negating the Germans' most effective
weapon, the U-boat. The Germans communicated with their men in
the field (or in this case the sea) with an incredibly complex
code called Enigma. The code was encrypted and decrypted with a
device of mechanical and electronic components that created an
unimaginably large number of possibilities that has to be
considered in decoding the message.
The mathematics necessary for decoding Enigma was considered to be
orders of magnitude beyond what any country could accomplish, even
if the closely guarded Enigma boxes fell into the hands of the
enemy. What the Germans did not know was that an Enigma box had
fallen into allied hands and teams of puzzle solvers and
mathematicians were recruited for the purpose cracking the code.
The team was installed at Bletchley Park under the direction of
Alan Turing. For the first time rudimentary electronic computers
were used to search for and test solutions. By July of 1941 the
work had already borne fruit and supply convoys from America were
saved from submarine wolf packs. It typically took two days to
decode a message, but for many of the messages that was short
enough time.
Then in February 1942 the code changed. It was still Enigma, but
a new order of complexity had been added. The code could not be
solved. At the same time the strategy of the submarine packs
changed. The Germans could not know how great a setback it was.
By December the Allied shipping losses had quadrupled. It took
ten months to recover the old capabilities and the Battle of the
Atlantic again turned in favor of the Allies. And so it remained.
All this is history. It is history filmmakers have not made much
usage of, though code breaking was an important part of World War
II. The film U-571 told the fictional story of Americans
capturing an Enigma box and set it much later than the British
actually did. The film MIDWAY tells a little about the Americans
efforts at code breaking. Robert Harris wrote the novel ENIGMA, a
mystery story set in and around the Bletchley Park project. Tom
Stoppard has adapted the novel into a screenplay and Michael Apted
directs.
The premise is that in March 1943, the Germans changed the code
again. The British have just four days to break the modified code
before an important convoy from New York will be entering waters
that may have German U-boats. Without knowledge of where the U-
boats are there is no way to avoid these waters. With nary a
mention of Alan Turing in the screenplay, sullen mathematician Tom
Jericho (played by Dougray Scott) who had left the Bletchley Park
project has been brought back onto the project. He had been
instrumental in breaking the code the last time, but had since
suffered a nervous breakdown. That breakdown was brought on by
being rejected by lovely co-worker Claire (Saffron Burrows). She
was a fellow project member with whom Tom had fallen in love. Now
there is evidence that Claire intentionally broke project security
and perhaps was spying for the Germans. Tom has a double problem
of resolving the new German code and looking for the now missing
Claire. Helping him is Claire's swatty and bookish housemate
Hester Wallace (Kate Winslett). Making life even more difficult
is sinister and polished intelligence operator Wigram (played
nicely by Jeremy Northam).
Tom Stoppard's adaptation is better than one might have expected
retaining some reasonable explanation of the history and the
mathematical issues involved without obvious expository lumps,
though by the end of the film some technical problems are going by
too fast to comprehend. Perhaps in deference to Apted the script
has some feminist touches that I do not remember from the book.
It also has one gratuitous car chase. John Barry has provided a
score that is by turns lush and ominous.
An interesting chapter in history could have made for a better
thriller, but as it stands it is reasonably exciting if reserved.
I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4
scale.
People interested in the efforts to break the Enigma can find a
lot of intriguing material at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/decoding/. This is information to
accompany the excellent episode of Nova "Decoding Nazi Secrets."
Included is a transcript of that broadcast.
TO END ALL WARS
CAPSULE: This is a harrowing look at a rarely dramatized chapter
of WWII, life in a Japanese prison camp. TO END ALL WARS is a
moving film about the struggle of prisoners to retain their
humanity and their dignity. The somewhat religious interpretation
may not be to everyone's taste. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to
+4)
More than any other people the Japanese seem capable of acting
with one goal and not letting any other consideration get in their
way. This may be a holdover from the code of Bushido when loyalty
to ones master was the only law. During World War II, of course,
the one goal was winning the war. This led them to do some very
inhuman things in pursuit of that goal. When the Japanese had
captured prisoners, they were very much treated in whatever way
would be optimum for achieving the one goal. Minimum resources
were to be spent in maintaining prisoners in keeping with maximal
positive output. While the Germans, not known for their kindness
in those days, had a 6% mortality rate among captured prisoners of
war, the mortality rate of Japanese prisoners of war was 27%. The
best thing for the war effort was working prisoners nearly to
death on the Thailand to Burma railroad. That railroad was needed
if Japan was to attack India as it planned to do. The best thing
for the effort was not to waste much food on the prisoners so
short and amazingly wretched food was the order of the day. And
just being in the jungle without proper medical aid took its toll.
In the public mind Japan has never been held as accountable for
war atrocities as was Germany. Filmmakers have been reticent to
tell the story, perhaps for fear of offending the Japanese. There
are comparatively few films about the Japanese POW camps.
Certainly there was David Lean's THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
There were some low-budget British exploitation films and that was
about it. Then there were TV series "A Town Like Alice" and
"Tenko." Lest the experience be forgotten we have a new film TO
END ALL WARS directed by David Cunningham and written by Brian
Godawa. It is based on the account of Ernest Gordan who survived
the horror of that World War II prison camp and went on to become
for 26 years the Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University. The
film while realistic shows the conditions in the camp as being
considerably more brutal and sadistic than BRIDGE ON THE RIVER
KWAI portrayed them.
The story opens with six or so soldiers being marched into the
prison camp only to be immediately placed in front of a firing
squad. It turns out to be a grim joke, one of many that the
sadistic Japanese play to amuse themselves. Beating and torture
are commonplace events. Men already imprisoned tell the new
arrivals to enjoy the last of their health; it will not last long
with parasites and disease almost inevitable. However, unlike as
in KWAI, the prisoners want to avoid going to the hospital, called
by the prisoners the Death House.
So goes a war within a war with the prisoners trying to maintain
their humanity and with the Japanese trying to make them
interchangeable and highly expendable cogs in a rail-laying
machine. This is more than just a battle of who will win the war
but a battle of ideologies. The Japanese believe that the
individual is nothing, that conformity to group's norms is all
that gives a life meaning. Conformity is purpose. Before the
film is over there will be some surprising revelations about the
character of the prisoners and the character of those running the
camp. If this story showed nothing but sadism from the Japanese
it would be one kind of story. If the British (with one American,
by the way) and the Japanese learned to respect each other it
would be another kind of story. It is neither. It is a stirring
and believable account of camp life.
The color has been distorted in the film to give a washed out
yellow. This serves a double purpose for Cunningham. It gives an
effect of Technicolor film that has been left in heat. It also
creates a distancing effect. The only touch that seems a little
out of place is the use of Gaelic music.
This is a powerful and philosophical view of the prison camp
experience. I rate it a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4
to +4 scale.
TAKING SIDES
CAPSULE: This is a film that avoids easy answers. Wilhelm
Furtwangler, then the world's greatest orchestra conductor stayed
in Germany and cooperated with the Nazis. What were his views;
was he a war criminal or a secret resistance fighter? How much
did he know about crimes against humanity? The US government
investigated him after the war and this film is a dramatization of
that investigation. Rating: 8 (0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4)
In my opinion one of the best films of the last few years is
Istvan Szabo's SUNSHINE, a film that covers the fortunes of a
Jewish Hungarian family under the reigns of three different
regimes, Hungarian aristocrats, Nazis, and Communists. Szabo's
follow-up film, a German production, is much more limited in
scope. It is about the post-war investigation of who criminally
supported the Nazis and who opposed them. Ronald Harwood's
screenplay ambiguously looks at the investigation of a great
classical music conductor who stayed on in Germany when the Nazis
took power and became the most popular conductor of the Third
Reich.
Maj. Steve Arnold (played by Harvey Keitel) has been assigned by
his superiors to investigate Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellan
Skarsgard), perhaps Europe's greatest classical music conductor.
When other artists fled Germany, Furtwangler remained behind and
conducted for the Hitler and his henchmen. After the war is over
Arnold assigned to interview Furtwangler and members of his
orchestra and if appropriate to prosecute him for war crimes. He
secretly is told by his commanding officer to find Furtwangler
guilty. From there we follow him and learn a little about Arnold
and something about Furtwangler and his orchestra. As he
interviews members of the wartime orchestra Arnold starts noticing
odd peculiarities that may or may not point to a conspiracy
against his investigation. There is a certain sameness to the
responses that he is getting. Perhaps any cooperation he is
getting has been in some ways managed. If so, perhaps he can
never come to the truth.
In large part the film is about mind games that Arnold uses to
manipulate his interviewees and especially Furtwangler. Where the
script has problems is that in the end it is so ambiguous. It has
no obvious resolution and not much of a final act. When it is
over whether anything has been established is open to
interpretation. Perhaps that is better than so many films that
make it all to obvious what the audience should believe, but it is
like watching a murder mystery and never finding out who the
killer is. We are given clues to something but they are never
tied up. In the end we just know more about both Arnold and
Furtwangler.
The film is basically a stage play. The visual is not very
important. Corners are cut visually including touches like
filling windows with photographs to avoid having to shoot on
location. As with a stage play, what this film centers on the
dialog, and that is intriguing. I rate the film an 8 on the 0 to
10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [There is one piece
of sloppiness few people but me would notice. At one point we
clearly see Arnold's desk calendar say "Jan 16 Tues." A quick
mental calculation told me that combination could occur in 1945
and then not again until 1951. The events had to take place in
1946 or 1947. A possible date could be obtained from any World
Almanac.]
FOCUS
CAPSULE: In the late years of World War II a man sees anti-Semitic
influences moving into his neighborhood but wants to remain
neutral. As neutrality become more and more difficult he
struggles with his conscience. Neil Slavin directs this
adaptation of a novel by Arthur Miller. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2
(-4 to +4)
FOCUS is a story of an anti-Semitic movement during the years of
World War II, but it does not take place in Europe, but in the US.
Kendrew Lascelles wrote the film based on Arthur Miller's 1945
novel FOCUS. It is the story of Fascism creeping into a middle-
class neighborhood.
Lawrence Newman (played by William H. Macy) lives with his mother.
He works in a prosperous Manhattan company interviewing new
applicants. He interviews people applying for jobs and generally
makes sure the company hires only the "right type," good gentiles.
One of the people he turns down is non-Jewish Gertrude Hart (Laura
Dern) who nonetheless looks too Jewish to be put in a visible
position.
Lawrence happens to witnesses a tough-guy neighbor beat up a
woman. But he does not want to make trouble in the neighborhood
by going to the police. Another neighbor Fred (the intimidating
Meat Loaf Aday) seems to be on a personal campaign to chase out of
the neighborhood the corner news dealer, a Jew (David Paymer), to
move out of the neighborhood. When Lawrence gets new glasses,
glasses that accidentally make him look Jewish; suddenly he gets a
new view of his street and especially neighbor Fred who is
inviting "Americanist" organizers into the neighborhood. Lawrence
tries desperately to hold onto his neutrality in the Jew-baiting
in spite of the dictates of his conscience.
For his first feature film commercial producer Neal Slavin has
chosen a particularly timely theme, that of a slow but insidious
spreading prejudice and fascism. The targeting of ethnic groups
for particular hatreds is especially timely. Particularly
chilling is that Fred so anxious to introduce the same fascism
that was currently engulfing Europe.
Slavin symbolizes the cycle of evil with the image of merry-go-
round accompanied by ominous music. The film's one less than
subtle touch is the big billboard at the end of the infiltrated
street proclaiming "There's no way like the American way."
It is interesting that two of Arthur Miller's novels were adapted
at the same time. Like FOCUS, Amos Gitai's EDEN also was shown at
the Toronto International Film Festival. Both are about people
caught up in evil circumstances and having to take a stand.
However, FOCUS is by far the better of the two. I rate it a 7 on
the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
--Friedrich Nietzsche
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