European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory and Politics

European Cinema and Intertextuality

Also by Ewa Mazierska JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI: THE CINEMA OF A NONCONFORMIST MASCULINITIES IN POLISH, CZECH AND SLOVAK CINEMA: BLACK PETERS AND MEN OF MARBLE NABOKOV’S CINEMATIC AFTERLIFE ROMAN POLANSKI: THE CINEMA OF A CULTURAL TRAVELLER POLISH POSTCOMMUNIST CINEMA: FROM PAVEMENT LEVEL CROSSING NEW EUROPE: POSTMODERN TRAVEL AND THE EUROPEAN ROAD MOVIE (with Laura Rascaroli) WOMEN IN POLISH CINEMA (with Elz˙bieta Ostrowska) RELOCATING BRITISHNESS (co-edited with Steven Caunce, Susan Sydney-Smith and John Walton) DREAMS AND DIARIES: THE CINEMA OF NANNI MORETTI (with Laura Rascaroli) FROM MOSCOW TO MADRID: POSTMODERN CITIES, EUROPEAN CINEMA (with Laura Rascaroli)

European Cinema and Intertextuality History, Memory and Politics Ewa Mazierska

© Ewa Mazierska 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–57954–5 ISBN-10: 0–230–57954–X

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To my children, Kamka and Daniel

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Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country?

1

1 The Burden of the Past and the Lightness of the Present: Dealing with Historic Trauma through Film

22

2 ‘Our Hitler’: New Representations of Hitler in European Films

60

3 A Clear Dividing Line?: Cinematic Representations of German, Italian and Irish Terrorism

97

4 From Socialist Realism to Postmodernism: Polish Martial Law of 1981 in Polish and Foreign Films

135

5 Goodbye Lenin or Not: Cinematic Representations of the End of Communism

174

6 Twists of Fate: Secret Agents, Communist Collaborators and Secret Files in German, Polish and Czech Films

207

Notes

247

References

255

Index

274

vii

List of Illustrations 1.1

Bruno Putzulu as Edgar in Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001), directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Courtesy of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Battiaga

29

Edgar on the way to the past in Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001), directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Courtesy of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Battiaga

31

Commemorating Armenian history through film in Ararat (2003), directed by Atom Egoyan. Courtesy of Johnnie Eisen, Serendipity Point Films

39

Arsinée Khanjian as Ani in Ararat (2003), directed by Atom Egoyan. Courtesy of Johnnie Eisen, Serendipity Point Films

39

Marek Kondrat as Paweł in Weiser (2000), directed by Wojciech Marczewski

49

1.6

Elka and Weiser in Weiser (2000), directed by Wojciech Marczewski

50

2.1

Leonid Mozgovoy as Hitler and Yelena Rufanova as Eva Braun in Moloch (1999), directed by Aleksandr Sokurov. Courtesy of Zero One Film

71

Noah Taylor as Hitler and John Cusack as Max in Max (2002), directed by Menno Meyjes

75

Helge Schneider as Hitler and Ulrich Mühe as Adolf Grünbaum in Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler, 2007), directed by Dani Levy

81

Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

89

Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008), directed by Uli Edel

108

Moritz Bleibtrei as Andreas Baader in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008), directed by Uli Edel

112

1.2

1.3

1.4 1.5

2.2 2.3

2.4 3.1

3.2

viii

List of Illustrations ix

3.3 3.4 4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4 4.5

5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

6.1

Maya Sansa as Chiara in Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003), directed by Marco Bellocchio

117

Liam Neeson as Alistair in Five Minutes of Heaven (2009), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

130

Jerzy Aleksander Braszka as Karol Szostak, ejected from ‘Metalpol’ by fellow workers in Godnos´c´ (Dignity, 1984), directed by Roman Wionczek. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa

141

Marian Opania as General Zambik in Rozmowy kontrolowane (Tapped Conversations, 1991), directed by Sylwester Che˛cin´ski. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa

151

Marian Dzie˛dziel as Zdzisław Dziabas and Arkadiusz Jakubik as Edward S´rodon´ in Dom zły (The Dark House, 2009), directed by Wojciech Smarzowski. Courtesy of Feliks Pastusiak and Film It & Grupa Filmowa

159

Hard work in Moonlighting (1982), directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa

162

Isabelle Huppert as Isabelle and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz as Jerzy in Passion (1982), directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Courtesy of Jean-Luc Godard

171

Regina after the assault by Sergei’s friends in Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories, 1992), directed by Peeter Urbla. Courtesy of Peeter Urbla

184

Vytatutas and Juozas in Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories, 1992), directed by Peeter Urbla. Courtesy of Peeter Urbla

185

Florian Lukas as Denis, Alex’s friend and the presenter on Aktuelle Kamera in Good Bye Lenin! (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker. Courtesy of X Verleih

197

Television studio in A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest, 2006), directed by Corneliu Porumboiu. Courtesy of 42 Km Film

202

Ulrich Mühe as Gerd Wiesler in Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Courtesy of Wiedemann & Berg Film

214

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List of Illustrations

6.2

6.3

6.4

6.5

6.6

Sebastian Koch as Georg Dreyman and Martina Gedeck as Christa-Maria Sieland in Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Courtesy of Wiedemann & Berg Film

215

Bogusław Linda as Franz Maurer and Marek Kondrat carrying secret files in as Olo in Psy (Dogs, 1992), directed by Władysław Pasikowski. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa

225

Kamil Mac´kowiak as Bartek in Korowód (Twists of Fate, 2007), directed by Jerzy Stuhr. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa

231

Jadwiga Jankowska-Cies´lak as Joanna and Krzysztof Stroin´ski as Jan in Rysa (Scratch, 2008), directed by Michał Rosa. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa

233

Pupendo (2003), directed by Jan Hrˇebejk. Courtesy of Jan Hrˇebejk, Daria Špaˇcková and T.H.A.

239

Acknowledgements A book dealing with the histories and cinemas of so many different countries would not be possible without the help of many colleagues and friends working in different countries, to whom I wish to express my gratitude. Cesar Ballester, Sune Bechmann Pedersen, Petra Hanáková, Z˙aneta Jamrozik, Lars Kristensen, Iwona Kurz, Matilda Mroz, Alun Munslow, Eva Näripea, Elz˙bieta Ostrowska, Laura Rascaroli, Katerina Svatonová, Wendy Webster, Michael Witt and Szymon Wróbel read the whole or parts of the manuscript and provided insightful comments. Adam Wyz˙yn´ski from the Polish Film Archive and my research assistant, Lars Kristensen, helped me to access much of the secondary material used in this book. I am grateful to the University of Central Lancashire for awarding me a generous study leave, which allowed me to finish the book earlier than otherwise would happen, and to the Polish History Museum, whose grant supported my research into films about Polish martial law. I am also grateful to all institutions and individuals who allowed me to use stills from their films. Preliminary versions of parts of Chapter 4 were published in Communist and Post-Communist, 42, 2, 2009, as ‘Polish Martial Law of 1981 in Polish Post-Communist Films: Between Romanticism and Postmodernism’ and in New Cinemas, 7, 3, 2009, as ‘Polish Martial Law of 1981 Seen from Abroad’. They are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.

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Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country?

Cinema is part of history, namely a discourse on the past. But what is the past? ‘The past is a foreign country’, is an answer which immediately appears in my head. These words, opening L. P. Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between (Hartley 1953: 9), were repeated or paraphrased by so many historians (see, for example, Lowenthal 1985, 2007; Judt 1992; Hobsbawm 1997; Fuchs and Cosgrove 2006) that they became a cliché. And yet, they require scrutiny, because they are ambiguous and therefore their meanings divide contemporary historians. Explaining their meanings will also allow me to locate my book within a number of debates concerning the status of history and its relation to cinema.

Past and present, history and memory One way to approach this sentence is to treat it as a methodological directive. Some historians, such as Eric Hobsbawm, whom Alun Munslow describes as ‘reconstructionists’ and ‘constructionists’ (realist, empiricist, positivist) (Munslow 1997: 18–19 and 36–56; 2006: 216–18) regard it as a warning against projecting current ideas and views onto the past, for example attributing contemporary concepts of nations and states to ancient civilisations, as reflected, for example, in the recent dispute about the name of Macedonia (Hobsbawm 1997: 7). For Hobsbawm, past events, institutions, structures and people should be analysed in their original context, as elements of a complex web making up distant societies and cultures. Other historians, however, derive an opposite conclusion from the premise about the foreignness of the past: rather than trying to access the past ‘as it really was’, they postulate to treat the past as if it was similar to the present or even as if it was a version of the present, openly introducing current views and insights into their 1

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studies. For such historians, grouped together as postmodern or deconstructionist, many of them influenced by Jacques Derrida (1996) and Michel Foucault, especially Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge (1972) (whose work Cahiers du cinéma described as a systematic attempt to restore to light what lies forgotten in the black archives of the ruling class), there is no single, objective past, past which is not ‘historiographically uncontaminated’ (Munslow 1997: 25–6 and 57–75). Past, as we know it, is already a text, existing in relation to other texts. Consequently, there cannot be a single, objective history, there are only histories written according to different discursive regimes, in different, ultimately untranslatable languages, and competing for space on library shelves, in the university curricula and on the desks of film and television producers ( Jenkins 1997; Munslow 1997). This is also a view to which I subscribe. In historical practice or historiography, however, the difference between these two camps is not as radical as it appears. Historians from the first group frequently, albeit tacitly, judge past events using current political ideas and moral standards. This refers especially to the events which, if they happened today, would offend our sensibilities, such as slavery and acts of genocide. On the other hand, few deconstructionist historians try to construct discourses in the way which is radically different from those proposed by their colleagues belonging to the reconstructionist school. Equally, it often requires some effort to decide whether a given historical book is written from a reconstructionist or deconstructionist perspective, as the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘truth’ tend to appear in the same chapter. Alongside those who occupy themselves with creating the best methods to discover or construct the ‘foreign land of the past’, we should mention those who maintain that the past ceased to be foreign or at least is no more foreign than the present. Fredric Jameson claims that in our times of consumer capitalism the present changes into the past so quickly that we lose a sense of both the past and the present, becoming schizophrenics, unable to differentiate between different moments of history and our own biography. The main responsibility for this situation lies with the media, especially film and television. As he puts it, ‘One is tempted to say that the very function of the media is to relegate such recent historical experiences [as the age of Nixon and Kennedy] as rapidly as possible into the past’ ( Jameson 1985: 125). A similar argument is proposed by Pierre Nora, who begins his essay ‘Between Memory and History’ by saying ‘The acceleration of history … An increasingly slippage of the present into a historical past that is gone for good, a general perception that anything and everything may disappear – these

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 3

indicate a rupture of equilibrium’ (Nora 1989: 7). Andreas Huyssen in a somewhat complementary argument to that offered by Jameson and Nora maintains that the gap between past and present is disappearing because the recent and not so recent pasts impinge upon the present through modern media of reproduction like photography, film, recorded music, and the Internet, as well as through the explosion of historical scholarship and ever more voracious museal culture. The past has become part of the present in ways simply unimaginable in earlier centuries. As a result, temporal boundaries have weakened just as the experiential dimension of space has shrunk as a result of modern means of transportation and communication. (Huyssen 2003: 1) Anton Kaes puts it in even simpler terms: ‘The further the past recedes, the closer it becomes. Images, fixed on celluloid, stored in archives, and reproduced thousands of times, render the past ever-present’ (Kaes 1989: ix). Recognition of a significance of the subjective and cultural factors (language, gender, class) in the construction of historical texts and thus of the impossibility to reach an unmediated, ‘pure’ past, and a sense of melting the boundary between the past and the present, led to a perception that history as a discipline of the humanities is in a state of crisis. This perception is also affected by the idea that history, understood as humanity’s march towards a better future, has reached its end, either because of the exhaustion of the old grand ideas and inability to create a new ideological project (Niethammer 1992) or because the best of the worlds was reached (Fukuyama 1989, 1992; see also Anderson 1992: 279–375). The sign of the crisis of history (as well as its ability for renewal and development) is, on the one hand, an immense growth in metahistorical research and, on the other, an increase in what tended to be left behind or marginalised in historical studies, namely microhistory or history written ‘from below’, which includes oral history and family history. The sense of a crisis in history is also regarded as one of the causes of the development of ‘memory studies’ and their penetration of other disciplines of the humanities, such as literature and film studies. At the same time, the ‘memory boom’ adds to the perception of the current crisis in historical research (see, for example, Klein 2000), rendering history as old-fashioned and unsophisticated, yet elitist. Some authors also link the fashion for memory with the expansion of university education,

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beginning in the 1960s and, connected with it, the increase in disposable income and leisure time, which allows ordinary people to delve into their past (Winter 2001: 59). Last but not least, the shift from history to memory is attributed to the Holocaust: a historical event which, due to being perceived as a traumatic rupture in the Western experience and understanding of history, defies ‘ordinary’ historical representation and can be accessed only through the work of memory (ibid.: 53; Hirsch 2004: 1–13). This memory boom inevitably raises a question about the relationship between history and memory. For Pierre Nora, whom Jay Winter describes as an agent provocateur of the current memory wave (Winter 2001: 52), the closeness between ‘history’ and ‘memory’, paradoxically, signifies the crisis of memory. As he puts it, ‘We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left’ and ‘There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory’ (Nora 1989: 7). In a similar vein Michel Foucault argues that what the workers at the end of the nineteenth century knew about their past was remarkable and this knowledge is fast shrinking (Foucault 1975: 25). Nora perceives history as an aggressor on memory, whose ‘true mission is to suppress and destroy it’ (Nora 1989: 9; see also Wood 1999: 1–37). Yet, at the same time as proclaiming memory as a delicate flower, in need of constant protection, he describes history in terms which render it profoundly unattractive, especially for contemporary sensibilities, as distant, intolerant, even totalitarian, unsubtle, institutionalised, with pretence to telling the truth, but really misleading its users, being powerful yet practically dead. Not surprisingly, anybody who falls under the spell of Nora’s prose must feel disinclined to engage in history; being a ‘memorist’ appears to be the only acceptable way to talk today about the past. Kerwin Lee Klein, in an essay published a decade after Nora’s ‘Between Memory and History’, observes that we ‘use memory as a synonym for history to soften our prose, to humanise it, and to make it more accessible … Memory appeals to us partly because it projects an immediacy we feel has been lost from history’ (Klein 2000: 129). It is worth adding that a consequence of anti-historical propaganda, perpetuated by Nora and his followers, is an edification of a witness or anybody who remembers over a professional historian who has only a second-hand knowledge of the past. The erosion of the division between history and memory is reflected in the proliferation of terms standing somewhere between ‘history’ and ‘memory’. They include ‘collective memory’, ‘cultural memory’, ‘social memory’, ‘public memory’, ‘national memory’, ‘structural memory’,

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 5

‘mnemohistory’, ‘collective remembrance’, ‘hauntology’, ‘ego-history’, ‘present past’ and ‘Memory with a capital M’ (see, for example, Klein 2000; Kansteiner 2002). Let us look at some of these terms. The first, ‘collective memory’, is also the oldest. It was coined by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the 1920s, to reflect the idea that memory can be shared and sustained through the continuous production of representational forms, such as literary texts (Halbwachs 1992). Due to its social character ‘collective memory’ is thus similar to (classical) history. Another term bridging the gap between history and memory, ‘cultural memory’, was developed by Jan and Aleida Assmann (Assmann 1995, 2006; Assmann 2008). They distinguished between ‘communicative memory’ and ‘cultural memory’. The first term ‘includes those varieties of collective memory that are based exclusively on everyday communication’ (Assmann 1995: 126). Practically everybody participates in this form of memory, but it lasts only as long as human life, thus 80 to 100 years. ‘Cultural memory’, on the other hand, ‘comprises that body of reusable texts and images specific to each society in each epoch, whose “cultivation” serves to stabilise and convey that society’s self-image’ (ibid.: 132). ‘Cultural memory’ is thus far longer lasting. It is also an object of contests, of power games, because certain texts prove more appealing to the public or are imposed with greater force on certain groups in certain times than others; the other texts have to wait in the archives for better times. This is also a reason why communicative memory feels more ‘pure’ and trustworthy than cultural memory, although if we are to believe Halbwachs, it is no less a product of cultural influences than cultural memory. The Assmanns’ cultural memory is especially close to traditional history. Not surprisingly, many contemporary historians regard history as a particular form of cultural memory (for example Burke 1989; Hutton 1993; Tamm 2008). However, even if we agree with this statement, a historian might in his/her practice emphasise or play down/reject the fact that s/he deals with what is remembered: discuss past events as taking place objectively or as remembered/represented by a particular individual or a group of people. The first, objective approach, as I have already indicated, dominates in reconstructionist history; the second, subjective, in the deconstructionist one. The importance of Mnemosyne as the mother of Clio is also recognised by filmmakers. In contemporary cinema we observe a strong tendency to present past events as filtered by somebody’s memory or as transformed by cultural representations, typically films or television. In non-mainstream/avant-garde filmmaking, the tendency of ‘memorising

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history’ is even stronger (Skoller 2005). The most celebrated and, partly for this reason, controversial example of the domination of memory over history is Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann. The author of this film does not use any documentary footage to represent or confront the Holocaust, but bases it entirely on interviews with people who remembered the genocide and on the traces of past events in the present, such as trains and train platforms and the absence of Jews where there was once their presence. According to Lanzmann and his advocates, such representation is truer than showing the past in its ‘past-ness’, precisely because it does acknowledge that the past is unrepresentable as past; it can only be represented in and as the present. The current memory wave has its precursors and its leading figures. As for the first ones, we should list Hegel with his concept of original, reflective and philosophical histories (Hegel 1975: 12–24), Nietzsche with his idea of monumental, antiquarian and critical histories (Nietzsche 1997: 59–23), Marx with his idea of history as a memory of a ruling class (Marx 1977), Freud with practically all his work due to its focus on memory, including memory of the events which traumatised entire populations, such as the First World War (Freud 1961). As for those responsible for the shift from history to memory (or Memory), apart from Nora, who was the main inspiration behind one of the most influential ventures in cultural history in the past 20 years, Les lieux de mémoire, published between 1984 and 1992 (Nora 1996–98), we should also list a large group of authors working on Jewish history and the Holocaust, such as Saul Friedlander (1993a) and Amos Funkenstein (1993), due to the idea that Jews are a nation with memory rather than history and that the Holocaust requires memory work on top of historical research.

History and spatial research There is another aspect of the sentence from Hartley’s novel which is less explored by historians, although, in my view, it deserves equal attention. This aspect is conveyed by the use of the words a ‘foreign country’. Let us begin with the second word: ‘country’ – as opposed to ‘period’ or ‘epoch’. ‘Country’ has a spatial rather than a temporal dimension, suggesting that history should be understood as a spatial entity and, consequently, as a subdivision of such disciplines as geography, cartography or architecture. One of the first to recognise the importance of the study of space for learning about history, and vice versa, was Maurice Halbwachs, who in his discussion of ‘the legendary topography of the Gospels’ commented on the practice of building

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 7

Christian churches and other Christian monuments on the sites of earlier religious buildings (Halbwachs 1992: 193–235). The importance of space as a means to transmit histories and memories and create traditions was also noted by numerous anthropologists and historians (Burke 1989: 101–2; 2001; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992). The spatial dimension of history is also recognised by the chief ‘memorist’, Pierre Nora. Large parts of his Realms of Memory are devoted to history immortalised in places. Part II of its third volume is entitled ‘Major Sites’ and includes studies of Lascaux, Reims, the Louvre, Versailles, the Pantheon, the Eiffel Tower and Verdun (Nora 1996–98: vol. 3, 163–401). In a lecture delivered in 1967 and published in the 1980s as ‘Of Other Spaces’, Michel Foucault went further than these authors, announcing that space is winning over history in contemporary culture: The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth century found its essential mythological resources in the second principle of thermodynamics. The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. (Foucault 1998: 229) A similar position was expressed by Fredric Jameson in 2003. He begins his essay ‘The End of Temporality’ with the question ‘After the end of history, what?’ and suggests that the obvious answer is [T]he spatial alternative. Statistics on the volume of books on space are as alarming as the birthrate of your hereditary enemy. The rise of intellectual stock of architecture accompanied the decline of belles lettres like a lengthening shadow; the opening of any new signature building attracted more visitors and media attention than the newly published translation of the latest unknown Nobel Prize winner … So the dictum that time was the dominant of the modern (or the modernism) and space of the postmodern means something thematic and empirical all at once: what we do, according to the newspapers and the Amazon statistics, and what we call what we are doing. I don’t see how we can avoid identifying an epochal change here, and it affects investments (art galleries, building commissions) as much as the more ethereal things also called values. ( Jameson 2003: 696)

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The shifts from time to space and from history to spatial discourses are explained by such factors as the proliferation of new media, especially the Internet, which allows easy access to many distant sites at once, the increased speed of transportation and, connected with it, growth in migration and diaspora. Jameson specifically mentions the end of colonialism, which leads to bringing many people, who previously lived, metaphorically speaking, in different time zones, into one place (ibid.: 700–1). Paradoxically, the current ‘space wave’, not unlike the ‘memory wave’, might also be linked to the perception that (physical) space lost in significance. Such a conclusion we can draw, for example, from the book by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (first published 1983), which argues that physical space is now less important in creating communities than it used to be. Modern and postmodern communities, thanks to the mass media, can be imagined. From this perspective, studying space equals studying a ‘shrinking subject’, although nobody has pronounced yet the ‘end of space’, the ‘death of geography’ or ‘post-geography’. From Foucault and Jameson’s meditation on the importance of space in contemporary culture we can deduce that, in order to study history, we should pay attention to its physical embodiments: buildings, monuments, museum exhibits and the space of a city itself. It is worth mentioning in this context the works of Paul Virilio (Virilio and Lotringer 1983; Virilio 1994) and David Harvey (1989, 1996), who both perceive a city as a spatial-temporal entity, although each of them privileges different histories, imprinted on the city-text. For the first one, it is a history of warfare; for the second, the history of the accumulation of capital. Equally, we should search for concepts and theories which allow us to bring space and time close to each other, even collapse them into one entity. Jameson mentions two such theories: Kant’s theory of time and space as universal categories through which we perceive the world, and Bakhtin’s chronotope (Jameson 2003: 697). To those notions I will add the categories of time-image and movement-image introduced by Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze 1997, 2000). Bakhtin introduced ‘chronotope’ as a tool of literary research (Bakhtin 1981), but it turned out to be very useful for film studies (for example Stam 1989; Sobchack 1998; Naficy 2001; Näripea 2010a). Deleuze’s categories were invented to analyse films and proved very appealing to film scholars. Although the topic of spatial representations has been a major concern in the humanities, it is not widely reflected either in history with a small ‘h’ or in metahistory. For example, Alun Munslow’s Routledge Companion to Historical Studies ignores Bakhtin and pays little attention to Deleuze, while focusing on the problems of ‘language’, ‘narrative’

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 9

and ‘emplotment’ (Munslow 2006). This might reflect the way historians have been educated; for example, the works of Walter Benjamin or Paul Virilio are not included in the staple diet of history students. It might also be a consequence of the fact that the notion of ‘space’, like that of ‘time’, proved multifaceted and therefore difficult to grasp. For example, the recent volume on Key Thinkers on Space and Place includes as many as 52 ‘important thinkers informing current debates about space and place’ (Hubbard and Kitchin 2004: 3; emphasis added; see also Crang and Thrift 2000), including a myriad of geographers, sociologists, philosophers and literary historians. It is exceedingly difficult to even begin to imagine the possibility of a single theoretical framework for analysing space in history or any other area of the humanities. This discovery is, of course, rather unsurprising in the continuing era of the ‘postmodern condition’ which as long as 30 years ago was diagnosed by Jean-François Lyotard as incredulous towards metanarratives (Lyotard 1984: xxiv). Nevertheless, in my view, it puts off historians, already battling with their own problems, from potentially adding new ones. Foucault and Jameson also indirectly point to the importance of film and moving image in a wider sense as a perfect embodiment of Bakhtin’s chronotope, therefore a bridge between the time-oriented modernism and space-obsessed postmodernism. Studying film should thus allow one to overcome the tension between the old concept of history as ‘written’ and the new as ‘visual’. However, it is only one of the many advantages of using film in history, which I will discuss shortly. Before that, I shall turn to another word from Hartley’s definition of the past – ‘foreign’. Its use suggests that if one wants to learn about the past of one’s country (or class, family, gender or any other aspect of one’s identity, for that matter), one has to look at the past of other countries. Such an idea encourages the researcher to move away from a national framework towards transnational and comparative studies. Even the past of one’s own country should be regarded as existing in conjunction or in tension with the history of other countries, such as, for example, their neighbours, enemies or colonies, and looked at from the perspective of the ‘other’. A model of such an approach is Orientalism by Edward Said, published for the first time in 1978 (Said 2003). Transnationalism also entered the study of history, as demonstrated by the works of authors such as David Thelen (1999), Patricia Clavin (2005), Thomas Bender (2002) and Ian Tyrrell (2007). However, a transnational approach is used more in relation to American than European history and the vast majority of histories are still written from one nation’s perspective, most likely because, as Hobsbawm observes,

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‘Our era is still one of nation-states – the only aspect of globalisation where globalisation does not work’ (Hobsbawm 2007: 156). The historians of cinema also recognise, to use Andrew Higson’s phrase, ‘the limiting imagination of national cinema’ (Higson 2000; on the discussion of national/transnational cinema see also Crofts 1993; Ezra and Rowden 2006), but a transnational history of cinema is still a project rather than a fulfilled idea.

History and film The relationship between history and film was of interest to filmmakers and film historians for almost as long as film has existed. One of the first authors to discuss it was a pioneer of cinema, cinematographer to the court of the Russian Tsar and employee of the Lumière company (and a fellow countryman of mine), Bolesław Matuszewski. In 1898, Matuszewski published in the Paris Le Figaro an essay entitled ‘Une nouvelle source de l’Histoire’, in which, true to its title, he argued that film is a new and highly valuable historical source, and therefore should be treated with respect similar to that granted to other historical documents such as books and paintings. A mark of this respect would be the creation of film archives. Matuszewski maintained that the specific value of film in relation to history results from its immediacy and talent for mimicry: A cinematographic photographer is an indiscreet individual, a feature inherent in his profession, on the lookout for an opportunity, he frequently intuitively finds the place where the occurring facts will turn out to be historical causes. And it will be necessary to restrain his over-zealousness rather than accuse him of shyness. Sometimes the natural curiosity of the human mind, sometimes greed, and not infrequently both, will stimulate his ingenuity and courage. Authorised to operate during the official celebrations, on another occasion he sneaks in with no authorisation and is usually capable of detecting places and circumstances in which history of tomorrow is in the making. He will not be intimidated by any revolutionary movement or an outbreak of riots and one can easily envisage him in wartime with his camera taking aim from the same trench as riflemen and photographing at least a fragment of the battle. (Matuszewski 1999: 26–7) The advantage of cinema, according to Matuszewski, also lies in its ability to allow us to access things which we cannot see with a ‘naked

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 11

eye’.1 With regards to history this means seeing historical events clearly and thanks to that being able to get access to their causes (ibid.: 26). Furthermore, photographic and cinematographic histories are very efficient: ‘Had we had reproductions from the times, let’s say, of the First Empire and the Great Revolution … we would have saved a sea of ink’ (ibid.: 27). However, Matuszewski’s concept of history was narrow. For him, history was concerned only with events of great importance for public and official life, such as the visit of the President of the French Republic to St Petersburg in 1897, which he filmed himself (ibid.: 29). The history of clothes fashion, popular events such as carnivals, the everyday behaviour of ordinary people, what we now term ‘cultural history’, for Matuszewski was not worth registering and even less worth keeping in the archives. Yet, it was also early noted that a cinematograph has a special ability to bear witness to such ‘ordinary’ features of reality. Attitudes to this talent divided authors. In 1920, when the Dutch Academy asked Johan Huizinga about the value of a project for an archive of documentary films, the Dutch anthropologist, despite his visual approach to history, advised against this idea on the grounds that film made no serious contribution to historical knowledge since what it showed was either unimportant or already known (Burke 2001: 155). For Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, who wrote his famous essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in 1936, the special value of film lay precisely in its ability to capture ordinary human behaviour (which slips the notice of ‘professional’ historians): For the entire spectrum of optical, and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar deepening of appreciation. It is only an obverse of this fact that behaviour items shown in a movie can be analysed much more precisely and from more points of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage. As compared with painting, filmed behaviour lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation. (Benjamin 2007: 235–6) In many decades of cinema’s existence discussion about its historical value revolved around its mimetic qualities, which surpassed those of older arts (see, for example, Kracauer 1960, 1969). The most powerful glorification of cinema as a mimetic medium was offered by André Bazin in his essays written in the 1940s, especially ‘The Ontology of the

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Photographic Image’ from 1945, in which the author describes cinema as a descendant of the practice of embalming the dead and in this way prolonging their lives (Bazin 1967: 9). Bazin bases his argument that ‘photography and the cinema … are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and its very essence, our obsession with realism’ on the fact that these media reproduce reality mechanically (ibid.: 12). For Bazin, the filmmaker records what exists in front of his eyes and the reality leaves a trace on a print. In the digital age this is no longer the case. As D. N. Rodowick observes, ‘one of the defining features of digital cinema … is combining images recorded from physical reality with images generated only on computers in the absence of any recording function or physical referent’ (Rodowick 2007: 102–3). Yet, as Rodowick observes, perceptual realism remains an important goal for creators of digital images (ibid.: 99–110). Creating the impression that what we watch on screen truly happened did not disappear from the agenda of ‘historians with cameras’, only they attempt to achieve this impression by different means. Post-Bazin the question of the usefulness of film for history gradually moved from shooting/registering reality to editing. However, cinema’s ability to connect or disconnect events more often than praised was dismissed for being counter-productive in achieving valuable historical results. Authors such as Ian Jarvie and Robert Rosenstone claimed that in contrast to history ‘proper’, which presents historical debates about what and why something happened and how to convey it, film simplifies the past, changing it into an uncomplicated and usually sensationalist narrative ( Jarvie 1978; Rosenstone 1988). This reasoning, however, is undermined by Hayden White, a historian who, drawing on authors such as Foucault and Jameson, argues that history, like works of fiction, also uses a narrative discourse. This discourse, ‘far from being a neutral medium for the representation of historical events and processes, is the very stuff of a “mythical” view of reality, a conceptual or pseudoconceptual “content” which, when used to represent real events, endows them with an illusory coherence and charges them with the kinds of meanings more characteristic of oneiric than of waking thought’ (White 1987: ix). Armed with the idea that history tells tales not unlike fictional works, White maintains that ‘historiophoty’, understood as history conveyed or rather created by film, is essentially no different from traditional historiography. The filmmaker, like a historian, chooses his ‘facts’ and edits them in the same manner that the historian connects them in a historical study. For example, he ‘zooms in’ on certain events and personalities, leaving others in the background or off-screen. White’s conclusion is that we should not demand from film a historical

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 13

fullness and objectivity which ordinary historiography cannot achieve (White 1988). It is also worth noting that from White’s perspective, with which I identify, there is no difference between documentary and feature cinema in relation to ‘historical facts’. Both propose a discourse, rather than the former giving us direct access to ‘facts’, the latter offering facts transformed or manipulated by a filmmaker to suit his audiences, as many critics and viewers believe. However, it makes sense to separate documentary and feature films for aesthetic reasons, regarding them as different genres, employing different conventions. Cinema not only bears witness to important events, but also transmits them in a manner which comes across as more attractive to the general public than any other form of historical discourse, such as an academic book or a historical novel. As Robert Rosenstone maintains, ‘Each day it becomes clearer to even the most academic of historians that the visual media are the chief conveyor of public history in our culture. That for every person who reads a book on a historical topic about which a film has been made, especially a popular film such as Schindler’s List (1993), many millions are likely to encounter that same past on the screen’ (Rosenstone 2006: 12). In my native Poland the conviction about the power of the moving image to win the battle with a ‘correct’ version of history led to crude acts of censorship. In communist times many films, such as Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble, 1977), directed by Andrzej Wajda, or Przesłuchanie (Interrogation, 1989), directed by Ryszard Bugajski, were shelved due to their not ‘correct’ take on national history. In postcommunist times some popular television series made under the communist regime such as Stawka wie˛ksza niz˙ z˙ycie (More Than Life at Stake, 1967–68), directed by Andrzej Konic and Andrzej Morgenstern, and Czterej pancerni i pies (Four Tank Men and a Dog, 1966), directed by Andrzej Czekalski and Konrad Nałe˛cki, were forbidden from being shown again on television on account of falsifying Polish history (Kurz 2008: 10). Of course, on both occasions what was deemed false was inconvenient for the current political establishment. In the light of these troubles with ‘screen history’ it is worth returning to Rosenstone, who, echoing White’s idea that the form of historical research is as significant as its content, argues that rather than dismissing popular historical films, ‘as mere “fiction” or “entertainment”, or lamenting their obvious “inaccuracies”, it seems more judicious … to investigate exactly how films work to create a historical world. This means focusing on what we might call their rules of engagement with

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the traces of the past, and investigating the codes, conventions, and practices by which they bring history to film’ (Rosenstone 2006: 12). Few ‘proper’ historians follow Rosenstone’s advice but many film historians do. For example, Richard Neupert and Jeffrey Skoller, the second drawing on Deleuze’s concepts of movement-image and time-image, argue that films gravitating towards classical, mainstream cinema or ‘closed text’ help to reaffirm dominant ideology and a hegemonic vision of history, while open and avant-garde films tend to question history (Neupert 1995; Skoller 2005). David Martin-Jones, also drawing on Deleuze, as well as Homi Bhabha’s and Benedict Anderson’s work on the construction of national identity, suggests that movement-image tends to be more or less pedagogical ‘in that it aimed to establish one dominant view of national history, and identity’, while the labyrinthine timeimage reflects the potentially ungrounding ‘performative rethinking’ of those notions (Martin-Jones 2006: 33). At the same time, in many films the elements of movement- and time-image co-exist and intertwine, even though one or the other ultimately defines the overall ‘ideology’ of narrating time and space, nation and history: Accordingly, the various European new waves of the 1960s and 1970s, can be interpreted not only as comments on the state of their respective national cinemas, but also on the changing postwar conditions each nation experienced. A jumbled, fragmented, multiplied or reversed film narrative … can be interpreted as an expression of the difficulty of narrating national identity at a time of historical crisis or transformation. Such narratives formally demonstrate a nation’s exploration of its own ‘national narrative’, its examination of the national past, present and/or future in search of causes, and possible alternatives, to its current state of existence. (Ibid.: 1) Finally, cinema not only transmits history, but becomes history in a double sense. Firstly, as Siegfried Kracauer argues in From Caligari to Hitler, certain films and cinematic movements are able to see the seeds of momentous changes. For Kracauer, the works belonging to German Expressionism foreshadow the coming of Nazism in Germany by, for example, choosing as their main characters tyrants and madmen and presenting the society as doomed (Kracauer 2004). We can also list here Godard’s La Chinoise (1967) as a film about the premonition of May 1968 and Wajda’s Man of Marble seen as the anticipation of the Solidarity movement. Films also become history in the sense that the stories of making and screening them become historical facts in their own right,

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 15

often occupying front pages of national newspapers. In this category we can list films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D. W. Griffith, Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin, 1925) by Sergei Eisenstein, Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann and in my native Poland Krzyz˙acy (Knights of the Teutonic Order, 1960) by Aleksander Ford and, recently, Katyn´ (2007) by Andrzej Wajda. Of course, the special place of these films in the cultures of their countries and continents points to the significance of the past for the present: the use of old (hi)stories for current political debates and especially for transformation of national identity. As Foucault put it, ‘If one controls people’s memory, one controls their dynamism’ (Foucault 1975: 25). Of all histories conveyed by film and film historians, Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98) has attracted most attention from film scholars in the recent period (see, for example, Witt 1999; Temple et al. 2007).2 In its conception and execution, this monumental work, which took its author over ten years to complete and lasts 265 minutes, fulfils many ideas proposed by authors such as Matuszewski, Benjamin, Bazin, Kracauer, White and Deleuze and approaches the ideal of history produced by film. It is also a meditation on the relationship between film and history. History, for Godard, is based on the skill of connecting events distant from each other in space or time, as expressed by such words: If you say that around 1540 Copernicus introduced the idea that the Sun no longer revolved around the Earth, and if you say that a few years later Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica, which shows the inside of the human body, the skeleton and écorchés, well, then, you have Copernicus in one book and Vesalius in another … And then four hundred years later you have François Jacob who says: ‘The same year, Copernicus and Vesalius …’ Well, Jacob isn’t doing biology anymore, he’s doing cinema. And that’s what history really is. (Godard, quoted in Wright 2000: 56) These words suggest that media other than cinema are also able to bring distant images, ideas or objects together. We can even be historians using only our heads, by connecting literally or metaphorically ‘our country’ with ‘another country’, but cinema is privileged in this respect because it makes connections without special effort, thanks to employing editing, and because it allows the viewer to see the links, rather than helping them to imagine them or grasp them intellectually. In this sense cinema is alone. Godard also states explicitly that cinema’s ability to see and show the connections between things furnishes it with

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great responsibility towards humanity. This medium, in his view, is able to warn people against approaching disasters, such as wars and genocide. On some occasions, it has played this role; an example is German Expressionism, which, following Kracauer, he perceives as a movement predicting and warning against the perils of Hitler’s rule. History, even the history of distant epochs, is never finished, because what happened a long time ago can and should be juxtaposed with new events and looked at through new lenses. Godard goes as far as to say that history has not yet begun. A fitting example of the audacious juxtapositions advocated by Godard and a proof that history is never finished, according to his definition of ‘history’, is a fragment known as ‘Elizabeth Taylor in Auschwitz’ from Chapter 1A of his series. In it, the author superimposes a fragment from George Stevens’s melodrama, A Place in the Sun (1951), based on Theodore Dreiser’s novel, An American Tragedy, with footage shot in the concentration camp following its liberation. He superimposes pictures of stacked corpses onto an image of Taylor’s peaceful smile as she cradles Montgomery Clift in her arms on the shores of a lake. This fragment is open to different interpretations (see, for example, Wright 2000), and it is beyond the scope of this introduction to discuss them. What is important for me, is that by linking the Holocaust atrocities with Hollywood melodrama, Godard generates new responses to history, making the past alive.

The subject, method and structure of this book My book draws on many notions and views, presented in this introduction. First, in accordance with the opinion that the past exists for us only as a text, the overall object of my study will be intertextual connections. I will compare written texts, for example historical studies and biographies with cinematic texts, as well as older films with newer films, histories presented on screen with stories circulated in the media at the time they were made and, on occasion, my own memories. My study thus belongs to the widely understood field of ‘adaptation’, which in recent years revamped itself into a study of intertextuality (see, for example, Stam 2000; Elliott 2003, 2004; Aragay 2005; Mazierska 2011). Authors following an intertextual approach propose to treat film and literature not as ‘original’ and its ‘adaptation’, but as equal partners, existing in a complex and unstable web of relationships with other texts. For example, following Gérard Genette’s study of transtextuality (1997), Robert Stam proposes to treat adaptation as a relation between the ‘hypertext’ to an anterior text, the ‘hypotext’, which the hypertext

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 17

transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends (Stam 2000: 65–6). In common with this approach, my aim is not to decide whether any film chosen for the discussion represents the past truthfully, but to which discourse it adheres and which it opposes and why. For this purpose I will situate the films in the context of different pasts (different hypotexts), as well as different presents (different hypertexts). Yet, inevitably, some pasts and presents I will privilege, for example because they reflect my personal experience or my knowledge gained when writing this book but, equally, with an awareness that discourses about the past can be constructed differently by those interested in different issues, having different experiences and using different sources. To paraphrase JeanLuc Godard’s words, I will say that this is not a just book on history and cinema, this is just a book on history and cinema. Secondly, this book focuses on history and memory (individual and collective) and their mutual relationships rather than exclusively on history or solely on memory. This is reflected first by the choice of films for discussion. The majority of them refer not only to what happened, how and why, but also how it is remembered by somebody or reimagined on screen. Some of the films even take as their topic memory contests, namely different versions of the past, competing for a privileged position in the culture of a specific society or in the life of an individual, examples being Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001) by Jean-Luc Godard, Ararat (2003) by Atom Egoyan and Weiser (2000) by Wojciech Marczewski, discussed in Chapter 1. Furthermore, a large part of them are based on memoirs or testimonies of people who purport to have first-hand experience of the represented events. The history-memory approach is also embedded in the concepts and methods I use, such as applying the distinction between communicative and cultural memory, proposed by Jan Assmann. In common with Matuszewski’s view that historical film should concern itself with events which are of importance to large groups of people, I chose films devoted to such momentous events as wars, revolutions, terrorist attacks and acts of genocide, to what can be labelled ‘political history’. However, this does not mean that ‘ordinary’ people will not feature in my analysis. They will, because in the films at hand history is presented as a force shaping the life of an ordinary person and/or as filtered through the memory of such a person. Furthermore, even if the films deal with people whose names were printed on the front pages of newspapers, they tend to represent them as ‘ordinary’, closing the gap between them and us. The most poignant examples are recent films on Hitler, as discussed in Chapter 2.

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My book will also be concerned with spaces, places and objects where history is played out and then immortalised, such as Mount Ararat in Chapter 1 and the disgraced monuments of the communist leaders in Chapter 5. Equally, however, I will ponder on the fact that (physical) space has lost in significance for memory and history, giving way to the virtual space of the television screen where histories are today created and replayed. This is the case, for instance, of the histories of terrorist attacks of the 1970s, presented in Chapter 3, and Polish martial law, which is encapsulated by the televised image of General Jaruzelski, as discussed in Chapter 4. Following Godard’s idea that in order to learn about history we should juxtapose distant histories and films, in each chapter I ‘jump’ from place to place, usually comparing films dealing with the same issue, but made in different countries, for example comparing German, Polish and Czech films about communist secret agents in Chapter 6. Moreover, although my book is preoccupied with history represented in the films of the past two decades, in order to account for their specificity I will frequently refer to earlier films on the same subject. However, in common with Godard, whose Histoire(s) privilege European and American cinema at the expense of the ‘Third World’, my search for foreignness will have distinct temporal and geographical boundaries: twentieth century and Europe. I have chosen the twentieth century because many of the events of this period are still remembered by individuals who experienced them first-hand – they do not belong to a (stale) history in the same sense that the Battle of Hastings does (although if we are to believe Godard, the Battle of Hastings can also be ‘put in motion’), but to the living history or even to communicative memory. Practically all of them constitute Nora’s ‘sites of memory’: small islands of remembrance on the huge sea of forgetting. This means that their names are recognised by contemporary people, even if they do not have any detailed knowledge about them. To the greatest extent, this refers to the Second World War, which will be a thread weaving other events and sites discussed in this book. I chose Europe not to belittle other continents, but because of my unfamiliarity with the histories and cinemas of other regions. However, my concept of Europe is wide, encompassing not only the West, but also the East, even reaching as far as Armenia. Nevertheless, the largest part of my book will be devoted to German history. This is because Germany played a crucial role in shaping the history of Europe in the twentieth century and, hence, learning its history is a required condition to grasp European history as a whole. To use Nora’s language, there are many

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 19

sites of memory in contemporary Germany which enter into productive relations with the histories of other nations and places. German’s ability to transform memory into art is reflected in the long and beautiful words used in this language to describe the work of memory, such as Geschichtsaufarbeitung and Vergangengenheitsbewältigung. The number of times I have encountered them in books published in English is for me a clear sign that today Germans are seen as being in the forefront of the ‘memory wave’. Another, albeit connected reason why German films feature so extensively in this volume is the success of German cinema to project its own history and its memory to domestic and international audiences, as testified by the impressive box-office results of films such as Good Bye Lenin! (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker, Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006), by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008), directed by Uli Edel. By extension, the popularity of these films, unparalleled by films from any other European country, supports the idea that post-unification Germany regained its position as a ‘land of the middle’ of Europe (lost following its defeat in the Second World War), with whom the whole of Europe can identify. Choosing these films for analysis also reflects my desire to discuss not only films, but cinema, namely movies which, thanks to their popularity, attest to the state of mind of a large section of society, as opposed to only that of an individual artist and a handful of his/her followers. For the same reason, I avoid films labelled ‘avant-garde’ or ‘experimental’, although some of my examples, such as the films by Jean-Luc Godard and Atom Egoyan, divert from mainstream cinema. Equally, some of the popular films considered here use the means associated with the avant-garde. I will also devote much attention to Polish history, as much on account on my familiarity with Polish history and cinema, as due to the importance of Poland in changing European history of the past 20 years or so. For this reason, I decided to devote a whole chapter to the representation of martial law imposed in Poland in 1981, which led to the abolition of state socialism in Poland and elsewhere. My book follows the chronology of historical events, as represented in the films at hand, but this chronology is often disrupted by the need to juxtapose events from different periods. In Chapter 1 I discuss the memory of the Second World War, Armenian genocide and anti-Semitic attacks in Poland after the Second World War, as rendered in Éloge de l’amour, Ararat and Weiser. Chapter 2 presents the portrayal of Hitler in the films Moloch (1999), directed by Aleksandr Sokurov, Max (2002),

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directed by Menno Meyjes, Downfall and Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler, 2007), directed by Dani Levy. Chapter 3 is concerned with the representation of European terrorism of the 1970s in The Baader Meinhof Complex, Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003), directed by Marco Bellocchio, and Five Minutes of Heaven (2009), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The last three chapters are devoted to the end of communism and the memory of communist times. Chapter 4 deals with the representation of Polish martial law, analysing films such as Kazimierz Kutz’s S´mierc´ jak kromka chleba (Death as a Slice of Bread, 1994), Rozmowy kontrolowane (Tapped Conversations, 1991) by Sylwester Che˛cin´ski, Moonlighting (1982) and Success Is the Best Revenge (1984) by Jerzy Skolimowski and Passion (1982) by Jean-Luc Godard. Chapter 5 discusses the representation of the end of communism in the German Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories, 1992) by Peeter Urbla and dedicated to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, and the Romanian A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest, 2006), directed by Corneliu Porumboiu. Finally, Chapter 6 tells the stories of communist secret agents, told in German, Polish and Czech films, such as The Lives of Others, Korowód (Twists of Fate, 2007), directed by Jerzy Stuhr, and Kawasakiho Ru ˚ že (Kawasaki Rose, 2009), directed by Jan Hrˇebejk. Of course, the events and films discussed represent only a small fraction of European history and cinema. However, I believe that my choice is representative of certain approaches to studying both, which, for the lack of a better word, I will describe as postmodern. Drawing on Hayden White, Gilles Deleuze, Mikhail Bakhtin and many of their followers who believe that ‘the form is the content’ – in this case the form of the film attests to how certain histories are remembered and evaluated – I will pay attention not only to the subject matter of the films, but also to their style. In particular, I will try to discover which genre conventions were used by filmmakers. As the reader will notice, a large number of the films discussed in this book are comedies. Such a choice in part results from my desire to focus on the films which gained wide international popularity. But this, of course, raises the question why history tends to be presented in contemporary films in a humorous way and why comedies about history became so popular. I will suggest two complementary answers to this question. One was offered by Karl Marx, who began ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ with these words, later repeated by many authors: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all the great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 21

Caussidière in place of Danton, Louis Blanc in place of Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848–51 in place of the Montagne of 1793–5, the Nephew in place of the Uncle’ (Marx 1973: 146). The sense of the repetition of history is also conveyed by the films chosen for my discussion. The second reason why the comedy genre is so often applied in the films at hand might be their authors’ conviction that laughter is the best response to historical trauma. In laughter we recognise the absurdity of such historical events as wars and the smallness of an individual against the circumstances of history (also recognised by Marx on many occasions) but also show a desire to overcome the pain and disappointment which history brings and master our past. As I noted about reading historical books, many of them reflect their authors’ histories, for example their position of being descendants of Holocaust victims or survivors who through the study of history attempt to learn more about their own past. This book in relation to my own past is both similar to those and different, as I tended to perceive myself as a person without history and with little memory. What can be regarded as ‘my history’: the history of my country, region and family, was always for me a ‘foreign land’. A possible reason for that might be a failure of my history teachers to show me the connection between the past and the present, instead rendering the past as sealed off from current problems. Another factor might be the fact that at my home national history and family past were neither celebrated nor suppressed in a way which made me sense any meaningful gaps that needed to be investigated. The past in my home was simply ignored: we always lived in the present. This happened despite the fact that in my family (as I believe in every family) there were events which were historical, such as the death of my paternal grandfather in the Mauthausen concentration camp. I was a teenager when martial law was declared in Poland in 1981: an event which many of my peers regarded as proof of belonging to ‘historical times’ and even an opportunity to carry a badge of martyrdom. For me, however, there was nothing worth remembering from this period and, most importantly, this time did not give me any sense of belonging to history. While ‘real past’ was alien and meaningless for me, I always identified with histories created by cinema. Writing this book was in large part motivated by my desire to overcome the ‘thinness’ of my own past: to feel more connected to some larger narratives of the past, and I hope that I have achieved this goal.

1 The Burden of the Past and the Lightness of the Present: Dealing with Historic Trauma through Film

In the Introduction I announced that this book will be concerned with both history and memory. In the films discussed in this chapter: Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001) by Jean-Luc Godard, Ararat (2003) by Atom Egoyan and Weiser (2000) by Wojciech Marczewski, memory, understood as a process of recollecting, reliving and representing past occurrences, dominates over history, conceived as a result of the memory’s work, as something possessing a definite shape: crystallised. The process of recalling the past and coming to terms with it also dominates in them over living in the present, enjoying the here and now. However, the present hugely affects what is remembered and how. The relationship between history, memory and the present, as depicted in these three films, will be the focus of my investigation. The main common denominator are their characters who, more than with their own experiences, are preoccupied with a past which they inherited, so to speak. Marianne Hirsch refers to such a past using the word ‘postmemory’: In my reading, postmemory is distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deep personal connection. Postmemory is a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation … Postmemory characterises the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose relationship of the second generation to traumatic experiences that preceded their births, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated. (Hirsch 1997: 22) 22

Dealing with Historic Trauma 23

‘Postmemory’, as Hirsch admits, is not a memory in the common sense of this word, according to which we can remember only what we personally experience, but the inclusion of the word ‘memory’ in ‘postmemory’ points to the possibility of the transmission of experiences to the next generation. Yet, equally Hirsch underscores the fact that such transmission is difficult and partial. The possessors of postmemory carry a multiple burden or void. They have to struggle with the memories of their parents/ancestors which they cannot properly access, but know only through gaps and fissures, and therefore with a sense of lacking roots and with having a less important story about themselves than one their ancestors could tell, if they were able to speak. Discussion of postmemory belongs to ‘trauma discourse’, as developed by authors such as Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich (1975), Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992, Cathy Caruth (1995), Eric Santner (1990), Dominick LaCapra (2001), Susannah Radstone (2001), Katharine Hodgkin (Hodgkin and Radstone 2003) and Joshua Hirsch (2004), and the previously mentioned Marianne Hirsch. A crucial impulse to distinguish such a category was the Holocaust,1 perceived as an event which defies memory and normal historical practices. Other post-Holocaust events, such as the Vietnam war and natural disasters, also played a large part in its development. Trauma discourse, like memory discourse at large, can also be viewed as the response to the crisis of history and the traditional historian’s loss of status, unable to account for the gap between the testimony of a witness and ‘objective’ facts, as documented in the archives. It calls for him to join forces with the representatives of other professions, most importantly psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and neurobiologists, to unearth what happened during the painful times. But what does trauma mean in this context? This term, transplanted from medicine, where it means an injury to the body, refers to longlasting injuries to the mind. As Cathy Caruth notes, it is manifested in ‘repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviours stemming from the event, along with numbing that must have begun during or after the experience, and possibly also increased arousal to (and avoidance of) stimuli recalling the event … The event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its possession of the one who experiences it. To be traumatised is precisely to be possessed by an image or event’ (Caruth 1995: 4–5). Trauma, of course, affects individuals. People suffering great pain claim that they are no longer themselves and might even miss themselves from the time before the traumatic event happened; their identity is undone (Brison 1999: 39). But trauma also, as Kai Erikson argues,

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has a social dimension: ‘Traumatic wounds inflicted on individuals can combine to create a mood, an ethos – a group culture, almost – that is different from (and more than) the sum of private wounds that make it up’ (Erikson 1995: 185). Trauma can break but also create communities (ibid.). The phenomenon of postmemory supports such a social and cultural reading of trauma, pointing to its infectious character, to its passing from person to person, from generation to generation. As trauma theory was prompted by a crisis of representing the Holocaust, let us refer briefly to this issue.2 The most radical of the proponents of such opinion claim that the Holocaust is unrepresentable, either through memory or in symbolic form. An example is George Steiner’s claim: ‘The world of Auschwitz lies outside speech as it lies outside reason’ (Steiner, quoted in Lang 1990: 151). The middle ground, so to speak, is taken by those who maintain that only certain forms of representation should be used for this purpose. But what these desirable forms should be divides the critics. Theodor Adorno in Commitment expresses an opposition towards any artistic representation of genocide or other barbarity which might either elicit enjoyment in the audience or create an impression that this barbarity has some meaning, because such representation does an injustice to its victims: ‘When genocide becomes part of the cultural heritage in the themes of committed literature, it becomes easier to continue to play along with the culture which gave birth to murder’ (Adorno 1980: 189). Perry Anderson, on the basis that certain kinds of evidence preclude certain types of historical representation or ‘emplotment’, argues that ‘the Final Solution cannot historically be written as romance or as comedy’ (Anderson 1992: 180). Hence the wide opposition towards the most successful, in terms of box-office results, cinematic rendering of the Holocaust: Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) which, as is widely agreed, is a melodrama, eliciting enjoyment in the audience and creating an impression that the Holocaust has a meaning, not least because it led to the creation of Israel (for a more detailed discussion of objections towards Schindler’s List see Loshitzky 1997; Rawlinson 1999). Many representatives of ‘trauma studies’ claim that, because the Holocaust constituted a traumatic rupture in Western experience, it should be represented ‘as a rupture, to embody that rupture for the audience, perhaps even to assist in mourning that rupture’ (Hirsch 2004: 7I). For this reason, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), which does not use any archival footage or actors to recreate the war past, but presents solely the traces of the past (and their lack) in the present, is for many critics the ultimate film about the Holocaust (for example LaCapra 2001: 207). The view that a coherent narrative is not

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the right tool to represent the Holocaust is espoused, among others, by Slavoj Žižek, who argues that ‘realistic prose fails, where the poetic evocation of the unbearable atmosphere of a camp succeeds … Poetry is always, by definition, “about” something that cannot be addressed directly, only alluded to’ (Žižek 2009: 4).3 But, of course, Žižek’s encouragement to produce ‘Holocaust poetry’ (metaphorically speaking), as he is himself well aware, opposes the famous Adorno’s dictum that ‘writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’. As these examples suggest, the consensus about the right form of representation of the Holocaust is difficult to reach. This is partly because some prohibitions are made on the basis of their epistemological usefulness, others on grounds of their moral suitability. Nevertheless, these controversies show that they are themselves culturally specific, for example they depend on whether the author of a specific claim is an artist or historian, experienced the Holocaust first-hand and to what representations s/he was previously exposed. In a wider sense, they confirm Hayden White’s idea that the form of historical research is as significant as its content (see Introduction). Finally, at the opposite end of the spectrum to the view that the Holocaust is unrepresentable we find an opinion that it poses essentially the same problems to representation as any other event. It cannot, indeed, be represented ‘fully’ or ‘comprehensively’ (to demand such fullness is to demand the impossible), but it can be represented and there are in principle no unsuitable forms and means to render it. For example, Hayden White, using as an example Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (also discussed by Marianne Hirsch), which presents the events of the Holocaust in a medium of the black and white comic book, and which he describes as a ‘masterpiece of stylisation, figuration and allegorisation’ (White 1992: 41–2), demonstrates that ‘low genres’ might be as suitable for representing the Holocaust as ‘high genres’. From the same perspective we can also defend the films belonging to socalled ‘Holocaust trash’, of which the best-known example is Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, 1974) by Liliana Cavani, as accurately capturing some aspects of the Holocaust experience. What is at stake in these debates is not only achieving a pragmatic consensus about what a poet or a filmmaker can do with the topic of the Holocaust, but accepting or rejecting the claim about the exceptional character of this event. For proponents of the first position, it is inappropriate even to discuss the genocide of the Jews in the same book as the genocide of the Armenians or Gypsies. I believe that the uniqueness of the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War cannot be

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declared, but only demonstrated precisely by making such comparisons, which the films made by Godard, Egoyan and Marczewski are offering. Returning to the question of representability of the Holocaust, I do not think that anybody takes seriously the opinion that the Holocaust cannot be recollected or represented. At least I have not found even one book or article advocating erasing the Holocaust from the history books and school curricula and discouraging its witnesses from attempting to recollect it, to save them and their potential listeners and readers a futile effort. Those who claim that in the Holocaust humanity reached the end of history and the limits of language, including Adorno and Jean-François Lyotard (1988: especially 32–58), are also the most ardent advocates of the Holocaust studies in a wide sense, which includes also literature and art. And certainly their call has been answered. Judging by the current state of this discipline, one might reach the conclusion that there is no more attractive subject for the contemporary historian or artist than the Holocaust and there is a wealth of documents to draw on. Annette Wieviorka, writing about only one subgenre of the representations of the Holocaust: testimonies from the ghettos and concentration camps, observes: ‘We … have at our disposal today a mass of testimony – perhaps in volume greater than that related to any other historical event. No single scholar can master it all: books, newspapers, audio and video recordings, alongside evidence produced privately or for personal reasons’ (Wieviorka 1999). Although Wieviorka’s words convey immense satisfaction from the fact that the crimes of the Nazis and the suffering of the Jews are so well documented and therefore will not be forgotten, they also hint at a burden of history which might overwhelm a person who inherits the painful memories, either due to being personally connected with their owner or due to belonging to an (imagined) community connected by these memories. Alexander Etkind, who writes about searching for traces of Stalinist genocide in postcommunist Russia, not only hints at the possibility of being overwhelmed by the painful past of others, but gives a concrete example of such a situation. He mentions a Russian man named Iurii Dmitriev, who spends a large part of his life searching for and excavating the places of burial of Gulag prisoners and conducting archival research about the victims of Stalinist crimes. Etkind describes Dmitriev as a man ‘obsessed with the duty of memory which he feels as his personal responsibility’. The symptoms of his obsession: loss of appetite, restlessness, sleeplessness and alcoholism (Etkind 2009: 183–4), closely correspond to those of the victims of trauma, as described by Caruth. Dmitriev is not the only one who became so debilitated by

Dealing with Historic Trauma 27

the effect of searching for traces of the Soviet horrors. Etkind mentions his friends, who died, when engaged in the same pursuit (ibid.: 184). Dmitriev and his kind can be seen as victims of a double yoke of a traumatic past: they have severe problems in accessing it and, when they reach it, they are infected with ‘the black energy of crimes and murders which were committed decades before‘ (ibid.: 183–4). The protagonists of the films which I will analyse in this chapter and, to some extent, their makers, are also infected by such black energy. At the same time, they point to the possibility of – to refer again to Etkind’s term – crystallising this black energy, changing it into a celluloid monument. These films refer to different traumatic events: the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the disappearance of a Jewish boy in the 1960s in Poland, which they relate to traumatic events which happened elsewhere and in different times. In this sense, they act in a spirit of internationalising trauma, for the sake of overcoming it and preventing it in the future by helping to understand ‘alien’ cultures. As Caruth says, ‘In a catastrophic age, that is, trauma itself may provide the very link between cultures’ (Caruth 1995: 11). More than the films discussed in the remaining chapters of this book, they are auteurial endeavours. Commercial pressures exerted on their directors were relatively weak and they represent predominantly the personal visions of their directors, who also wrote or co-wrote their scripts. Equally, the critical recognition and the moderate boxoffice successes they achieved4 are in a large measure the fruit of the cultural capital (to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term) of the names of their directors, rather than their subject. This refers especially to Jean-Luc Godard, the greatest star among European directors who shun stardom and commercial cinema. Atom Egoyan and Wojciech Marczewski also have a strong position within their respective national cinemas: Canadian and Armenian in the case of Egoyan, and Polish in the case of Marczewski.

In Praise of Love and against Spielberg I chose to begin the analytical part of this book with a film by Jean-Luc Godard. This is partly because In Praise of Love suits perfectly the subject of this chapter: the impact of the past on the present. I also wanted to open my discussion with a Godard film because his works of the past 30 years or so reflect better than those of any other European director the shift from history to memory and offer an original proposition of a historical film. The most famous example is Histoire(s) du cinéma,

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mentioned in the Introduction, but films such as Passion (see Chapter 4), King Lear (1987), Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, 1991), Notre musique (2004) and Film socialisme (Socialism, 2010), as numerous studies demonstrate, deserve attention from this perspective. Edgar, the protagonist of In Praise of Love, says several times during the course of the film: ‘You can only think about something if you think about something else’ (Figure 1.1). These words reflect Godard’s concept of history as montage: history is the art and science of juxtaposing distant events and ideas, so that their connections produce new meanings which were unavailable to those who lived through these events. These new senses are needed to better understand the past and avoid mistakes in the future. Edgar wants to put his words into practice and create a montage of images, stories and discourses. He attempts to connect different places and moments of French, European and world history, different moments in the lives of individuals (youth, adulthood and old age) and different stages of love, from first meeting, via betrayal, to final reconciliation. In his role as a connector/editor Edgar follows in the footsteps of earlier Godard characters, such as Jerzy in Passion, who arrived in Switzerland from Poland to shoot a film about European histories told by paintings, and Lemmy Caution in Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, who travelled through the newly united Berlin to learn about the city’s past and present. Both these characters were regarded as stand-ins for Godard and the same can be said about Edgar. Godard can also be seen as a guardian angel in relation to Edgar. This is suggested by Godard himself appearing in the film, near the places where we also see the young director. The viewer senses that the old director sees and hears more than Edgar, who comes across as distracted and oblivious to what happens to him, as if he is always elsewhere, thinking about something else. Godard’s presence is almost spectral, we see him in deep shadow, which hardly allows us to discern his features. It is tempting to see the relationship between Edgar and Godard as embodying that between memory and history, as it is widely perceived today, for example by Pierre Nora (see Introduction): the first being alive, malleable and young; the second old, static and crystallised. Yet, as Godard’s own concept of history suggests, history’s stability is an illusion. Godard in the film also makes us realise that he is not static; he is even more mobile than the rest of the film’s characters. Although we see people being auditioned for parts in Edgar’s film, he does not want to decide which medium or genre he will ultimately employ. Opera, novel, play, cantata and film are all mentioned but, after abandoning the idea of cantata, Edgar himself prefers to use the

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Figure 1.1 Bruno Putzulu as Edgar in Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001), directed by Jean-Luc Godard

word ‘project’. Neither has he decided on the title of his work. We hear that it will be ‘Of Something’ or ‘Of Love’ and we see the intertitles ‘Of Something’ and ‘Of Love’, as if Godard was mimicking and scrutinising the mental work of his protagonist. Edgar’s preference for the term ‘project’ and his unwillingness to name his work accentuate its scientific and open character, which are also the salient features of Godard’s works. Especially his Histoire(s) were frequently described as a ‘project’ for the same reason as Edgar’s work: they were also a product of research and reflected the work of a historian, which, in Godard’s view, is never finished. Yet, meaningfully, the first person asked in In Praise of Love about her preferred form to transmit history, despite her young age, replies ‘novel’, in this way reflecting the centuries-long tradition of narrating history rather than showing it as a spectacle or evoking it in music. In order to realise his project, Edgar has to embark on a journey, which has two dimensions, spatial and temporal, and two aims, to gather material for his artistic project and to find his lost love: a woman whom he met two years previously and whom he wants to cast in his film (Figure 1.2). In this way Edgar resembles Marcel from Proust’s

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Remembrance of Things Past, who also searched for his lost love(s) and the material for his novel. Edgar’s project, as we can deduce from various clues planted by Godard, is also personal. He wants to unearth the story of his mother and grandfather and the generations to which they belonged: those who had first-hand experience of the Second World War and for whom it was a crucial event, either because it was the last event in their lives or because it marked them for the rest of their existence. The project is funded by an old man named Rosenthal, who lives in Paris and was a close acquaintance of Edgar’s family. Rosenthal’s father was a business partner of Edgar’s grandfather, who was arrested in 1942, the year when deportations of Jews started in France. Rosenthal was also in love with Edgar’s mother who, however, married another man and subsequently committed suicide. The money for Edgar’s project comes from the art collection which Rosenthal built up with Edgar’s grandfather. The collection disappeared during the war, most likely due to being confiscated by the authorities, and was only recently and after much struggle returned to its owner. The name Rosenthal suggests that Edgar’s benefactor is a Jew, as is Edgar, but this fact is never spelt out in the film, perhaps reflecting the tradition of Jews living in a diaspora and not wanting to ‘disturb’ the national framework (on Jews in diaspora see Gilman 1995: 1–16). The returning of Jewish property so many years after the war evokes many similar stories across Europe and symbolises the belated response of France and Europe to the Holocaust. By embarking on his project Edgar acts on his postmemory. However, this poses a problem because postmemory, by its very nature, is ‘punctured’ if not ‘hollow’: it is a memory of something important which was not fully transmitted from ancestors to their descendants due to the traumatic character of their experiences. What was transmitted was rather a sense of something important missing. The descendants of traumatic experiences thus have an unfilled identity, are like children despite reaching adulthood. This is the case of Edgar, as suggested by his looking at an empty notebook at the beginning of the film and a comment made by Rosenthal’s assistant who says that Edgar wants to be an adult, which implies that in reality he is a child. Edgar also cannot learn about his ancestors’ past simply because they are dead: they took their memories with them. Hence, he has to find their replacement: people who offer him their memories, substituting histories of their parents and grandparents. He meets them in the second part of the film, set on the Brittany coast, two years before the first part. At this stage Edgar is doing research for a book or a cantata on the role of Catholics in the French Resistance and for this purpose interviews a

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Figure 1.2 Edgar on the way to the past in Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love, 2001), directed by Jean-Luc Godard

famous historian and journalist, Jean Lacouture. The historian tells the aspiring artist about an elderly couple, Monsieur and Madame Bayard, who were involved in the Resistance. Edgar visits them and learns about their past which is different from the histories usually transmitted by history books as it is neither heroic nor simple. During the course of his research Edgar learns that the French Resistance was largely a conservative movement, as Catholics prevailed in it and it was directed and manipulated from London. It also turns out that the man denounced the woman to the Gestapo, supposedly on orders from their anti-fascist organisation, which led to her being sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. There the woman converted to Catholicism and changed her name from Jewish Samuel to French Bayard. Such a change suggests a change of identity, of losing or forgetting her old self. This seems to be the case here, as Madame Bayard does not return to her original name after the war. Her decision, although reflecting personal reasons (she mentions meeting in the camp Geneviève de Gaulle, the niece of the famous General and an important figure in the French Resistance), can be regarded as reflecting a wider, political situation – the French and European Jews’ continuous fear of persecution and perhaps their

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internalised sense of inferiority towards the majority population in France and Europe at large. Such a reading is encouraged by France’s long unwillingness to deal with the country’s crimes against the Jews. As Kathryn Jones argues: General Charles de Gaulle’s return to power as President of the Fifth Republic in 1958 led to a new dominance being accorded to the interpretation of a wartime France collectively united in resistance against the German occupier. Such an interpretation minimised the number of French collaborators, and sidelined conflicts within the Resistance and the post-Liberation purges. The overriding focus on the Resistance and national unity led to the marginalisation of war victims such as Jews, prisoners of war, and forced labourers. ( Jones 2007: 24; see also Sweets 1994: 230–40) The family name, Samuel, was, however, assumed by the Bayards’ son, which can be viewed as a sign of his postmemory: his desire to unearth and adopt the rejected identities and memories of his traumatised parents. Equally, it can be taken as a reflection of France coming to terms with its shameful war secrets. The beginning of this process is frequently linked with the production of the documentary Le chagrin et la pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity, 1969) by Marcel Ophüls (Foucault 1975: 25; Colombar 1993; Greene 1999: 64–97), devoted in large part to French collaboration with Germany during the war. Eventually it led to the trials of Klaus Barbie in 1987 and Maurice Papon in 1997 (Wood 1999: 113–42). The Bayards tell their stories in a disjointed and elliptical way. It takes several viewings to piece together what happened to them during and after the war and even so the story is full of gaps and ambiguities. Such a way of presenting the memories points to the trauma which they experienced and which they did not overcome for many decades after the war. It can also be linked to the fact that, as Hayden White observes, stories always involve moralisation (White 1987: 21–5) and the Bayards do not want to moralise, knowing that their own conduct left something to be desired. The memories of the Bayards include not only verbal transmissions but also photographs and fragments of films which, like their words, need deciphering. Especially mysterious and troubling is one presenting a man with a moustache, resembling Hitler, looking at the piles of corpses. A photograph/film of this type, namely documenting genocide from the perpetrator’s perspective, is of utmost importance to Godard, who accused cinema of failing to bear witness to the gas

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chambers (Saxton 2007: 371).5 Watching it raises the question who is taking the photograph/making the film, for whom and for what purpose (a concern which Godard expressed most forcefully during his militant period, following May 1968) – hence makes us realise that behind every act of utterance, as much in art as in ordinary communication, stands a certain ideology. During his visit to the Bayards Edgar meets their granddaughter, a trainee lawyer, Berthe, with whom he falls in love. However, he realises that he loved her only later, when he has lost her, not unlike Proust’s Marcel, forced to seek the lost love in his memory. Berthe advises the couple on their contract with an American company named the Spielberg Associates, to whom they are about to sell their war memories. Those who know the relationship between Schindler’s List and ‘historical’ renditions of Schindler (Cole 1999: 73–94) can predict without much difficulty how the film based on the Bayards’ ‘story’ would look like: it would include no betrayal, either sexual or political, the Jewishness of the couple would be asserted and celebrated after the war, and the film would be made according to the rules of ‘good storytelling’, so that a moral lesson can be drawn from the past. The idea of the Americans making a film based on the memories of the Bayards outrages and disgusts Edgar in the same way Godard was disgusted and outraged by Schindler’s List.6 It is also an opportunity to repeat or allude to many criticisms which were directed towards Schindler’s List and narrative/mainstream and American films representing this event at large (Loshitzky 1997). As Douglas Morrey maintains, Godard ‘objects to making films about European history by Americans … because of their appropriation of other people’s pain, exploitation for profit in a form which threatens to reduce its specificity to the level of an amorphous entertainment’ (Morrey 2003: 122). Morrey refers to an episode in which Madame Bayard reminisces about a time when she spoke in the United States about her war experiences, reflecting that: ‘People reacted then the same way they do now in front of their television sets’ (ibid.). Godard thus criticises Americans for treating European history as tourists, beautifying, simplifying, homogenising and detextualising it (on ‘tourist gaze’ see Albers and James 1988; Urry 1990; Wang 2000), thus hiding the ideology of historical discourse. Another argument used in the film against Americans making a history film is the claim that they have no history of their own, which is reflected in their lack of a correct name. The name ‘United States of America’ is wrong, because it is too grandiose (the USA do not cover the whole of America, hence the name suggests unfulfilled colonial ambition) and lacks individuality

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(there are other ‘united states’ than those ‘of America’). There is also a mismatch between making a film about suffering and political resistance by a country which itself is known for thwarting resistance and causing pain in other nations. The idea of America as heir to fascist regimes (strongly espoused by the 1960s and 1970s terrorists groups, such as the RAF, see Chapter 3) is conveyed by evoking the Vietnam war and the need to resist American dominance in France, for example by dubbing American films into the local language. Yet, Godard also betrays a touristic approach to American history and culture, by paying no attention to its complexity, but instead reducing it to a ‘Steven Spielberg – Julia Roberts paradigm’. Equally, he does not ponder on the fact that his attack is made from a specific position: that of a European and non-mainstream director, and a representative of a country which lost its colonies and worldwide cultural influence, as signified by the French language being overtaken by English in global communication. The virulence of Godard’s criticism might be regarded as a way of drawing our attention to the fact that each assessment is ideological. The fact that Godard’s anti-Americanism did not go unnoticed by critics (for example Bradshaw 2001; Morrey 2003), confirms that Godard’s strategy (if it was a conscious strategy) has worked. The very fact that memories in In Praise of Love are presented as an object of monetary exchange points to two contemporary phenomena. One is the heritage industry, which repackages history, including such gruesome events as acts of genocide, to be accessible for mass tourism. The phenomenon, known as dark tourism or grief tourism, began with Auschwitz (Cole 1999: 97–120), but now constitutes a large part of the tourism industry (Lennon and Foley 2009; Sharpley and Stone 2009). The second phenomenon is the growing distrust of ‘ordinary’ history as based on the authority of the historian, no doubt undermined by the postmodern/deconstructionist historians (see Introduction), and hence the need to replace the authority of the historian with that of a witness. Godard himself points to the superiority of the (direct) testimony and memory of the witness in the contemporary part of the film, in an episode set in a bookshop, where there is a public meeting about the war in Kosovo. We hear an American voice retelling histories of atrocities committed during this conflict and, even if we believe their factual truth, their transmission through the soft American voice attempting to inculcate in the listener specific emotions renders the story fake. The Bayards themselves are not too keen to entrust their memories to the Spielberg Associates, as demonstrated by their seeking advice from Berthe and feeling obliged to explain their decision, but they have little

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choice – they need the money the American firm is willing to pay them to save their business and simply to survive. It raises questions about why the French and Europeans at large cannot ensure that memories of people such as the Bayards stay ‘at home’ and how they should be transmitted in order to avoid the fiasco (according to Godard’s criteria) of Schindler’s List and similar products. This first question is not answered directly, but the references to the complicated history of the French Resistance and anti-Semitism in postwar France point to possible reasons for French unwillingness to deal with its wartime past. Having said that, it should be added that In Praise of Love immediately precedes a new phenomenon in European commemorating practices: mourning victims of crimes perpetrated by the nations themselves, of which the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas) in Berlin, opened in May 2005, and the Wall of Names (Mur des Noms) in Paris are crucial examples (Carrier 2004: 207). Such monuments suggests that the ‘call from the past’ was answered, but with a delay and, perhaps, by the wrong people. Such an idea is also suggested in the film by the motif of a telephone call, which is either unanswered or answered with a delay. The ringing of the telephone can also be viewed more positively, as an appeal to open up a debate about the past, to communicate one’s views in an unrestrained way (Sofair 2004–5: 41). The second question: how to make a ‘successful Holocaust film’ and, by extension, how to create a successful history of the Holocaust, can be answered in two contrasting ways by the viewer of In Praise of Love. One answer is that Europeans are unable to resist American versions of history. Such an answer is suggested by the fact that Edgar is unable to finish his film, therefore it does not enter into the public domain, while the films of ‘Spielbergs’ and their associates, for better or for worse, are made and preserve the past, even if in an incomplete and problematic form.7 The second answer, which Douglas Morrey suggests, is that such a film is possible – it is the Godard film we are watching (one of many of Godard’s films about unfinished films), and in which history ‘talks’ more through material traces of the past: the past ingrained in buildings, monuments, posters, and less through a narrative (Morrey 2003). Such a film will itself resist the passage of time, as did his earlier films, Le mépris and Passion. However, Godard’s idea of a historical film is also elitist; it is addressed to people who already know much about history and therefore are able to make sense of and gain pleasure from what they see and hear. In a wider sense, such an interdisciplinary history without narrative, and one which projects back the consistent history into an assemblage

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of fragments, in the light of postmodernist critique of history undertaken by Foucault, Hayden White and their disciples, comes across as ‘truer’ or less problematic than a traditional model of history. Having said that, not everything is postmodern in In Praise of Love. Some aspects of the film suggest that its author does not share the epistemological scepticism associated with this paradigm, but believes in a possibility of creating a historical language which will be able to transmit experiences and memories belonging to different people and epochs. This is suggested by the repeated use of the word ‘universalism’ in conjunction with ‘memory’ and ‘justice’. Moreover, at one point Edgar claims that when people disagree (about the past), they usually say that ‘this is a different story’ and end their argument. Edgar, by contrast, advocates telling this ‘different story’ in the hope of finding a consensus or at least a universal platform of discussion. Despite their painful war experiences and postwar disappointments, the Bayards cling to life. Even their entering into a deal with the American company can be regarded as a sign of their vitality: they need to sell their memories because they want to live. It appears that being in the Resistance taught them resistance to death: the immense value of life which outweighs any other value. This cannot be said about their descendants. The proof that they are lacking a comparable desire to live are the suicidal deaths of Berthe’s parents, as well as her own. All take their own lives despite having small children, regarded as the main reason why people want to live. The fact that there are so many suicides in the film points to the belated reaction to trauma, in this case reaching subsequent generations: the generation of the postmemory and even the descendants of this postmemory.8 The extreme response to what happened in the past by people like Berthe also testifies to the lightness of the present: the lack of historical events or political projects which might enthuse the youth of today. Here postmemory can thus be viewed as a response to posthistory/the end of history, as professed by authors such as Niethammer and Fukuyama, and which reduces the political sphere to what Slavoj Žižek, following Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière, describes as ‘post-political bio-politics’ (Žižek 2006: 72; 2009: 34), in which protecting one’s own physical being and comfort is the highest value. Berthe and Edgar clearly reject ‘post-political bio-politics’, but at the same time are unable to oppose it with a new political project. The domination of the past over the present is conveyed not only by the film’s narrative, but also by its form. By and large, the film adheres to the Deleuzian ‘time-image’, associated with questioning and subverting the received/hegemonic vision of history (see Introduction). The part

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set in the present is shown first and the retrospective part follows. Such a construction gives the impression that ‘the past has the last word’: the past explains the present and thanks to the past the present gains its meaning. For example, if there was no Berthe two years previously, Edgar would not look for her in Paris and would not discover, for himself and us, the viewers, the various places associated with French history. Equally, if there was no Second World War, there would be no war in Kosovo and neither would Edgar have any reason to make his film. The use of colour also conveys the sense that the past is more present than the present. The present part of the film is shot in black and white, the colour associated with newsreels and old films. By contrast, the retrospective part is shot in colour on digital video, in a style which brings association with the gaudy colours of modern life. Such style also points to the opportunities of transforming recorded material brought about by digital technologies. Godard himself takes advantage of them in this film, by slowing down motion and freezing frames, playing with colour and superimposing images. The result of using such technique is a sense that, unlike the present which is fixed, the past is open to change, can be made more dense and expressive. The director himself explained his choice by saying ‘I wanted to find a way of intensifying the past’ (Godard 2001). The carefully chosen images in the first part of the film, of the empty shell of the Renault factory, of a poster advertising Bresson’s Pickpocket or of a barge moving slowly on the Seine, accompanied by Maurice Jaubert’s song from Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, on which many critics pondered (for example Reader 2001; Tesson 2001; Morrey 2003), creates an impression that Paris is full of history, largely mediated by film. Finally, the dominance of the past over the present is signalled by dialogue. A large proportion of what the characters say are quotations or paraphrases of some famous thinkers and phrases from Godard’s earlier films, such as Nouvelle vague (1990) and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero. They give an illusion of contemporary intellectual life as limited to the recycling of old texts, which is of course one of the main features of postmodernity. Yet, at the same time Godard demonstrates that by using quotations we can create a new, even groundbreaking work. This is because novelty, as he argues in his Histoire(s), does not come from the raw material used by the artist or the thinker, but from the context in which it is situated. This is also the reason, as Godard implies, that Americans, despite having a wealth of material, are unable to create anything new. They are incapable of ‘thinking historically’ in the Godardian sense: see a new in the old. Instead, they reduce the new to the old, for example various war stories to Hollywood-style

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melodrama. From this perspective, they are also to blame for the end of history.

Postmemory of post-emigrants in Ararat In Ararat, as in In Praise of Love, the past also haunts practically every character included in the narrative (Figure 1.3). It is the past of their nations and their ancestors. To use Marianne Hirsch’s words again, the characters ‘grew up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth’. The bulk of the characters are descendants of victims and survivors of the genocide committed on Armenians by the Turks in 1915. These descendants are living in Canada, which in itself is a consequence of this tragedy. They include Edward Saroyan, a distinguished (fictitious) Canadian Armenian filmmaker, whose mother survived the genocide and who shoots a film about the events of 1915. Another character is Ani, an art historian of Armenian origin and an author of a monograph on Arshile Gorky, a famous Armenian painter and contemporary of Pollock, who died in exile by committing suicide (Figure 1.4). Ani gives public lectures, trying to decipher various mysteries, enveloping Gorky’s life and art, and is asked by Saroyan and his producer to act as a consultant on Saroyan’s film. Raffi, Ani’s son from her first marriage, demonstrates his preoccupation with the Armenian past by travelling to places where the genocide happened and shooting a video film there. For him the film is a way of coming closer to the genocide, as well as his father’s attempt to assassinate a Turkish diplomat, which ended in his own death. Raffi believes that his father committed this act to avenge the Armenians killed by the Turks 70 or so years previously. Finally, Raffi’s stepsister, Celia, whose father was Ani’s second husband and died most likely by committing suicide, believes that his death is related both to Gorky’s death and to the death of Raffi’s father. By killing himself, he attempted to re-enact the deaths of these two brave and politically minded men with whom Ani was preoccupied, and in this way prove to Ani that he was deserving of her affection. This outbreak of suicides links Ararat with In Praise of Love. Equally, in both films the suicides are the reaction of the characters to what happened to their ancestors. Hence, the question which arises again why is postmemory more important for these people than their present and why do they see the present as a mere reflection of the past. One reason, as Egoyan suggests, is the enormous burden of the past: the pain and sense of injustice which the generation of the victims and survivors of the genocide passed to their descendants and which they passed

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Figure 1.3 Commemorating Armenian history through film in Ararat (2003), directed by Atom Egoyan

Figure 1.4 Arsinée Khanjian as Ani in Ararat (2003), directed by Atom Egoyan

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to their children, grandchildren and the wider diasporic community of Armenians. The fact that Turkey never compensated the Armenian victims and their families for lost lives, or possessions, as well as a lost country and history, and never even admitted committing genocide adds to their trauma. For Canadian Armenians, the events of 1915 are the key to their current identity – if not for them, they would not be in Canada today. It is worth noting here that diasporic communities tend to be more past-oriented than those who stayed in their place of origin; they guard the key to their house, figuratively and sometimes literally, most eagerly (see, for example, Seed 1999; Naficy 2001). The search for history as the key to the present also reflects the fact that contemporary life in the West and in Canada specifically, as represented by Egoyan, appears to be devoid of drama and therefore of any deeper meaning, which results from the transient character of the lives of the Canadians, of which the airport, where a large proportion of Ararat is set, is a potent symbol. The sense of void is also a by-product of the relative material comfort of Canadian citizens and the fact that the state and various institutions take care of many of their needs, in this respect limiting their need for action (Mazierska 2002). Consequently, Egoyan’s characters both in this and his earlier films have to create dramas, as did, for example, the young woman in The Adjuster (1991), who set her house on fire, because ‘something had to happen’. Alternatively, they attempt to see in more mundane or ordinary occurrences versions of some dramatic past events. Ani attributes this scenario of the dramatising of the ordinary to Celia’s memory of her father, telling Raffi: ‘She wants her father’s death to be more meaningful than it was.’ Of course, the first wave of emigrants did not feel the need to add drama and meaning to their lives: it was dramatic enough. Emma Wilson in her analysis of Ararat aptly quotes Svetlana Boym: ‘First-wave emigrants are often notoriously unsentimental, leaving the search for roots to their children and grandchildren unburdened by visa problems’ (quoted in Wilson 2009: 129). In this respect, the children of exiles from Armenia can be compared to the descendants of the Holocaust survivors in In Praise of Love. Tom McSorley, in his interpretation of Ararat, also draws attention to the fact that Canada encourages and nourishes the emigrants’ memory and postmemory. McSorley refers to Edward Said who said that ‘Canada is unique among modern nations because it has turned the idea of exile into an institution.’ Said was describing the process by which this country’s official policy of multiculturalism took Exile’s

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profound spiritual aches and metaphorical potentialities and domesticated them. Canada had put a roof over Exile’s head, kept it from freezing to death, gave it a cup of coffee, and even created for it a specific government institution, the Department of Multi-culturalism. That a new nation would encourage its multi-ethnic citizens to remember constantly their origins, to cherish and indeed actively perform traditional cultural practices, while simultaneously being contemporary Canadians, struck Said as intellectually untenable, seriously dislocating and uncomfortably alienating. (McSorley 2003)9 McSorley, however, disagrees, claiming that ‘Said is … mistaken, for he assumes that forms of cultural remembrance will remain static and reactionary in the Canadian multicultural model and therefore the pain of exile will go unrelieved and unexpressed’ (ibid.). This is also an idea which Egoyan conveys in Ararat by showing how varied and vibrant is the culture of Armenians living in diaspora in Canada. It flourishes in private houses and state-supported institutions; it is expressed in poetry, film as well as personal stories; it is transmitted in the Armenian language, as well as in English and French. However, while subtly celebrating Canadian respect for the national traditions of its emigrants and their descendants, Egoyan also points to the fact that those Canadians, whose ancestors came to Canada such a long time ago that they now feel ‘native’ in Canada, live almost in a cultural void, lacking any anchoring in religion or any other form of tradition. In Ararat this void is encapsulated by the characters of David, the customs officer, and his gay adult son, Philip. Unlike the descendants of Armenian exiles, these men, being of Anglo-Saxon descent, do not cherish any tradition, national or private. The father is a practising Christian, but we get a sense that Christianity is for him more a matter of habit than of deep faith. Moreover, David’s religiousness only creates conflict between him and his son, as Philip is entirely indifferent towards religion. This lack of tradition and shared history is a factor explaining why both men show a deep interest in the histories of other people. For David, the main pleasure of his job as a customs officer is in learning about the lives of the people whom he suspects of smuggling drugs. As he puts it, he likes to learn about their mind and he always has time to listen to them. Philip, who works as an attendant in the National Gallery, listens with avid interest to the museum guides, who inform the visiting youths about the historical background of the paintings exhibited there. We guess that for these men the complex and dramatic stories of others act as a substitute for family, national histories and

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myths they do not have. However, unlike the Armenians who attempt to appropriate the histories of their forefathers and relive them, they only listen to them passively. Metaphorically speaking, they do not have either their own memory or postmemory, but only the postmemory of others. In this sense, they are very similar to Americans, as discussed in In Praise of Love. The portrayal of Americans or Westerners in the wider sense as culturally impoverished, which we find in these two films, concurs with Anthony Giddens’s view that ‘globalising modernity’ is ultimately unfavourable to Western culture. This is because the global ubiquity of Western-style institutions represents a decline in the differentials between the West and the rest of the world (Giddens 1990, 1994; Tomlinson 1999). To put it crudely, few Westerners today will show pride in Coca-Cola, because it belongs to everybody. Instead, little belongs solely to them. The privileged method of commemorating Armenian history in Ararat is through making a film – the film about the genocide of 1915. One such film, directed by Saroyan, involves a large cast and crew and significant financial resources. It utilises the memories of different generations of Armenians, such as those of Saroyan’s own mother, and Ani’s research on Arshile Gorky. However, its principal ‘hypotext’ are the memoirs of an American doctor, Clarence Ussher, An American Physician in Turkey, published in 1917. The importance of Saroyan’s film within Egoyan’s narrative is emphasised by the title of Egoyan’s film, which is identical to the title of the film Saroyan is shooting. Off-screen Egoyan suggests that he treats this kind of cinema with respect, as does the audience attending the official premiere of Saroyan’s film, but he himself would not make a film of this kind (Romney 2003: 180–2). Saroyan’s film is also criticised within the diegesis of Ararat. Judging by the fragments we see, Saroyan’s film is a conventional, old-fashioned historical epic, of the type Hollywood abandoned some decades ago in favour of a more postmodern style, and which is now used only by some aged, nationalistically minded directors, most recently by Andrzej Wajda in his Oscarnominated Katyn´ (2007). Even the short titles of these two films, with each referring to a place of crucial importance for a particular nation, are somewhat similar. They suggest that their authors privilege grand history and opt for a ‘definitive’ version of the events represented. In its content, Saroyan’s Ararat bears similarity with the narratives concerning the genocide of Jews. Jevdet, the Turkish officer, responsible for the massacre of Armenians in the city of Van, is stylised on a typical Gestapo officer, as depicted in films about the Second World War. His brutality, ruthlessness and the arguments he uses to justify the Turkish onslaught

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on Armenians, such as ‘We allowed you to live with us, but you took our space and polluted our cities with your shops,’ sound like a repetition of anti-Semitic Nazi discourse. By recycling models used many times previously, Saroyan helps the viewers to make sense of what they are watching, but undermines the uniqueness of Armenian history, making it look like a Hollywood ‘Holocaust melodrama’. This impression is reinforced by the fact that in most of the scenes the characters speak English and the film uses a solemn, symphonic score. Saroyan’s Ararat is also criticised within the film for falsifying facts. According to Ani, Van was not in the proximity of Mount Ararat, therefore cannot be seen from there, as Saroyan’s film implies. Saroyan, however, argues that Ararat had to be included in the film because it is a symbol of the Armenian nation and stands for what was lost due to the genocide. Ararat is for Armenians what for Jews are both a shtetl and Auschwitz: a symbol of the Armenian lost paradise and of the brutality of losing it. According to this argument, the specificity of Ararat’s geographical location and its history, in common with the complexity of the real Auschwitz, must sometimes be sacrificed to give way to the representation of the mythical, ‘monolithic’ Ararat. It is assumed that the dramatic effect of the mythical Ararat is much stronger than that of any real location. Adding Ararat to Saroyan’s film is meant to demonstrate that the Turks attacked the Armenians at their very heart, and in this way to emphasise the viciousness of their actions. A similar consideration leads to the inclusion of Arshile Gorky in Saroyan’s epic as one of its main characters. Saroyan and his producer tell Ani that they took this decision after reading her book on Gorky. This inclusion results in adding many unconfirmed details and omitting others which would crowd the action or weaken the emotional impact of the film. Such practice is not uncommon in historical films, including in the films about the Holocaust. For example, Tim Cole observes that in Sophie’s Choice ‘Sophie’s Auschwitz’ is an amalgam of different places and an amalgam of different chronological periods of Auschwitz (Cole 1999: 106). In a similar vein, Saroyan and his producer argue that even if their film does not concur with history in detail, it conforms to it in the ‘bigger picture’ (or on a wider screen). The discussions conducted in the film, principally between Ani and the director and producer of Ararat, but also between Ani and other characters, such as Celia, about what can go into a film and what into a historical book, raise a question about the status of historical facts and the relationship between written history and film (to which I referred in the Introduction). Ani in these discussions represents the voice of

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a traditional, empiricist historian who believes in uncontaminated facts and demands that these facts be respected by everybody with the pretence of practising history. Although she does not articulate it clearly, her position brings to mind those historians who argue that by diverting from ‘historical facts’ makers of historical films and indeed everybody sacrificing historical ‘details’ for a ‘bigger picture’ give licence to more sinister manipulations of history and provide ammunition to those who on the basis of the inexact reconstructions subsequently question these ‘facts’. The case in point are ‘Holocaust deniers’ who often base their arguments that the Holocaust did not happen on the observation that the widely accepted representations/reconstructions of the Holocaust do not concur with each other and, especially, that the ‘touristic Auschwitz’ does not agree with ‘historical Auschwitz’. As Tim Cole observes, ‘One of the dubious methods adopted by revisionists has been to read back into the past of Auschwitz from the present “Auschwitz”. They dismiss the “Auschwitz” of the present, and then by extension dismiss also the Auschwitz of the past’ (Cole 1999: 109). It is possible to apply the same logic to the Armenian genocide – to dismiss ‘Ararat’ of the present, as recreated by Saroyan, and on the same basis dismiss the Ararat of the past. Yet, Egoyan, who not without reason has a reputation of being one of the most postmodern directors of his generation, does not subscribe to this argument, which edifies the professional historian as a custodian of the ‘truth’. Instead, time and again he draws attention to the fact that Ani, not unlike the makers of Ararat, whom she initially criticises and patronises, follows a similar agenda, namely that on the basis of some traces left by past events constructs a narrative which she presents as an (unquestionable and objective) truth. For example, she offers an ‘ultimate’ interpretation of the famous painting of Gorky, representing the painter with his mother, although, as Celia argues, her interpretation is only one of many possible ‘readings’ of the painting. Egoyan appears to support Celia’s interpretation by showing the painter painting and erasing his mother’s hands, as if unsure how to finish his work and what it should mean. Furthermore, Ani’s biography of Gorky has a kitschy title ‘Enigma and Nostalgia’, which corresponds to Saroyan’s take on Armenian history in Ararat. Maybe because Ani realises that Saroyan’s approach is in fact not far from her own, she ultimately endorses Saroyan’s film, as demonstrated by her attending its premiere, together with its director and producer. Her eventual acceptance of the movie can also be interpreted as a sign of her craving for popularity, which many filmmakers but few (professional) historians achieve,

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or of fulfilling a patriotic duty of commemorating and disseminating her nation’s tragic history. Another objection to Saroyan’s film is that it represents only the Armenian side of the conflict, reducing the Turks to a mindless, bloodthirsty mass, led by the sadistic Jevdet. As Jonathan Romney observes, ‘As an Armenian, Saroyan feels horror “to know that we could be so hated”, but his film responds to hate with hate’ (Romney 2003: 182). The old director’s perspective on the Turks as bad people appears also to extend to contemporary Turks or even to Canadians of Turkish descent. The case in point is Ali, who plays Jevdet in his film. Following the end of shooting, Ali approaches Saroyan, willing to discuss the events represented in his film, but the director refuses. Instead, he asks Raffi to take Ali back to his apartment, in this way announcing that his dealings with the actor are finished, as, indeed, with anybody who wants to open a debate on Armenian–Turkish history. Saroyan’s unwillingness to extend his acquaintance with Ali is also visible in the episode of Ararat’s premiere. At this gala we see practically all the main actors, except Ali, and thus can guess that he was not invited. By refusing to talk to Ali about the Armenian and Turkish past, Saroyan diminishes the chance of any acknowledgement of guilt by the latter, and thus forgiveness and reconciliation. In his insistence that pure hatred is responsible for the events of 1915, and his aloofness, and refusal to move beyond the parameters of discussions which suit him, Saroyan comes across as a milder version of Lanzmann. This is because the author of Shoah (1985) also rejected any attempt to contextualise/explain the Holocaust and anti-Semitism at large, instead advocating it be surrounded by a ‘circle of silence’ and projected the attitudes which led to the death camps onto contemporary people (in this way forgiving in advance any abuses of power by the Jewish citizens of Israel) (Lanzmann 1979–80). Similarly, according to Lanzmann’s ‘recipe of the Holocaust film’, Saroyan begins his epic with scenes of the greatest atrocities, thus increasing the impression that the violence of Turks towards Armenians was entirely unmotivated. At the same time, by being a fiction film, located in the past, with actors impersonating the victims and perpetrators, Saroyan’s movie stands in opposition to Shoah, which is about the past in the present. Hence, Saroyan’s Ararat combines the most criticised features of traditional and new ‘Holocaust film’. Ali, on his part, while showing interest in history and being prepared to discuss the Turkish atrocities, even accept Turkish responsibility for the destruction of the millions of Armenians, refuses to be connected with them in the way Egoyan’s Armenians feel connected with the

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suffering of their ancestors. In an exchange with Raffi, who is very disappointed by Saroyan’s aloofness towards Ali, the actor says that he is not Turkish, but Canadian, and Canada is a new country in which people have to move beyond ancient enmities. It is difficult not to sympathise with Ali’s position and, ultimately, Raffi himself identifies with it, when he condemns his father for sacrificing the happiness and the very survival of his family for the sake of reliving (old) history. While Jevdet is represented in Saroyan’s film as a sadistic, Gestapo-type killer, an American, Doctor Clarence Ussher, is portayed as a holy man. In contrast to Ali, who is not invited to the film’s premiere, Martin, who plays Ussher, has a seat next to the director and the producer and is the only member of the cast who is so highly honoured. The special position of Ussher and the actor can be explained by the fact that Ussher helped many Armenians, and both the character and the actor represent the country in which many survivors of the genocide and their descendants settled, including Arshile Gorky. Yet, as much as distancing himself from Saroyan’s snubbing of Ali, Egoyan distances himself from his elevating of Martin. He treats this character with irony, pointing to his ‘American’ exaggerated style of acting and his sense of self-importance. Moreover, Martin, not unlike the Spielberg Associates in In Praise of Love, exploits another nation’s history and suffering for popularity and financial gain. This is visible during Ararat’s premiere, when we see Martin talking to a journalist about the genocide while smiling and waving to the film’s viewers. Saroyan’s film is not the only film within Egoyan’s film; the second is made by Raffi. Shot in real places, where the Armenian massacre occurred, and including no real characters, the film is meant to illuminate the emptiness which remained after the destruction of the people and its culture. Its subject is not what happened in 1915, but its meaning for those people living in the present and especially for Raffi. These characteristics link it with Shoah and other documentary films about the return of survivors of ethnic cleansing and their descendants to the places of genocide and destroyed cultures, such as Kitty Returns to Auschwitz (1980) by Yorkshire Thomson Media and D’Est (From the East, 1996) by Chantal Akerman. Griselda Pollock praises these films, arguing that each of them is unique and they avoid the danger of sentimentality and conformity to convention (Pollock 2003), which was the case of Schindler’s List. However, watching Raffi’s film makes me sceptical about Pollock’s argument, preceded or echoed by many authors, including Eric Santner (1990) and Joshua Hirsch (2004). I find Raffi’s film even more sentimental than Saroyan’s and (perhaps due to my over-average

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exposure to the ‘Holocaust films’) it does not strike me as unique, but as belonging to a by now well-established genre, along with the films mentioned by Pollock and concerning traumatic returns and conveying the ‘silences’ and ‘gaps’ resulting from genocide and other traumatic experiences. Raffi’s film is shown to only one viewer, David, the customs officer, whom the young man attempts to convince that he went to Turkey for a good cause, rather than to smuggle drugs into Canada. He shows David his film on the very small screen of his own video camera and the screening is punctuated by Raffis’s explanations and the officer’s questions. This mode of exhibition epitomises the way non-mainstream documentary films are watched: by small audiences, outside movie theatres, often at home. Raffi claims that he shot his film in order to add it to Saroyan’s movie and, in this way, make it more authentic. In reality, however, as the customs officer learns, he brought the copy of his film to Canada after Saroyan’s Ararat had had its premiere. The fact that these two films remain separate, both as material products and as experiences (neither does Raffi manage to see Saroyan’s work in its final form nor Saroyan the film of his young assistant), symbolises the separation of producers and consumers of these two types of films, which prove inadequate representations of historical trauma. Egoyan attempts to bring these two types together by making Ararat. As a director of a traditional historical film, Egoyan creates a coherent story, even if this story turns out to be very complicated. As a ‘progressive’ filmmaker, he is self-reflective and from time to time breaks with the coherence, creating confusion and showing its affinity to the Deleuzian time-image which, as was noted, reflects a questioning attitude towards history and national identity. The main example is the figure of Arshile Gorky, whose status in Egoyan’s Ararat is unclear. We do not know whether the episodes in which he appears belong to Saroyan’s film or only to Egoyan’s film, whether he is ‘real’ or only imagined. In my opinion, such ambiguity is intended: in this way the director suggests that the painter acts as a bridge between Armenian past and present, Armenia and its diaspora, reality and ideal. The question arises whether Egoyan’s Ararat is creating a successful historical film by bringing together and laying bare deficiencies of two types of historical films. For me, the answer to this question is ‘yes’, but a rather cold reception of this film suggests otherwise: by oscillating between Saroyan’s film and Raffi’s film, Egoyan alienated both types of audiences. Saroyan and Raffi also represent Egoyan’s take on filmmaking in a wider sense. Raffi, in the director’s own words, evokes Egoyan at 18 and

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his film brings association with Egoyan’s early films. The character of Saroyan, on the other hand, as Romney puts it, ‘embodies Egoyan’s worst fears of what career success entails’ (Romney 2003: 186). Yet, at the same time, the fact that he names his own film after Saroyan’s movie, rather than calling it, for example, Ararats or The Film Ararat, which would draw attention to the pluralities and instabilities of memories and histories, suggests that unconsciously Saroyan’s take on history is closer to the Canadian director’s than he would like to admit. After completing Ararat, Egoyan’s next major project was Where the Truth Lies (2005), which also concerns searching for the truth about past events. Although it reveals some features typical of the ‘young Egoyan’, such as shifting narratives between locations and periods, it is his most mainstream film so far and one entirely set and shot in the USA. Judging by this film, after Ararat Egoyan chose Saroyan’s path, in terms of both opting for a more classical story and accepting American cultural hegemony. But in Ararat Egoyan leaves Raffi in transition: we do not know what happens to the young man or his film after he returns home, and what he does with the various history lessons he learnt during the course of the narrative.

Unearthing layers of the Polish Jewish past in Weiser Paweł Heller, the protagonist of Weiser, based on the highly praised, autobiographical novel Weiser Dawidek (1987) by Paweł Huelle, unlike the main characters of In Praise of Love and Ararat, is not a film director, but a musician, who previously played in an orchestra and is now a sound engineer, working for companies producing recorded music (Figure 1.5). However, his work, consisting of restoring the music on old records and tapes to their previous glory, can be compared to the restoration of history undertaken by Edgar, Saroyan and Raffi in the films previously discussed. Heller is a humbler ‘historian’ than the filmmakers in Godard and Egoyan’s films, because he believes that he does not add his own interpretation to the old sounds; he simply cleans them of the ‘dirt’ collected during the course of history. Whether this is indeed the case, we never learn, because there is no way to compare the product of Paweł’s work with the ‘original’: the original has disappeared for ever. This is also, as we learn in the course of the film, the message of Weiser. Not only in his professional life is Paweł committed to the idea of restoring, establishing what exactly happened in the past, but in his private life too. The narrative begins when Paweł returns to Wrocław in his native Poland, after 11 years spent in Hamburg, Germany. Ostensibly

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Figure 1.5 Marek Kondrat as Paweł in Weiser (2000), directed by Wojciech Marczewski

he returns to live in a newly liberated, postcommunist Poland, but in reality he is prompted by a desire to find out what happened one momentous day when he was 13 years old. On that day he was playing with a group of four friends near a disused railway tunnel, including a small Jew, Dawid Weiser, who previously proposed to blow up the tunnel. The children were meant to wait outside with the explosive device, but Weiser and the only girl in the gang, Elka, entered the tunnel (Figure 1.6). Weiser was never found, dead or alive; Elka was subsequently discovered near the tunnel, unconscious and lacking any memory about what happened. The school headmaster, the local priest and the local representative of the secret services all tried to force the children to admit that they killed Weiser, but they failed. In order to establish the facts, the adult Paweł approaches the three remaining witnesses of Weiser’s vanishing. These encounters demonstrate that they never overcame the trauma caused by this event and the subsequent interrogations. Szymek, a musician who, like Paweł, gave up playing in an orchestra, is practically a wreck of a man, debilitated by alcoholism and mental illness. Proof of that is his admission to Paweł that Weiser (or his ghost) keeps visiting him. His story is reminiscent of some cases of surviving Nazi concentration camp inmates who tend to lose their sense of reality and who experience the past as if it was the present (Felman and Laub 1992; Caruth 1995; Hirsch 2004).

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Figure 1.6 Elka and Weiser in Weiser (2000), directed by Wojciech Marczewski

Szymek dies during the course of the film, most likely from suicide: a belated response to his original trauma. Piotr, a successful businessman, first pretends that he does not remember the incident and does not even remember who Weiser was. However, pressed by Paweł, who challenges him to tell the truth, he reveals that for many years he did everything he could to forget about Weiser and advises Paweł to do the same. Yet, his final distress and taking to alcohol during Paweł’s visit show that he was unsuccessful in his attempt to forget. Trauma, it appears, cannot be forgotten. Finally, Elka, who is now the mother of a girl who looks just like her, except for different coloured hair (played by the same child actress, Olga Frycz, who played Elka in the flashback sequences), provides Paweł with various details about the momentous day, but ultimately refuses to tell him what happened in the tunnel. Again, it feels like the memories are too disturbing for her to relive. A sign of Elka’s trauma is her almost physical pain suffered at the sounds and images of a firework display which are part of the New Year festivities. No doubt they remind her of a different kind of ‘firework’: that produced by Weiser and herself. Paweł also attempts to look for traces of Weiser’s life by visiting the housing register office and the antique shop where somebody sold a record which most likely belonged to the Jewish boy. Here too he draws a blank. The house where Weiser once lived does not exist any more and the antique dealer does not remember the person who sold him

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the record. This unwillingness of almost everyone Paweł encounters to discuss the disappearance of a young Jew can be regarded as emblematic of Polish unwillingness to come to terms with its own part in the persecution of Jews, both during the Second World War and in more recent history, such as the end of the 1960s, when many prominent Jews were forced to leave the country, and during which the retrospective part of Marczewski’s film is set. Equally, in his effort to overcome the silence surrounding Weiser, Paweł counters the trend of forgetting the Jews pertaining to Polish postwar history and, in a sense, is symbolic of the difficult postcommunist attempts to investigate Polish–Jewish relationships. This very shameful part of Polish history gained in prominence thanks to the publication of two books by a Polish-born historian working in the USA, Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors (2001) and Fear (2006), analysing Polish anti-Semitism during and after the Second World War (see also Chapter 4). Weiser could be seen as a ‘hypertext’ in relation to Gross’s ‘hypotexts’, in which events described in prose are poetically evoked.10 Unable to find Weiser in the present, Paweł, like Proust’s Marcel and Godard’s Edgar, has to find him in the past: in his private memory and in the collective memory of the Poles. In both the past and the present parts of the film the mise-en-scène is dominated by trains, especially freight trains, which during the war were used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. Such trains pass near the tunnel which the children attempt to blow up and on one occasion they travel on the freight train. Images of passing trains catch the attention of the adult Paweł too. He also spends a large part of his stay in Wrocław at the railway station: waiting for his girlfriend, or for a train to take him to meet his old school pals. Weiser’s attempt to blow up the railway bridge can be viewed as a belated and symbolic attempt to prevent the war trains from reaching their destination: the concentration camps. The adult Paweł also ponders on Weiser blowing up a building, most likely an old factory, with two tall chimneys. This image, the ontological status of which is unclear, because we are not certain whether Paweł remembers or imagines this event and what was really blown up, brings association with the uprising in Auschwitz and its remembrance by traumatised witnesses. For example, Dori Laub refers to the story of a woman who witnessed four chimneys explode during the Auschwitz uprising, while in reality only one chimney was destroyed. But, as she argues, as a recollection of a particular psychological state, this memory is truthful, as it testifies not to what happened then (this cannot be remembered correctly), but to what this woman experienced at the time of the event (Felman and

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Laub 1992: 59–63). Other symbolic attempts to relive the past include children finding a pistol from the Second World War and firing it, as well as organising fake executions. It is worth adding that the images of children and sometimes also the adults playing war, with pretend shootings and executions, appeared in some earlier Polish films, such as Jerzy Skolimowski’s Rysopis (Identification Marks: None, 1964) and Re˛ce do góry (Hands Up!, 1966). These films also tackled postmemory, yet there it was always the memory of suffering and heroism of ethnic Poles. It took Polish directors much longer to represent and comment on memory and postmemory of Jewish suffering in Poland, not least because it took Polish society at large much longer to admit that Jews, rather than ethnic Poles, were the main victims of the Second World War (Mazierska 2005). As Iwona Irwin-Zarecka puts it, ‘For the majority of Poles, it is their own victimisation during the Nazi occupation that represented a formative trauma’ (Irwin-Zarecka 1994: 49). Yet, Marczewski does not simply replace the suffering Pole with a suffering Jew, but addresses their intertwined histories and pain. The Polish suffering is epitomised by the trauma of children who witness Weiser’s perishing, without fully grasping what happened to him, and then stand accused of killing Weiser, although they did not do so. Such accusations can be construed as seeking scapegoats for the true culprits of Jewish genocide, both in Poland and elsewhere. There are many signs of Jews’ previous presence and current absence in Wrocław and, by extension, in Poland as a whole. For example, the antique dealer whom Paweł visits in relation to the old record which was played by Weiser wants to sell Paweł a set of cutlery, which most likely belonged to some Jews taken to the death camp, and a leather armchair, on which Hermann Göring apparently once sat. The character of these ‘antiques’, namely the fact that the cutlery is an object of merchandise and enriches those who are not their real owners and that the connection with the man who, together with Hitler, played the most important role in the annihilation of Jews, adding value to the old armchair, testifies to the lack of respect for Polish Jewish heritage and even, possibly, of anti-Semitism flourishing in contemporary Poland. From Weiser’s talk with his Jewish grandfather or religious mentor, as recollected or imagined by Paweł, we learn that he is an orphan. Although, being a 12- or 13-year-old boy he cannot be a child of the Holocaust victims, their conversation suggests that Weiser’s parents died because they were not fit to survive in adverse circumstances. Weiser’s mentor does not want Dawid to repeat his parents’ mistakes and the boy promises to follow his request. In the light of this conversation, Weiser’s

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probable death in the blown-up tunnel can be interpreted as a kind of repetition of his parents’ death, thus a sign of him being overwhelmed by postmemory, not unlike the Jewish and Armenian characters in the films previously discussed. Conversely, it can be seen as proof that Weiser learnt from their mistakes and avoided their fate by masterminding his own death, rather than allowing others to kill him. The second interpretation is supported by scenes of Weiser constantly working on his physical and – even more – mental powers. He learns to endure pain, levitate and, ultimately, disappear. We see Weiser for the first time when he is harassed by a group of Polish children. They attack him as he mends his bike and call him a Jew. The assault takes place after the last lesson of Catechism before the summer holiday. The fact that Weiser does not attend religious education is perceived by Polish children as sufficient reason to punish him. Symbolically, this can be viewed as an indictment of the Catholic Church in the history of Polish anti-Semitism, as argued by Gross (Gross 2006). Weiser is rescued by Elka, who forces the children to leave the boy alone. This incident is observed by Paweł, who neither takes part in the harassment, nor defends the boy. His silence is repeated later in the antique shop, where he refuses to comment on the antiquarian’s tasteless advertising of his Jewish souvenirs. This passivity can be regarded as emblematic of the position taken by the majority of Poles in response to the killing of Jews by Germans and fellow Poles. It also can be interpreted, as some reviewers observed, as signifying Paweł’s attitude as a future artist, who prefers to look rather than act (Lubelski 2001).11 In becoming the rescuer of a Jew, Elka cuts an unusual figure in the Holocaust narratives and especially the Holocaust films. Typically it is a strong, Gentile male who rescues Jews, both male and female, the most famous example being Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List (Cole 1999: 82). Yet Elka concurs with the representation of women in Polish war narratives, for example in the Polish School films, who often had to take care of weak or sick men (Ostrowska 2006) and in Polish Holocaust films, where it is usually a woman who shows solidarity with a Jew, as can be seen in the films by Wanda Jakubowska and Jan Jakub Kolski (Mazierska 2000, 2001). In my opinion, by choosing a woman as the rescuer of a Jew, Marczewski links Polish anti-Semitism with patriarchy, suggesting that overcoming one of these ideologies might help to overcome the other. After Elka’s rescuing of Weiser, Paweł and his two classmates befriend him, most likely regarding it as the acceptable price for being close to the charismatic and pretty girl. Yet, Elka remains the only person in

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the neighbourhood who is emotionally close to Weiser. For her, Weiser is not inferior to the Polish boys but superior, as demonstrated by her observing with awe his levitating. She also participates in his dangerous experiments, lying next to Weiser on the airport runway, at the very place where the plane is about to land. It should be mentioned that Weiser is not the only Polish film from the postcommunist era in which Jews are represented as possessing supernatural powers. This motif is also prominent in the films by Jan Jakub Kolski, a descendant of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, who in his films also takes issue with Polish–Jewish relations during and beyond the Second World War (Mazierska 2000). Both in Kolski’s films, for example Cudowne miejsce (Miraculous Place, 1994), and in Weiser, the miracles which occur in the presence of the Jewish characters are a measure of the almost impossible task the Jews had to undertake to survive in adverse circumstances. From this perspective, Weiser can be compared to the magic realism of such Latin American authors as Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso and Gabriel García Márquez. The fact that magic realism flourished in the literature of the ‘Third World’ is often explained by the fact that the postcolonial experience involves sharp discrepancies between the cultures of technology and superstition, as well as grave economic and social inequalities (Slemon 1988). Accordingly, magic in these works is frequently represented as a tool of imaginary overcoming of these inequalities, of bringing justice and prosperity to those who are harmed and marginalised. Likewise, in Weiser magic is a way to make the situation of both Weiser and the Polish children equitable. At the same time, his magical qualities are a marker of the boy’s otherness; they add to his difference from the Polish children and, by extension, of the Jews from the Polish mainstream. We can thus regard Weiser as a metonym of Polish or even European Jewry. Such an interpretation is encouraged by Paweł Huelle, who said that Weiser ‘can be regarded as the symbol of disappearance of Jews from Europe’ (quoted in Szczepan´ski 2001: 14). If this is the case, the title of Marczewski’s film bears resemblance to other short titles such as Ararat and Katyn´, which refer both to a specific historical place or event, and to their symbolism of genocide and disappearance of a specific culture. At the same time, it differs from these titles, by not evoking a well-known place which occupies a privileged position in the history of a specific nation, but instead inviting the viewers to create their own set of associations, give their own meaning to ‘Weiser’. When Elka meets Paweł in the contemporary part of the film, she confesses that she was in love with both Weiser and Paweł. Ultimately, however, she did not choose either of them. We can regard Elka’s naming her

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daughter ‘Rachela’ as a sign of her continuing sentimental attachment to Weiser because in Poland this name is regarded as typically Jewish and rarely given to Polish children. Thus Elka stands for the part of Polish culture which was open to Jewish influences. Although Elka is the only person who might know what happened to Weiser in the tunnel, she refuses to reveal her knowledge to Paweł. The tears in her eyes and her physical pain caused by the fireworks suggest that she remembers Weiser’s death but cannot talk about it. Her ultimate silence can be seen as an expression of the ‘horror of the unspeakable’. Paweł, however, in his relentless search for the details, reveals his faith in the possibility of recovering the past, not unlike the sounds on an old record. He even believes that anybody can do it who possesses the right tools. Elka neither encourages nor discourages Paweł in his search for the truth, but urges him to pay attention to every detail, stressing that ‘everything matters’. It is perhaps far-fetched to suggest that her words are a warning against changing the details of history for a more ‘dramatic’ or ‘touristic’ effect, but they certainly can be seen in this context. Alternatively, Elka’s insistence on detail, on factual precision in her and Paweł’s accounts, can be regarded as a defence mechanism, whose purpose is to circumvent her true experience of the past (Felman and Laub 1992). Paweł’s turning to the past inevitably brings him closer to the old friends with whom he experienced Weiser’s disappearance. Simultaneously, it drives a wedge between him and those who do not share his memories, especially his German girlfriend Juliana. Her inclusion in the narrative suggests that although Poles are unable to come to terms with the various waves of the persecution of Jews, imprinted on their memory and postmemory, the Germans, or at least the younger generation of Germans, have no problems with their past: they simply ignore it or laugh at it. The very relationship between Polish, German and, inevitably, Jewish past is initially the subject of a joke between Paweł and Juliana, as demonstrated by Paweł singing ‘Deutschland. Deutschland über alles’ when making love to Juliana in a taxi. It appears that the 11 years Paweł spent in Hamburg made him forget about the past or at least desensitised him to it. The fact that Juliana is half his age adds to the sense that living in Germany led Paweł to focus on his future. Juliana’s ‘short memory’ is also revealed by her saying to Paweł that Wrocław (German Breslau before 1945) is a Polish town and if something is wrong there, it is solely the fault of Poles. On another occasion she uses the past to materially enrich herself, as conveyed by her buying prewar records (some of which, most likely, once belonged to Jewish owners), for Paweł to ‘clean’ them and resell at a profit. Although

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Juliana and Paweł’s work does not harm anybody in the present, this procedure symbolically evokes the Nazi practice of taking over and ‘cleansing’ Jewish properties to enrich their new users. Moreover, Juliana is angry that Paweł thinks more about Weiser than about her and she has a strong desire to have a baby, a wish the past-oriented Paweł resists. The opinion of Germans as a nation without memory (a view which sometimes refers to the whole of Western Europe) is, of course, a sign of the Polish sense of superiority, reflecting complexes resulting from decades of technologically and economically lagging behind Germany and the West. In her interest in the past, willingness to talk about it, but equally refusing to take responsibility for the sins of her ancestors and orientation to the future, Juliana resembles Ali from Ararat.12 These characters are also of importance to Poles of my generation, who were too young to participate in (or prevent) the anti-Semitic attacks as discussed by Gross, but might be (and sometimes are) approached by foreigners in relation to them. As for me, I always adopt Ali’s position, refusing to take responsibility for the sins of my Polish ancestors and Europeans at large, similarly as I refuse to show pride in the noble acts they committed. Juliana and Weiser represent two possibilities for contemporary Poles: oblivion to the past and living for the future or living in and for the past. These choices are additionally mapped by Marczewski on two nationalities with which Poland has especially close and painful relationships: Germans and Jews. Paweł’s trajectory, from Hamburg to Wrocław, marks his ultimate choice. For him, returning to Wrocław means returning to history, albeit history which is not purely Polish, but multiethnic and complicated. Marczewski’s narrative, in common with those of Godard and Egoyan, shows the importance of a physical place for successful remembering and, thus, of geography for history, which is a theme strongly present in the work of authors such as Pierre Nora (mentioned in the Introduction), as well as in those referring to the experience of the descendants of the Holocaust survivors and victims (for example Koch 1989; Kugelmass 1996; Hirsch and Spitzer 2003; Buruma 2009: 69–91). Returning to the place of death or genocide, where people, houses and cultures disappeared, makes the person who returns physically experience that annihilation took place. The time Paweł returns is also meaningful – 1989, the end of communism in Poland. No doubt, for many people, and especially Polish Jews, this date brought hope of unearthing many painful incidents from the past. In my view, this hope was largely fulfilled, as signified by bringing

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into the public domain information of such events as the massacre in Jedwabne committed by Poles in July 1941 on about 1600 Jews (Gross 2001) and some postwar acts of ethnic hatred (Gross 2006). Inevitably, the process of unearthing caused much controversy in Poland, but I do not regard it as something shameful or unacceptable, but a proof that history is a matter of contested memories. Marczewski, in common with Godard and Egoyan, points to the lack of ontological autonomy and aesthetic mediocrity of the present as a factor in Paweł’s obsessive return to the past. Wherever Paweł turns, he sees diminished or caricatured versions of previous events, such as the previously mentioned fireworks or the ‘Göring armchair’. Sometimes the burden of history is so literally heavy, such as the dusty files in the housing register office, that Paweł has to go out to avoid suffocation. Otherwise, the present comes across as unreal because it is dominated by a spectacle. Whenever Paweł goes into the city centre, he is drawn to the street performance of some ballet artists near the railway station. Another means by which Marczewski renders the present as less distinct than the past is the use of colour. As in In Praise of Love and Ararat, the past appears much more vivid than the present. Although, unlike in Godard’s film, the present is not shot in black and white, nevertheless it feels almost indistinct and devoid of colour. By contrast, the sequences set in the past are rich in colours, especially red, yellow and brown. Part of this effect results from the different seasons of the year in which the two parts of the film are set: the contemporary part takes place in winter, the flashbacks are set in summer and early autumn. However, these differences also pertain to different epochs, as seen by the protagonist. Contemporary Silesia is indistinct and grey; people walking the streets all look the same; buildings are devoid of any meaning. By contrast, the past was versatile and full of secret places, caves, tunnels; it was full of meaning. Equally, in common with Egoyan, although by different means, Marczewski in his film attempts to reconcile the mainstream and the ‘Lanzmannian’ tradition of ‘representing the unrepresentable’. As in a mainstream film, he shows us what happened in the past. When we see the events near the tunnel, we have little doubt that it is a true representation. Only by repeating the same event many times, placing it in different contexts, adding and subtracting information, do we realise that what we see is not an objective reality, but its replaying in the present tense by a man who can neither correctly remember what happened many years ago nor erase it from his memory. Such a technique resembles the films of Alain Resnais, such as Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), Muriel (1963) and La guerre est finie (1966). Resnais himself

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described these films as taking place in an ‘eternal present’ and showing a character who is ‘mixed up’ (quoted in Turim 1989: 220). The same can be said about Paweł who, like Resnais’s characters, is ‘mixed up’ because he cannot come to terms with the traumatic past. Marczewski’s Paweł never learns what happened to Weiser and, for that matter, to himself and his childhood friends. However, his search for the past taught him that it cannot be fully recreated and one’s identity is never complete. Paweł’s partial failure or partial success in unearthing the past concurs with how nowadays we think about histories, memories and identities: as partial, patchy, subjective, contradictory, never finished; as a process rather than a result. What Paweł will do with this knowledge remains an open question. Although Weiser lends itself to a discussion in the context of the relationship between Polish, Jewish and German histories, this aspect of the film was remarkably absent in its reviews. For example, the renowned Polish critic and film historian Tadeusz Lubelski discussed Weiser solely as a meditation on people of different generations, not about representatives of different ethnicities, living in Poland. Furthermore, he argued that in contrast to the novel by Paweł Huelle, which encourages a political reading, Marczewski’s Weiser is a ‘personal’ film, which purposefully sheds the political baggage of its original, to indulge in nostalgia (Lubelski 2001: 37). The lack of references to the Jewish motifs of Weiser, observed in this and other reviews, testifies to Polish mainstream culture subsuming for many decades the past of Polish Jews, making Jewish experiences practically indistinguishable from Polish ones (on the ‘polonisation’ of Auschwitz see Charlesworth 1994). Although Marczewski’s Weiser (as well as the previously mentioned films by Jan Jakub Kolski) testifies to changes in the way the Jewish past is represented in Polish cinema, film criticism in Poland appears to lag behind these changes.

Conclusions Each of the films discussed shows the importance and the burden of the past, the dilemma of whether to live in and for the past or to focus on the present. They demonstrate that we are condemned, by ontological requirements (to have a sense of individual and group identity), moral obligations (to honour those innocent who suffered and/or died horrible deaths) and practical considerations (to maintain good relationships within one’s community and with our neighbours) to remember the past. On the other hand, we have to move on with our lives to procreate

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and create a history worthy of remembering by ourselves and following generations. I also regard these three films as interesting propositions of ‘history/ memory films’, each offering a third way beyond a melodramatic historical film, epitomised by Schindler’s List, and a film in which the past remains unrepresented as the past, as in Lanzmann’s Shoah. Their opting for open endings and for narratives which are incoherent and difficult to grasp encourages the viewer to distrust stories which come across as well-told narrative. In this respect we should follow David, the customs officer in Ararat, who believes Raffi and lets him walk free after hearing his incongruous explanation.

2 ‘Our Hitler’: New Representations of Hitler in European Films

Adolf Hitler is one of the most famous of historical figures, if not the best-known historical figure of all time. Practically every child in Europe knows his name and is able to associate it with the Second World War and the Holocaust. For many Europeans, even after half a century, he remains the ‘face of Germany’, despite the fact that postwar Germany can count numerous economic and cultural achievements. Paradoxically, Hitler is also regarded as one of the most mysterious historical personas. The details of his real life, the workings of his mind, as well as the significance of his personal views and actions for the course of the history of the twentieth century are the subject of controversies filling hundreds of books and articles. Hitler’s mystery has many causes. One is his uniqueness. As Joachim Fest puts it: History records no phenomenon like him. Ought we to call him ‘great’? No one evoked so much rejoicing, hysteria, and expectation of salvation as he; no one so much hate. No one else produced, in a solitary course lasting only a few years, such incredible accelerations in the pace of history. No one else so changed the state of the world and left behind such a wake of ruins as he did. It took a coalition of almost all the world powers to wipe him from the face of the earth in a war lasting nearly six years, to kill him – to quote an army officer of the German resistance – ‘like a mad dog.’ (Fest 1974: 3) Another reason is his secrecy: ‘All through his life he made the strongest efforts to conceal as well as to glorify his own personality. Hardly any other prominent figure in history so covered his tracks, as far as 60

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his personal life was concerned’ (ibid.: 13). Hitler’s mystery derives also from the fact that he broke many rules concerning political leaders. ‘To a virtually unprecedented degree, he created everything out of himself and was himself everything at once: his own teacher, organiser of a party and author of its ideology, tactician and demagogic saviour, leader, statesman, and for a decade the “axis” of the world’ (ibid.). And yet, his many personal traits, such as vulgarity, intolerance, lack of generosity and respect for his enemies and, of course, the great death toll and the masses of ruins he left behind, made him an example, as Thomas Mann puts it, of ‘botched greatness’ and of a ‘debased stage of genius’ (Mann, quoted in ibid.: 5). As a result of these factors, there are many Hitlers, produced in numerous biographies, as well as in memoirs and historical studies (on different biographies of Hitler see Rosenfeld 1985; Lukacs 2000). In some we encounter the cold-blooded, rational politician; in others a pathetic sufferer of hysteria and a madman. The enigma of Hitler also pertains to the contrast between his ascent to power and his decline: the enormity of his political achievements, symbolised by his Berghof retreat high in the mountains, where he apparently made the decision to start the war, and then rapid collapse, signified by burrowing into his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in the last days of the war (Friedlander 1993b: 27–8). Such a trajectory is not unique in European history, an example being Napoleon (Lukacs 2000: 240–68). However, there was still Napoleon after the losses of Leipzig and Waterloo, and a significant part of Napoleon’s accomplishments survived in France and elsewhere in Europe. As Ian Kershaw maintains, Napoleon ‘can be, and often is, looked upon with pride and admiration by modern-day Frenchmen’ (Kershaw 2000: xvi). Hitler’s legacy is regarded as one of ‘utter destruction’ and ‘moral trauma’ (ibid.: xvii) or at least any mention of the positives of his policies and the whole period of National Socialism, even achievements in motorisation and aviation, has been regarded as politically incorrect. Although for contemporary people Hitler personifies evil, its source and nature are far from obvious, not least because Hitler preferred to remain at some distance from the atrocities committed in his name. In contrast to Himmler, he did not inspect concentration camps or witness executions. This distance, excellently conveyed by the saying of his countrymen ‘If only the Führer knew …’, was most likely premeditated by him and proved an excellent means to broaden and maintain his appeal among wide sections of German society. Hence, there are as many reasons to make films about Hitler as there are to avoid it. Judging by the number of films made in the past decade

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or so about this figure – and which include Moloch (1999), directed by Aleksandr Sokurov, Max (2002), directed by Menno Meyjes, Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler, 2007), directed by Dani Levy, and Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, which will be the focus of this chapter – the reasons to make films about Hitler in this period prevailed. My purpose is to establish how these new representations of Hitler reflect the changes in historical and popular thinking about this figure and wider political and cultural changes which occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I am much less interested in the relationship between these new ‘cinematic Hitlers’ and the ‘historical Hitler’ who, as I indicated, is also always a product of a discourse, thus of mediation, not a truthful reflection of reality. Nevertheless, in recognition of the important role such a relationship plays in watching a film, I will evoke here time and again the ‘historical Hitler’ (although frequently he will be relegated to the notes). I shall thus reveal that my favourite ‘historical Hitler’ is that from the biography by right-wing liberal Joachim Fest (1974). Fest’s book attracted me both by its historical competence and, even more so, by its premise to capture Hitler’s ‘botched genius’. Although Fest is often put together with such conservative German historians as Broszat, Nolte and Hillgruber, all of them the leading figures of Historikerstreit (Historians’ dispute or Historians’ controversy), to which I will return in due course, I do not find in his writings any attempt to exonerate Hitler by, as the others did, rendering him as morally superior to Stalin. This is most simply put in his book Inside Hitler’s Bunker: ‘What makes Hitler a phenomenon unlike any other in history is that his goals included absolutely no civilising ideas … Even Stalin’s bloody despotism draped itself with promises for the future, extremely threadbare though they may have been’ (Fest 2005: 165).

The taboo of representation In order to assess the newness of the new portrayals of Hitler, I shall briefly discuss his earlier cinematic portrayals. The importance of Hitler for cinema and German cinema especially is indicated by the use of his name in the titles of books about film history, such as Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film and Anton Kaes’s From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. And yet one often encounters the opinion, with which I agree, that until recently it has been taboo to represent Hitler. Some of the causes and dimensions of this taboo are shared with the subject of

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the Holocaust, with which Hitler is closely linked by being its ultimate ‘author’ (see Chapter 1), therefore I will not repeat them; some pertain to representing enemies; others are specific to Hitler and on those I will focus here. One problem is a demand not to trivialise Hitler as this brings the risk of undermining his victims. This requirement was articulated by Theodor Adorno, who criticised one of the earliest and still the bestknown renditions of Hitler, The Great Dictator (1940) by Charles Chaplin, claiming that ‘for the sake of political commitment, political reality is trivialised: which then reduces the political effect’ (Adorno 1980: 184–5). The same criticism can be directed to numerous films (as well as representations in other media) which render Hitler as a serial killer, a monster hidden in a human body or a pathetic figure, manipulated by his collaborators. Equally, filmmakers are asked not to render Hitler as a potential object of identification, sympathy or fascination. From this perspective Hitler – eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career, 1977), directed by Joachim Fest and Christian Herrendoerfer, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler – ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler: A Film from Germany, 1977) were sometimes criticised. Making feature films about Hitler is also so challenging because Hitler was probably the first statesman in history who perfectly understood the power of cinema, and contemporaneous cinema served him exceptionally well. Hence, every good film about Hitler, even if made against him, is open to criticism of repeating the laudatory, propagandist representations which dominated the years of Nazi rule and becoming a monument to ‘Hitler’s art’ (Elsaesser 1992, 1996: 150–3; Friedlander 1993b: 17–22).1 A version of this argument was recently repeated by Ian Kershaw, an eminent historian responsible for some of the most popular and respected books on Hitler, who in his review of Downfall, while praising the film, warns against making too many movies of this kind (Kershaw 2004). Another, more prosaic, but no lesser problem pertaining to Hitler’s ‘love affair’ with cinema is the abundance of documentary footage representing Hitler, repeatedly broadcast on television. People living during and after the Second World War, especially Germans, as Anton Kaes observes (Kaes 1989: ix), but also Slavs, as I can confirm from personal experience, grew up exposed to these images. The fact that the public at large ‘knows’ Hitler from these films makes creating his believable portrayal in fiction film difficult. Unlike actors playing Napoleon, who at best can be compared to his painted portraits, actors playing Hitler compete with Hitler himself, as immortalised by Nazi cameramen.

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There is also incompatibility between the parameters of a standard film and Hitler’s life, because the latter, despite being relatively short, had so many dimensions, touched upon so many aspects of world history, that it feels impossible to contain in a story lasting two hours or so. This problem can be compared to adapting to screen masterpieces of modernist literature, such as Remembrance of Things Past or Ulysses, although, of course, it would be highly controversial to call Hitler’s life an artistic masterpiece. It is thus not an accident that the majority of Hitler’s best-known written biographies, authored by Alan Bullock (1964), Joachim Fest (1974) and Ian Kershaw (1998, 2000), exceed 500 pages of small print. Similarly, the only film about Hitler which gained the status of a masterpiece, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film from Germany, exceeds many times the length of a feature film, lasting 442 minutes, and even this film offers a somewhat limited view of this figure. Another related difficulty in representing Hitler pertains to the fact that Hitler the man is superseded by Hitler the symbol. He is seen as a sign of all the miseries inflicted on people during the Second World War, of a disease which crippled the twentieth century and modernity at large, even of the greatest evil humanity is capable of. When we nowadays hear ‘Hitler’, we probably think less about the historical figure and more about all the issues associated with him. In this respect ‘Hitler’ is similar to ‘Auschwitz’. To these reasons why filmmakers shied away from showing Hitler on screen we can also add some that are country- and period-specific. Here the scarcity of films about Hitler made in Germany deserves special attention. This scarcity can be explained by two interrelated factors. The first Alexander and Margerete Mitscherlich describe as ‘the inability to mourn’, characteristic of the German people post-1945, especially those living in West Germany (Mitscherlich 1975). This phenomenon is multifaceted, but its crucial element was a desire by German survivors of the war to forget about their past.2 It was only the next generation of West Germans, the generation of the children of Nazi supporters, who started to ask questions about their parents’ wartime past. But then, the focus of their interest was not Hitler, but rather the political, social and psychological conditions in Germany which assured Hitler’s success and the influence of Hitler on the behaviour of ordinary Germans before and after the war (see Chapter 3). Not surprisingly, the most famous film from this period, the previously mentioned Hitler: A Film from Germany by Syberberg (b. 1935), tackled not Hitler as such, but the imprint of Hitler on the German soul, his place in German history and the relationship between Nazism and later historical phenomena, such as the

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modern entertainment business (Sontag 1983; Santner 1990: 103–49; Elsaesser 1992; Kaes 1989). Similarly, Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979), which deals with West Germany’s rebirth after the war, opens with the image of a picture of Hitler falling to the ground. Paradoxically, the fact that this generation proved very critical of their elders, and saw Hitler as a beneficiary of the spectacle and media-saturated culture he created, added to the difficulty of making a film about him, especially one with documentary/realistic ambitions. Proof of the risk run by filmmakers embarking on such projects was the fierce criticism by Wim Wenders, a leading director of New German Cinema, of Fest and Herrendoerfer’s Hitler: A Career. This film, assembled from documentary footage and furnished with off-screen commentary by Fest, was attacked by Wenders for uncritically repeating the images and messages circulated in Nazi propaganda (Wenders 1988). Wenders went as far in his criticism as to say: ‘NOT to see the film is perhaps the only recommendation one can make’ (ibid.: 130). In East Germany, the suppression of the Nazi past was even stronger than in the West. An important reason was the political project of construing East Germans as ‘good Germans’, not implicated in the Nazi crimes, and of stressing the memory of East Germans’ liberators, the Soviets, as suffering, heroic and victorious. Consequently, East German representations of the war were dominated by a perspective from below and from the point of view of resistance, which did not include high-ranking Nazis (Mückenberger 1999: 69). For East German filmmakers, Hitler thus turned out to be a more uncomfortable subject than for their Western counterparts. The same rule applies, to a large extent, to filmmakers from other East European countries, who also were unwilling to focus on the Nazi hierarchy, preferring to show them as an inhuman, monolithic force. At the same time, authors such as Siegfried Kracauer (2004), Eric Santner (1990) and Anton Kaes (1989, 1992) argued that Hitler permeates German cinema because even when German films do not show him, they deal with his presence and legacy in a deeper sense. Kracauer goes as far as to claim that in cinema Hitler appeared even before the real Hitler entered the political scene. This is because Expressionistic films made during the Weimar period, such as Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, 1920), directed by Robert Wiene, predicted his appearance and subsequent domination in all spheres of social life (Kracauer 2004; see also Introduction). But the heaviness of Hitler’s shadow acted as a deterrent from making the films of the ‘body’ of Hitler, so to speak. As a result of these factors, the number of films about Hitler, although not insignificant, is lower than one might expect, taking into account

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Hitler’s place in European history, and Anglo-Saxon and, especially, Hollywood filmmakers had a near-monopoly on this figure. This, of course, is considered as an unfortunate situation, due to the belief that Hollywood trivialises, melodramatises and replaces history with spectacle, and commits all these sins for commercial reasons.3 Moreover, in a large proportion of films about Hitler, including Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film from Germany, we see not a man, whom we identify as Hitler, but somebody mistaken for Hitler, his representation or a representation of his representation: ‘Hitler in us’, Hitler as a dream or Hitler as (mis)construed by cinema. Hitler also became an important figure in low comedies, ‘cinematic trash’, ‘badfilm’, ‘pornography’, in summary work which can be qualified as ‘paracinema’. Although neglected in historical studies, I will not dismiss films of this type, because without risking being accused of secretly harbouring proNazi sympathies, they tackle cultural taboos and allow their viewers to unleash emotions which mainstream cinema and mainstream culture at large do not allow to happen (on subversive potential of ‘paracinema’ see Sconce 2008). Taking into account the problems of representing Hitler convincingly, the upsurge of films devoted to this figure in the past decade or so might come as a surprise. The fact that there are so many of them and that most of their authors represent Hitler realistically, as a man, as opposed to a symbol of ultimate evil, using a coherent narrative, encourages me to test the hypothesis that the taboo of representing Hitler has been lifted. The fact that two of these films were produced in Germany, where the unspoken prohibition of showing Hitler on screen was at its strongest, suggests that even Germans are finally able to ‘look directly in his face’. What are the reasons for this upsurge of interest? First, it follows a rise in historians’ interest in this figure, as exemplified by his biographies published in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, by authors such as Joachim Fest, Gerhard Schreiber and Martin Broszat. Not only new books on Hitler entered the public domain, but there appeared new arguments about the way this figure should be discussed. The leading figures of Historikerstreit (Historians’ dispute) in the 1980s, such as Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber and Martin Broszat, offered new assessments of the Second World War by suggesting that Hitler’s policies had a positive function of stopping the Soviets’ march towards the West and that the expulsion of the Germans from their Eastern territories was of the same order as the Holocaust (Anderson 1992: 169–81; Moeller 2001: 51–87, 170–98). Martin Broszat argued for using a ‘historical distance’

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when approaching questions of the Nazi period in general and Hitler in particular: As I see it, the danger of suppressing this period consists not only in the customary practice of forgetting, but rather, in this instance – almost in paradoxical fashion – likewise in the fact that one is too overtly ‘concerned’ for didactic reasons, about this chapter in history. As a result, what happens is that an arsenal of lessons and frozen ‘statuary’ are pieced together from the original, authentic continuum of this era; these increasingly take on an independent existence. Particularly in the second and third generation, they then intrude to place themselves in front of the original history – and are finally, in naïve fashion, understood and misunderstood as being the actual history of the time. (Broszat, quoted in Burleigh 1996: 2) Although Broszat, who clearly represents a ‘reconstructionist’ position, suggests that the younger generations of Germans are more vulnerable to treating Hitler and Nazism in a ‘didactic way’, as opposed to a scientific way (which undoubtedly Broszat attributes to his own position), in my view the opposite is more likely to happen. This is because the generation of Hitler’s contemporaries, for whom Hitler was their ‘ego-ideal’, were too traumatised by the war and its aftermath to gain any emotional distance towards him (Mitscherlich 1975; Santner 1990; Geyer 1997). The very ideas espoused by historians such as Nolte, Hillgruber and Broszat, all born in the 1920s, are poignant testimony to their and their contemporaries’ inability to distance themselves emotionally from Nazism even many decades after its end. ‘Hitler’s children’ also found it difficult to look at Hitler in a ‘cool way’, because they were angry with their parents for their involvement in Nazism and their unwillingness to repent for it (see Chapter 3). Only ‘Hitler’s grandchildren’ appear to be distant enough from Nazism to avoid the ‘didacticism’ Broszat mentions. Indeed, as I will argue in due course, the new wave of ‘Hitler films’, all made by directors born in the 1950s, hence being closer to the generation of ‘Hitler’s grandchildren’ than ‘Hitler’s children’, comes across as rather impersonal and lacking in passion. One can also see a link between making films about Hitler and entering the new millennium. This is because Hitler, more than any other historical figure, epitomises the twentieth century and modernity. For some authors, like Zygmunt Bauman, he embodies the dark extremity of modernism – modernism as utter barbarity (Bauman 2000). For others,

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his reign was the last large-scale revolt against modernity and an attempt to create a utopia (Friedlander 1993b: 29).4 Whatever interpretation is chosen, Hitler’s story still acts as a warning against what can happen to Europe if its inhabitants are not vigilant and allow themselves to be seduced by grand-scale political projects. Hitler’s rule and the Second World War can thus be regarded as the last moment when history was ‘great’ and ‘real’, before becoming fragmented into numerous mininarratives and giving in to simulation and hyper-reality, as described by Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Hence, Hitler offers cinema a chance to produce an epic film about events which still belongs to ‘our age’, is still remembered, albeit by a rapidly shrinking number of people. The upsurge of new films on Hitler can also be regarded as a reaction to the sheer number, commercial success and the character of the films tackling the Holocaust made in the past two decades or so. This is because, as I argued previously, although the taboos of representing Hitler and representing the Holocaust are different, they are also related, and changes in one of them affect the other. Accordingly, the fact that the ‘Holocaust sells’ can be seen as a sign that ‘Hitler will sell too’. Equally, the fact that more and more of the ‘unrepresentable’ have been represented by a filmmaker – as demonstrated by films such as The Grey Zone (2001) by Tim Blake Nelson and the moral respectability of the Holocaust comedy La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1997) directed by Roberto Benigni – could have emboldened filmmakers wanting to show Hitler in the way deemed unacceptable in the 1970s or the 1980s. It is worth mentioning in this context that the director of Max, Menno Meyjes, had worked with Steven Spielberg before directing his ‘Hitler film’ and first offered his script to Spielberg, assuming that this director, who was so successful in introducing the Holocaust into mainstream cinema, would be equally keen to ‘mainstreamise’ and update Hitler. Another factor in the production of the new Hitler films might be the success of such postmodern movies as Starship Troopers (1997), directed by Paul Verhoeven, Gattaca (1997), directed by Andrew Niccol, and Hellboy (2004), directed by Guillermo del Toro. These films, as Florentine Strzelczyk argues, recreate, amplify and revel in Nazi-like spectacles and even edify the principles of Nazi society (Strzelczyk 2007), but thanks to being set in the future and using strategies of ‘paracinema’, conveniently avoid any moral responsibility for their ideological stance. Making ‘historical’ films about Hitler can be seen as capitalising on an unfaltering fascination with fascism, while purporting to unmask these postmodern pastiches by pointing to their ‘original’ and ‘proper’ context.

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Moloch or posttotalitarian Hitler à la russe The prevailing tendency in the new films about Hitler is to ‘historicise’ him. Moloch, however, is born out of an opposite impulse – to locate Hitler outside history. This desire is already announced by its title – ‘moloch’ means a demon in a shape of a man or possessing a man. One Russian reviewer described Sokurov’s Hitler as an abstraction and a possible embodiment of a basic (transhistorical) character (Mantsev 1999). Such demonisation of Hitler is a common practice of authors writing his biography (Lukacs 2000; Rosenfeld 1985; Rosenbaum 1998). Although it often derives from noble impulses, such as bewilderment and outrage at the enormity of crimes committed by the Führer and in his name, it might be seen as a tactic of circumventing the link between Hitler’s crimes and some wider historical formations and phenomena, such as modernism and (pan-European) anti-Semitism, and an attempt to obscure the connection between Hitler’s ascent to power and the attitudes of ordinary Germans, in order to absolve them from the Nazi crimes. The perception of tyrannical rulers as timeless demons incarnating different bodies is also typical to people subjected to them and betrays a desire to distance themselves from them. Russia, of course, had its fair share of tyrants, the last being Stalin, famously alluded to in Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible, 1944) by Sergei Eisenstein to which Moloch was compared (Szaniawski 2006: 23; 2007: 148). It is easier in Russia than, let us say, Holland or Britain, to see Hitler as an ahistorical figure. A reading of concrete evil acts as resulting from forces which are outside human capacity is also in accordance with a certain tradition in Russian literature, best epitomised by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose works can also be located in the context of the history of Russia as governed by tyrants. Such reading can be supported by the fact that Moloch is one of a number of films made by Sokurov about the famous modern dictators, including Lenin in Telets (Taurus, 2001), and the Japanese Emperor Hirohito in Solntse (The Sun, 2005). Through them, Sokurov attempts to find a common denominator for dictators and dictatorships and, perhaps, understand the history of Russia. The conviction that all dictatorships are essentially the same links Sokurov with Hannah Arendt, especially her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1958), or perhaps can even be partly explained by the respect with which she is treated in postcommunist countries (Žižek 2001: 2–3), of which Sokurov is most likely aware (on the comparison between Hitler and Stalin see also Kershaw and Lewin 1997). Apart from the ‘metaphysical title’, the intention to situate Hitler somewhat beyond or outside history is also betrayed by the film’s setting

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in the Berghof, Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps, known as his favourite retreat, ‘where the echo of the world runs aground like a faroff rumbling’ (Lalanne 1999: 73). Yet, Sokurov conjures up the Berghof not as a place of refuge from the not-so-sunny reality of war, but as a prison: a heavy, concrete fortress, blanketed by fog. Hitler and his entourage are thus prisoners of forces which he unleashed, but over which neither he, nor anybody else, has power.5 The overall idea of Sokurov’s film is to undermine Hitler as a man and politician. He achieves this goal by rendering him as isolated, small and weak, as symbolised by his diminutive name, Adi, while representing the forces with which he has to deal as hugely exceeding his capacities. These circles of oppression are Hitler’s body, his past, and German landscape and culture. Sokurov’s Hitler is thus a vegetarian (in common with the ‘historical’ Hitler), but this feature results not from the dictator’s conviction that a vegetarian diet is healthy, but from his morbid obsession with bodies. Meat for him equals corpse, and even in the bodies which are alive he sees signs of decay and nourishment for death. He is sickened at the sight of a litter of puppies, which leads his servants to killing the dogs, and he perceives his own body only as a stage on a way to inevitable death. The perception of everything alive as close to death, awakening association with Freud’s ‘death drive’, explains also his disgust at the idea of reproducing. While for most people reproducing equals perpetuating life, for him it means perpetuating death. Freudian discourse is also evoked through the depiction of Hitler’s relationships with women: his mother and his mistress Eva Braun. The former does not appear in the film as a person (she died of cancer many years previously), but Sokurov obsessively returns to her large portrait, hanging in the parlour of Hitler’s residence. The portrait points to both the mother’s importance and her absence in Hitler’s life. Hitler’s biographers often claim that his mother was the only person whom he truly loved and she had a ‘civilising’ influence on the future dictator, cut short by her premature death. Yet, in Sokurov’s film the portrait signals that we are dealing with Hitler as a Norman Bates-type figure: an impotent who kills other people out of fear of his mother.6 The shadow of the mother appears also to shape Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun (Figure 2.1). Unlike Hitler’s lover in Traudl Junge’s description, who was a ‘girlish’ type: vivacious, indulging in expensive clothes and obsessed with staying thin ( Junge 2004: 63), Sokurov’s Eva is of a similar age to Hitler and, due to being tall and athletic, physically thwarts the dictator. Sokurov’s Eva also overwhelms Hitler intellectually, and is contemptuous of his politics and his political friends. She stays with Hitler not

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Figure 2.1 Leonid Mozgovoy as Hitler and Yelena Rufanova as Eva Braun in Moloch (1999), directed by Aleksandr Sokurov

because she finds him attractive, but because she loves him as a mother loves her child: despite his shortcomings or even because of his shortcomings, knowing that if she disappears from his life, he will be utterly lonely. But, at the same time, as a mistress of a man who cannot satisfy her, she is frustrated and searches for ways to release her energy. This aspect is conveyed in a lengthy sequence, beginning the film, when she is prowling the rooms of the Berghof naked, dancing to the music played from records, doing gymnastics and waving to the unseen guards watching her through their binoculars. Her portrayal evokes the ancient German ideal of a woman: a fit, naked ‘Amazon’, which Nazi ideologists attempted to revitalise, but also points to the gap between the ideal and the realities of women during the war. Sokurov’s Eva is an Amazon wasting away and might be regarded as a metaphor of healthy and decent people misused for a mad political project. The culmination of the film is Hitler and his entourage’s expedition to the mountains. During this trip the travellers are literally enveloped by fog, which underscores the smallness and insignificance of people against the forces of nature. Fog also separates the characters from each other, and especially Hitler from his ‘friends’, making him unable to communicate with them. Camera techniques, such as high-angle and tilted shots, create an effect of characters being dwarfed by and alienated

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from the landscape. We also get a sense that Hitler has been observed, hence rather than being an omniscient God, he is at best an object of God’s or the director’s extra-scrutiny. The excursion to the mountain is accompanied by Wagner’s music which, like the cinematography, does not convey Hitler’s accord with and measuring up to Wagner,7 but his discord with and inferiority towards the composer. The loud and powerful sounds add to the effect of the group being thwarted by the forces of nature. We can thus derive that Hitlerism was born from an ambition to conquer the landscape and reach the peak of human abilities, which, ultimately, failed. If Sokurov’s Hitler is a metaphorical dwarf, Hitler’s collaborators, Martin Bormann and Joseph and Magda Goebbels, come across as even more diminished. These people, like small children, have no views of their own and fight for the best place at their master’s table, as well as go to any length to hide from him any unpleasant truths concerning, for example, losses at the Eastern front or the existence of concentration camps. Whenever any unpleasant news is broached, it is immediately extinguished. The image of a tyrant being protected by his cronies from the realities of his crumbling empire is a familiar element of Soviet and Eastern European postcommunist history. If we replace Sokurov’s Hitler with Honecker, Ceaus¸escu or the late communist Soviet leaders, such as Brezhnev or Andropov, we are left with a portrait which perfectly suits the discourses of the history of late communist East Germany, Romania or the Soviet Union (see Chapter 5). A representation of leaders as severed from those whom they are meant to lead is also a common motif in Sokurov’s cinema (Jameson 2006: 7; Szaniawski 2007: 148). At the same time, Sokurov, whose cinema is not free from nationalistic undertones, uses his film as an opportunity to convey the idea of Russian superiority over Germany. We learn that while the Führer holds practically all European nations in contempt, including his main allies, the Italians, he treats Russians with awe.8 The war is presented by Sokurov as a childish and failed attempt by Hitler to prove that the Germans can outdo the Russians. Moloch thus can be viewed as a means to metaphorically compensate the Russians for the harms inflicted on them by their own and foreign tyrants. Sokurov’s film is also about the impossibility of escaping nature and history, a subject known from previous films about the Nazi past such as Despair (Despair – Eine Reise ins Licht, 1978) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose character was also frightened and disgusted by the political circumstances and by his own mortality. In these films nature

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and history eventually catch up with the refugee, baring his inadequacies. In Sokurov’s film this idea is conveyed by the last dialogue between Hitler and Eva Braun. When he tells her that he will conquer the plague, she answers: ‘But Adi, you can’t do anything about it, death will always remain death.’ The theme of escape is also evinced by the film’s style. As Jean-Marc Lalanne observes, Sokurov’s style evokes pictorialism, a movement in nineteenth-century photography that violently rejected photographic realism: ‘Like Hitler burying his excrement, Sokurov never stops covering, blocking out the vision’ (Lalanne 1999: 75), as if wanting to deny that he is using a mimetic, photography-based medium. Yet, of course the blocking of vision only draws special attention to what is blocked, such as showing an absence draws attention to what is absent (see Chapter 1). The unrealistic style of Moloch prompted some critics to argue that Sokurov’s film is not about Hitler, but about representing Hitler; in a similar way, Guy Maddin’s pastiches of silent films are removed from any tangible reality. Such a reading is encouraged by Sokurov, who, in a style typical for late modernists, prides himself on prioritising ‘artistic needs and imperatives’ (quoted in Szaniawski 2007: 149). Benjamin Halligan goes as far as claiming that Sokurov’s film shows the impossibility of making a ‘realistic’ film about Hitler (Halligan et al. 2000). Such a statement echoes what was said about Hitler: A Film from Germany by its author and critics (Kaes 1992: 212). However, the opinions about the unrepresentability of Hitler as a concrete individual were uttered in different contexts. Syberberg made his film over 30 years ago, when the memory of the ‘real’ Hitler was much stronger than it is now. Secondly, Syberberg’s point was to try various takes on Hitler, using different perspectives and applying different media, and to demonstrate that they are not working: what we get in the end is the impression of a ‘mediated’ not a ‘real’ Hitler. Sokurov, by contrast, fails to achieve a similar effect because he is not trying – his approach to Hitler is too narrow and his attitude to the subject too remote. Consequently, what Sokurov demonstrates is rather the opposite to Syberberg, namely that works which position themselves as films about the representations of Hitler reached their limit – there is little to add to this genre. This opinion is confirmed by the cold international reception of Moloch, with the bulk of critics finding the film pretentious rather than profound. For example, David Stratton of Variety described it as a ‘disappointingly shallow film’ (Stratton 1999: 30). Russian reviews were more favourable (Mantsev 1999; Brashinsky 2001) but largely on account of its pandering to the Russian taste for representing dictators.

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Not surprisingly, Moloch turned out to be an exception rather than a typical film in the new wave of Hitler films.

Queer Hitler for postmodern cosmopolitans in Max Whilst Moloch attempts to de-historise and universalise Hitler, Max locates Hitler in a distinctive moment of German and Hitler’s personal history: the end of the First World War and its aftermath, and refers to the debate of when and how Hitler’s anti-Semitic views crystallised. It is not based on any of Hitler’s biographies and its eponymous protagonist, Jewish art dealer Max Rothman, is a fictitious character. Despite its fictitiousness or perhaps because of it, Meyjes reveals an ambition to provide a substantial insight into Hitler’s mind and his life, filling the gaps eluding professional historians. Max, representing opposite views, tastes and lifestyle to that of Hitler, works as a medium, through which we can access the future German leader. This is because, to use Lacanian terminology, only through learning about the other can we learn about ourselves. These words resonate especially in Germany, where Jews were given the role of everything Germans were not. Meyjes’s film is close to Joachim Fest’s rendition of Hitler because it obsessively accentuates two features of Hitler which Fest foregrounds in his biography, namely his fear of losing his bourgeois status and sinking into the abyss of the proletariat and, at the same time, Hitler’s unwillingness to follow his father’s footsteps by having a career and a regular life, as testified by his clinging to his artistic dreams and, later, becoming a professional politician. As Fest puts it, ‘He looked upon politics as the vocation of one who was without a vocation and wanted to remain so’ (Fest 1974: 119). This mixture of fear and ambition is convincingly conveyed by Noah Taylor, playing Hitler in Max (Figure 2.2). Taylor’s Hitler is not Hitler as we know him from documentary films and photographs, but possesses the right essence, thanks to looking ratty, undernourished and full of complexes and, at the same time, angry, arrogant and demanding. Such a Hitler emerges from the pages of Mein Kampf (Hitler 1969). Even Taylor’s English is less obtrusive than in the majority of English-language films about the Nazis, because his pompous expressions emulate the clumsy rant of Mein Kampf. Hitler’s miserable social status and his dreams of grandeur and power are also conveyed by frequent use of extremely low-angle and highangle shots. The first time we see Hitler he is looking up at a sculptured eagle, a symbol of Germany and later of the Nazi party, adorning a very tall building. This look conveys his (not fully realised at this stage)

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Figure 2.2 Noah Taylor as Hitler and John Cusack as Max in Max (2002), directed by Menno Meyjes

desire to conquer Germany, to have it at his feet. In Vienna, as Fest describes, Hitler ‘would stand in front of the pompous buildings on Ringstrasse and dream of even more monumental structures he himself would erect one day’ (ibid.: 30). Hitler himself presented his formative years in such terms: ‘At the time of this bitter struggle between spiritual education and cold reason, the visual instruction of the Vienna streets had performed invaluable services’ (Hitler 1969: 50). Max is set in Munich immediately after the end of the First World War. Here the young Hitler in the rank of corporal finds himself among many disenchanted soldiers looking for ways to vent their disappointment and/or to move on with their lives. Yet, many of them are so poor and deprived of prospects that they cannot leave the army barracks. In the film this situation also applies to Hitler. Munich at the time was the principal site of radical politics, both on the left and on the right. It became a capital of the short-lived ‘Munich Soviet Republic’, which ended with the assassination of its leader, theatre critic Kurt Eisner, by a 22-year-old right-wing fanatic, Count Anton von Arco-Valley (Fest 1974: 110). The mood in the army barracks reflects and adds to the atmosphere of chaos and confrontation between radical political groups experienced on the streets, as Hitler’s comrades indulge in anti-communist

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and anti-Semitic agitation. Hitler, however, initially stays aloof from their discussions and only when challenged by his superior, Captain Mayr, who is a historical figure, replies that he does not support their ‘emotional’ anti-Semitism, regarding Jews as a ‘structural’ problem which needs to be addressed by special policies and institutions, such as those dealing with health or cleanliness. Mayr, impressed by Hitler’s intelligence, suggests that he attends a course in the new branch of political science: propaganda.9 At the same time as getting to know Mayr, Hitler in the film forms a close relationship with a Jewish art dealer, Max Rothman. The two men discuss art, politics and the meaning of life, and Hitler hopes that the art dealer will launch his artistic career. Mayr and Rothman act as two polarities, simultaneously attracting and repelling Hitler. Mayr encourages Hitler to become a politician, Max an artist. Both men, being taller and broader than Hitler, thwart the short and undernourished corporal.10 However, despite having only one arm due to losing the other in the war, Rothman, more than Mayr, who behaves very humbly in Hitler’s proximity, overwhelms Hitler. This is because Hitler is hopelessly poor, while Rothman comes across as rich, as testified by the grand house where he lives and a warehouse which he uses as a gallery for the contemporary art he champions. Hitler is single and has problems with women; Rothman has an attractive wife and lover who are madly in love with him. Rothman is a social man who attracts people of both sexes; Hitler is a loner and a dreamer; Rothman is handsome and strong, Hitler is ugly and weak. Hitler yearns for order, Rothman regards chaos as natural and beautiful. The differences between these two men, however, prove deceptive. Rothman cannot afford his flamboyant lifestyle and is nearly bankrupt, and deep down he is a loner devoid of any true friends and unable to commit himself either to his wife or to his lover. However, Hitler and Rothman have contrasting attitudes to their shortcomings. Hitler plays them up with masochistic pleasure; Rothman ignores them and embraces new opportunities. Hitler emphasises their differences; Rothman glosses over them, focusing on their shared experiences and interests. In the end, Hitler reconciles the influence of Mayr and Max by giving up on the idea of becoming either a professional artist or an old-style politician and becomes an artist-politician, for whom art serves as a model for politics. As Peter Bradshaw puts it: Art remains his vocation, but he reinvents it, horribly. He embraces the grotesquely higher artistic calling of popular politics, which he is to supplement with spectacle, stagecraft and hatred, fusing the kitsch

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bad art that comes so naturally to him with the boiling subversion of modernism, and inspired moreover by the shock-tactic performancetheatre pieces in which Rothman disastrously dabbles. It all adds up to Nazism, which Max refuses to take seriously – or rather, he takes it seriously in the wrong way; he thinks he can market Adolf’s performances as some kind of multi-media installation-piece in his gallery. (Bradshaw 2003a) Max helps the future Führer not only to find out his vocation of ‘artistic politics’ but also to realise what in this discipline he should avoid. Hitler in the film is contemptuous of Expressionism in the vein of Georg Grosch (who is Rothman’s main protégé), because it offers a vision of reality as repulsive and decayed and because it engages with the current world. Hitler, by contrast, strives for beauty and order and expects art to convey what is eternal. For these reasons he is better disposed to future-oriented Futurism and elegant, orderly Cubism. Hitler also rejects art which is elitist, wanting it to be a form of mass communication, in which the audience is immediately affected by an artist and, equally, has a chance to influence him. This idea is put into practice by Hitler the orator. As one reviewer puts it, he ‘smells the mood of the crowd, indulges it, gets a boisterous response, and then plays it for all it’s worth’ (McCarthy 2002: 35). Unfortunately Meyjes fails, as indeed the authors of all films about Hitler do, in conveying Hitler’s oratory skills and his mass appeal. Hitler’s speeches in Max are reduced to outbursts of hysterical anger and repetition of slogans, and even dialogues, as Geoffrey Macnab observes, ‘drift into sloganeering’ (Macnab 2003: 54).11 But, as I indicated, in this respect Meyjes has the advantage over other directors who make Hitler’s biography by focusing on the young Hitler, who is only learning how to mesmerise the crowds. Recognising the active role of the audience in art creation means recognising the importance of German society in creating and implementing anti-Jewish policies. As Avraham Barkai argues, the Holocaust was possible in Germany because it was a kind of communication between Hitler and those whom he addressed. Each new anti-Semitic idea and policy was tested on society and only when it was accepted was a more radical one introduced (Barkai 1996). Of course, the communication was rather simple, like a front-page article in a tabloid newspaper, in line with Hitler’s rule that ‘the masses must never be shown more than one enemy, because to be aware of several enemies would only arouse doubts’ (quoted in Fest 1974: 40). In seeing politics as an art form, Hitler, despite his old-fashioned taste for realism and classicism, ultimately

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proves more contemporary than Rothman, who confines the paintings of his protégés to a gallery, thus demonstrating that art and life constitute different spheres of life. We can thus view Rothman as a modernist and Hitler as proto-postmodernist.12 Although a friendship between Hitler and a Jew, as presented by Meyjes, is not documented by Hitler biographers, it comes across as plausible because, as a struggling artist, Hitler was supported by some Jewish art collectors, who occasionally bought his work. Some authors of less respectable works on Hitler, for example Kimberley Cornish in The Jew of Linz, which discusses the connection between Hitler and Ludwig Wittgenstein (Cornish 1998), and those who argue that Hitler’s paternal grandfather was a Jew, go as far as to suggest that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was a kind of defence mechanism against his deep involvement and fascination with Jewishness, a sign of his mortal fight against his own ‘internal Jew’ (Rosenbaum 1998: 3–36). Meyjes does not refer to such dubious theories, but his film can be regarded as their metaphorical rendition. More importantly, the idea that a Jew was once Hitler’s best friend can be viewed in the context of films about the Nazi past made in the second half of the 1990s, which Lutz Koepnick describes as ‘German heritage cinema’. The films belonging to this cycle, of which the best-known example is Aimée & Jaguar (1999) by Max Färberböck, ‘reclaim sites of German–Jewish reciprocity against the grain of historical traumas’ and ‘recuperate links between Jews and Germans which had been disrupted by the rise of Nazi power’ (Koepnick 2002: 52), Their narratives usually concern German–Jewish friendship or even love, both hetero and, more importantly, homosexual. This is also the case with Max, where the mutual fascination of Max and Hitler has erotic undertones. Koepnick observes that while celebrating Jewish–German bonds, German heritage cinema demonstrates that they are possible because the Jews are assimilated into German culture, most often into the German liberal bourgeoisie. This also happens in Max; its protagonist is represented as a valuable member of German society, who lost an arm heroically defending his country in the First World War and later supports German art. One almost cannot imagine a greater German patriot than Max. Max’s allegiance to German culture is symbolised by his surname, which is similar to Karl Rottmann’s (1797–1850), a German landscape painter close to Ludwig I of Bavaria, whose mythical landscapes of Bavaria, which in the early twentieth century Vienna and Munich regarded as old-fashioned, inspired classically minded Hitler (Fest 1974: 33).13 Another feature which Max shares with German heritage cinema pertains to both of them ‘privileging setting over narrative, mise-en-scène

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over editing’ (ibid.: 49). Indeed, of all the films discussed in this chapter, the mise-en-scène in Max is the most elaborate and is the only film which conveys the richness of prewar German culture. Yet, behind these similarities between Max and German heritage films lie differences. One pertains to the fact that it is not a German film, but an international co-production of countries such as Hungary, Canada, the UK and USA, and its director is Dutch ‘whose father spent his late teens in a German slave labour camp where a Nazi smashed out his front teeth with a rifle butt’ (quoted in Pfefferman 2003). Hence, the film has no special obligations towards German audiences by making them weep ‘that the Nazis betrayed the nation by prohibiting Germans to love their Jewish compatriots’ (Koepnick 2002: 72) and, not surprisingly, it follows a different political agenda. It plays up German guilt by demonstrating that for Max, who becomes an early victim of Nazi violence, and, by extension, for any German Jews, being a good German and seeking friendship with Germans did not pay off. Some Jews included in the film are aware of that and advise Max to stay away from Hitler. In a memorable episode, Max’s female friend mentions Florence Nightingale who died of syphilis caught from people to whom she showed charity.14 Meyjes, moreover, unlike the German filmmakers who tend to separate German ‘good people’ from their ‘bad dictator’, moves the blame onto the people. This is demonstrated by the fact that Max is assaulted by Hitler’s comrades; Hitler is not even aware of their zealous actions. The attack on Max is the first move in creating a distinct Nazi pattern, as suggested by finishing the film with a bird’s-eye view of Max imprisoned in a swastika-shaped web of Munich’s streets. Another difference between Max and German heritage films pertains to their representation of the Holocaust. In the heritage films, such as Viehjud Levi (1999), directed by Didi Danquart, the images of the Holocaust are avoided and the mise-en-scène consists of soothing images of rural, pastoral Germany or of bourgeois milieux, suggesting the continuity of German history and culture and the possibility of ‘other solutions’ than Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’. By contrast, the mise-en-scène of Max underscores the rupture in German history which happened during the First World War and continued in the later period. Especially poignant references to the Holocaust are Rothman’s metaphorical recreation in his theatre of a scene from the Battle of Ypres by putting himself in a huge meat mincer, which is an uncanny premonition of the fate of the Jews in the Second World War, and the previously mentioned final episode, in which the streets form the shape of the swastika.

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Koepnick locates German heritage films in the context of German unification, as works which celebrate German unity (albeit on ethnic Germans’ terms), following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meyjes’s film appears more sceptical about the possibility and need for German unity post-unification. Not unlike in Fassbinder’s Despair, the ‘merger’ of groups and nations appears to be for Meyjes dangerously close to ‘murder’. Ultimately, Max suggests that, as Micha Brumlik puts it, ‘an easy reconciliation over graves will not occur [in contemporary Germany]’ (Brumlik 1996: 13) and advocates difference and disunity. Due to its references to Expressionism and theatralisation, especially using the motif of theatre as a metaphor for the ‘theatre of history’, as well as putting the viewer in a position of the Hegelian ‘owl’, able to extract correct meaning from events whose significance their actors are unable to assess, Max can be regarded as an offspring of Syberberg’s Hitler.15 However, while Syberberg’s work, for reasons such as abandoning narration and its length, is addressed to a dedicated avant-garde viewer, Max, in common with German heritage films, is ‘user-friendly’: relatively short and easy to watch. It allows for the pleasures of recognition and identification and allows for both metacinematic and realistic, ‘naïve’ viewing. Such a ‘user-friendly’ style can be explained by the different artistic trajectories of Syberberg and Meyjes. Syberberg was one of the pillars of anti-Hollywood New German Cinema; Meyjes is close to Hollywood cinema thanks to working with Spielberg. It was argued that by making a difficult film, Syberberg rendered represented reality as incomprehensible and off-putting. By analogy, the ‘user-friendly’ style of German heritage films and Max also brings the risk of rendering the German Nazi past as ‘user-friendly’, rather than frightening and eluding explanation. Meyjes, in my view, balanced the requirement of making a commercial film and a chilly work very well. Unfortunately, it cannot be said about the next film exploring German–Jewish connections.

Holocaust Hitler for the Jews in Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler by Dani Levy, a Swiss director living in Berlin and produced by mostly German companies, was promoted as the first ever comic film in the German language centred on the figure of Hitler (Steinberg 2007). The fact that such a film was made can be regarded as a sign of a weakening of the taboo of representing Hitler in Germany. Also significant is Levy’s bringing together objects of two German taboos: Hitler and the Holocaust. Although related, rarely

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in cinema do we see attempts to break them at the same time. One such rare undertaking was Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, in which the director played both the dictator of Tomania, Adenoid Hynkel, and a poor Jewish barber, who usurps the place of the dictator in order to disarm him. As in Chaplin’s film, in Mein Führer Hitler and a Jewish man change places. Levy’s protagonist, Adolf Grünbaum, is a famous Jewish actor, incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In late 1944 he is called by Goebbels to appear in the Reich Chancellery. The minister for propaganda, who remembers Grünbaum from pre-Nazi times, asks the actor to coach the Führer to give an upbeat New Year’s address to the nation. Hitler needs his help because he is undergoing a crisis of confidence, caused by a series of military defeats on the Eastern front. Grünbaum agrees, regarding this as a chance to save himself and his family, and to assassinate the dictator. However, through working with Hitler, he learns that deep down Hitler is an unhappy man and all the atrocities he committed resulted from his traumatic childhood, when he was beaten and humiliated by his father. Unleashing Hitler’s suppressed memories makes Grünbaum identify with his enemy and even forgive him (Figure 2.3). As with the two films discussed previously, Levy’s film harks back to some dubious ‘theories’ about Hitler. The link between Hitler’s unresolved

Figure 2.3 Helge Schneider as Hitler and Ulrich Mühe as Adolf Grünbaum in Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler, 2007), directed by Dani Levy

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Oedipus complex and his murderous urge was previously explored by Levy’s compatriot, Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller. She portrayed Hitler as a victim of an abusive father, who became an anti-Semite ‘for his own good’, but in reality against himself (Miller 1987: 142–80). Needless to say that this theory, whose pedagogic value lies in encouraging parents to treat their children gently or risk bringing them up as murderers, was rejected on the grounds of both not adequately capturing Hitler’s childhood and making unfounded connections between people’s childhood experiences and their adult personalities. Most likely Hitler’s father was less of a monster than proponents of these theories claim, and even if he was indeed very severe, it is only a minor factor in explaining Hitler’s progress to be the leader of the Nazi movement. Among the greatest opponents of ‘Oedipal Hitler’ was Claude Lanzmann. He was incensed by Miller’s book not so much because of the dubious scientific value of her theory, as because of her attempt to unearth Hitler’s childhood, claiming that it would act as a bridge between understanding (even only in the form of misunderstanding), identifying with and forgiving Hitler (Rosenbaum 1998: 258–9). Indeed, such a bridge is created by Levy, and the Jewish Adolf is given this role. The idea of Hitler befriending a Jew invites comparing Mein Führer, in common with Max, to German heritage cinema. Another point of correspondence between Mein Führer and the heritage films are references to the prewar common Jewish German heritage. In Levy’s film the idea of German and Jewish closeness is transmitted not through the mise-en-scène but through dialogue, which refers to the popularity of Grünbaum and Jewish theatre at large in the whole of Germany. After sending people like Grünbaum to the death camps, there is no German theatre to enjoy, as testified by the lack of German actors being able to coach Hitler. It is thus suggested that the destruction of Jews by the Nazis practically equals Germany’s self-destruction. Yet, Levy’s strategy, not unlike Meyjes’s, is to bring Hitler and a Jew as close as possible, only to separate them in the end. Adolf Grünbaum is shot by Hitler’s bodyguards when, during delivering a pro-Nazi speech on behalf of Hitler, Grünbaum diverges from the script and makes the audience realise that either Hitler is mad or he does not utter himself the words which come from his microphone. Although Grünbaum is killed because he disobeys Hitler, we can guess that he would be killed even if he fulfilled his task well. He has thus nothing to lose in denouncing Hitler and Nazi Germany. That Grünbaum is killed not by Hitler himself but, again, as in Max, by Hitler’s henchmen, conveys Levy’s rejection of the ‘bad Hitler, good Germans’ model of the past. For Levy,

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ordinary Germans are no better than their Führer and it was their rapport which allowed for Nazism to triumph in Germany and for Jews to perish. Yet, Levy’s Mein Führer differs from Max by showing not only the harm inflicted on Jews by the Nazis in the name of Hitler, but also the resistance, even the revenge of Jews on their oppressors. The motif of a Jewish revenge, paid with the heaviest price, foretells films such as Inglorious Basterds (2009) by Quentin Tarantino. Grünbaum can be seen as a ‘cinematic’ father to Tarantino’s Shosanna, as both have the courage to spoil Nazi entertainment by imposing their own version of a spectacle for the masses and both die in the process, as heroes and martyrs. Perhaps the motif of a fighting Jew can be seen as projecting back the model of a Jewish soldier, associated with postwar Israel, into Germany during the Second World War. The difference between Levy and the German heritage cinema lies also in Levy’s not shirking from representing the Holocaust, in the form of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He presents the camp from two perspectives: German and Jewish. The German perspective renders the camp as a faultless self-perpetuating killing machine. The sign of its perfection is that top Nazis have grave difficulties in fishing Grünbaum out from Sachsenhausen. In due course they also use the segmented and alienated character of a camp as an excuse for their own role in the genocide of the Jews, claiming (not untruthfully) that they had nothing to do with the running of the camp. Likewise, each of them tries to reassure Grünbaum that the Nazi elimination of the Jews ‘was not meant personally’ and that they are deeply sorry about what had happened to them. Such explanations mirror the famous excuses of the Nazis who claimed to only fulfil their duties and lacked the ‘full picture’ of the Holocaust, especially the gruesome details of the death camps. Representation of the concentration camp as something distant and self-contained, outside the interests and knowledge of the Nazi elites and as a bureaucratic killing apparatus, links Levy’s film to the works of Raul Hilberg, Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman. Agamben, in ‘What Is a Camp?’, argues that rather than deducing the definition of the camp from the events that occurred there, we should ask ‘What is its political-juridical structure? How could such events have taken place there? This will lead us to look at the camp not as a historical fact and an anomaly that – though admittedly still with us – belongs nonetheless to the past, but rather in some sense as the hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we still live’ (Agamben 2003: 252). Raul Hilberg, the author of the most famous study of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews, and Zygmunt Bauman

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in Modernity and the Holocaust illuminate the link between the rationality and efficiency of modernity and the type and scale of atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Second World War. Hilberg writes: ‘When in the early days of 1933 the first civil servant wrote the first definition of a “non-Aryan” into a civil service ordinance, the fate of European Jewry was sealed’ (Hilberg 1961: 669). Bauman adds, quoting Henry Feingold: Thorough, comprehensive, exhaustive murder required the replacement of the mob with a bureaucracy, the replacement of shared rage with obedience to authority. The requisite bureaucracy would be effective whether manned by extreme or tepid anti-Semites, considerably broadening the pool of potential recruits; it would govern the actions of its members not by arousing passions but by organising routines; it would only make distinctions it was designed to make, not those its members might be moved to make, say, between children and adults, scholar and thief, innocent and guilty; it would be responsive to the will of the ultimate authority through a hierarchy of responsibility – whatever that will might be. (Feingold, quoted in Bauman 2000: 90) Indeed, for the bureaucratic apparatus it does not matter that Grünbaum is an eminent actor nor that the top Nazis want to save him; the wheels of the killing machine go with the same speed irrespective of who is in charge of the machine and who is subjected to its work. One lesson from Levy’s film is that there might be no more Hitlers in the world, but mass atrocities can still happen because the contemporary world is also highly bureaucratised (if not more so than under the Nazis) and responsibilities are divided. The difficulty in attributing blame for tortures and killings which took place in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan confirms this assessment. The Nazi explanation for the genocide of the Jews, as offered by Feingold, Bauman and Levy, also concurs with Hannah Arendt’s study on Eichmann. At his trial in Jerusalem Eichmann came across as a petty clerk, who insisted, in the opinion of Arendt, sincerely, that he had never harboured any ill feelings towards his victims and never made a secret of that fact. He even had a Jewish mistress when implementing anti-Semitic policies (Arendt 1977: 30). However, Arendt wrote about the banality of evil in relation to Eichmann not to exonerate him and others like him, but to express her scorn of them. Levy’s attitude to his German characters is more difficult to capture. The sadness of Hitler

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and the pleasant demeanour of Speer and Goebbels make a viewer rather sympathetic to their plight. But it is difficult to establish whether the sympathetic representation of the top Nazis was a means to make the viewer laugh by realising the absurdity of regarding them as positive characters or a result of Mein Führer being financed by German companies, expecting the film to convey a message that not all Nazis were utterly bad. While the Nazi lives and the Sachsenhausen camp as shown from a German perspective are the stuff of comedy, even if, ultimately, not funny, as many reviewers argued (for example, Steinberg 2007), Levy presents seriously the episodes depicting the prisoners’ lives in Sachsenhausen. We sense their suffering and anguish and there is nothing funny about the prisoners’ personalities. Grünbaum is depicted as a man who remains selfless and attached to his old principles even in the most adverse circumstances. For example, in spite of extreme hunger, he sacrifices bacon from the sandwich offered to him by Goebbels. Such idealisation of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is only natural on the part of the Jewish artist. Yet, most likely, such representation would cause disbelief in such first-hand witnesses of Auschwitz existence as Tadeusz Borowski, who in his works showed how the ‘camp system’ succeeded in depriving decent people of their basic morality (Borowski 1992). The serious treatment of the Holocaust has twofold consequences. One is a sense that the film is broken into two parts: one, unserious, concerning Hitler and his Nazi entourage; the second, serious, concerning the lives of Grünbaum and his family. The dichotomy is strengthened by the casting choices. Hitler is played by a well-known comedian, Helge Schneider, who underscores the pathetic and clichéd features of ‘media Hitler’, such as his impotence and love of his dog, Blondi, substituting for human contact. Ulrich Mühe is cast in the role of Grünbaum, best known for his part in The Lives of Others (see Chapter 6), an actor with an aura of seriousness and tragedy. The second consequence is making an old-fashioned, sentimental Holocaust film. According to Slavoj Žižek, the Holocaust tragedy failed, hence the recent upsurge of the Holocaust comedies, as exemplified by La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1997), directed by Roberto Benigni, and Jacob the Liar (1999), directed by Peter Kassovitz. Their advantage over the Holocaust tragedies is, paradoxically, ‘the elevation of the Holocaust into the unspeakable Evil – after all, the stuff of comedy is things which elude our grasp; laughter is one way of coping with the incomprehensible’ (Žižek 2001: 68).16 Yet, of course, such comedies are very risky, and even the films mentioned by Žižek are not ordinary comedies – laughter

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stops in them at some point to reveal the horror of the crematoria, most famously in Life Is Beautiful. The mise-en-scène of Levy’s film is as remote from the idylls offered in heritage films as a film set in Nazi Germany can be. It underscores two features which were presented in many earlier films on Hitler, but typically were kept separate: destruction and spectacle. Levy combines them, showing that the mise-en-scène of spectacle is needed to cover up the destruction caused by the bombing of Berlin, similarly as the Jewish actor is needed to cover up for Hitler’s inability to enthuse the crowds. Eventually, however, everything crumbles, to reveal fascism as ruin and lie.

‘Historical’ Hitler for German and global audiences in Downfall While the creators of the Hitler films discussed so far attempted to enrich or replace history with fiction, to provide a better insight into Hitler’s mind, the ambition of the authors of Downfall was to create a film about Hitler as close to historical truth as possible.17 This intention was explained by the film’s producer, Bernd Eichinger, who in an interview admitted that his intention was to adapt the book by Joachim Fest about the last days of Hitler, using the same title (Fest 2005) (which is one of the two literary sources of the film), before Hollywood snatched it (quoted in Dockhorn 2004). Such motivation brings to mind the story of Schindler, which can be regarded as Hollywood’s appropriation of a part of German history (also later alluded to in Godard’s In Praise of Love, see Chapter 1). Eichinger added that making Downfall is part of a larger project of saving German history for Germans and allowing them to experience their own trauma, which the German nation was previously denied (ibid.). This project produced a German heritage cinema, as well as some films about German postwar history, such as The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), directed by Udi Edel, for which Eichinger also acted as a producer. These films, although no doubt concern German history and address German audiences, are also made with an eye for a global audience. A clear sign of it is the director Hirschbiegel’s subsequent international career: after Downfall he made Five Minutes of Heaven (2007) in Ireland (see Chapter 3) and The Invasion (2009) in Hollywood. Even Eichinger’s wish not to be overtaken by Hollywood speaks for his concern for international recognition. By contrast, it is difficult to think about the makers of Hitler: A Film from Germany being troubled by the same consideration. It also reflects the huge difference between these

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films’ international appeal. While Hitler: A Film from Germany remained food for hardcore enthusiasts, Downfall in Europe alone attracted an audience of over 9 million people, an amazing result for a European film. The paradox of the situation is that Eichinger, who is widely regarded as the main force behind the production of Downfall, also produced Syberberg’s film. Eichinger’s trajectory, from Hitler: A Film from Germany to Downfall, can be seen as symbolic of some wider ideological changes pertaining to the generation of filmmakers who created New German Cinema, and German intellectuals representing ‘generation 68’ at large, after the unification of Germany (on the views of Syberberg and Wenders see Gemünden 1999). Equally, it is emblematic of the transformation of the German film industry: from high-brow to popular, and from national to transnational. The second is reflected by the fact that Downfall was an international co-production of the Munich-based Constantin FilmGmbH with German, Italian and Austrian Television networks, making it, as Roel Vande Winkel observes, ‘more of a European than a German production’ (Vande Winkel 2007: 187). Downfall exemplifies an urge to tell us about the ‘real Hitler’ not only before Hollywood does the job but also before the last witnesses of his life die and, to use Jan Assmann’s terminology, before communicative memory, regarded as more reliable because less prone to manipulation, gives way to cultural memory. Communicative memory in this case is particularly important due to the mysteries and controversies about Hitler’s life and death. For Hirschbiegel, the last witness, so to speak, is Hitler’s last private secretary, Traudl Junge, whose memoirs provided the second source for the film, along with Fest’s book. By the time Hirschbiegel embarked on Downfall, Junge was still alive, although old, sick and frail. She died in 2002, thus before Hirschbiegel’s film had its premiere, which adds to the sense of the timeliness of this project. Using part of an interview with her in Downfall creates the impression that Junge gave Hirschbiegel her blessing, in a similar way that she endorsed her biography, written by Melissa Müller and published in one volume with her memoir ( Junge 2004). We do not see Junge’s interviewer, but assume that she addresses the film director or somebody from his team, although in reality the interview was recorded for another occasion.18 Junge’s voice opens and closes Downfall and, along with Hitler, she is the main character in Hirschbiegel’s movie. The film thus appears to capture the moment of transition from lived, communicative memory to cultural memory, which will be processed by the media for mass consumption. This transition literally occurs when the face of the real Junge is replaced by that of an actress, Alexandra Maria Lara. Being preceded

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by Junge’s real appearance gives Lara’s performance, and by extension, the whole film, extra credit, bringing to mind Schindler’s List, where images of the real ‘Schindler Jews’ bestowed credibility on Spielberg’s film. We are compelled to trust the film because we trust Junge. For those who know Junge’s memoirs, this position results not only from the fact that she was so close to Hitler, both literally and metaphorically, and kept him company till his last hour, but also because her memoirs come across as credible. This is because its author, in contrast to the majority of her compatriots, to use the Mitscherlichs’ terminology, undertook seriously the work of mourning. Rather than seeking justification for her actions by putting the blame on others or on her special circumstances such as her young age (as those whose cases the Mitscherlichs discuss in their book tended to do), Junge showed remorse for the misery caused by the Nazis and admitted that she was largely to blame for falling under the Führer’s spell. On the other hand, her book conveys the idea that she was naïve rather than evil, as were millions like her. She just reaffirms the division between Hitler and ‘ordinary Germans’, the more successfully as she was so close to the Führer. Equally, her memoirs are full of sympathy for fellow Germans who paid with their lives for their master’s mistakes. Thus, although Junge’s work belongs to a different literary genre and has no wider historical or moral ambitions, it can be compared to the famous work by one of the leading representatives of the Historians’ dispute, Andreas Hillgruber, Zwerlei Untergang: Die Zerschlagung des Deutsches Reiches und das Ende des europaischen Judentums (Two Kinds of Ruin: The Dismemberment of the German Reich and the End of European Jewry, 1986), which brings together the tragedy of the Jewish genocide with the tragedy of Germans losing a large chunk of their territory, culture and its special position in the heart of Europe (on Hillgruber’s work see Anderson 1992: 169–81), As a follower of Hitler ‘till the last hour’, Junge ‘remains the audience’s entrée into the inner circles of absolute power, as well as being the main avenue for understanding Hitler’s powerful allure for ordinary Germans’ (Elley 2004). This task is facilitated by casting in the role of Junge Alexandra Maria Lara, who is of Romanian origin and, although she lives in Berlin and is one of the greatest stars of German cinema of her generation, is also a transnational actress, who played in Control (2007) by Anton Corbijn and The City of Your Final Destination (2009) by James Ivory. Lara, metaphorically speaking, de-germanises and denazificates Junge, rendering her as a nice girl who happened to be close to Hitler. Her role as the young Junge might also convey the message that Hitler had a wider appeal, not only to Germans, but also to citizens

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Figure 2.4 Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

of many other European countries, such as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Denmark. Another means facilitating our identification with Junge is cinematography. The camera frequently shows Junge’s face in closeup, which, by turn, looks at and identifies with the suffering Hitler. At the same time, it makes us realise that Junge begins to understand the role Hitler played in the misery of fellow Germans and distances herself from Hitler. The part of Hitler’s body on which the camera most frequently focuses is his trembling hand, kept behind his back, a sign of the Parkinson’s disease which he allegedly suffered from in the last period of his life, and a metaphor for his weakness as a politician. Bruno Ganz, who was widely praised for his role, appears very much like Hitler as we know him from newsreels, due to his thick Austrian accent, the personal mannerisms and his physical likeness to Hitler (Figure 2.4). He also seems similar to him, paradoxically, by his ‘humanity’, best revealed by his sad smile. As previously mentioned, this humanity was excluded from earlier fictional representations, whose purpose was to ridicule Hitler or focus on his viciousness. Not surprisingly, the main criticism directed towards Hirschbiegel’s film was for humanising Hitler: showing him as a man who has not only bad features, but also some good ones, such as being an understanding boss. In my view, however, such a representation does not serve to exonerate Hitler, but exonerates ‘ordinary German people’. This is because if Hitler was shown as a monster, it would be more difficult

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to understand and forgive his grip on the German psyche. Furthermore, Hirschbiegel qualifies Hitler’s ‘good side’ in a similar way that Spielberg relativises the good side of Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List or even uses it to demonstrate that ‘humanity’ in one area does not guarantee such human behaviour in a different area.19 Hirschbiegel further exculpates ordinary Germans by pointing to Hitler’s treatment of his own nation merely as a means to fulfil his grandiose plans, not as people of flesh and blood. This instrumental and abstract approach to his countrymen is conveyed by the sending of children from Hitlerjugend to take part in combat and using the map of Europe and the model of Berlin not as representations of places populated by real people, but as models of a reality he wanted to create irrespective of human cost. We see this side of Hitler in a scene when he tells Speer that it is good that Berlin is bombed, as it will be easier to clear the debris than dismantle what exists. Such a display of a mad idealism indirectly validates the pragmatism of German survivors of the war, which was a subject of criticism from the generation of their children, as manifested in the New German Cinema of Wenders, Kluge and Fassbinder. By showing that Hitler does not care about his people, only about his plans, Hirschbiegel also likens the Germans to the Jews, who were also merely pawns in Hitler’s grandiose plan of creating a perfect reality. Such representation also fits the scenario of German heritage cinema, as previously discussed. The structure of the film further helps to divide the Nazi universe into bad Hitler, good albeit misguided ordinary Germans. Downfall begins in November 1942, when 22-year-old Traudl (then named Humps), receives the post of Hitler’s private secretary, beating to the job four other female applicants. The questions these young women ask Hitler’s adjutant and their behaviour prior to the interview give the impression that they are all in love with Hitler, confirming the opinion that he was a true leader of the German nation, not a cruel dictator who forced a society into submission. Yet, the reason for representing the rapport between Hitler and German citizens is not to emphasise the guilt on the part of the latter, but their ignorance. It is not an accident, in my view, that as those most charmed by Hitler Hirschbiegel chose a group of young German women. In popular cinema and literature young women often encapsulate (excusable) silliness and, as I mentioned, Junge herself talks on many occasions about her ignorance. However, by excluding any other sections of German society which supported Hitler, with the exception of the top Nazis, Hirschbiegel uses the silly young women as a synecdoche of all ‘ordinary Germans’, suggesting that their main sin was also

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their ignorance, not a shared desire to annihilate Jews and conquer the world. A Polish reviewer described Hirschbiegel’s Hitler as a shaman who charmed and cheated an innocent nation (Wojciechowski 2004: 12). Then we are taken to Hitler’s last days, inside and outside Hitler’s bunker, witnessing the different responses to Germany’s demise, from suicide to the decision to escape. These responses allow for the introduction of moral order into this apocalyptic reality. Broadly speaking, those who decided to live are morally saved by Hirschbiegel; those who decided to die, are condemned. Of all the characters the greatest sympathy is shown for Junge, Albert Speer and Doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck. Not only does the camera identify with their points of view, but now and again we see their generosity and common sense, which the other participants of the drama and especially those who decided to take their own lives are lacking. Speer, for example, attempts to dissuade Hitler from applying the policy of ‘scorched earth’ in order to save German and non-German lives. Junge does the same on a smaller, ‘female’ scale, pleading with Magda Goebbels not to kill her own children. Schenck saves the lives of those who became injured during the Russian attack on Berlin. Hirschbiegel also ‘poeticises’ Junge’s escape from Berlin, giving her a small boy as a companion, a symbol of Germans embracing the future and of the chance of rebirth. Such an image can be seen as a symbol of a shared past for all living Germans and of a union of the generation of Hitler’s supporters and their children: a union which was rejected by the postwar generation who committed terrorist attacks in the 1970s (see Chapter 3). It is worth noting that those presented by Hirschbiegel in the most favourable light, Speer, Junge and Schenck, belong to the most famous ‘diarists’ of the Nazi period, whose testimonies to a large extent shaped current views on Hitler and the war. Most likely, they also influenced Hirschbiegel’s vision. A cynical viewer might conclude that for ex-Nazis longevity and literary talent, rather than any moral credentials, proved the best passport to redemption and the position of custodians of the truth. In a wider sense, it confirms White’s view that in history, as in literature, the form matters as much as the content (see Introduction). While, paradoxically, those who choose life are presented not only as rational but also as generous, those who choose death come across as selfish and unable to grant others autonomous existence. This applies to the Goebbelses, who refuse their children the right to live. The most extreme example of such attitude is Hitler himself, who provides his collaborators with cyanide capsules to be used for suicide, encourages the children of Hitlerjugend to take part in battles in which they have

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no chance of winning, prepares Eva Braun for her suicide, and does not object to Magda Goebbels killing her own children. On the contrary, he agrees with her view, which he himself instilled in her, that there is no possibility for a happy life for any German beyond National Socialism. He even puts down his perfectly healthy dog, as if assuming that nothing good awaits Blondi in a world which rejects his grandiose project. Unlike the deaths of the majority of the characters, which are shown with painful openness, Hitler’s demise is rendered invisible. Such discreetness might be explained by the fact that nobody saw Hitler taking his own life – he did it in private. (By the same token, we will not see the deaths of the RAF terrorists in The Baader Meinhof Complex.) However, it was criticised by some reviewers as a way of showing undeserved respect for Hitler. In my view, the opposite is true: by keeping Hitler’s death offscreen, unlike the death of the Goebbelses’ children, Hirschbiegel prevents us from seeing these deaths as similar; we object to the death of the children, whilst Hitler’s death comes across as a historical necessity, lacking in human tragedy. In his representation of the defence of Berlin, Hirschbiegel draws on numerous earlier films about the Second World War, such as ‘rubble films’, made after the war by East German DEFA (Mückenberger 1999; Cooke 2006), and perhaps the films about the destruction of Warsaw, following the Warsaw Uprising, such as Andrzej Wajda’s Kanał (Kanal, 1956) and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), which was partly shot in East Germany. In all these films we get a sense of helpless civilians caught up in a situation on which they had no influence. In the interior scenes, on the other hand, the director draws on the ‘Holocaust genre’. The old withered people clad in striped pyjamas, practically abandoned in a partially evacuated hospital, bring to mind concentration camp inmates from numerous photographs, as well as documentary and fiction films. Magda Goebbels’ killing of her own children, which for me constitutes the most moving episode in the film, brings to mind the lethal injections given to Jews in the camps, not least because on both occasions the victims’ peace and cooperation was at the price of their ignorance. Similarly, showing the Goebbelses’ eldest daughter refusing to take her ‘medicine’, because of suspicion about her fate, and then being forced by her mother, is an image familiar from ‘Auschwitz’ literature and cinema. The mise-en-scène of the killing, which includes bunk beds in the windowless bunker, strengthens the association with the annihilation of the Jews. German children, be it children of prominent Nazis or the idealistic followers of the Führer from the Hitlerjugend, function as a synecdoche.

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The sympathy for their plight makes the viewers sympathetic to the position of all ordinary Germans during the war. By the same token, the film endorses the Adenauer policy of democratising postwar West Germany through forgiving the guilt of the vast majority of Hitler’s supporters. It does it by showing that those who survived the war were, if not particularly good people, at least able and deserving to be reintegrated into the democratic system. The images of ordinary Germans as abandoned by a self-centred and divorced from reality Hitler and bombed by the Allies can be seen in a wider context of the discourse of German victimhood. This discourse has existed in German postwar culture, especially in West Germany, practically from the very end of the Second World War till the current day, as the Mitscherlichs’ study demonstrates, but it gained in force in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, following Germany’s unification (Niven 2006). From this perspective, Downfall can be placed alongside such films as Die fetten Jahre sind forbei (The Educators, 2004), directed by Hans Weingarten, and Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Bern, 2003), directed by Sonke Wortmann (Cooke 2006), Jörg Friedrich’s books about the bombardment of Dresden, Der Brand (The Fire, 2002) and Brandstätten (Sites of Fire, 2003) (the second being a book of photographs) and such relatively recent German memorial activities as erecting in Sachsenhausen a new monument commemorating those who ‘after 1945 … sacrificed their freedom, health and life in resistance’ (Burleigh 1996: 2). Hirschbiegel’s film is especially close to Friedrich’s books as it also draws on the imagery of the Holocaust (Schmitz 2006; Berger 2006: 219–20; Vande Winkel 2007: 192). Of course, such representations prove controversial, because they bring the risk of exculpating the Germans from their war crimes and even replacing the Jews as the principal victims of the Nazis with the Germans. Stefan Berger, for example, writes in the context of Friedrich’s book: ‘He is taken to task for relativising the Holocaust by comparing, through linguistic association, the suffering of German civilians in the bombing war with the suffering of European Jews’ (Berger 2006: 219). This sentiment is echoed by Michael Burleigh who criticises the new memorial in Sachsenhausen as a ‘singularly distasteful aggregation of victims and persecutors’ (Burleigh 1996: 2). Opposition towards indulging in one’s victimhood can explain the harsh treatment of Hirschbiegel’s film by some critics in his native country. For example, Georg See␤len in epd Film protested against providing Hitler’s end with an aura of tragedy, as conveyed by the film’s title, by writing; ‘Fascism has no downfall, fascism is downfall’

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(See␤len 2004: 37). Wim Wenders, known for his criticism of Fest’s film, was even more outspoken, writing: Most Hitler films contain fascism theories – explicitly or not – economic, sexual, mass-psychological means of explanation that go beyond the plot and rumble through it. Not Downfall. Instead it opts for a change of perspective: fascism, seen from an end point of view, emerges as a tragedy of mankind. And the myth of authenticity gives birth to another, completely different fantasy that is hidden behind the mask of authenticity: the downfall of the Reich’s capital as a return of the bloody end to the Nibelungen (the film quite openly turns a scene of surrounded German soldiers into a replica of the slaughter at the court of the king of the Huns); the three-act structure of damnation, sacrifice and redemption, ... the strange distribution of sympathies in the entourage of the Führer (the war criminal Speer is turned into a humanist hero). Downfall does not depict the end of the war as liberation, but as a tragic sequence of self-destruction, sacrifice and rebirth. That’s a big lie, even if it is made up of small truths. (Wenders 2004) Wenders’s anger at Hirschbiegel’s film and their difference of opinion about the Nazi past can be explained, as I previously indicated, by generational factors. The former (b. 1945) belongs to the generation of the children of Hitler’s supporters who were too disappointed by their parents’ following Hitler and their unwillingness to pay for their mistakes to be able to ever forgive them. Hirschbiegel (b. 1957) is closer to the generation of ‘Hitler’s grandchildren’, therefore distant enough to treat with some sympathy those who loved and lost Hitler. Equally, Wenders, in common with fellow New German directors and the ‘cold war’ generation of artists, prefers to look back rather than ahead. Hirschbiegel, in a postcommunist fashion, as his Five Minutes of Heaven demonstrates (see Chapter 3), advocates leaving the past behind and moving on. Downfall adheres to such a position – the more rubble there is, the greater the need to run away from it. The sympathy with which Hirschbiegel treats the bulk of the German people at the end of the Second World War was also criticised by foreign viewers, in countries such as the UK, USA and my native Poland, which suffered particularly severely during the war, but it was balanced by praise of the film’s ‘objectivism’. For example, Ian Kershaw, the author of a well-known biography of Hitler, in a review published by

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The Guardian, writes: ‘I could not imagine how a film of Hitler’s last days could possibly be better done’ (Kershaw 2004). The immense boxoffice success of Hirschbiegel’s film, making it the most popular Hitler film of all time, validates the view that its vision is widely accepted, if not entirely hegemonic, reflecting the fact that for the bulk of European people the ordinary Germans who fought the war are no longer perpetrators. Their suffering and contrition, expressed by the woman who speaks from her grave, is enough to finally forgive them (and, by the same token, those of their ancestors who were also charmed by Hitler and fascist ideas) and draw satisfaction from the fact that the Allies’ policies worked: after the war a new nation was born, which not only deserved to be reintegrated into the democratic system but even to regain its position at the heart of Europe. An amusing and, in my view, important sign of European appropriation of Hitler’s story and Germany’s war past at large is the presence of fragments of Downfall on YouTube with English subtitles, referring to current political events. In the last one I watched, Hitler (Hirschbiegel’s Hitler and ‘our Hitler’) was discussing students’ protests following the announcements about the rise of university tuition fees in England.

Conclusions The films discussed in this chapter testify to the continuity and change in representations of Hitler after the Second World War. The signs of continuity are the obvious references to the films made about Hitler previously, and war films in general. There is also still a strong tendency (as two of the four films reveal) to diminish Hitler by ridiculing him. Diminishing this figure is also undertaken by focusing on times of his decline as a statesman and man (three films chose such periods), or those preceding his rise to power (the remaining one), as opposed to choosing the period of his political and personal successes. For example, the years 1933–38, regarded as the period of his greatest triumphs, are omitted. From such choices we derive that, although the taboo on Hitler weakened, it did not disappear entirely. The change in approach to Hitler lies in the recurring attempt to understand Hitler, as opposed to putting him on trial, as was, most famously, the case in Syberberg’s Hitler and, to an extent, in Fest’s film or even Chaplin’s film. By and large, this desire to understand does not lead to exonerating Hitler, but rather serves to explain the relation between Hitler and his followers. Another feature which unites Moloch and Max, Downfall and Mein Führer is their tacit assumption that it is not

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possible to show Hitler in his entirety. In order to approach him, one has to limit oneself to a specific period and perspective, usually by finding a medium, if possible Hitler’s ‘other’: a good man or woman, who thanks to his or her decency makes an effort to understand and sympathise with Hitler. Their privileging of a limited insight into Hitler’s life is in line with postmodern preference for small narratives. In this sense neither of the films discussed here stands as competition to Syberberg’s masterpiece, a film which can be described as postmodern on account of its style and ideology, but due to its scale bears similarity with the masterpieces of modernism. The authors of the new Hitler films show him as a concrete person located in specific historical circumstances, as opposed to a symbol or an imprint on the German psyche, and they situate Hitler firmly in the past, rather than choosing to make a film about how Hitler is remembered or represented. In their approach they differ from Syberberg and from the filmmakers discussed in the previous chapter of my book. This attitude might suggest that Hitler finally became history understood as ‘another country’, which one can visit only as a tourist. Belonging to different genres, made by directors of different nationalities and ethnicities and with Hitler played by German, American and Russian actors, these films also testify to the ‘internationalisation’ and ‘mainstreamisation’ of Hitler, reflecting the fact that Hitler, more than any politician of the twentieth century, transcended national boundaries and the division between history and popular culture.

3 A Clear Dividing Line?: Cinematic Representations of German, Italian and Irish Terrorism

In his book, The Age of Terrorism, Walter Laqueur maintains that ‘The difficulty with terrorism is that there is no terrorism per se, except perhaps on an abstract level, but different terrorisms’ (Laqueur 1987: 9). Stefan Wolff adds: ‘No act of violence in itself carries the quality of terrorism, only its interpretation does’ (Wolff 2000: 129). These and other authors (for example Whittaker 2004) point to different ideologies, leading to terrorist attacks, different strategies used by terrorists, as well as contrasting moral assessments of those who engage in them.1 The situation is further complicated by the fact that in the past many terrorists, especially those fighting against the colonial order, such as Jewish extremist groups operating in the British mandate of Palestine, did not mind this label, even wore it with pride (Gupta 2008: 6; Žižek 2009: 99–101), while today ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ are derogatory terms. I myself have been brought up in a tradition which presents the illegal fight of Polish insurrectionists during the period of Poland’s partitions (1795–1918), often involving bombings and assassinations, as patriotic acts in their noblest form. The word ‘terrorism’ in Poland, as I am sure elsewhere, was reserved for the violent actions of ‘others’. On the other hand, the fact that the word ‘terrorism’ was more widely used in the first decade of the twenty-first century than in previous periods suggests a common semantic field attached to the ideologies and deeds of groups such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Rote Armee Fraktion (the Red Army Faction, the RAF) or Irish Republican Army (IRA). As I want to establish what some of them have in common, it is convenient for me to label all of them as ‘terrorist’ and begin with the Oxford English Dictionary which defines terrorism as violent acts which are committed against the law, perpetrated for a specific political or ideological goal, intended to create terror and target the civilian population. The advantage of this 97

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definition is that, although it describes terrorism as violent, it does not assess its overall moral value, not least because the law, against which the terrorists stand, might be regarded as leading to more violence and injustice than the acts of terrorists. Terrorism was a subject and a source of inspiration for many European films because it was and is a European problem. The most famous of them, however, were conceived as an immediate response to terrorist deeds or the reflection of an atmosphere of social unrest in which terrorist organisations were born. I have in mind films such as Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, 1975) by Volker Schlöndorff, Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, 1978) directed by a collective of German directors, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz, and Le petit soldat (1960), La Chinoise (1967) and Ici et ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere, 1976) by Jean-Luc Godard.2 What was striking about these films was not only their subject matter, but their innovative, avant-garde form, which drew attention to the problem of representing terrorism and, in a wider sense, to the whole discursive space in which terrorism is tackled. Such an approach, irrespective of the attitude to terrorism and terrorists revealed at the level of the narrative, can be seen as sympathetic to terrorism understood as an attempt to introduce innovation into a conservative, stale political language. Possibly the least known in this group of films, but also the most interesting, from my perspective, is Godard’s Here and Elsewhere, which proposes to look at Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel in conjunction with observing events taking place in France. Only by seeing these different situations, by moving our eyes from ‘here to elsewhere’ and back, can we start to understand terrorism. Godard’s recipe was followed by Slavoj Žižek, who in his recent book, Violence (2009), attempts to look at terrorism in the way advocated by the French director, namely crossing continents, epochs and cultures to discover what causes violence and how it spreads. Godard’s approach also reflects the character of the left-wing terrorism which swept through Europe in the late 1960s and 1970s, and will occupy me in a large part of this chapter. As Jeremy Varon maintains: New Leftists were not only implicitly united across national boundaries by their shared opposition to oppression, their commitment to democratic participation, and their use of direct militant action as a means of protest; they were also consciously internationalist. In what amounted to a global crusade, students and youths throughout the world protested the Vietnam war. They assimilated dimensions of

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Black Power and Third World revolutionary ideologies, in which they saw near-universal appeal and relevance. They created an international protest culture organised around master texts, chiefly those of Karl Marx, Mao Tse-Tung, and Herbert Marcuse, and ‘revolutionary’ icons like Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. And, in instances, they responded directly to the triumphs and failures experienced by their foreign New Left comrades. In their wildest dreams, they saw themselves waging a revolution that would overthrow both the U.S.-led imperialism of the West and the ossified, bureaucratic communism of the East. (Varon 2004: 1) However, Varon also observes that while the internationalism of terrorism is acknowledged, it is rarely researched by historians (ibid.: 2) (he himself counters this trend by comparing American and West German radicals). Cinematic representations of terrorism are also typically confined to one country. Even in the collection Transnational Cinema (Ezra and Rowden 2006), which includes this issue in a part entitled ‘Tourists and Terrorists’, the two articles devoted to terrorism on film consider only American screen representations of terrorism (Nelson 2006; Bhabha 2006). To counteract this trend of looking at terrorism from one country’s perspective, I will consider three films from the past decade: Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008), directed by Uli Edel, Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003), directed by Marco Bellocchio, and Five Minutes of Heaven (2009), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, dealing with terrorism in three different countries: Germany, Italy and Great Britain. My aim is to find out what connects and divides memories and evaluations of these different terrorisms: the first two belonging to left-wing or revolutionary terrorism; the third one nationalist terrorism. I am focusing on the representation of late 1960s–1970s terrorism because during this period terrorist activities in Europe peaked. This was the consequence of such factors as strong student, feminist and workers movements in the late 1960s, culminating in the events of 1968, the youth and radicalism of the European population in this period, the volatile international situation, marked by the Vietnam war and the conflict in the Middle East, and the support of European intellectuals, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Antonio Negri (who was himself accused of being a terrorist) or even Pope Paul VI (Drake 1989: 155), for radical politics. These factors can be linked to the prosperity of the 1960s, as testified by the increase in wages and almost full employment in the West. In Italy, it amounted to the greatest economic and cultural transformation, from a

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backward, largely peasant population, to a modern, urban, industrialised and consumerist society (Ginsborg 1990: 210–53; Drake 1999–2000: 62). Eric Hobsbawm describes the 1950s and the 1960s as the ‘Golden Years’ (Hobsbawm 1995: 256–86); Tony Judt talks about the ‘The Age of Influence’, which covered the period between 1953 and 1971, but which peaked in the 1960s ( Judt 2007: 324–59). Yet, the prosperity of this period also brought problems, such as an uneven development and, as Drake puts it, a ‘revolution of rising expectations’ (Drake 1999–2000: 62). The rapid growth in automobiles, refrigerators and indoor plumbing made the economic slump in the 1970s, especially in countries such as Italy and Britain, difficult to accept, which gave rise to radical politics. The changes in communication technology, especially the presence of television in almost every household, helped the terrorist groups to influence society on a scale previously unknown and, at the same time, to be influenced by events taking place elsewhere. Although the 1970s are now the stuff of historical books and university courses, they are still the subject of communicative memory. Many people remember these times, including the terrorists, their friends and victims. The authors of the three films I will discuss attempted to capitalise on this memory, basing their films on the testimonies of the participants of represented events. In the case of The Baader Meinhof Complex it is a book of the same title, written by Stefan Aust (2008), who met many of the characters of his biography. Good Morning, Night is an adaptation of the memoir of Anna Laura Braghetti, one of the terrorists responsible for kidnapping and killing Aldo Moro. Five Minutes of Heaven is based on a script by Guy Hibbert, an Irish screenwriter, who, when asked by BBC Northern Ireland to write something about the legacy of violence, decided to interview two men who in 1975 were involved in a terrorist incident (Hibbert 2009). However, as I argued in the previous chapters, basing a film on ‘true stories’ or even eyewitnesses’ testimonies does not guarantee presenting unquestionable truth, but only gives a certain validity, which often serves as an alibi to convey a specific discourse, which otherwise would be open to criticism.

Curing the complex in The Baader Meinhof Complex Of all European films tackling terrorism made in the past 20 years The Baader Meinhof Complex proved the most successful. In Europe it attracted an audience of almost 3 million people, as well as numerous reviews and discussions in newspapers and on the web. It also received many awards and nominations for prestigious awards, such as an Oscar and BAFTA.

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No doubt its very subject, the history of the RAF, helped it to achieve such success. Another reason, which will be revealed in the course of my discussion, was making it in a way which appeals to the bulk of Western audiences, especially American ones, in contrast to earlier films about the RAF, which addressed predominantly the German public and attempted to challenge the dominant vision of this organisation. The fame or notoriety of the RAF or Baader-Meinhof Gang/Group (these names are used interchangeably, although they have different connotations), extends beyond the boundaries of German and political history. The words ‘Baader Meinhof’ ring a bell of recognition in many European ears, thanks to being used in numerous books, paintings, films and even inspiring a fashion. Outside Germany, they almost function as free-wheeling signifiers, suggesting something dangerous, exciting, yet now distant. However, if not for the political importance of the RAF, there would be no songs devoted to members of the group, the ‘Meinhof-Prada’ clothing line or numerous websites deriving their labels from the names of its members. The actions of the first generation of RAF terrorists defined the decade 1967–77 in Germany, and affected the history of Europe. It marked the last period when the political and social order in Western Europe was seriously challenged from within, by extra-parliamentary action. The fact that the leading figures in the movement were women, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, no doubt added to its notoriety. Meinhof, who before engaging in terrorism was a well-respected journalist and cultural personality, proved especially controversial. For many people, perhaps the majority who learnt her history, she was a deranged murderess, who in pursuit of badly chosen ideological goals sacrificed the welfare of her own children and gave intellectualism a bad name. For others, she became a martyr of the radical left and encapsulated, to use the words of Rosa Luxemburg, to whom she is often compared (for example Becker 1977: 283), the freedom to think differently and the courage to follow her thoughts with action (on the controversies surrounding Meinhof see Bauer 2008: 13–18; Colvin 2008: 92–4). She also represents an idea, so important for 1960s and 1970s feminism, of merging the political with the private, as opposed to reducing the political sphere to ‘post-political bio-politics’ (Žižek 2009: 34; Chapter 1). The involvement of the television and popular press, especially the Axel Springer publishing company, which targeted and demonised the growing students’ movement,3 not only made the RAF visible (which is always something terrorists strive for), but helped the group to shape its identity as a victim of the conservative press and state-run television.

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Their actions inspired art and were themselves akin to an artistic production. As Gerrit-Jan Berendse and Ingo Cornils note: In contrast to other violent events in German history, those in the 1970s manifest a unique juxtaposition of terror and the arts. In this violent decade, art did not merely comment or reflect on the violent waves on Germany’s streets; it started to shape events such as the coverage of the many hunger strikes which the terrorists seemed to control and spin via multiple media. (Berendse and Cornils 2008: 12) Many authors also draw attention to the involvement of members of the RAF with the world of art and media. Baader worked as a model for the fashion photographer Herbert Tobias, Ensslin worked as a publisher, Meinhof as a journalist and playwright (ibid.: 12–13; Bauer 2008). Their belonging to the world of art and media largely explains their sharp sense of style and sex appeal. As Bernd Eichinger, the scriptwriter and producer of The Baader Meinhof Complex puts it, ‘Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin had a real sense of style and pose – the fast cars, the clothes, the hair, the sunglasses … all that was very deliberate and it worked. They were like political rock stars’ (quoted in Huffman 2009). In common with many rock and film stars, such as Jim Morrison, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, they also died violent and somewhat mysterious deaths. Although Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin most likely committed suicide in the Stammheim prison in 1977, nobody witnessed their deaths; they remained off-screen. The mystery surrounding their deaths provided the terrorists with an aura of martyrdom, and positioned the state as an instrument of murder, either directly or indirectly, by negligence and subjecting them to inhumane conditions. Interest in the RAF results also from the difficulty in pinpointing its ideology, partly because of its internal contradictions and partly because the activities of the group spanned several decades, which on each occasion required a new contextualisation of its actions. This ambiguity proved an asset from the perspective of the longevity of the Baader-Meinhof myth, as it allowed new interpretations of its ideology and fate, in the light of new political developments, such as, recently, the treatment of ‘enemy combatants’ in the detention centre in Guantánamo Bay (Varon 2008). Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some dominant interpretations concerning the group’s political lineage and its place within German and European history. One such interpretation is offered by a South African author, Jillian Becker, who in 1977 published a book entitled Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Of course, the title

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left no doubt about the author’s hostility to her characters. Becker was also hostile to those who showed the terrorists some sympathy, such as Jean-Paul Sartre (Becker 1977: 270–3). Gerd Koenen characterises the book in such terms: Becker’s argument was very straightforward. In the same way that their fathers had followed Hitler, a new generation of young Germans was again denouncing and fighting the democratic order, above all a free and liberal society, which had finally been installed in the Federal Republic of Germany under the supervision of the Western allies after 1945. So the RAF members were ‘Hitler’s Children’, because, although using a different ideology, fighting the same battles against the same enemies, which gave their terrorist attempts – especially those against US Army personnel and installations – an apparent taste of revanchism. (Koenen 2008: 23–4) While Nazism served Becker as a model for representing the ideology of the RAF, to depict their style she borrowed from popular American fiction and action cinema, especially Bonnie and Clyde (1967) by Arthur Penn. For Becker the RAF was Nazi in content, American in style. The West German state also wanted to see in the young terrorists ‘Hitler’s children’, who attempted to destroy the German democracy in the same way Nazi organisations destroyed the Weimer Republic. This largely explains the harsh line taken by the authorities against the RAF (Varon 2004: 199–200 and 254–5). A competing interpretation, offered by members of the RAF themselves, their followers and sympathisers, presented their actions as a fight against the legacy of Hitler, by exposing the totalitarian and military tendencies of the FRG, testified by its support for the imperialistic practices of the USA and Israel,4 as well as promoting consumerism, regarded as a form of a new fascism (ibid.: 199–200; Meinhof, quoted in Bauer 2008: 138–43; Moncourt 2009). The RAF strengthened its anti-Nazi credentials and identity by the choice of their victims, especially the industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, chairman of the German Federation of Industry and a member of the SS from 1933. Schleyer was taken hostage and murdered by the RAF in October 1977, during the so-called German Autumn, a period of the most intensive activity of the RAF. Koenen describes the years 1975–77 as an ‘Oedipus Rex story – a story of unconsciousness and guilt, with a strong taste of “Vatermord”’ (Koenen 2008: 37). As with many terrorist organisations, the RAF provoked their enemy to act in such a way as would prove that they were guilty of what the

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RAF accused them of. The RAF’s attacks led the authorities to introduce severe anti-terrorist measures, which were regarded by the organisation as proof that the West German state was essentially authoritarian and violent, and therefore needed to be opposed with all its might. The relation between the RAF and the German state can thus be described as mutual provocation. The long sequence of deadly events, especially in the years 1975–77, and their symbolic significance divided German society. This division was strengthened by a state policy which aimed to stifle debate about the RAF through the introduction of a news blockade in 1977, which denied the terrorists any chance to present their version of events to the general public using state media channels (Homewood 2008: 234). Cinema reflected this polarisation, with many films attempting to give a voice to the terrorists and their sympathisers, not least because filmmaking in Germany at the time was to an unprecedented degree an occupation of those leaning to the left,5 and these anti-establishment filmmakers, due to a combination of factors, enjoyed a significant freedom in which to express their political positions (Elsaesser 1989). Another distinct feature of ‘Baader-Meinhof cinema’ was presenting the events from a distinct personal perspective, such as that of a member of the terrorist’s family or that of the director himself or herself who witnessed the events. The films thus offered many mini-narratives of the RAF, as opposed to creating its master narrative. Furthermore, these films were made according to the precepts of European art-house cinema, because their directors, such as Kluge, Fassbinder, Schlöndorff and von Trotta, represented this paradigm within German cinema (ibid.). The epitome of this approach is the omnibus film Germany in Autumn. Made by a collective of filmmakers, including Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (in this way mimicking the joint actions of the RAF), consisting of several episodes and mixing documentary with fiction, it does not offer any simple evaluation of the RAF. A large part of the film is taken up by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whom we see walking naked, talking to his lover, taking cocaine and interviewing his mother about her views on the RAF and her life during the Second World War. This part renders Fassbinder as a decadent who breaks the law, and both he and his mother as unable to clearly articulate their position in relation to the RAF. Moreover, the film is made according to a formula which prescribes that in order to understand one phenomenon, such as terrorism, we have to look at another one, occurring in a different place or time, such as Marshal Rommel’s suicide and the Bolshevik Revolution. We also see the police arresting a Turkish man for possessing a gun, although he protests that he wanted

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to use it only to shoot a bird for his lunch. Although the film presents different opinions about the RAF, the strongest rhetorical power lies in the contrast of images. The juxtaposition of the formal state funeral of Schleyer, part of which is a lavish reception, with Ensslin’s father searching for a place where she, Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe can be buried, and an interview with a couple who out of pity agreed to serve their funeral guests, underscores the immense power of the state and political elites against the weakness and marginalisation of the ordinary citizens (Hoerschelmann 2001: 91–4). The films about the RAF started to change in the 1990s, in what Julian Preece describes as a second cluster of films about the RAF (Preece 2008). They were more likely to take the side of the state and the victims of the terrorists, as in the documentary Todesspiel (Death Game, 1997), directed by Heinrich Breloer (Elsaesser 1999), or, as in Black Box BRD (2001), directed by Andres Veiel, show propinquity between the terrorists and their victims. They were also more likely to draw on the tradition of film or television genres. Yet, both clusters tended to use a subjective approach, which can be interpreted as a sign of acknowledging the contentious character of the RAF’s deeds and, consequently, the impossibility of creating a satisfactory (grand) narrative of its history. The Baader Meinhof Complex reveals some important points of correspondence with the second cluster, due to its use of genre conventions, yet, due to its scale and ambition, it is unique in the history of the RAF cinema. As the film producer and co-author of the script Bernd Eichinger admits, it is made from a ‘detached’ perspective. He even claims that 20 or so years previously he was unable to shoot a film like The Baader Meinhof Complex because he was too involved in the story to be able to present it objectively (Eichinger, quoted in Huffman 2009). Of course, as historians, especially of the postmodern type, teach us, one should not take any claims to objectivity at face value. ‘Objective’ usually means being able to hide one’s emotions towards one’s subject rather than withdraw a critical judgement. This is also the case with The Baader Meinhof Complex. It is worth adding that the 20 or so years Eichinger mentions point both to his political transformation – as testified by a difference between the films he produced in the 1970s, such as Hitler, and those from the 2000s, such as Downfall (see Chapter 1) – and to the changes in the German film industry and political climate in Europe at large. The film draws on two principal sources. One is a book of the same title by Stefan Aust which was used for the script. Although Aust based it on first-hand knowledge of the characters, his book functions not as a (subjective) memoir but as an objective, even definitive version of the

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history of the Baader-Meinhof Group. This status has as much to do with the book’s content as with its form. It is long, detailed and written in a matter-of-fact style, in short sentences, which at first sight seem to hold no personal judgements. However, Aust tends to choose his facts so as to undermine his characters and presents his views as if they were also objective facts. Take two sentences from the last pages of the book: ‘Although without Grams and Hogerfeld [the RAF leaders] the RAF was now hardly able to operate, it took the organisation another five years to take final leave of its madness’ (Aust 2008: 436) and ‘The horrors that had begun with the springing of Andreas Baader from jail on 14 May 1970 had come to an end twenty-eight years later’ (ibid.: 437). One can thus assume that if Edel and Eichinger planned to be faithful to Aust’s ‘original’, they would also attempt to juxtapose facts from the RAF’s biography in order to criticise the group, while appearing objective. As I will argue in due course, this indeed happened. The film’s main structuring device is ‘ironic juxtaposition’, whose purpose is bringing together two historical facts or features of one person to illuminate their contradiction and in this way undermine the RAF. The word ‘Complex’, which is used both in Aust’s book and in Edel’s film, has two principal meanings. One is a whole made of many different parts; using this word thus points to the complexity of the RAF. Secondly, ‘complex’ means ‘obsession’, ‘mania’, pertaining both to the members of the group and to German society at large. Aust’s aim was to overcome this complexity and complex: to show what the RAF was really about and in this way cure the German psyche of its fascination with their most famous terrorists. Its adaptation has the same objective. The second inspiration for the film was American genre cinema: action and road movies (and, indirectly, Becker’s book, who also used Bonnie and Clyde as her models) and American music associated with road cinema and American counterculture: Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. Edel’s film also draws on what Linda Williams described in 1993 as a ‘new documentary’: a genre collapsing fact with fiction (Williams 1993). The Baader Meinhof Complex can be described as an action film in an epic form. Rather than presenting a narrow fragment of the history of the RAF, it depicts the whole decade of its greatest activity, beginning in 1967, during a visit of the Shah of Iran and his wife, and finishing with the execution of Hanns-Martin Schleyer in October 1977. The epic ambition of providing a definitive version, a master narrative, is also conveyed by the frequent use of bird’s-eye-view shots. The American influence is signalled by the choice of the film’s director, Uli Edel, who is one of the most Americanised postwar German

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directors. In his portfolio he has films such as Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Body of Evidence (1993) and even an episode of Twin Peaks (1991). In these and other productions Edel proved to be capable of using different genres and expertly handling scenes with large numbers of extras. As a transnational film professional Edel is not renowned for a strong political interest or personal voice, although violence is a frequent subject of his films and it is always condemned, irrespective of its root or purpose. The years covered in the film, 1967–77, encompass the period of great activity of radical left-wing and students’ movements in countries such as France, Czechoslovakia, Italy and the United States. Germany during this period was under three Chancellors: Georg Kiesinger, a conservative politician and ex-member of the Nazi Party, and two Social Democrats: Willy Brandt, who fought the Nazis, and Helmut Schmidt, who as a Wehrmacht soldier fought on the Eastern front during the Second World War. Yet, irrespective of the political views or the wartime past of the country’s head of state, the authorities had a tough line on the RAF. Schmidt, in particular, is remembered for authorising an antiterrorist unit to end the hijacking of the Lufthansa aircraft Landshut by Palestinian terrorists in the autumn of 1977. Edel’s film begins in June 1967, on the island of Sylt, at a nudist beach. The image of the people playing in the water is accompanied by the song ‘Mercedes Benz’ by Janis Joplin. Joplin’s song was meant to criticise people who equate happiness with cars, colour televisions and partying, but in due course was used in Mercedes’s adverts and became associated with the pleasures of material consumption. This ambiguity foreshadows the entire behaviour of the protagonists: they fight capitalistic consumption, while indulging in it themselves. Of course, this kind of contradiction is typical for all youth countercultures, not least because, as Theodore Roszak observes, affluence and leisure allow time for reflection and gaining a critical attitude towards one’s condition (Roszak 1995). The film, however, maliciously plays up this apparent contradiction between idea and action, metaphorically and literally drowning the voices of the characters in Joplin’s song. At the nudist beach we are introduced to Ulrike Meinhof, the first of the three main characters in the film (Figure 3.1). She is reading a popular magazine, whose cover shows a photo of the Iranian royal couple who are about to visit Germany. Her twin daughters and her husband, the publisher and editor of konkret, Klaus Rainer Röhl, are also there. Röhl, against Meinhof’s wishes, takes a photo of her. This act has a symbolic meaning – it points to the fact that for us, the viewers, Meinhof is

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Figure 3.1 Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008), directed by Uli Edel

already ‘history’: her fate is sealed, her deeds the stuff of history books. Her refusal to be photographed and yet, in the end, posing for a photo, might also be interpreted as her premonition of losing control over her public image. The next episode shows the Iranian royal couple arriving in Germany, as seen on television, and Meinhof and Röhl at a garden party, where Röhl asks his wife to read an open letter she wrote to Farah Diba, the Shah’s wife. In reality this letter was subsequently distributed as a leaflet during the lecture by an Iranian publicist, Bahman Nirumand, at the Free University of Berlin on 1 June 1967 (Bauer 2008: 39).6 Meinhof mocked the empress’s attempt to represent herself as an ordinary Iranian, while living in obscene luxury contrasting with the abject poverty of the majority of her subjects. The way Edel shows us Meinhof’s political intervention is also imbued with irony, as the scene presents the guests laughing at what Meinhof attributes to Farah Diba against the background of a large mansion, a sign of Meinhof’s affluence and German 1960s prosperity. The filmmakers thus use Meinhof’s best weapon, namely her rhetorical skill, to fight against her political stance.7 Meinhof’s words serve as a commentary on the visit of the Iranian royal couple. The visit is met with a peaceful protest of students, which changes into a violent confrontation when pro-Shah groups attack antiShah protesters with wooden clubs and the police joins in the attack. After that we see Meinhof in the role of commentator, talking about

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these events on television. She claims that the way the police intervened, being granted unlimited powers of repression, testifies to West Germany being a police state. Meinhof connects her attack on the police with Western politics in the Middle East and condemns the Springer newspaper, Das Bild, for supporting and promoting imperialist policies. She is pitted against a group of male, conservative opponents, a situation which by a feminist filmmaker would be used to condemn the maledominated media. Edel, however, uses it to expose the self-centredness and extremism of Meinhof, showing that she does not argue with her opponents, but presents her opinions as if she were talking to an invisible audience or to herself. The film thus uses Meinhof to contrast female hysteria with male rationality. From the television studio, the action moves to an apartment shared by the second main character, Gudrun Ensslin, with her son, husband and parents. They are watching on television the same programme in which Meinhof participates, quarrelling over Meinhof’s performance, with which Ensslin identifies. The episode of the Shah’s visit and television discussion throws into relief the role of the media and television especially as a means of political information, education and propaganda, and as a catalyst for the audience’s action. The expansion of the media as a site of politics and history in The Baader Meinhof Complex is at the expense of the shrinking of real space. The physical places are also shown in the film, it is even crowded with cities and countries as if it were a travelogue, but less happens in the real space than in the media space, and the media must send a signal to ‘reality’ for the change to occur in ‘real places’. The style of episodes taking place in physical reality and on television is similar, suggesting that they belong to the same ‘real-televisual continuum’. The film’s cinematographer, Rainer Klausmann, confessed that much effort was put into giving the part of the film set ‘in reality’ the same look as the television footage, by avoiding strong reds, greens and blues (Klausmann, quoted in Hope-Jones 2009: 35). I regard the effort to make everything in The Baader Meinhof Complex look as if it was once shown on television as a conservative choice, testifying to a desire to lock the represented events in the past, to contain them so they would not infect contemporary viewers. The interdependence between the media world and the ‘real’ world is also conveyed by the use of sound. The sound from one scene, set in the ‘real world’, spills over into the next one, which presents a media report, or vice versa, which collapses media and reality into one continuum. Mixing fact with fiction was previously widely discussed in relation to Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991). As Hayden White observes, many

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critics discussing Stone’s film were outraged by the way he ‘distorts even those events whose occurrence can be established on the basis of historical evidence’ (White 1996: 19). By contrast, this aspect of Edel’s film hardly attracted reviewers’ attention, which testifies, in my opinion, both to the fact that this director is less conspicuous in using such techniques than Stone, in order not to jeopardise the realism of his film, and to the fact that since the early 1990s viewers had got used to what Linda Williams describes as ‘faction’ or ‘infotainment’ (Williams 1993). Due to mixing documentary with fiction, The Baader Meinhof Complex can be compared to Germany in Autumn. Yet, the way it is done in these two films is rather different. Germany in Autumn leans heavily towards time-image, as described by Deleuze. This is because its purpose is to call into question the way history is constructed by showing that the past has many meanings; everything is thus, in a sense, fiction. The authors of The Baader Meinhof Complex, by contrast, made their film according to the logic of movement-image (although on occasions the film loses its coherence). Each event in this film appears to have one simple cause and inevitably leads to another event – past thus has only one meaning. We see, for example, that Meinhof and Ensslin become terrorists in order to leave their bourgeois existence. In the case of Meinhof her road from respectability to notoriety has several stages. One consists of leaving her philandering husband and relocating from Hamburg to Berlin. In the second stage she acts as a sympathetic observer of the radical youth. However, this position proves difficult to sustain; the whirl of events forces the journalist to take a stand. Meinhof begins by throwing a stone into the Springer office during an anti-Springer demonstration and avoids being arrested only because a policeman recognises her as a famous journalist. This special treatment makes her uncomfortable, rendering her as less committed to the revolutionary cause than those who risk imprisonment and thus forces her to take more radical steps. Throwing a stone into the building of a political enemy leads Meinhof into assisting in freeing Baader and Ensslin from jail, at the cost of killing and wounding the guards. At this point Meinhof crosses the Rubicon, cutting herself off from her earlier life. This does not mean, however, that she embraces her new life wholeheartedly. Far from it; whatever she does, we sense her discomfort, as if there was a lacuna between her actions and her deepest views. Initially, the gap might simply convey the fact that she was a journalist, whose medium was the printed word, not live performance. However, the more Meinhof sinks into the terrorist world, the more she comes across as internally divided and withdrawn from life, to the point of being almost catatonic during

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the period of her stay in the Stammheim prison. Her strange behaviour at this time might be regarded as a way to reconcile internally what in reality cannot be reconciled: her terrorist deeds with her deeply felt belief that it is wrong to harm other people. Meinhof also suffers terrible headaches and complains that her head is about to explode. The focus on Meinhof’s head might be regarded as a tacit reference to the excessive interest in Meinhof’s brain by the prison authorities, culminating in her brain being removed from her body after her death and taken by neuropathologist Jurgen Peiffer for testing, without the knowledge of Meinhof’s family or lawyers. This interest resulted from the fact that, in 1962, immediately after her twin daughters were born, Meinhof had undergone brain surgery for a suspected tumour, which in the opinion of some criminologists affected her transition to terrorism (Colvin 2008: 84). Although the film does not allude to either Meinhof’s brain surgery or to the secret post-mortem investigations, it conforms to the view that Meinhof was a terrorist because she was sick and, in a wider sense, suggests the existence of a link between female criminality and mental and physical defects. At the anti-Springer protest we also see a bare-chested young man with a long beard shouting the names of the countries subjugated to American imperialism against a background of the burning buildings. He looks like Holger Meins, a cinematography student and member of the RAF, who died on hunger strike in prison. The photograph of Meins, printed on two pages in the popular Stern magazine by Dirk Reinartz, and since then reprinted many times, evoked associations with Christ and victims of the concentration camps. Edel’s film evokes this image but imbues it with irony by juxtaposing the Christ-like appearance of the man with his exaggerated and almost autistic behaviour. Such ironic juxtapositions of images, and images and words, are very effective in undermining the members of the RAF, because they appear to avoid any judgement, just show things ‘as they really looked like’. While Meinhof is presented as an accidental and reluctant terrorist, Baader and Ensslin, the two most famous members of what became the RAF, come across as natural criminals. For Baader radical politics is just an excuse to have fun (Figure 3.2). He has no concern for any human loss their actions might cause; if anything, he wants them to be more violent, justly assuming that the more carnage they create, the greater the headlines they will receive in the press. Ensslin abandons her respectable life as a pastor’s daughter and mother of a baby, to lead a more adventurous life with Baader. The couple’s joy is most visible during their trial for arson, when they exude immense self-confidence, like actors

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performing on stage, and later when they ride through a nocturnal city, firing a gun to the rhythm of the song ‘My Generation’. In an ironic way the film also juxtaposes the couple’s torching of department stores with the American bombardment of Vietnam. Both attacks are made in the name of a distinct ideology, respectively anti-capitalistic and anticommunist, but their juxtaposition suggests that what ultimately matters is not their motives or whether they were committed by the state or by disenfranchised individuals, but the mayhem they cause. Such thinking is not untypical, especially in the German context. Germany in Autumn opens with a quote from one Frau Wilde, a mother of five children, who in April 1945 said that ‘When cruelty reaches a certain level, it is no longer important who initiated it, only that it be stopped.’ Yet, Germany in Autumn is preoccupied predominantly with state violence, especially its less visible manifestations, an example of which is denying the members of the RAF proper burial. The Baader Meinhof Complex, by contrast, focuses on the terrorist violence, ignoring the state’s symbolic violence, and rendering the state’s physical violence, with the exception of its exaggerated reaction to the peaceful protest at the beginning of the film, as justified counter-violence. The film also underscores the group’s discord with its ideological allies and its internal divisions. Although they admonish the West for its cultural imperialism, they themselves show little respect for the values of their Palestinian ‘brothers’, as demonstrated by Baader’s racist

Figure 3.2 Moritz Bleibtrei as Andreas Baader in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008), directed by Uli Edel

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language used in the Palestinian training camp and his rejection of the Palestinian request for men and women to sleep in different buildings in the camp. The members also constantly quarrel with each other. The divisions within the group lead to its disintegration, when they are put in Stammheim prison. There Ensslin, thanks to her youthfulness, greater strength and lack of self-doubt, overpowers and isolates Meinhof. In this way she also plays a major role in worsening Meinhof’s mental health and, ultimately, her suicide which, of course, renders the role of the authorities in her death as smaller than initially assumed. There is also a conflict between Ensslin and Meinhof on the one hand and Baader and the fellow terrorist Jan-Carl Raspe on the other. When deprived of the civilising influence of a wider society, the male terrorists turn out to be misogynistic and rude. By and large, with the exception of Meinhof, who is portrayed as a ‘suffering enigma’, the other members of the group are represented as people who pick and mix elements of various ideologies to suit themselves, without caring about the overall coherence of their attitude. They are, to use a phrase from Godard’s Masculin féminin (1966), children of Marx and Coca-Cola, much more than any of Godard’s creations. This ideological mishmash can be attributed to either the RAF’s hypocrisy or their confusion and the film points to both of these reasons. However, neither explanation exonerates their actions, even less makes them appealing. Nevertheless, the first generation of the RAF succeeds in projecting their image as informed by a rejection of capitalism, imperialism and the German present understood as the recycling of its Nazi past. Their followers, as represented in The Baader Meinhof Complex, lack this propagandist talent and appear to act not because of any big idea, but in order to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors and, most of all, in order to liberate them. Moreover, although Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof hardly deserve to be called ‘professional’, the second generation of the RAF is positively amateurish: whatever they do, they bungle their work. The impression that they constitute thwarted versions of their terrorist parents is conveyed by casting. In the roles of Meinhof, Baader and Ensslin we see the most acclaimed and charismatic German actors of young and middle generations, respectively Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtrei and Johanna Wokalek. The younger terrorists are played by less well-known actors and are given little time to present their history. They remain practically anonymous: small links in a large chain of German and world history, and their history is overshadowed by that of their victims. Nowhere is this shown better than at the end of the film, which finishes with the murder of Schleyer. His death remains devoid

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of any commentary, ‘naked’, as if it is assumed that it speaks for itself. By contrast, in Germany in Autumn the death of Schleyer was presented as an event demanding contextualisation: it was only a beginning of the story. The strategy of the RAF is to emphasise the differences between themselves and the state: to draw a clear line between these two entities. This strategy is understood by Horst Herold, the chief of German police, who has the task of capturing the members of the RAF. Herold comes across as the most sympathetic character in the film, because he combines features the others are lacking. He is utterly professional in his work, having a strategy which perfectly matches his goals (defending democracy and peace in West Germany) and tactics suitable to his strategy. He is able to read the minds of terrorists and knows how to defeat them in the most efficient way. Herold does not want to play up the divisions between the RAF and the rest of German society, but searches for their common denominator. Consequently, although he fights with the terrorists, he does not regard them as evil, but only confused, and is able to appreciate the fact that they expose the shortcomings of the political system. However, while Herold claims that a large proportion of Germans sympathise with the group, we do not see in the film any sympathisers of the RAF. On the contrary, the impression one gets is that the RAF is an isolated group of people awakening fear in ‘normal’ citizens who are happy to collaborate with the police to get rid of this threat to West German democracy. Among the film’s characters we also find Stefan Aust, who attributes to himself the saving of Meinhof’s twin daughters from being sent to the Palestinian Al Fatah children’s camp, to be trained as young guerrillas (Aust 2008: xv–xvi). In the film the future ‘Baader-Meinhof expert’ comes across as an ambiguous character in a double sense. Neither do we know whether he is a friend of the RAF or their enemy, nor if he is a participant or an observer. This ambiguity suits the film’s authors, as admitting that it is based on the memories of a person who betrayed the RAF would inevitably undermine the project’s aim to present the story of Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin and their followers as made from an ‘objective’ perspective. While for directors such as von Trotta, Schlöndorf, Kluge and Fassbinder and their audiences the members of the RAF were their ‘sisters and brothers’, the bulk of today’s viewers of Edel’s film look at them as the generation of their parents or grandparents. This audience is projected as people for whom the only acceptable politics is the previously mentioned ‘biopolitics’, whose central goal is to ensure one’s physical security, and

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who are fascinated by decontextualised images and paraphernalia. It is assumed that such viewers will find it difficult to identify with Meinhof who sacrificed private happiness for public duty, but equally will be fascinated by Baader and Ensslin’s impeccable style. In line with this projection, as I argued, the film condemns the group’s ideology, what can be described as the RAF’s content, while revealing fascination with its style. Judging on the film’s box-office results, this strategy worked. Yet, some critics complained that the film lacks an authorial voice, is decentred and shallow. For example, Peter Bradshaw writes: ‘All the cliches and hairstyles are present and correct,’ but ‘Baader and Meinhof are treated superficially’ (Bradshaw 2008). Such opinions, in my view, reflect the fact that the form and the content of historical representation are always connected (see Introduction), therefore a change in one of them demands a change in the other.

Imagining a different story in Good Morning, Night Good Morning, Night was less successful commercially than The Baader Meinhof Complex. In Europe, it attracted an audience of 800,000 viewers, mostly in Italy. This can partly be attributed to the lower international profile of the terrorist group which the film depicts: the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades, BR). Although the Red Brigades were the most famous of all left-wing terrorist groups in postwar Italy and their actions led to more acts of violence and a greater number of victims than those of the RAF, they did not haunt the international audience to the extent that the RAF did. The sense that the Red Brigades are less important for European history is conveyed by Arthur Marwick, who in his comparative study of several countries during the 1960s argues that ‘Red terrorism in Italy, though deadly enough, was never quite so sophisticated or dangerous [as its German counterpart]’ (Marwick 1998: 746). One reason for this is that as a cultural phenomenon the Italian terrorists ‘came second’ after the Germans. This is best expressed by the phrase anni di piombo (‘years of the bullet’ or ‘years of lead’), used to describe the period of greatest terrorist activities in postwar Italy: 1973–80. As Alan O’Leary explains, the name derives from the Italian title given to a German film: Margarethe von Trotta’s Die bleierne Zeit – literally ‘the leaden time’ – shown at the Venice film festival in 1981 where it received that year’s top prize. The phrase is problematic in that the transition from the German adjective ‘bleierne’, intended to connote the ‘leaden’ weight of history, to the Italian noun ‘piombo’, with its clear metaphorical allusion to bullets, implicitly excludes the bombings

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characteristic of right-wing terrorism (O’Leary 2005: 169). This effect has been further exaggerated when the phrase is rendered in English. In Paul Ginsborg’s History of Contemporary Italy (1990), it becomes, in a chapter subheading not ‘years of lead’, but, precisely, the ‘years of the bullet’, and all potential ambiguity about the figurative character of the ‘lead’ is lost (Ginsborg 1990: 379). The Red Brigades attracted less international attention also because their actions, although expressing opposition towards the politics of the USA, were confined to Italy.8 In comparison with the RAF, the terrorism of the Red Brigades was widely justified as counter-violence. This is because the political situation in Italy in the comparable period was more unstable than in Germany. The actions of the Red Brigades were thus seen not only as an attack on the state, but as a reaction against greater violence by the far right, known as stragismo (massacre-ism), and as a means to prevent a fascist takeover in Italy ( Jamieson 1989: 20–3; Ginsborg 1990: 348–404; O’Leary 2008: 33–8; on the comparison between German and Italian terrorism see also Koenen 2008: 26–7; Drake 1999–2000: 70–1). Finally, unlike the Baader-Meinhof Gang, their members are remembered more for what they did and especially whom they assassinated and less for who they were as individuals. The story of Aldo Moro, whom the group kidnapped on 16 March 1978 and assassinated after 54 days of captivity, completely overshadowed even that of the leader of his kidnappers, Mario Moretti. Consequently, in films devoted to the Red Brigades, the focus is typically on Moro, rather than on the identities and political views of his tormentors: examples are Il caso Moro (The Case of Moro, 1986), directed by Giuseppe Ferrara, and Piazza delle Cinque Lune (Five Moons Plaza, 2003), directed by Renzo Martinelli. These and other films about Italian terrorism failed to attract international attention, partly on account of the lower international profile of Italian terrorism, and partly due to the lack of a distinctive cinematic idiom for representing this phenomenon. Moro was the focus of attention because his profile was much higher than that of any of the victims of the RAF. Being the leader of the Italian Christian Democratic Party and Prime Minister of Italy twice (1963–68; 1974–76), he encapsulated the drive towards the compromise between all the main political forces in postwar Italy, including that of the Communist Party. The ultimate sign of that was the broad coalition on which he was working before he was kidnapped, and which included Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party. For this reason, however, for those on the extreme left he represented a danger of diluting and, ultimately, circumventing the left, to the advantage of the right

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and, especially, the United States, as much in Italy as in West Germany regarded as a successor of the fascists. Due to the immense respect in which he was held across the whole country and his moderate stance, Moro appeared even more dangerous than the ordinary representatives of the right. The period of his captivity, which dominated the media for many weeks, traumatised the entire country and left its mark on the subsequent politics and culture (Drake 1989: 63–77; Ginsborg 1990: 348–87). In his film Bellocchio redresses the balance between the Red Brigades and their victim by giving them both a similar amount of screen time. His film is conceived as an attempt to present the case of Moro’s kidnap and assassination literally from the inside, from the position of Moro’s captors, and especially a female member of the BR, Chiara, a character partly based on Anna Laura Braghetti, whose memoir served as a basis for the film’s script (Figure 3.3). The insider perspective also means an Italian perspective: of somebody who is familiar with the place of Moro’s tragic end within the wider web of Italian history, politics and culture. Probably because Bellocchio trusts his viewers to know Italian history well, he pays little attention to the intricacies of Italian politics of the period and ignores the competing theories surrounding Moro’s death. The Italian character of Good Morning, Night can be deduced from the name of its director: Marco Bellocchio. Bellocchio is renowned for

Figure 3.3 Maya Sansa as Chiara in Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003), directed by Marco Bellocchio

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engaging with Italian history and culture by creating family dramas, beginning with his critically acclaimed debut, I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pockets, 1965) through Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina (Slap the Monster on Page One, 1972) to Good Morning, Night. He is preoccupied with showing how the political situation affects ordinary Italian families and, conversely, how family life can be regarded as a metaphor for the Italian political landscape. Bellocchio’s critique of the bourgeois family is always scathing but, equally, he is aware that Italian culture is so profoundly based on the institution of the family that it is an inescapable reality. Richard Combs goes as far as to argue that ‘the failure of the family in Fists in the Pockets has led Bellocchio not to abandon it, but to try to revitalise it, to make it work through shifting coalitions of its own’ (Combs 2005: 73). The relationship between family life and revolutionary practice plays an important role in Good Morning, Night. Bellocchio signals this by directing his camera to The Holy Family (1844), written jointly by Marx and Engels, a work offering a scathing critique of a bourgeois family, which hardly lost its force till now. It is placed on a night table in the flat, where the kidnappers live with Moro. No doubt, the terrorists’ leftwing project includes a plan to create a socialist alternative to a family, as described by Marx and Engels. However, Bellocchio demonstrates that being themselves children of the bourgeoisie and members of the Italian society in which family ties shape practically all individual and collective action, they are unable to escape the model condemned by Marx and Engels. We see it already in the first episode of the film, in which two young Brigadists, Ernesto and Chiara, rent an apartment in Rome. The estate agent is under the impression that the couple are married and planning to have a child. He shows them a study at the back of the apartment saying that it might serve as a nursery, to which Chiara smiles shyly, as if he was reading her thoughts. Only after he leaves, she takes off her wedding ring and we learn that the flat is about to serve a different purpose: to confine the kidnapped Moro. The ritual of taking off and putting on the wedding ring is performed several times during the film. Although it is meant to signify the incompatibility of a family lifestyle, which Catholic tradition prescribes to young Italians, with the fight for communism, irrespective of whether Chiara and Ernesto wear their wedding rings they behave the same, perpetuating the rituals of family life. We see them eating meals together prepared by Chiara and sharing their everyday problems. Because they project so successfully the image of a ‘typical family’, they are even entrusted with their neighbour’s baby. They also, especially Chiara, interact with Moro as if he was

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a member of the family. Chiara buys medicines for him, takes meals to his room and entertains him with talk. A viewer who starts watching the film halfway through might even presume that Moro is an elderly relative kept away from the rest of the family due to poor health. In due course, one of the kidnappers asks his comrades permission to withdraw from the mission on account of missing his girlfriend. Moro himself senses that belonging to a family is something which he shares with his captors and he appeals to their family spirit. He objects to being reduced to a political symbol, as the terrorists want to see him, and in his prison talks about his family, especially his grandson, and writes letters to his relatives. The sense that his death would be a blow to his family is the main reason that the terrorists, and Chiara especially, feel increasingly uncomfortable with their plan. Ultimately, by portraying the Red Brigades as a family, recreating the structures of patriarchal society, Bellocchio points to how confused its members were, how their revolutionary beliefs were dissociated from some of their deepest values. Equally, Bellocchio puts a question mark over the terrorists’ claim that they represent the true interests of the Italian working class. Initially, for Chiara and her comrades, Moro symbolises the generation of those who disgraced themselves during the war and postwar period, first allowing fascism to prevail and then by serving American masters who were not much better than the fascists. However, gradually a more positive image of this generation emerges. This happens when Chiara participates in the anniversary celebrations of the death of her father, who was an Italian partisan. By commemorating her father, Chiara positions herself as the real and spiritual daughter of those who resisted fascism. Yet soon she realises that her political methods link her more with the fascists than with the partisans, and she ends up likening Moro in her mind to the partisans condemned to death by the fascists. Thus Moro becomes, paradoxically, like a communist martyr. In her dreams Chiara fantasises that Moro is her father and in reality she tries to persuade her comrades to abandon their plan to kill the elderly statesman. Moro himself argues about his closeness to the Italian working class and, conversely, against the falsity of the kidnappers’ claim that they are the best defenders of this class by claiming that more workers support his formation, Christian Democrats, than the extreme left, which the kidnappers represent. Moro’s argument is supported intertextually by a quotation from Rossellini’s Paisà (1946), in which partisans were depicted as ordinary working-class people, unlike the terrorists who are bourgeois intellectuals. In his representation of the internal contradictions within the ‘family of kidnappers’, ultimately resulting from the

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gap between the kidnappers’ social background and the political ideals they espoused, Bellocchio harks back to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s attack on the Italian student protesters of 1968. In 1968 Pasolini wrote a poem ‘Il PCI ai giovani’ (To Young Communist Students), in which he claimed that the student protesters represented the rich, while their victims, policemen, were ‘sons of the poor, they come from urban or rural outskirts’ (Pasolini 2008; Bennett and Graebner 2009). Pasolini and Bellocchio’s attacks on the left-wing activists are especially painful and effective because they come from those sympathising with the terrorists’ overall social ideal.9 The Oedipal motif, foregrounded in Good Morning, Night, links this film with earlier Italian screen works devoted to terrorism, such as La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, 1981), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, and Colpire al cuore (Blow to the Heart, 1982), directed by Gianni Amelio (O’Leary 2005: 173). It also likens Bellocchio’s movie to the films about the RAF, including The Baader Meinhof Complex. The persistence of this motif is an expression of the deep generational conflict between the war and the first postwar generation and the difficulty to reach maturity by the latter. Good Morning, Night poses the question whether the conflict between generations could have been solved differently. The answer offered by Bellocchio is ambiguous. On the one hand, Chiara’s change of heart and her desire to free Moro suggest the possibility of reconciliation. On the other hand, the fact that in the end the option of freeing Moro is rejected by Chiara’s comrades, points to its impossibility. It should be emphasised, however, that Moro dies not only because of the hard line adopted by the terrorists, but also because the authorities reject their demands, preferring to sacrifice the Christian leader, perhaps even secretly relishing the opportunity to get rid of him using the hands of the Red Brigadists. For some reviewers, the fact that Chiara’s proposal is rejected testifies to the secondary position of women within the BR and terrorist groups at large: women are expected to participate in actions, but seen as lacking the intellectual muscle to make the right decisions (Sullivan 2004: 64). Such a representation of Chiara both differentiates and links this character with the women as represented in The Baader Meinhof Complex. This is because the women in Edel’s film are portrayed as playing a larger role in the ideology and action of the RAF, but the director still suggests that they are not up to the job of leading a political organisation. The sense of ideological and emotional closeness between Moro and Chiara is poignantly indicated in the last, imaginary part of the film,

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in which she frees Moro. This can be seen as a double liberation: of the famous politician from his imprisonment and of herself from the clutches of an inflexible ideological position. Of course, in reality Moro was killed, and the woman whom Bellocchio used as a model for Chiara went on to commit another assassination and ended up in jail, where she wrote her memoir. As Alan O’Leary observes, the meaning of Moro’s final walk as a free man provoked different readings, referring to different episodes in Italian history and cinematic history, especially from Italian Neorealist films, with their themes of suffering, death and resurrection (O’Leary 2008: 39–40). For O’Leary these intertextual connections, discovered by the reviewers, testify to Good Morning, Night being a palimpsest: the film ‘not only posited upon the spectator’s knowledge of the Moro kidnapping and its outcomes, but also on the variety of representations and theories about the kidnapping’ (ibid.: 40). To put it differently, for O’Leary Bellocchio’s film is not about history, but about its cultural memory, which is layered. For such a postmodern reading O’Leary presupposes the viewer’s familiarity with the quoted texts. Being himself a historian of Italian cinema, especially of films dealing with politically motivated violence, makes O’Leary especially susceptible to reading films in this way. Yet, for the spectator unfamiliar with them or one who ignores them, moved by the story of the suffering politician, Moro’s morning walk is not a ‘text’ but an ‘event’. As such, it signifies the incompatibility of the historical facts with our sense of imagining the past and, consequently, the need for different accounts of them to sustain our faith in the rationality of history. From this perspective the ending of Bellocchio’s film can be compared to that of Andrzej Wajda’s Korczak (1990), where children from a Jewish orphanage, sent to die in the gas chamber, leave the cattle truck heading for Auschwitz, and find themselves in an idyllic meadow. In both cases the fantasy of escape points to the ultimate inescapability of the situation. Although the endings of The Baader Meinhof Complex and Good Morning, Night are different, as one film underscores the utter brutality of the terrorists and the other refuses to show it and invents a different ending, both point to the helplessness of the artist faced with the task of representing ‘the unrepresentable’. Another deeper similarity concerns the relationship between the terrorists and their enemies. Edel highlighted their similarity by focusing on the violence of both sides; Bellocchio on the imprisonment of both the members of the Red Brigades and Moro himself. This imprisonment is literal and metaphorical. Literal, because by kidnapping and imprisoning Moro, the terrorists also constrained

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their own freedom. They could not invite guests to their apartment or spend much time outside, because they had to take turns at keeping guard over Moro. Cinematography, and especially the use of colour and shadows, adds to the sense of the terrorists’ confinement. The metaphorical imprisonment consists of the necessity to address Moro’s arguments and hence limit their mental horizon to the political questions he asks them. Bellocchio also blurs the line between terrorists and their victims by showing Chiara and Moro as if made of the same clay. Unlike Gudrun Ensslin and her female followers, who in Edel’s film joined the radical left largely out of their appetite for adventure, Chiara is in the Red Brigades due to her naïve idealism. She is a gentle creature, who does not take part in the kidnapping of Moro, but waits for her comrades at their rented apartment, like a mother waiting for her sons to return home from a battle. At the flat she also performs the bulk of the domestic tasks, cooking and serving food to Moro and her comrades. Other people see her gentleness and idealism and compare her to a nun. Such representation of a female terrorist testifies to the dominance of the traditional vision of femininity in Italian cinema. The figure of Chiara can also be read in the context of the law introduced in Italy ‘post-Moro’ which promised pentiti – terrorists who repent their actions and agree to cooperate with the authorities in uncovering the clandestine organisations – reduced prison sentences. The law proved very successful, in the 1980s greatly helping the state to overcome the terrorist threat (Ginsborg 1990: 386). Chiara’s behaviour validates the law on pentiti not only as a pragmatic move but also as a moral decision, allowing the terrorists in some measure to redeem their deeds. Together, The Baader Meinhof Complex and Good Morning, Night show the important role of women in the politics of the radical left and the terrorist wave of the 1960s and 1970s. This role comes across as particularly impressive if we compare it with the practically non-existent communist female secret agents in cinema representing this phenomenon (see Chapter 6). At the same time, the representations of Ulrike, Gudrun and Chiara demonstrate the limited parameters of the representation of women in cinema about terrorists. All these women come across as worn-out types (a mad woman, an adventurer, a misled ‘Madonna’) which from a feminist perspective are unattractive. Such portrayals can be regarded as a step back in comparison with earlier representations of female terrorists and their sympathisers, for example in Germany in Autumn, where Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin are compared to Antigone, and Gudrun’s sister, Christiane, to Ismene

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(Elsaesser 1999: 275–6), figures from an ancient tragedy imbued with immense power and dignity. Unlike in The Baader Meinhof Complex, where the terrorists are rendered as the main culprits of the attacks on ‘innocent civilians’, in Good Morning, Night responsibility for Moro’s prolonged captivity and eventual death is divided between the Red Brigades and the political establishment. The difference in the approach to the question of guilt is most visible in the endings of the respective films. The Baader Meinhof Complex finishes with the execution of the industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer; his death is thus rendered as the final fact in the history of the RAF. Good Morning, Night, on the other hand, finishes with Moro’s state funeral. We are informed by the subtitles that his body was absent from the funeral because Moro’s family refused to release it and buried it in a private ceremony. The arrival of the Pope at the funeral in a sedan chair, shown in slow motion, and of other famous figures from the Italian political scene creates a grotesque effect, pointing to the gap between the respect paid by these people to dead Moro and their indifference to his plight when he was still alive. One possible reason why Bellocchio’s film is more anti-establishment than Edel’s is its addressing a different audience, namely Italian, which is traditionally more sympathetic towards dissent than an American audience, especially in the light of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. Yet, ultimately both filmmakers do condemn the terrorists and thus validate the political status quo in Europe, in which the terrorists, irrespective of their political persuasion, are regarded not as freedom fighters, but as extra-dangerous criminals. Both also subscribe to the idea, proposed by Hannah Arendt, that using violence inevitably leads to the loss of moral authority and political power: ‘To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high: for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power’ (Arendt 1970: 53). In Good Morning, Night this is demonstrated by the hostility of Italian society towards the Red Brigades following the kidnapping of Moro. Such an assessment is confirmed by Paul Ginsborg who writes that ‘the crisis of Italian terrorism, as is generally recognised, dates from the death of Moro’ and ‘Had Moro not been killed but exchanged for one or more imprisoned terrorists, the Red Brigades would have appeared both unvulnerable and willing to compromise, with the result that their appeal would almost certainly have widened’ (Ginsborg 1990: 385). As in The Baader Meinhof Complex, television images fill a large proportion of Bellocchio’s film. Their main function is to provide information and entertainment to the terrorists, locked in their rented flat.

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Indiscriminately they watch silly game shows, documentaries about Stalin and Italian Neorealist classics. In this sense, they are also more like ordinary people of the modern age, whose space of action is shrunk and who absorb the world as mediated through the screen. What is also palpably clear from Good Morning, Night is that television does not create a community, but has an alienating effect on its audiences, on this occasion dividing the terrorists from other members of Italian society. By watching television, Chiara and her friends do not discover what Italian people think about them. Only after leaving her apartment and going to work does Chiara learn about the overwhelming opposition to their deeds. Television images also point to the role of television in the creation of cultural memory: what people remember from their country’s past is filtered by television. The kidnapping of Moro would also be remembered as an event captured on television, recycled and transformed for mass consumption. The historical importance of the kidnapping and execution of Moro and its openness to interpretation is also conveyed by the figure of Enzo, Chiara’s friend, who works in the government library and tells her that he is writing a play entitled Buongiorno, notte. Enzo encourages Chiara to act differently, and she conforms to his wishes, but only on an imaginary level: in her dreams and daydreams. Enzo can be seen as Bellocchio’s emissary, foreseeing the future in order to represent it on screen. And yet, this figure, as numerous reviewers note, is far from satisfactory (for example Rooney 2003: 27; Bonsaver 2004: 29), as was the character of Aust included in The Baader Meinhof Complex. Aust and Enzo disappoint because it is not clear whether they influence the events or are merely observers: they appear to be suspended between these options. Their ambiguous position acts as a metaphor for the dilemma facing an artist or a journalist witnessing dramatic events: should s/he merely register them or try to intervene? In contrast to almost all aspects of the film which underscore the Italianness of the story of the Red Brigades, the score, dominated by two pieces from Pink Floyd, ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and ‘Shine on you Crazy Diamond’, internationalises it. Bellocchio was apparently unfamiliar with Pink Floyd prior to making Good Morning, Night and was only introduced to their music by his partner, Francesca Calvelli, who was the film’s editor. The use of music attracted mixed opinions. On the one hand, the songs allow us to locate the events in the history of Europe, as they come from the concurrent period. Moreover, it was pointed out that due to its out-of-this-world, ‘cosmic’ feel the music coveys the claustrophobia and inner drama of the characters (Bonsaver 2004: 29;

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Iannone 2009). In my view, however, Pink Floyd’s songs sound alien to the terrorists, who are so preoccupied with the classics of Marxism, Italian Resistance during the Second World War and, of course, Moro, that they have no time to register international trends in rock music. However, Bellocchio’s choice of score also points to the difficulty in conveying in the 2000s the inner life of European terrorists of the 1970s; it seems to be, to again use the quote from Hartley, ‘a foreign country’.

Giving up ‘five minutes of heaven’ for lasting peace My last example, Five Minutes of Heaven, concerns 1970s terrorism in Northern Ireland. This terrorism differs from German and Italian terrorism, due to being a direct result of colonialism. Its roots lie in the political and economic domination of English and Protestant elements in Ireland which lasted many centuries and in Northern Ireland practically never ceased. English colonialism led to attempts by Irish Catholics to reverse their inferior position by using arms and the violent reaction to it by the British authorities and the Protestant population. As a result Ulster in the twentieth century was awash with terrorist organisations, dominated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the Catholic/Nationalist side and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) on the Protestant/Unionist side. The conflict escalated in the late 1960s. As David Whittaker notes: The mood of many Irishmen changed. They became interested in United States protest movements, particularly those connected with the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. The thrust of their demands had to do with a better deal for Catholics in regard to local government reform and improved housing. As their agitation brought little response both from the Protestant majorities on local councils and from Whitehall, a largely peaceful demonstration by the working class turned sourly into a popular uprising. In Belfast and Londonderry (Derry) barricades went up and angry words gave way to priming of weapons and the making of petrol bombs. By 1969 there were running battles in the streets, a curfew had been imposed and arrests were widespread. The IRA was now on a war footing … The 1970s brought wavering fortunes for all sides. There was little prospect of any negotiation in a situation now aflame with destruction and death … Direct Rule was reimposed in 1974. Violence soared and atrocities were committed by all sides. (Whittaker 2007: 135)

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This conflict, of course, found its reflection in film and film studies. Probably no less than half of John Hill’s book about the cinema in Northern Ireland is devoted to the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics (Hill 2006). A chapter about Northern Irish cinema in Ruth Barton’s Irish National Cinema has a subtitle ‘The Troubles and the Peace Process in Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Filmmaking’ (Barton 2004: 157). These and other authors point to the tendency to play down the political dimension of Northern Irish terrorism in the films devoted to this subject. From Odd Man Out (1947) by Carol Reed to The Crying Game (1999) by Neil Jordan, it does not matter whether the allegiance of the terrorists are to republicanism or loyalism – ‘all, it is suggested, are the same’ (ibid.). The indifference to the colour of political violence results from the longevity of the political conflict: it started so long ago that nobody remembers its beginning and for many it stopped to matter. In the films adopting the position that all terrorists in Northern Ireland are the same, ‘violence is seen as endemic to the human condition’ and ‘Northern Irish society, by virtue of its being locked in these age-old grievances, is thus in some sense retarded and pre-modern, a kind of universal id where the unrestrained impulses of humanity are free to circulate’ (ibid.: 158). The only remedy for this unfortunate situation is renouncing fanaticism and violence, in line with the advice given by Frau Wilde quoted in Germany in Autumn that ‘When cruelty reaches a certain level, it is no longer important who initiated it, only that it be stopped.’ Another feature of the ‘Troubles cinema’ is its international dimension; many are co-productions and are made by foreign directors, usually English and American. Brian McIlroy comments that ‘like many other small countries sharing a common language with a larger country, Ireland’s national images have been foisted upon it by outsiders’ (McIlroy 1993: 95). These directors tend to use Northern Ireland as realistic scenery to create versions of thrillers or war dramas. The previously quoted McIlroy regards this use of generic conventions as a conservative choice, because ‘it emphasises the universal quality of film’s narrative and, in so doing, avoids a concerted attempt to demythologise the Northern Ireland “problem”’ (ibid.: 94). McIlroy and Hill, among others, advocate de-universalising and demythologising the Northern Irish conflict. But, of course, this is not only a question of film production, but also of reception. An ‘insider’ tends to see a conflict represented in the film as particular to the history with which s/he is familiar, the ‘outsider’ focuses on this universal dimension.

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Five Minutes of Heaven is a typical ‘Northern Irish’ film due to being made by an outsider: German Oliver Hirschbiegel, who previously directed Downfall (see Chapter 2). However, most of its cast and crew is Irish, and it cannot be easily pigeonholed into existing genres. Furthermore, unlike the majority of film and television productions it does not focus on the IRA, but on its Protestant enemy, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). In common with Downfall, the film presents itself as a work of communicative memory. It does not purport to tell us what happened objectively, but how the past events are remembered by their participants and how their memory affects their current views and lives. Its Irish scriptwriter, Guy Hibbert, devoted two years to researching the story of a victim and a perpetrator on opposite sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland, and interviewed both men. The film attempts to discover what would happen if these men met, whether forgiveness and reconciliation would be possible. Simultaneously, Five Minutes of Heaven concerns the process of reconciliation and the role that mediators play in it. The main part of the film is set in the present, following the ceasefire between the Republican and Protestant terrorist organisations in the mid-1990s, and features two main characters. One, a Protestant from Lurgan named Alistair Little, as a teenager in 1975 killed a young Catholic man, Jim Griffin, as part of his initiation into the UVF. He was sentenced to a long incarceration and left prison in the 1990s, becoming an anti-violence counsellor. The second character, Joe Griffin, is the brother of Alistair’s victim. His youth was destroyed by this crime, because he was traumatised by witnessing it and because, as a result of losing his brother, in a sense he lost his parents too. His father died prematurely and his mother irrationally made him responsible for his brother’s death. As an adult, Joe remains a nervous, distrustful and violent man, a sign of the legacy of witnessing his brother’s assassination. Thirty-three years later the two men reminisce on what happened in 1975 on the day when they are about to meet. Their meeting is arranged by the television studio in Northern Ireland, which wants to broadcast it live, as proof that reconciliation is possible and, obviously, to boost its ratings. However, for Joe meeting the man who affected his life in such a negative way is a chance to fulfil his dream of revenge. Joe brings a knife to the studio in order, as he puts it, to ensure his ‘five minutes of heaven’. His old adversary waits peacefully for their meeting and confrontation which does not happen, as Joe, persuaded by a television employee, changes his mind. The men meet later, at

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Alistair’s request, away from the prying cameras, in the surroundings of their youth. Again Joe brings a knife and the two men attack each other and eventually fall from a window, but neither is killed. After this incident Joe decides that they are now even and each can go his own way. Despite its deceptive simplicity, Five Minutes of Heaven engages with a number of discourses pertaining to the conflict in Northern Ireland, its representation and terrorism in general. One is the situation in Ulster in the 1970s and the inability of its participants to see themselves ‘historically’, namely to try to understand the motifs of their enemy.10 For teenage Alistair the 1970s were just a period of great activity by Catholic military organisations: riots, building barricades and throwing petrol bombs on the streets. During this time, as he says, the Protestants were living under siege. Their reaction to this situation was retaliation, which included assassinating members of the Catholic community. Economic conditions played a part in the worsening of political circumstances in Ulster. We see a country in which Catholics are poorer than Protestants, as revealed by the appearance of the estates on which Joe and Alistair live. The whole town, however, comes across as poor and lacking in cultural facilities. In such a place terrorism is one of the few pastimes available, alongside watching television and going to the pub, confirming the image of Northern Ireland as backward and retarded. The hostility between the Protestants and Catholics is also exacerbated by the lack of communication between them, as it is easier to kill the enemy than somebody one knows and is friendly with. This mechanism of ‘othering’ an enemy is demonstrated in the episode when the members of the gang who are about to assassinate Joe’s brother start talking about their victim. When it becomes clear that the boys are familiar with his mother, they lose enthusiasm to carry out their assignment. Consequently, Alistair, who is the most determined in the group to prove that he is worthy of joining the UVF, has to play down their familiarity with the victim’s family. Television, which is the main pastime of Northern Irishmen, especially of the working class and lower middle class, but irrespective of their age, religion and political views, is presented as a means to further divide and fragment the communities. For example, we can deduce that if Alistair’s parents were less immersed in television programmes and more interested in their son’s life, they could spot his growing fondness for guns. It is also highly symbolic that Jim Griffin is killed while he is watching television. Had he been playing football, like his younger brother, Joe, he would have had a bigger chance to escape the bullet.

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Another context in which Hirschbiegel situates Northern Irish terrorism is in the construction of masculinity in 1970s Ulster. We see the teenage Alistair as somebody who desperately attempts to assert his masculinity. This is signified by a poster of Bruce Lee which adorns his bedroom. Alistair wants to be strong, violent and victorious like Bruce Lee, and killing a Catholic is meant to serve this goal. His three friends from the Unionist paramilitary group represent the same attitude as Alistair, but he is the cockiest in the team. Joe, due to his young age and introvertism, as conveyed by his solitary kicking a ball against a wall, is situated outside ‘proper’ masculine games. In the present, the roles of Joe and Alistair are reversed, which is conveyed by the choice of actors playing the parts of Joe and Alistair as adult men. In the role of Alistair is cast Liam Neeson (Figure 3.4), the greatest star to come from Northern Ireland, particularly celebrated in Schindler’s List (1993) by Steven Spielberg, Rob Roy (1995) by Michael Caton-Jones and Michael Collins (1996) by Neil Jordan. In these films Neeson’s characters connote both bravery and the voice of reason. Neeson often plays men able to measure the deeds of people belonging to his society against universal moral standards (as does Schindler) and understand the arguments of his opponents. These values are also embodied by Neeson’s character in Five Minutes of Heaven, as conveyed by his words, which open the film, ‘To understand the man I am one has to understand the man I was.’ The clearest sign of Alistair’s maturity is the fact that his main motivation in meeting Joe is not to be forgiven, but to help his old enemy come to terms with his past. By contrast, the adult Joe comes across as perfect material for a terrorist. He bursts with desire for revenge and would rather sacrifice the welfare of his wife and children than give up his ‘five minutes of heaven’ granted by revenge. Cast in the role of Joe is James Nesbitt, who specialises in gangsters and working-class men. Such an acting history underscores the violence and immaturity of his character. Yet, equally, Hirschbiegel, through his use of editing and close-ups, shows that these two men are closely connected by their traumatic memories. When Joe is drinking water in the studio, Alistair asks for water; the hands of both of them tremble, they are both afraid to meet each other and at the same time crave for confrontation. Finally, when they meet, they fight, fall through the window and lie on the pavement, as if joined in a deadly embrace. Then, gradually, they rise from the pavement, injured but alive. Finally, we see Joe taking part in a self-support group for ex-terrorists of the type Alistair previously participated in. In this way, the circle of violence is finally closed and Joe’s daughters have a chance to live in peace.

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Figure 3.4 Liam Neeson as Alistair in Five Minutes of Heaven (2009), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

Unlike in the two films discussed previously, where women played equal roles to men in committing terrorist acts, in Hirschbiegel’s film terrorism is exclusively a male domain, reflecting both the character of terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland and the way they are represented in film. A peaceful countering of terrorism, on the other hand, is represented as a female preserve. We see a succession of women who attempt to prevent men from engaging in violent acts. First is a social worker who discusses with Alistair his past and presumably is engaged in a support group for ex-terrorists and violent criminals. Another woman who attempts to divert Joe from violence is his wife, but she is unsuccessful and her demand that Joe should not meet Alistair only leads to Joe becoming violent towards her. Then we see Vika, a Ukrainian ‘runner’, who is looking after Joe during his time in the television studio. She plays a pivotal role in dissuading Joe from killing his opponent by pointing out to him that Alistair, in a sense, was already punished for his actions, because he is a broken man, and that if Joe engages in bloody revenge, it will not do him any good. Unlike other people with whom Joe talks, who represent one side in the Northern Irish conflict, being Ukrainian, Vika is disengaged from it, therefore can be trusted by both Joe and Alistair. As a foreigner who looks at Irish affairs from the distance of a different country with an equally troubled past, Vika can be seen as a stand-in for the film’s German director. The way she is shot, often shown in the corner of the frame, near the film equipment, also

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suggests the position of a film director. Vika is played by the Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca, who is best known from the Cannes-winning film 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 2007), directed by Cristian Mungiu, where she was cast as a resourceful young woman, helping to organise an abortion for her irresponsible friend. Of the three characters who represent the authorial voice in the films about terrorists: Aust, Enzo and Vika, I regard Vika as the most successful, as she is best integrated into the main narrative and offers the most positive model for an artist caught up in the web of political conflict. At the same time as pointing to the positive role women in Northern Ireland play in extinguishing the violence, Hirschbiegel also suggests that men occupy the positions of authority in Northern Ireland. During the period of the Troubles men had a chance to gain power thanks to joining the police or terrorist organisations, while women were relegated to domestic tasks. In the 1990s, men still occupied the higher rungs of the social ladder, as shown during the preparation for the broadcast, when the producer of the programme and cinematographer are male, while all those engaged in the supporting tasks (make-up artist, the runner) are female. The contemporary part of the film also questions the role of television in the lives of the Ulster communities and terrorists. Live television programmes, ‘talk shows’, such as the one in which Alistair and Joe are about to participate, are advertised as a means to bring together political opponents, allow the audience to better understand their conflict and heal the wounds. For Thomas Elsaesser, their popularity is a measure of the failure of such institutions as the churches, the welfare state and democracy at large to represent their citizens in the public sphere (Elsaesser 2001: 196). Yet, the specific format of these programmes and the overall style of television, marked by sensationalism and haste, as we see in Five Minutes of Heaven, are in conflict with these noble goals. We see that during the preparation of the television programme, Joe and Alistair are subjected to the intrusive presence of the cameras; they have make-up put on them and are asked to repeat the agreed movements and words, so that their words lose their initial meaning and gestures look fake. This applies especially to Alistair’s words ‘To understand the man I am you have to know the man I was.’ When heard for the first time, these words contain profound truth. When repeated, they sound hollow. The grand mansion, where the meeting between Joe and Alistair is meant to take place, signifies the long history of British and Protestant domination of Ireland. This domination is also conveyed by the English accents of the producer of the programme and senior

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people working on it. No wonder that Joe is suspicious about the purpose of the enterprise. The dubious role of television in representing and extinguishing Irish terrorism is ultimately confirmed by the fact that Joe refuses to meet Alistair in front of the camera and the men deal with their shared past in ‘their own (physical) space’: at the place where they met previously. By criticising ‘confessional television’ Hirschbiegel both offers self-criticism and edifies his film above ordinary ‘confessional TV’. This is because Five Minutes of Heaven draws heavily on the style of television docu-dramas, yet it proves also an excellent vehicle of ‘work through the past’ thanks to being able to juxtapose the past with the present, public history with private memory, expose the dominant politics of representation and give everybody time for reflection. It is worth mentioning here that Five Minutes of Heaven hardly reached cinema audiences; Lumiere database gives the figure of only 5160 people watching the film in movie theatres. Paradoxically, thus, while criticising television, the film relies on the small screen to put its critical message across. Due to their shared director, Five Minutes of Heaven encourages comparison with Downfall. Both films advocate revisiting the past, but for the sake of finally leaving it behind and ‘moving on’. Such a position, which will also be discussed with regard to the films about the end of communism and communist secret servicemen, has its unquestionable advantages, such as allowing for peace. Yet, it is also a position which is very difficult to apply in practice, as demonstrated by the fact that in order to furnish his film with a happy ending the film director had to divert from the real situation of the men who served as models for Joe and Alistair as in reality these two men never met.

Conclusions The three films discussed in this chapter adopt a resolutely anti-terrorist position. They do so by focusing on the tragic results of terrorist attacks, especially for their victims and, to some extent, the terrorists themselves. They pay less attention to the causes of terrorism, such as the political and economic situation in the countries where terrorist attacks occurred and the ideas rousing the young fighters. The only terrorists who are given a voice and treated with sympathy are repentant and reformed terrorists. Those who did not repent or died before they had a chance to re-examine their actions are looked at from a distance, by mesmerised but ultimately hostile filmmakers, who do not take the trouble to reconstruct the terrorists’ discourse. Equally, the question of the relationship

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between the terrorist groups and the wider public, especially the terrorist sympathisers, is omitted or played down. The terrorists come across as locked in their own private world, insensitive to the views of their adversaries, self-isolated rather than isolated by the state. Each of these films can be located in the tradition of realism, a tradition which signifies the need for conventional resolution. At the same time, as I indicated, the stories these films attempt to tell prove difficult to contain within the format of a traditional film. Such treatment of terrorism differs from the approach taken in the films made in the period concurrent to the terrorist attacks, most importantly Germany in Autumn and La Chinoise. In these films ideas advocated by the terrorist groups, such as overthrowing capitalism and creating an egalitarian society, were at least as important as actions and were analysed at length by the characters. Furthermore, they used an avant-garde, non-realistic form, which conveyed the difficulty of accommodating the phenomenon represented in the parameters of a traditional film. Consequently, they elicited an intellectual, rather than an emotional reaction. These two different takes on terrorism can be mapped out in the changing attitudes of filmmakers and audiences to terrorism and radical politics in a wider sense. It is worth referring here to the conservative Italian Indro Montanelli, whom Richard Drake quotes as saying that in the 1960s to be an intellectual on the right meant that one was not perceived to be an intellectual at all (Drake 1999–2000: 74). Of course, from Montanelli’s words we can deduce that an indiscriminate condemnation of left-wing terrorism was ‘unfashionable’ across Western Europe. This is no longer the case. On the contrary: to express sympathy for terrorist organisations or even their causes is not in vogue, even among intellectuals. One can list various reasons for this change: the comprehensive defeat of the RAF, the Red Brigades and similar organisations, the fall of communism and, perhaps most importantly, the current association of terrorism with Muslim rather than ‘European’ causes. I shall also include here the decline of the type of cinema exemplified by La Chinoise and Germany in Autumn in Europe, which is both political and entertaining, avant-garde yet popular. Finally, although terrorism of the 1970s is still an object of communicative memory, it is presented in these films as remembered via media, which reflects the fact that from the very beginning terrorism was a media event, in a sense of both being widely reported in the media and being ‘played’ for the media. The ‘urban guerrillas’, as many of the terrorists called themselves, deserve to be labelled ‘television guerrillas’. In this respect the members of the RAF and the Red Brigades are the

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‘parents’ of today’s terrorists, especially the authors of the September 11 attacks, who perfected the ‘art of terrorism’. The media, and television especially, create ‘imagined communities’, allowing the characters to identify with and follow people whom they never met, but more often they fragment the communities by reducing the scope for direct contact and misrepresenting their enemies, allies and themselves.

4 From Socialist Realism to Postmodernism: Polish Martial Law of 1981 in Polish and Foreign Films*

In his discussion of the book by Charity Scribner, Requiem for Communism (2005), political scientist Jan Kubik criticises the project of remembering ‘communism’ as a homogeneous experience of collective labour, regarding it as a myth created by Western left-leaning artists and intellectuals, largely as a means to articulate and defend their own intellectual position. Instead, he proposes to avoid such generalisations by looking at communism and its memory as country and period specific. As he puts it, ‘What constitutes a satisfactory analysis of the memory of communism for, say, the former East Germany in 1995 may be completely off the mark for Poland in 2004 or 2007’ (Kubik 2007: 133). Equally, he points out that ‘inside Eastern Europe the process of coming to terms with the memory of communism has been impossible without dealing with the memory of anti-communism and its various forms. What continues to be politically explosive is not how communism is to be remembered but how resistance and open struggle against communism are to be remembered’ (ibid.: 132). This chapter and the two following ones derive from a similar premise to that advocated by Kubik, which in a wider sense confirms the intertextual approach employed in this book. Rather than presenting how communism is remembered in postcommunist cinema, I am trying to account for different versions of communism and different and evolving national memories of this phenomenon. Equally, my analysis of communism is combined with the discussion of anti-communist opposition, beginning with Polish martial law of 1981. This event deserves a special treatment for a number of reasons. First, it marks the beginning of the end of communism in Poland and the whole of Eastern Europe. Second, it was internationalised, becoming a motif of a number of films made outside Poland. Third, it provides excellent material to demonstrate how memories and histories change over time. Although the basic historical 135

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facts concerning this episode remained largely uncontested in 1982, 1992 and 2002, comparing the films one gets an impression that they deal with very different events. However, before I move to the films, I shall introduce some historical and popular renderings of martial law.

Martial law in history and legend: between romanticism and bathos Martial law was introduced on 12 December 1981. It followed the gaining in strength of the Solidarity trade union under the leadership of Lech Wałe˛sa, the increased impatience of the Soviet authorities over the abnormal situation in Poland, and the joint failure of Wałe˛sa, Cardinal Glemp, the leader of the Catholic Church in Poland, and General Jaruzelski, the new First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), to secure a national compromise at a meeting on 4 November 1981.1 The vast majority of citizens learnt about martial law, coded ‘Operacja-2’ (Operation-2), on Sunday 13 December, when they failed to find any working channel of the state radio or television. The television sets were brought to life again at 9 o’clock in the morning when General Jaruzelski, in military uniform, read an announcement about its imposition, explaining its necessity by the desperate political and economic condition of the country, for which he blamed Solidarity alone. It is impossible to establish whether Jaruzelski himself, a man of gentry origin and a young victim of Stalinist deportation, was in favour of such a solution, as opposed to seeking a compromise with Solidarity, or whether he regarded it as a measure to prevent a more brutal Soviet intervention, as he later suggested in his court testimonies ( Jaruzelski 2008). Jaruzelski’s address to the nation was repeated many times that day, together with some classical music and information about restrictions resulting from military law taking precedence over civil law. In the years that followed, the images of television sets not working and of Jaruzelski’s speech were repeated ad nauseam in documentary and feature films, as well as on the national news, whenever martial law was commemorated. Consequently, in the memory of a large number of Poles, what Jan-Werner Müller terms ‘mass individual memory’ (Müller 2002: 3), the media images and the very state of the national media largely epitomised martial law, and constituted it as the first major event in Polish history which exists predominantly as a ‘mediated event’. As I will argue in due course, the same was later said in relation to the ‘Romanian revolution’ of 1989 (see Chapter 5).

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The television announcement was followed by more tangible signs of the new political order, such as the presence of tanks and other military vehicles, and military patrols on the streets. In total, over 100,000 troops were deployed. Most democratic organisations, including Solidarity, were suspended, strikes and demonstrations were forbidden, a curfew was introduced, freedom of movement was restricted, and most newspapers and magazines ceased publication. In the first week of martial law over 5000 people were interned in special camps, primarily prominent Solidarity members, including Wałe˛sa. The powers of the government were transferred to the military body, the Military Council of National Salvation (Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego), headed by Jaruzelski. Known as WRON, a name resembling ‘wrona’ (crow), the Council invited ridicule. Many branches of industry, including public transport and the production of energy, were militarised. Force was used to crush some spontaneous strikes which erupted in the country, including in the Wujek coalmine in Katowice, which I will discuss later in detail, but large-scale bloodshed was avoided. In total, there were approximately 90 fatalities during the whole period of martial law. As Norman Davies observes: ‘The conduct of policy in Poland lacked many of the characteristic ingredients not only of military take-overs elsewhere in the world but also of the usual Soviet-style programmes of “normalisation”. The repression was highly selective and strangely half-hearted’ (Davies 2005: 494). Despite the widespread containment of political opposition, underground political and cultural life flourished. Its main centre became the Catholic Church, distributing food and clothing sent to Poland from the West, helping interned politicians, organising charity cultural events and discussions about the future of Solidarity and the Polish state. From March 1982, the authorities started to remove restrictions and release the interned politicians. In December 1982 martial law was suspended. An important factor in this decision was the death of the leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, in November 1982, whose hardline stance was a major obstacle to any earlier attempts to find a compromise between Solidarity and the communist authorities. In June 1983 Pope John Paul II visited Poland. One month after this event, on 22 July 1983, martial law was abolished. Several months later Lech Wałe˛sa received the Nobel Peace Prize. The six years that followed can be described as a period of the communists gradually losing their grip on power to Solidarity and the Church, which emerged from the period of martial law as the moral victors. It culminated in the Roundtable Negotiations (Rozmowy Okra˛głego Stołu), between February and

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April 1989, in which the representatives of the communist authorities, the Church and Solidarity, including Lech Wałe˛sa and Adam Michnik, agreed on the conditions of the political and economic transformation of Poland. As a result of the compromise reached then, in August 1989, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a high-profile member of Solidarity and editor of its magazine, Tygodnik Solidarnos´c´, became the first, democratically elected Prime Minister of postwar Poland. Another result of the compromise, later criticised by right-wing forces, was the promise that there would be no vindictive action towards the communist functionaries. The fact that the change of the regime was reached in Poland not by revolution, but as a result of the compromise between the communists and the opposition, affected various aspects of politics, economy and social life in postcommunist Poland, including the attitude to secret services and their archive, as reflected in Poland’s opting for the ‘forgive and forget’ model of transitional justice (see Chapter 6). Martial law poses some serious problems for Polish political historians, as well as for politicians, trying to use its memory in the power struggle, because it does not fit easily into the tragic-heroic narrative which dominates Polish history.2 It had its tragic and heroic moments, but, due to the overall ‘half-heartedness’ of the communist rulers, cannot be put on the same footing as the Second World War or even, as Davies observes, compared with the well-known episodes of suppression of the citizens of Eastern Europe by its Big Brother (Soviet Union) and its henchmen. Even the anti-government actions, largely organised by young people, soon became perceived as repetitive and pointless, losing the interest and sympathy of the wider public. By and large, martial law has been associated with bad television programmes, long dark evenings and petty inconvenience, rather than with shootings or beatings by the police and long incarceration of Solidarity activists. Ironically, the deficit of tragic-heroic elements in martial law is underlined by the grandiose Polish term used to describe it – a state of war (stan wojenny), which brings associations with the Second World War. Consequently, according to Agata BielikRobson and Dariusz Gawin, the generation of those born in the 1960s, who grew up and were active during the years of martial law and played an important role in Solidarity’s final victory (a generation to which I also belong), unlike their parents and grandparents, lack any distinctive identity, feeling permanently homeless and ‘unfinished’ (Bielik-Robson 2005; Gawin 2005). Yet, I believe that, paradoxically, this condition makes this generation well adjusted to living in the postcommunist world. Martial law brings to the end two powerful currents shaping Polish postwar history. One is variably named communism, socialism or state

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socialism. Although the communists clung to power for many years after the end of martial law, and people connected with the old regime, such as Aleksander Kwas´niewski who became Poland’s President in 1995, did rather well in postcommunist Poland, they lost any ambition for ideological hegemony. To put it differently, martial law was the last attempt of the communist authorities to show internally and externally that ‘socialism’ is the only possible political and economic system in Poland. At the same time, it closed the heroic chapter in the history of Solidarity and its grip on the hearts and minds of Polish people. After martial law there was a different Solidarity, as there was a different socialism; both became treated as only one of a number of political positions offered to the electorate. This difference is marked by the decline in the use of the term ‘socialism’ and the frequent adding of the word ‘first’ to ‘Solidarity’ which existed before the fall of communism in Poland. Finally, martial law coincides with a period of immense respect for the Catholic Church in Poland. Whilst after the overturn of communism the Church still enjoyed huge, although unofficial, influence on political decisions, its moral authority had been eroded. The difficulty of construing martial law as a romantic-heroic episode in Polish history has an impact on its rendering in art, including in feature film. Unlike the victory of Solidarity in 1980 which found its definitive image in Andrzej Wajda’s Człowiek z z˙elaza (Man of Iron, 1981), a film that draws on and augments the heroic narrative of this event, and at the same time inscribes it into a larger history of the Polish fight for freedom, martial law’s privileged image is that of General Jaruzelski reading a statement on television with a monotonous voice and expressionless face hidden behind dark glasses. It is not an image which Polish society created, but rather one imposed on them by an unidentified agent, a sign of the country’s (including the authorities’) passivity and anomie. Man of Iron, in a sense, closes the period of Polish cinema as a production of ‘great narratives’ reaching the whole nation.3 The cinematic discourse of martial law, by contrast, like a wall covered with graffiti, is made up of many different pictures, complementing, overlapping and obscuring each other.

Martial law as pro-state propaganda in Dignity and Time of Hope In the 1980s, Roman Wionczek, an ex-Home Army soldier who in the 1970s and the 1980s became the leading pro-regime director, took upon

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himself the role of chief defender of martial law in Polish cinema. His two films, Godnos´c´ (Dignity, 1984) and Czas nadziei (Time of Hope, 1986), deal specifically with this topic. Wionczek’s principal method, used in Dignity and Time of Hope, is ‘part pro toto’: depiction of a small fragment meant to illuminate the whole. This method is applied in two stages. First, the story of a working-class family, the Szostaks, is meant to illustrate the situation of the whole Polish nation during martial law. Second, problems suffered by Poles during this period are deployed as a metonym of the entire Polish postwar history, even Polish fate. The main character in Dignity, which is set shortly before the military takeover, is Karol Szostak, a worker in the ‘Metalpol’ metal plant. Szostak is chosen as the new leader of the so-called ‘branch’ trade union in his factory. ‘Branch’ union was the heir of the organisation which before the ‘Solidarity revolution’ was widely despised, being regarded as a caricature of real trade unions, with leaders acting as communist stooges, and during the period of martial law the government sponsored its expansion as a counter-action to the banned Solidarity (Lukowski and Zawadzki 2001: 277). It is in this context that we should view the actions of the characters. In ‘Metalpol’ Solidarity activists demand that all the workers go on strike and, following Szostak’s refusal, eject him from the factory in a wheelbarrow (Figure 4.1). Such undignified disposal of communist supporters was a common practice in 1980–81, but the targets were typically factory managers and Party officials, rather than ordinary workers. Time of Hope depicts Szostak’s attempts to reinstate himself in the factory, following the imposition of martial law. Although all people in positions of power in ‘Metalpol’ sympathise with his plight, the task proves very difficult, as the new manager is wary that bringing Szostak back to the factory will anger fellow workers. Only after the intervention of the local representative of WRON, Szostak finds his way back to his old position. To defend the socialist authorities, Wionczek employs socialist realistic rhetoric and aesthetics, albeit trying to adjust them to the new set of circumstances in which his characters operate and new type of viewers (Sobolewski 1987). The characters are divided into honest workers, impeccable communist leaders, ‘naïve people’ and enemies of the state. The epitome of an honest worker and a true communist is Karol Szostak, who had worked in the same factory for 46 years before being stripped of his job and dignity by Solidarity activists. We can regard him as the successor of such impeccable communists as Franciszek Olejniczak in a Polish socialist realistic classic, Pod gwiazda˛ frygijska˛ (Under the Phrygian

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Figure 4.1 Jerzy Aleksander Braszka as Karol Szostak, ejected from ‘Metalpol’ by fellow workers in Godnos´c´ (Dignity, 1984), directed by Roman Wionczek

Star, 1954), directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and Szczuka in Andrzej Wajda’s Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds, 1958), a film which, despite belonging to the later period, the Polish School, draws heavily on socialist realism. In common with those characters, Szostak comes across as idealistic, both in the sense of adhering to communist ideals and in rejecting materialism and consumerism. He admits that he used to go to 1 May demonstrations even when they were forbidden and gets very angry when his wife brings home some gifts from the West, distributed in the local church. He throws away the bags of flour and breaks the bottles of ketchup, claiming that they have enough to eat and do not need any Western help. Despite these occasional differences of opinion, Szostak and his wife are a model couple, thanks to sharing the same, working-class experiences. Yet, the Szostaks and his old comrades, veterans of the prewar anticapitalist movement, are being replaced by less noble generations of people who have a more pragmatic attitude to socialism. Szostak’s sonin-law, Waldemar Rzewin´ski, is still in the pro-communist camp, but he is a womaniser and opportunist. Rzewin´ski’s wife does not love her husband either and, unlike her parents, who stay away from church,

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is very religious. Their son Marcin is involved in anti-communist conspiracy and at some point is captured by the police. Marcin fits the image of a socialist realistic ‘naïve person’, who joins the wrong camp and must be guided by a mature communist to avoid serious mistakes, but nobody manages to put Marcin on the right path. Through this character Wionczek shows that communism in Poland is the preserve of the old; the young embrace a different vision of Poland – the one offered by Solidarity. The image of a ‘divided house’, in which the old members of the family show wisdom, while the young are confused, also brings to mind earlier renderings of political conflict in postwar Poland, such as Ashes and Diamonds, where Szczuka’s son was an anticommunist conspirator, severed from his father. Ideological differences pertain also to gender. Practically every man represented by Wionczek is a homo politicus, while women stay away from politics. Such a division of labour will be reflected in the films about socialist secret agents, made in Poland and elsewhere (see Chapter 6). Not surprisingly, taking into account the time of the film’s production, the role of impeccable communist leader is given by Wionczek to a military commissioner. He arranges Szostak’s return to the factory, when other members of the establishment lack the courage or authority to do so. He is a ‘good master’, who tries to avoid any harsh decisions, works for the welfare of the wider population and looks at every issue from a human perspective, rather than following slavishly the letter of the law. However, because of his approach he can be seen by a hostile viewer as an epitome of Polish-style ‘real socialism’: a political system which was extremely nepotistic and disrespectful of any rules, even those which it created itself. As in a typical propagandist work, the arguments on the side of the conflict privileged in the film are not only spelt out, but repeated by positive characters. The opinion that martial law was introduced to free the country from looming political and economic disaster, brought about by Solidarity, is presented first by General Jaruzelski, addressing the nation on TV, and then echoed by local Party dignitaries, the military commissioner, old Szostak, people from his circle and eventually even by people queuing for basic groceries. Similarly, the view that thanks to the military takeover factories work again and there is now hope of ‘normalisation’, as the very title of Wionczek’s film pronounces, trickles down from the communist hierarchy to ordinary people. It is worth mentioning that the demand that ‘things return to normal’, with each individual doing his or her particular job is, according to Jacques Rancière and Slavoj

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Žižek, the main sign of anti-democratic politics, whose basic aim is depoliticisation (Žižek 2006: 70). Of course in Wionczek’s film, normalisation and depoliticisation receive positive spin, due to being associated with honesty, modesty, altruism and hard work. In contrast to the opinions of the supporters of the authorities, the views of Solidarity are practically never spelt out; we only see interned Solidarity members squabbling among themselves about the methods of their fight to disrupt the government’s attempts to bring order to Poland. The young supporters of Solidarity, one of whom is Marcin, like in official documents of the time, are labelled wyrostki: immature youngsters looking for adventure, who because of their very age have no right to partake in the affairs of their elders. The view that young age disqualifies from any serious political activity is inconsistent with the communist ideology which encouraged the young to act politically. However, during martial law such an idea was propagated for pragmatic reasons. At no stage does Wionczek allow any intellectual confrontation between Solidarity supporters and government supporters, aware that in such a confrontation the Solidarity camp might win. In common with socialist realistic classics, Wionczek deploys his discourse mostly through dialogue. The film includes, for example, long discussions between the factory Party members, conducted in the solemn style which even in the 1950s was perceived as unrealistic. Everyday conversations about trivial matters are generously peppered with discussions about serious issues, especially workers’ dignity. A large part of the dialogue includes evaluations of people and events, such as ‘He is an honest man’ and ‘The situation is complex.’ Consequently, dialogues come across as unnatural, which was noted and criticised even by those reviewers who wrote about his films from a pro-communist position (Karbowiak 1984; Pawlukiewicz 1987; Sadowski 1987). One of the rare moments when Wionczek allows the ‘image to speak’ is at the end of the film, when a peaceful 1 May demonstration of the workers loyal to the communist authorities is interrupted by shouting and stone throwing by young Solidarity supporters. Their behaviour is eventually halted by the arrival of ZOMO, special riot police, widely used during the period of the ‘state of war’, but even then the security forces come across as civilised while the youngsters escalate their brutality. The image of 1 May demonstrators under attack is styled on socialist realist classics, such as Mat (Mother, 1926) by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Under the Phrygian Star by Kawalerowicz, by the use of close-ups of faces and meaningful details, such as red flowers and hands. This part of the

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film, in my opinion, despite its lack of originality, works best, thanks to its dynamism, breaking the monotony of talking heads. Another element which enriches the otherwise unimaginative narrative is the ominous music, written by Michał Lorenc, who in due course would become one of the leading composers of scores for Polish films. Wionczek’s diptych is not a successful film even on its own terms, namely as a piece of pro-socialist propaganda. Its crucial shortcomings are avoidance of any confrontation with Solidarity’s position and using an outmoded aesthetics. Not surprisingly, the films were box-office flops. Tadeusz Szyma, reviewer for the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny confessed not without schadenfreude that he was the only viewer of Dignity in a cinema of the essentially working-class town of Nowa Huta (Szyma 1985). In a similar vein, Tadeusz Sobolewski observed that the special show of Time of Hope for workers, organised during the Festival of Polish Films in Gdan´sk, was called off due to lack of interest (Sobolewski 1987). However, in order to assess Wionczek’s work, we should realise how difficult his task actually was. Unlike filmmakers working under the conditions of Stalinism, who only needed to please political leaders, he attempted to address both the political establishment and ‘ordinary people’, who in their masses were against the government. Moreover, since the demise of socialist realism, propagandist pro-socialist films in Poland were rare and they were largely unsuccessful (Zwierzchowski 2000: 150–3); thus Wionczek had few models to follow. The ardour with which Wionczek defended martial law was recognised by the political authorities at the time. From newspapers of the period of Dignity’s premiere we can learn that General Jaruzelski and Deputy Prime Minister Rakowski watched the film and promised to support similar projects – which led to Wionczek’s subsequent directing of Time of Hope. The director, the scriptwriter, Jerzy Grzymkowski, and the most important members of the cast were invited to meet political leaders (‘Spotkanie z twórcami filmu Godnos´c´’ 1984). As one might guess, such a cosy relationship with the political authorities, as enjoyed by Wionczek in the 1980s, did not bode well after the collapse of communism. Wionczek made his last film, Rzeczpospolitej dni pierwsze (First Days of the Republic), in 1988. Similarly, the actors playing the Szostaks ceased to work in the 1990s. This wiping out of practically the entire crew of Dignity and Time of Hope from Polish cultural life post-1989 (bar the composer) is highly symbolic, suggesting that a positive approach to martial law was tantamount to political and cultural suicide after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Searching for bitter truth, commemorating the victims in Death as a Slice of Bread When communism collapsed in 1989 there was a sense that the truth about martial law, suppressed by the previous rulers, needed to be told and the more unpleasant the truth for the old government, the more it needed to be unearthed. Another, intertwined, goal was to commemorate its victims. Yet, a typical strategy of the artists who attempt to create a monument is to exaggerate the features worth commemorating and play down those which might clash with them. Their work is thus similar to producing propaganda; therefore monuments are often treated with distrust, especially in places such as Eastern Europe, where blatant propaganda was fed to the citizens in large quantities. One episode from the period of martial law which lends itself perfectly to the purpose of commemorating the victims was the previously mentioned suppression of the strike in the Wujek coalmine during the first days of martial law, in response to the arrest of a local Solidarity leader. The outcome was the death of nine workers, which was the greatest tragedy of the time. Kazimierz Kutz devoted S´mierc´ jak kromka chleba (Death as a Slice of Bread, 1994) to this episode. Kutz appeared to be the perfect choice for making such a film due to previously directing films about Silesian miners. His Sól ziemi czarnej (Salt of Black Earth, 1969) and Perła w koronie (Pearl in the Crown, 1972) depicted the miners’ fight against political and economic oppression in the earlier periods of Silesian history, including the uprising of 1920 and the miners’ strike in the 1930s. Despite the fact that the period following the fall of communism could be regarded as the perfect time to make films about Wujek, Kutz encountered severe difficulties in finding the funds to make his film. They can be linked to the Round-table agreement not to persecute the communist functionaries and, consequently, the unwillingness of the first non-communist Polish government to ponder on the communist past: the approach encapsulated by the term ‘thick line’ ( gruba linia or gruba kreska), used by Tadeusz Mazowiecki in his opening statement to the parliament (see Chapter 6). Death as a Slice of Bread begins with the night arrest of Ludwiczak, Solidarity leader in the mine. During their intervention, the police also beat some other people they meet on the way, including a young miner. Following this event the outraged miners discuss how they should react, organising meetings and inviting a priest to hold a mass down the pit. They also discuss the situation with the local Party leader and representatives of the army, to whom they pass their demands to free their

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leader and denounce martial law. Finally, they are given an ultimatum: either they end the strike, or face military attack. The miners choose the latter, which leads to many of them being killed. Kutz presents the miners from Wujek as courageous and patriotic, believing in values greater than life itself. In this sense they have much in common with their fathers’ and grandfathers’ generations, as portrayed in Kutz’s earlier films. As proud workers, they cannot let themselves be overpowered by military might and cannot envisage being shot at by fellow Poles. This faith is conveyed by their shouting ‘Soldiers, come with us’ to the soldiers sitting in the tanks, and by offering a sandwich to a soldier by one of the strikers, which gave the film its title. However, the soldier’s tank is used to subdue the strikers and it turns out that the miner shared his lunch with his killer. The disappointment with the Polish authorities is expressed most bitterly by a female doctor who looks after the wounded miners and, unable to obtain the necessary medicines because of the military bureaucracy, tells the Polish officers: ‘You are worse than the Gestapo.’ The idea that those who embark on quashing the miners’ strike are like Nazis is also conveyed visually. Many images created by Kutz bring to mind legends of the Second World War and their subsequent cinematic representations. For example, the fight of poorly equipped miners with tanks harks back to the films of the Polish School, especially Andrzej Wajda’s Lotna (1959). The final overthrowing of the miners by the soldiers and the police is reminiscent of Westerplatte (1967) by Stanisław Róz˙ewicz, whose subject was the ultimate defeat of the last outpost of military resistance in Poland during the Second World War. The film also draws on the aesthetics of religious ceremonies, especially the Passion. The striking miners resemble the suffering Christ; each stage of the struggle brings them closer to their ultimate demise. The dramatic score by Jerzy Kilar plays up the religious overtones. The idea of Germans being better for the Silesians than the Poles, as expressed by the doctor, brings to mind Kutz’s Pearl in the Crown where the German mine owners turn out to be more responsive to the arguments of the striking miners than the Polish government. However, there are also important differences between the characters in Death as a Slice of Bread and those from Kutz’s earlier films. The unofficial leader of the striking men is not one of them, but an outsider – the local priest. He was approached by the miners for advice when the Solidarity leader was arrested and he articulates for them the reasons for protest. In a theatrical, highly modulated voice, he talks about the ‘inner freedom’ which must not be taken away from the individual by anybody,

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not even by political powers. In comparison with the ‘earthy’ values and simple language of Silesian men in Salt of Black Earth and Pearl in the Crown, this ‘inner freedom’ sounds esoteric. The priest’s privileged role casts doubt on the conviction, articulated in Kutz’s earlier films, that miners and Silesians are able to think for themselves. The priest is played by Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, best known for his portrayal of Matusz Birkut and Maciek Tomczyk in Wajda’s Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble, 1976) and Man of Iron. Such casting on the one hand points to the continuity of the Polish workers’ protests from the period of Stalinism to the present day, but on the other underscores the difference between the miners and the priest – he comes from a different part of Poland, using a different language, even from a different film, so to speak. Miners in Death as a Slice of Bread are also not as inclusive as their forebears. The constant presence of priests and other religious symbols and the images of holy communion, taken by all the strikers, give the impression that there is no place amongst them for anyone of a different ideological persuasion, such as Marxists and atheists, featured in Kutz’s earlier films. Also, in contrast to Kutz’s earlier heroes, who understood that not everybody is physically or mentally fit to strike, they no longer tolerate ‘weaklings’. An atmosphere of distrust and suspicion pervades the strike. In one scene the strike leaders discuss the possibility of allowing workers from other factories to come to the pit and join them in protest. After some deliberation they reject the idea as too risky, fearing that agents provocateurs could be amongst them. Such suspicion is a measure of the communist authorities’ success in dividing Polish society prior to and particularly during the period of martial law, including Solidarity, and foretells the atmosphere of suspicion characteristic of the postcommunist period. The strike of the Wujek miners comes across as a thoroughly male affair. Miners go on strike irrespective of the views of their spouses or mothers. It is expected of the miners that they will sacrifice their families for the common good. Women in Death as a Slice of Bread are depicted either as a nuisance, attempting to persuade their men to withdraw from the strike, or as nurses and doctors, serving the fighting men. For Kutz a man’s strength is measured by his ability to suppress his feelings towards the woman he loves and avoid sexual temptation. A woman’s strength, on the other hand, lies in her capacity to serve him well. Such a division of labour, as proposed by Kutz, was ingrained in the Solidarity ethos, which drew on Catholic ideology, although this feature became widely recognised only in the 1990s, with Solidarity’s promotion of such anti-women policies as the ban on abortions.

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Despite Kutz’s links with the traditions of the Polish School and religious art, his film also has much in common with Wionczek’s diptych. The main similarity pertains to a desire to impose on the viewer a definitive version of events at Wujek. To use Michel Foucault’s terminology, in Death as a Slice of Bread there is no space for counter-memory and popular memory, namely any voices that offer an alternative or add a nuance to the official, institutionalised version of history (Foucault 1975, 1977a: 139–64). Kutz’s film does not offer any new insight, despite the fact that by the time it was made many new data had been unearthed about the Wujek episode. The main vehicle of meaning for Kutz, as for Wionczek in the films discussed in the previous section, is the spoken word. Their films are filled with scenes of characters discussing their opinions in a group of like-minded individuals or when a local leader addresses a collective, only in Wionczek’s film this collective is the Party organisation in ‘Metalpol’, while for Kutz it is the Solidarity organisation in the Wujek mine. The ultimate leaders in their films are people who are outside the ordinary political order: in Wionczek’s film the military commissar; in Kutz’s the priest. The dialogue in Death as a Slice of Bread comes across as stylised due to extensive use of grand words such as ‘freedom’, ‘courage’ and ‘dignity’. Rituals and gestures play a major role in both films. The decision to make characters use the Silesian dialect paradoxically undermines the film’s realism, because from the mouths of well-known actors, such as Janusz Gajos, it sounds artificial. Not unlike Wionczek, Kutz also makes little effort to individualise characters by any verbal idiosyncrasies or, indeed, any other particularities. They are divided solely by their convictions and their resolve to stand by their views, which make them resemble the heroes of socialist realistic art. Death as a Slice of Bread is washed out of colour; with black and cobalt blue dominating the palette. These are the colours of the coal which surrounds the workers and covers their faces. In the context of another film Kutz claimed that the prevalence of black symbolises the miners’ identification with their place of work; their fight to save the mine is their struggle to preserve their livelihood and identity (Kutz 1972). Dark colours also signify the metaphorical night of martial law: secrecy, fear and despair experienced by the striking miners and Poles in general. Unlike in Wionczek’s movie, there is no transition from dark colours to a lighter palette as, for Kutz, martial law is a time of utter hopelessness. The film gets darker and darker as the narrative progresses and the situation of the miners gets direr. Blue and cobalt are from time to time broken by patches of red, but red signifies only the blood of injured workers.

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In an interview given shortly after its premiere, Kutz stated that his aim in Death as a Slice of Bread was to show Solidarity as it was during the time of martial law: supportive, united and selfless. This Solidarity – in his opinion – was very different from the Solidarity of the 1990s, deeply divided and much less concerned with the welfare of ordinary workers than with its own political advancement. According to Kutz, the miners portrayed in Death as a Slice of Bread in the early 1990s would be more inclined to shout the slogan ‘Come back, communism’ than identify with the new face and new leaders of their old trade union (Lubelski 1994: 16). However, Death as a Slice of Bread (contradicting the intentions of its director) identifies the seeds of the political situation of the 1990s, marked by deep social and political fragmentation, and the Roman Catholic Church being a force which deepened existing divisions. The cold reception of Death as a Slice of Bread by the Solidarity authorities confirmed this view, as did, ironically, the financial assistance given to Kutz by the postcommunist government to help him finish the film. Death as a Slice of Bread was met with respect by critics, but in common with the films discussed in the previous section it was a box-office flop. One can guess that the bulk of viewers were put off by its solemn, elegiac tone, the pathos of the dialogues and unambiguous moral message. For the same reasons, Death as a Slice of Bread ages badly; today it is of interest only to film historians. Although films like, on the one hand, Dignity and Time of Hope and, on the other, Death as a Slice of Bread, arise from contrasting political perspectives, they convey the same modernist meta-perspective, favouring ‘grand narratives’. This perspective is marked by privileging one political point of view at the expense of any other and underscoring the tragic fate of the protagonists. We are to believe that the decisions they make will change the course of their entire lives. Moreover, they purport to represent the ‘common fate’ of Poles. This idea is most clearly presented by Kutz, who shows masses of workers engaged in anti-communist resistance. Looking at these masses in 2010 one wonders if there is any factory in Poland left employing as many people as Wujek did in 1981. In addition, the films discussed here and others of their kind employ classic narratives which respect the rules of chronology and causality, and which render the camera invisible, giving the impression that objective truth is displayed on screen. To return to Deleuze’s categories, this cinema leans heavily towards ‘pedagogic’ movement-image. The characters, the plots, the dialogues, the construction of mise-en-scène, even the use of colour, bring to mind earlier Polish films, especially socialist realist classics and war movies. This ‘grand narrative’ cinema

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of martial law failed to produce any original idiom of representing this event and remained a parochial affair, attracting no interest from foreign cinema-goers.

Martial law seen from pavement level in Tapped Conversations and The Turned Back After 1989, new films about martial law were made that privileged the perspective of a bystander or a political conformist. I describe these films as made ‘from pavement level’ because their protagonists, unlike the proud heroes of Dignity or Death as a Slice of Bread, who reminisced about the noble past or gazed into the future, are preoccupied with the material basis of their current existence. Rozmowy kontrolowane (Tapped Conversations, 1991), by Sylwester Che˛cin´ski and Stanisław Tym, and Zawrócony (The Turned Back, 1994), by Kazimierz Kutz, perfectly fit this description. Tapped Conversations was advertised as the first comedy about martial law (Figure 4.2). By using comedy the authors reject the martyrological narrative of martial law and at the same time choose as their subject the heroic narrative which, as they purport, did not quite fit the reality. Stanisław Tym, who wrote the script, also plays the main character, Ryszard Ochódzki, the chairman of the ‘Te˛cza’ sports club, an utter conformist and opportunist, who uses every possible loophole in the communist system to his own advantage. Ochódzki is not a new figure in the Polish cinematic landscape. He appeared ten years earlier in Mis´ (Teddy Bear, 1980) by Stanisław Bareja, perhaps the most critical film about communist Poland ever made when this Poland still existed. Other characters, such as Zygmunt Molibden, played by Krzysztof Kowalewski, an incompetent officer in the secret service (SB), are also familiar stereotypes from Bareja’s films. The film is made in a style of ‘coarse realism’, marked by fragmented structure, in which the main plot is subordinated to the deploying of gags. The use of comedy and the fragmented structure suggest a postmodern, ‘mini-narrative’ approach to the represented event. The film begins some weeks before the announcement of ‘the state of the war’. Molibden, who together with Ochódzki used to smuggle Polish art abroad, asks his old business partner to join Solidarity and temporarily relocate to Suwałki in the east of Poland where he can act as Molibden’s agent. However, a series of coincidences, including the police finding in Ochódzki’s car a large quantity of anti-government leaflets, make him look like a real Solidarity hero and force him into hiding. Molibden, on the other hand, now regarding his old associate

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Figure 4.2 Marian Opania as General Zambik in Rozmowy kontrolowane (Tapped Conversations, 1991), directed by Sylwester Che˛cin´ski

as a liability, decides to kill him, which forces Ochódzki to emigrate to Sweden, dressed as a woman. This absurd situation allows Tym and Che˛cin´ski to satirise both sides of the conflict under martial law: Solidarity and the military/political establishment. They show that both sides used various rituals and symbols to give meaning to their position and both sides ended up looking ridiculous due to the disparity between the seriousness they attached to their actions and the real significance of their deeds. For example, the Solidarity activists, as represented in Tapped Conversations, want martial law to be regarded as a real war because it would prove that they posed a serious threat to the political status quo and in this way guarantee them the position of martyrs in Polish history, as well as help their future political careers. Consequently, they thrive on all kinds of conspiracy, including pseudonyms and elaborate passwords, and religious and patriotic symbols,4 to underscore that they are true Poles, unlike the communists who are simply Russian stooges ( Janicka 1992; Guzek 2007). For the military establishment, martial law is a way to show their muscle to a public that had become too disrespectful of the authorities, as well as an opportunity to create new symbols. Ultimately, both sides dream about a greatness and

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heroism of which they were deprived during the times of ‘real socialism’ and both model themselves on the heroes of the Second World War (as later Kutz showed in Death as a Slice of Bread). The only exception is Ochódzki who stays completely apolitical, switching sides according to the situation. However, even he becomes treated as a hero against his will, as if to prove that heroism is a Polish fate. Che˛cin´ski contrasts the alleged seriousness of the ‘state of war’, as proclaimed by Solidarity and the government, with its everyday reality, symbolised by the censorship of telephone conversations. This censorship was announced by a recorded message saying ‘This conversation is being tapped,’ which is perhaps the best remembered sentence from this period. In Che˛cin´ski’s film, however, this announcement is made by a bored soldier sitting in a phone booth who from time to time interrupts its user by taking the receiver from his hands and saying repeatedly ‘This conversation is being tapped.’ Tapped Conversations proved an immediate success in Poland, amongst both ordinary cinema-goers and critics, as demonstrated by the award for best script at the Festival of Polish Films in Gdynia in 1992. The main reason for its popularity was, of course, its high entertainment value, contrasting in this respect with the films previously discussed. However, the film also felt convincing as a historical document, giving much detail ignored in the official renditions of martial law. Moreover, as Mariusz Guzek argues, the viewers saw in the film not only a reflection of recent Polish history, but a commentary on the country’s present. Ochódzki especially epitomised a large section of politicians who, after 1989, used their doubtful martial law martyrdom as a passport to parliament (Guzek 2007: 40–1). Furthermore, Che˛cin´ski’s film reflected the new mode of thinking about the Second World War, which came into existence largely thanks to martial law. As Maria Janion observes, this new thinking consists of unmasking and rejecting the pro-combatant rhetoric that dominated Polish discussions about the war post-1945 ( Janion 1998: 298). The idea of Zawrócony (The Turned Back, 1994) came to Kazimierz Kutz when he was working on Death as a Slice of Bread and due to problems with finishing this costly film had its premiere earlier. The film is set in the last days before the introduction of martial law and, in common with Tapped Conversations, casts in the main role a conformist, albeit more naïve than Ochódzki. Tomasz Siwek works in a power station in the industrial town of Tychy. He is not a front-line labourer sharing his daily experiences with other workers, but performs the solitary job of distributing bottles of soda water among the power-station employees.

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Being of peasant origin, he feels distanced from the Solidarity struggle, perceiving it as a ‘town affair’, and feels more attuned to the Party and the factory’s management who offer him some kudos, such as a holiday in Bulgaria, for loyalty and spying on fellow workers. Tomasz agrees to go as an informant to a pro-Solidarity demonstration, attended by his workmates. Yet, inspired by the religious songs sung by the demonstrators, he spontaneously joins in, is photographed by the secret police and ends up in jail. Although Tomasz’s offence appears to be rather minor, the tortures and humiliations he is subjected to are enormous. The most memorable episode in the film shows him running up and down the stairs at the police station, passing bored policemen, who observe his suffering while reading books. His torture ends only when Tomasz loses consciousness. The episode of the interrogation is photographed literally from pavement level, with the camera repeatedly showing a hole in Tomasz’s sock and his feet rubbing each other in an act of extreme nervousness and then pain. Such a device underscores the urge of Tomasz’s interrogators and, by extension, of the whole regime to crush their victims, to reduce them to a worm-like existence. After his experience in jail Tomasz refuses to cooperate with the regime and, when released, seeks justice for himself. When he visits his mother, he does not hide his anger at his brother who joined ZOMO, telling her that people like him were his tormentors. He also starts to work in a church as a sexton, which can be read as a sign of his switching sides to Solidarity, and beats up a local policeman who, when checking on him during his incarceration, inflicted additional torture on him. Whilst we can regard Andrzej Wajda as the spiritual father of films discussed in the previous section, Tapped Conversations and The Turned Back follow in the footsteps of Andrzej Munk. Munk, alongside Andrzej Wajda, was the main creator of the Polish School, the paradigm depicting the Second World War, but he favoured more ordinary characters, displayed a critical attitude towards Polish romantic tradition and used more episodic, fragmented narratives. The adventures of Ochódzki bring to mind the trials and tribulations of Dzidzius´ Górkiewicz in Munk’s Eroica (1957), a ‘Warsaw fixer’, who during the time of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, largely by chance, starts to act as a hero and eventually chooses to act heroically when he decides to leave his comfortable life in a villa on the outskirts of Warsaw and return to the inferno of the Uprising, most likely to meet his death. Some crucial scenes, such as Ochódzki accidentally throwing a bottle at a tank, are direct quotations from Eroica. The Turned Back, on the other hand, harks back to Munk’s

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Zezowate szcze˛s´cie (Bad Luck, 1960). Tomasz Siwek bears close psychological resemblance to Jan Piszczyk in Munk’s film, even their names have similar connotations of mediocrity and a desire to hide in the crowd (Piszczyk can be translated into ‘squeaking man’, Siwek into ‘grey man’). Both are opportunists with a desire to belong, who appear to pay a disproportionately heavy price for their lack of principles. However, unlike Piszczyk who fails to gain any political awareness, accepts his lot and is happiest when put in jail, Siwek comes across as ‘Piszczyk who learnt his lesson’ (Lubelski 1995: 12) and arrives at a distinct political position, marked by a hatred of communism. Hence, at the same time as showing that Polish history repeats itself, Che˛cin´ski and Kutz demonstrate that repetition is accompanied by change. His characters show better insight into their country’s situation and learn to act as individuals, rather than following the crowd or hiding from history. Although the films discussed in this section are made from the perspective of ordinary people, this is still a male perspective. Women in Tapped Conversations and The Turned Back are either absent or relegated to the position of supporting men in their pursuit of power or survival. As I previously mentioned, such positioning of women reflects the political reality in Poland of the 1980s, but also the fact that Polish filmmakers had no intention of challenging it; on the contrary, their films helped to normalise it.

Remembering martial law in Man of ..., Solidarity, Solidarity … and The Dark House My next object of investigation are films that deal not with martial law as such, but with its memory and representation. The first is Człowiek z … (Man of ..., 1993) by Konrad Szołajski. Although its production was practically concurrent with Death as a Slice of Bread, and even had its premiere earlier than Kutz’s film, it feels as if it was made many years later, when the memory of martial law had faded and needed to be unearthed by meticulous archival work, as Polish Stalinism was unearthed by Agnieszka in Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble. Szołajski parodies Man of Marble and Man of Iron to poke fun at the heroic reading of martial law and the whole Solidarity ethos. His heroine, Anna, a young film-school graduate, is mistaken by the military police for an anti-communist conspirator during martial law. She emigrates to the West and returns as a celebrity to a democratic Poland in 1989, to make a film about an anti-communist activist, Marek Mirkut. Not unlike Wajda’s Agnieszka, who tried to discover the past of Mateusz

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Birkut, Anna spends long hours in the archives, watching documentary footage about Mirkut. Thus she learns that he joined Solidarity not so much to fight against the communist oppressors, as to win the heart of a girl called Maria, who suffered from ‘neurosa eroica’: being unable to fall in love with anybody except a hero. The plot consists of many typical Solidarity activities, which were included in Wajda’s films and recycled by other directors, but none of the events in Szołajski’s film look as they did when immortalised in the Solidarity myth. For example, Marek’s involvement in the escape of a member of the opposition, Jan Okra˛glak, is an allusion to a true event of the escape of Solidarity member Jan Naroz˙niak from a Warsaw hospital. However, instead of freeing Jan Okra˛glak, Marek liberates a member of the SB. The message conveyed in Man of ... is almost identical to that proposed in Tapped Conversations: martial law was not harsh, in the 1980s many people joined the anti-communist opposition for reasons that were less than noble and later cynically used it as a passport to a career in politics and business. Although in terms of content Man of ... is similar to Tapped Conversations, it points to a motif not present in this or any earlier Polish film on martial law, namely the openness of the history of Solidarity and martial law to artistic and political reworking or manipulation. When watching with Anna the film history of Mirkut, we realise that the footage can be used to construct many different narratives – we can practically get any history we want. In this sense the film parallels the multitude of memories and histories of the Polish 1980s which have circulated from the time communism collapsed. However, unlike Polish politicians, who cannot accept that Solidarity and martial law have a number of valid historical renditions, reflecting different memories of its participants and witnesses, Szołajski regards this multitude of historical narratives as natural. The very history of Szołajski’s film also reflects the problem of searching for the ultimate truth about this period, as during its production it was expected that Man of ... would offer a revisionist version of the events of the 1980s (Miodek 1992). When, however, it turned out that its director offers instead a meta-vision which is sceptical about all circulating histories of Solidarity, the film was regarded as disappointing. Conflicting histories of Solidarity and martial law are also evinced in Solidarnos´c´, Solidarnos´c´ … (Solidarity, Solidarity … , 2005). It is a portmanteau film, made by 13 directors of different generations asked to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the strikes of 1980 which led to the legalisation of the Solidarity trade union in the same year. Through its very structure, the film acknowledges that there is no

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‘master narrative’ about Solidarity; its history is open to multiple interpretations, complementing and competing with each other for the viewers’ attention and sympathy. As Tadeusz Szyma admits, the subject is now too big and too complex to be tackled by one director (Szyma 2005: 54). Yet, it should be added that the film was initiated by Andrzej Wajda, who suggested its production to the Polish state television. By posing himself as the ‘father’ of this project and making an episode, which includes the stars of Man of Iron, Krystyna Janda and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, as well as the leader of the first Solidarity, Lech Wałe˛sa, Wajda tacitly suggests that his narrative is still privileged; if it is not a ‘master narrative’ then it at least remains a ‘father narrative’. Although the film’s topic is not martial law, the majority of directors, rather than limiting their episodes to the year 1980, decided to make films about a larger section of Solidarity’s history, up to the present day, of which martial law was a crucial chapter, signified by the inclusion of General Jaruzelski’s speech announcing martial law in sketches made by three directors. The majority of the études are set in the present and they take issue with the legacy of the events of 1980 and 1981. Paradoxically, older directors, such as Robert Glin´ski, Ryszard Bugajski, Jacek Bromski and Juliusz Machulski, tend to be dismissive about the fruits of the Solidarity revolution. In Bromski’s episode, a former anticommunist activist has an appointment with a bank official, with whom he pleads to give him credit, and it turns out that this official is a former member of the communist establishment and the prosecutor who sent this man to prison. Bromski suggests that whilst the time when people were incarcerated and tortured for their views has passed, the old relationships of power remain and the honest and idealistic people are still under the boot of the sly and cynical ones, which is a claim repeated many times in the films made in the whole of the exSoviet bloc (see Chapters 5 and 6). In Bugajski’s episode, which takes the form of a music video, the veteran of Polish rock, Ryszard Markowski, sings about Polish history, beginning in the year of 1968 and finishing in 2005. His narrative acknowledges the victory of Solidarity, but also the erosion of its ethos post-1989, especially the disappearance of solidarity from Polish politics. Robert Glin´ski, through the medium of Japanese tourists, takes us on a tour of the old shipyard in Gdan´sk where the famous strike began. The yard is now derelict, looking like a ghost town, a clear metaphor for the decline of the working class in Poland. In this and some other episodes, including one directed by Andrzej Wajda, where the director of Man of Iron interviews Lech Wałe˛sa, it is suggested that martial law was the last moment in Polish history when

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the working class mattered in Poland and, by extension, in the whole of Eastern Europe, because its importance relied on the Soviet Union’s demand for the products of heavy industry, provided by Poland and other ‘satellite’ countries. Once this demand diminished, the working class declined too, as the capitalist West does not want Polish coal or ships. A similar conclusion is evinced in the episode by Machulski, where a number of trendy scriptwriters, discussing what Solidarity’s victory gave Poland, after a long brainstorm come to the conclusion that the only tangible benefit is sushi, which they themselves eat when discussing their project. Although Poles did not eat sushi before 1989, after this date the Japanese food hardly found its way to the menu of the working classes. More positive representation of Solidarity and its times are offered in the films of some younger directors, such as Piotr Trzaskalski, Andrzej Jakimowski or Małgorzata Szumowska. Szumowska openly claims that thanks to Solidarity she now lives in a free country. By and large, however, a sense of disappointment, sadness and nostalgia dominates over joy in Solidarity, Solidarity … It partly results from the filmmaker’s looking back at what is regarded as the most noble chapter in Polish postwar history and which, consequently, has been the subject of mythologisation. The films give the impression that the noble chapter is definitely closed and those responsible for its end are not the old communists, but people who came from the Solidarity camp. Or, to put it differently, it is not martial law which killed Solidarity and solidarity, but the year 1989. This opinion is even suggested by Lech Wałe˛sa, who describes his generation as people able to fight and win, rather than reap the fruit of their victories. Typically for portmanteau films, Solidarity, Solidarity … is very heterogeneous in terms of subjects and styles. Whilst some authors construct short feature films with distinctive plots, others limit themselves to editing archive footage; whilst some focus on events from the years 1980 to 1981, others discuss the legacy of Solidarity in contemporary Poland; whilst some choose as their characters ordinary people, others favour well-known politicians. That said, certain tendencies can be identified. The most striking is the prevalence of personal narratives. Filmmakers such as Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda tell the viewers about how their filmmaking was related to the history of Solidarity. Zanussi mentions how the shooting of his film about Pope John Paul II, Da un paese lontano (Giovanni Paolo II), which took place in the winter of 1981, and required showing Russian soldiers and tanks in the centre of Kraków, caused political upheaval. This was because passers-by took the

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extras clad in Russian uniforms to be real Russian soldiers, intervening in Poland, which was a rational assumption because at the time Russian intervention in Poland was very likely. Andrzej Wajda invites Janda, Radziwiłowicz and Wałe˛sa, the actors and characters of Man of Iron, to reminisce with him on the 1980s and imagine the future of Solidarity. Małgorzata Szumowska talks about her father, an oppositional journalist. Other directors, such as Jan Jakub Kolski and Filip Bajon, include in their narratives characters named after them, respectively Janek and Filip. Of course, this prevalence of personal stories in the film points to the domination of (private) memory over (public) history. Solidarity, Solidarity … draws attention to the fluid character of both memory and history and the need to represent the past over and over again, juxtaposing, clashing and synthesising the testimonies of witnesses and those who have only mediated access to past events. In the last film to discuss in this section, Dom zły (The Dark House, 2009), directed by Wojciech Smarzowski, the work of memory is most foregrounded. The film is set in several planes of action, each marked by a distinctive cinematography. One is the year 1978, when a zootechnician (a profession strongly associated with the communist past, nowadays practically extinct), named Edward S´rodon´, on his way to his new job in the cooperative farm (PGR) stops at a farmhouse belonging to the Dziabas family in the remote area of the Bieszczady mountains (Figure 4.3). The second plot is set during a winter day in 1982, shortly after the imposition of martial law in Poland. A police investigation team is visiting a crime scene, trying to solve a multiple murder case from four years ago. The third temporal order is only indicated by the occasional changes in colour to black and white and the freezing of frame in the second narrative. These changes can be explained by the fact that one of the policemen makes a video-film during the investigation, to document the place of the crime. Yet, in my view, they also suggest that what we are watching is the reconstruction/recreation of the past made from today’s, post-martial-law perspective. Although Polish reviewers did not notice, or did not regard it as important to mention, this third perspective and plan of action, practically all of them pondered on the intertextual character of The Dark House. Jacek Szczerba of Gazeta Wyborcza even offered to the readers a ‘Short Guide’ to The Dark House, listing numerous antecedents to Smarzowski’s film, such as Fargo (1996) by the Coen Brothers, a play Niespodzianka (Surprise) by Karol Hubert Rostworowski, and its two television adaptations, as well as Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the paintings of Pieter Bruegel (Szczerba 2009). In addition, The Dark House also

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Figure 4.3 Marian Dzie˛dziel as Zdzisław Dziabas and Arkadiusz Jakubik as Edward S´rodon´ in Dom zły (The Dark House, 2009), directed by Wojciech Smarzowski

resembles Gruz 200 (Cargo 200, 2007) by Aleksey Balabanov and harks back to Smarzowski’s previous film, Wesele (The Wedding, 2004), also set in the Polish province and focusing on the primitivism, greed and barbarity of its inhabitants. Yet, even those critics who were most successful in cataloguing the items in Smarzowski’s ‘intertextual luggage’ admitted that his film works very well as a realistic story about Poland before and during martial law. In my view, the references to other works are mobilised to create rather economically a synthetic view of Poland in this period. To this portrayal I would like to turn now. Smarzowski shows us the events taking place in one house, belonging to the Dziabas family, where hideous crimes took place and were investigated with a delay. This house is a metonym of the Polish province which, in turn, stands for the whole country. The house is really ‘dark’ or, according to the original title, ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. Everything there turns out to be vicious: people who initially offer the stranger friendship and cooperation, treat him badly and destroy themselves in the process. Those who later are given the task of investigating the crime are unable to do so, because they are themselves bad: debilitated by alcoholism, adultery, greed, blackmail, incompetence. Practically everybody in this ‘house’ is scum. This aspect of Polish society of late socialism is also

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conveyed by the mise-en-scène, consisting of the objects which were literally thrown into a rubbish bin after the fall of communism: black and white television sets, Russian dolls, cheap vodka glasses and ashtrays, badly made clothes. This is Poland which one would like to forget. Yet, unlike the bulk of filmmakers who tackled the subject of martial law, Smarzowski does not ‘save’ anybody from this Polish late communist hell. Everybody, even the ‘good’ policeman, proves unable to restore a moral order in this world, because he is himself also compromised. In common with the bulk of Polish critics, I was also drawn into a game of identifying the works The Dark House adapted, but for me the principal hypotext was the book Neighbors by Jan Tomasz Gross (also referred to in Chapter 1). Gross describes how during the war the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne village killed their Jewish neighbours, mostly using sharp weapons and fire, and how this hideous crime was buried in court acts and ‘forgotten’ after the war. I am writing ‘forgotten’ in inverted commas because Gross’s book demonstrates that in fact it was well remembered by the local inhabitants and that sufficient documents existed to prove that a genocide took place and Poles were responsible for it. Smarzowski, like Gross, offers us an investigation into the ‘first crime’ of killing one’s neighbours, as demonstrated by the gesture of inviting them to one’s home. Also, like Gross, he shows us the second crime, of investigating the crime with a significant delay and against all rules of good legal and police practice. Furthermore, not unlike Gross, but with a deeper insight, in my opinion, he attempts to explain why the investigation was compromised. One important reason, although never spelt out in the film, is martial law, which is presented by Smarzowski as the state of war of virtually everybody with everybody. He implies that this war, despite being invisible or precisely because being invisible, demoralised the whole population, or added to this demoralisation, which began much earlier, even managed to change a good policeman into a bad one. Both authors create a horror of the Polish province, using the same setting and props: the wooden barns, which easily catch fire, the lakes or rivers, into which people throw their neighbours or co-workers ‘for fun’, the axes, pitchforks and dogs used for hurting and killing. Both works underscore repetition. Gross refers to earlier killings and pogroms of Jews, committed by Poles; Smarzowski shows several incidents of arson, beginning with the setting alight of a haystack, most likely by S´rodon´ when he was a child. There are also, of course, differences in the representation of this despicable aspect of Poland. Gross constructs a clear dichotomy: pitting primitive and murderous Poles against saint-like Jews, as conveyed by a story of an old

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Jewish woman repaying a Polish gift of a small amount of potato peel with a whole gallon of milk (Gross 2001: 37). Smarzowski does not spare anybody: in his film every Pole is, ultimately, worth only scorn.5 Although both works are accomplished pieces in their own genres, as testified by the attention attracted to them, there is something which troubles me in both works, namely the fact that they are written from the perspective of moral superiority. In Neighbors this perspective is acknowledged by the author who does not hide his distaste for Poland and Poles; in The Dark House by making us aware of the camera, shooting from a distance, through the door, or from above, as in the final scene. Both Gross and Smarzowski ‘write’ about the province from what can be described as a metropolitan perspective. Yet, again, there is a difference between them. Gross renders his perspective as universal and argues that he discovered the truth. Smarzowski, by using as an epitaph to his film the words ‘Truth? There is no such thing,’ admits that there are no objective and universal truths, only discourses. As I have already indicated, this is also a position which I adopt in this book.

Martial law seen from abroad in Moonlighting, Success Is the Best Revenge and Passion Martial law was also a motif of a number of films which can, broadly speaking, be described as foreign. The majority of them, such as Moonlighting (1982) and Success Is the Best Revenge (1984) by Jerzy Skolimowski and To Kill a Priest (1988) by Agnieszka Holland, were made by Polish émigré directors with the financial assistance of foreign companies; others, such as Passion (1982) by Jean-Luc Godard and Strajk – Die Heldin von Danzig (Strike, 2006) by Volker Schlöndorff, were made by foreign directors. I want to discuss Moonlighting, Success Is the Best Revenge and Passion because these films belong to the earliest renditions of martial law on film and their directors were not bound by the constraints of political censorship in the same way Polish directors were. It could thus be expected that they had an immediacy and honesty their Polish counterparts could not afford. On the other hand, they were made from a distance of many miles from the actual events and from the position of an outsider, who has only a partial contextual knowledge of the events taking place in Poland. Moonlighting presents a story of a group of Polish workers, led by Nowak (Jeremy Irons), who during the end of November 1981 travel to London to renovate the house of Nowak’s mysterious Polish boss – the Boss (Figure 4.4). In order to fulfil their assignment they have to live in appalling conditions, in the very house which they are meant to

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Figure 4.4 Hard work in Moonlighting (1982), directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

renovate, and work extremely hard to save for their families, as well as suffer isolation, due to not knowing the language. Being unable to manage the financial resources allocated to him by the Boss, Nowak is forced to drastically limit their needs and their contacts with the outside world. He changes the time on the workmen’s watches so they think they have slept more than they actually did, and steals food from a local supermarket, as well as clothes and cosmetics from department stores, so that they do not need to spend any money on gifts for their families. During their stay martial law is announced, about which, however, only Nowak learns thanks to his good command of English and his mobility, which allows him to see and read the posters about demonstrations in support of Solidarity. Concerned that if his subordinates learn about the political situation at home they would demand to be sent back to Poland immediately or at least would refuse to work properly and, consequently, disgrace Nowak in the eyes of the Boss, he decides to hide from them his knowledge. In order to fulfil his plan, Nowak refuses to explain to the men why the telephone in the phone booth where they were meant to receive a weekly call from their wives has

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stopped ringing, reads and then burns letters from their families, and goes to great lengths to conceal any information about Poland available in the British media. At the same time, he is afraid that his censorship activities will be revealed and eventually that the workers will punish him for his actions. Indeed it does happen when the renovation of the house is completed and he feels compelled to tell them about martial law. The workers react by severely beating Nowak on their way to the airport, which they are forced to do on foot, having no money left for a tube fare. By showing the lives of Poles in London at a time when they have ‘war’ at home to be more miserable than if they were there during a time of peace, Skolimowski implies that capitalism offers no help to Poles oppressed by their system. In a moment of crisis, they have to count only on themselves. Skolimowski’s view of capitalism here is more cynical than that espoused by the majority of Poles at the time, who expected moral and political support from the West. The methods Nowak uses in the relationship with his supervisees replicate the methods Polish authorities applied in their dealings with Polish society during the same period. They both attempted to lock those over whom they possessed power in their ‘home’ (which was not really theirs), deprive them of any agency, restrict their access to information and cheat them. They also share justifications for their action, trying to convince themselves that by applying all these drastic measures they in fact act in the best interest of the workers, as well as proving themselves to be worthy of working for their ‘Boss’: the Boss who equals the Soviet Union. The uneasiness and the sense of guilt accompanying Nowak’s actions mirror the half-heartedness with which martial law restrictions were implemented by WRON. Hence, Moonlighting can be interpreted as a parable about martial law as experienced in Poland or, more precisely, the psychology of the top communist politicians. The ending of the film also foretells what followed martial law, namely the punishment of some minor figures who, like Nowak, implemented the orders of their Bosses, while the Bosses themselves went unpunished and enjoyed prosperity (see Chapter 6). If we regard Moonlighting as pertaining to the situation in Poland, then it is worth looking at the way it represents work. It should be mentioned that the issues around work played an important role in the discourse on martial law. The communist authorities claimed that martial law was caused by the country’s despicable economic situation, caused by continuous strikes and Solidarity’s unrealistic demands on the government. In the official propaganda, martial law was presented as the time when production was meant to rise to pre-Solidarity levels and work ethics

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were to be restored. In everyday life however, the opposite phenomena could be observed: further collapse of industrial production, deepening of economic problems and the collapse of work ethics. The only type of economic activity which had increased was illegal, most importantly the selling of goods in short supply at a high profit. In Skolimowski’s film the Polish émigré workers also work illegally and the ways Nowak acquires all the goods the workers need for their physical survival, by stealing, buying stolen goods or buying the cheapest products, pretending that they cost more than in actuality, can be regarded as an analogy of the black economy thriving in Poland at the time. The period of martial law also constitutes the last stage of the socialist mode of work, marked by privileging heavy industry and large-scale production according to Fordist principles over other types of work, both in the sense of building and maintaining large factories at the expense of smaller establishments and in the sense of edifying labourers employed in such Fordist factories, especially miners, steelworkers and shipbuilders. After the end of martial law a shift could be observed in Poland, from Fordism to post-Fordism, both in reality and in the official discourses on work. The workers employed in heavy industry constituted the first and most numerous victims of the rationalisation of the Polish economy, losing jobs in hundreds of thousands, as well as their numerous privileges granted to them by socialism. Equally, the heroic figure of a miner or shipbuilder was pushed off the pedestal, to make space for the new heroes: managers and entrepreneurs. In not much time, manual labour in Poland, as well as in other countries of the ex-Eastern bloc, as Slavoj Žižek observes, had become ‘the site of obscene indecency to be concealed from the public eye’ (Žižek 2001: 133). Such undermining of the importance and dignity of manual work takes place in Moonlighting. Nowak’s ‘brigade’, working according to the rules: ‘no strikes, limited freedom of movement for the work force, low wages’ (ibid.: 134), became a model of the organisation of work in Poland in the years to come, as well as of the position of working Poles abroad. In this sense Moonlighting foretells Poland’s late-capitalist, postcommunist future. It can thus be regarded as a kind of prequel to Andrzej Wajda’s episode Solidarity, Solidarity …, as discussed earlier. Skolimowski’s film is also prophetic in the sense of drawing attention to the physical distance between the places where, on the one hand, manual labour is performed and, on the other, where it is planned, controlled and taken advantage of. He also shows that, paradoxically, the physical distance between the exploited worker and the exploiting capitalist works for the advantage of the latter, because it frees him from the

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involvement in the production and any moral or aesthetic displeasure such involvement might bring him. Furthermore, the figure of Nowak’s Polish Boss who possesses a house in London and, most likely, is a Party official, can be regarded as typical of the Polish nomenklatura who shortly after the end of martial law agreed to transfer part of their political power for the positions allowing them to amass wealth. In a more fundamental way, the film argues against capitalism as an antidote to socialism because neither ‘real socialism’ nor capitalism is interested in promoting workers’ welfare and social position. Metaphoric interpretation does not exclude reading Moonlighting realistically, as a story of Polish illegal workers stranded abroad, when their country is going through a politically turbulent period. Hence, the question which arises is whether martial law has, in the opinion of Skolimowski, any impact on the men’s situation. His answer is negative. Although London in Moonlighting is full of posters proclaiming the solidarity of English people with Poles suffering as a result of the military coup, the real British people in contact with real Poles come across as hypocritical and bigoted. We can deduce that the British under Thatcher’s government quickly get bored by the plight of Poles and even reveal impatience with the uninvited guests. This idea is thrown into relief by the Boss’s neighbours’ growing hostility towards the men who are renovating his house. In the end they call them ‘communists’ and demand that they leave England immediately. Such a treatment of a working Pole foreshadows the hostility towards the ‘Polish plumber’ (French plombier polonais), who became a symbol of French and Western Europe’s resistance towards the cheap workforce coming from Eastern Europe and Poland especially after this country joined the European Union in 2005. It feels thus that whatever country the Polish people choose, they will face the same set of problems: economic deprivation, helplessness and isolation. Through painting such a bleak picture of the Polish fate, Skolimowski subscribes to the dominant discourse on Polish history, constructed during the period of Romanticism. However, the director strips his characters of any sense of tragedy; they come across as a nameless and passive herd, whose desires are reduced to animal needs. The Pole, the honourable loser, in Skolimowski’s film changes into a serf or even a slave, reminiscent of the image of the Pole that prevails in nineteenth-century Russian literature. This unsentimental portrayal of foreigners’ attitudes to Polish emigrants during this period poignantly contrasts with that offered by filmmakers tackling Polish migration from a Polish perspective, most importantly in Ostatni prom (The Last Ferry, 1989) by Waldemar Krzystek and 300 mil do nieba (300 Miles to Heaven, 1989) by Maciej Dejczer, where

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the representatives of the host countries show Polish emigrants compassion and offer them practical help. This difference in approach can be attributed to the ‘inside’ knowledge Skolimowski enjoyed when making his film, resulting from his living in London during this period and even befriending some of the new Polish emigrants, such as Eugeniusz Haczkiewicz, who played one of the workers in Moonlighting. Skolimowski’s next film about martial law, Success Is the Best Revenge, casts as the main character Alex Rodak (Michael York), a Polish theatre director, who worked extensively abroad and set up home in London. However, for two years he lived away from his wife and sons because he could not leave military-ruled Poland. He was only reunited with them when he was allowed to travel to France to receive the Légion d’honneur. Alex’s ambition is to stage an avant-garde play about Polish martial law. He regards this project as his moral obligation, feeling that he has to undertake on foreign soil what his fellow artists living in Poland are forbidden to do by censorship. In this sense Rodak is the alter ego of Jerzy Skolimowski, who was always resolutely anti-communist and during martial law took part in pro-Solidarity demonstrations and helped fellow Poles stranded in London. Although Rodak’s project can be seen as very idealistic, bringing it to fruition forces him to abandon basic moral principles, including entering into shabby deals with a rich pornographer, probably of Polish Jewish roots, Dino Montecurva (‘kurwa’ is Polish for whore). It also drives a wedge between him and other Poles depicted in the film, including those closest to him: his wife and son, Adam. Rodak’s Polish wife, Alicja, is weary of Alex’s theatrical project which will make her whole family enemies of the Polish authorities and bar them from returning to their country. Rodak, on the other hand, is exasperated by his wife’s provinciality and narrow-mindedness. He interacts even more reluctantly with his other fellow countrymen, mostly working illegally in London, performing various poorly paid jobs, in catering or on construction sites. He gets in contact with them, plays football with them, appeals to their patriotism, but only to use them as extras in his show which should come across as their spontaneous performance. The exploitation of the working masses by their leaders during martial law, as evinced by Skolimowski, points to the way the Solidarity leaders were perceived by many working-class people in the period following the end of martial law and the fall of communism. Equally, the degradation of workers, presented by Skolimowski, foreshadows the loss of status of physical labour in the postcommunist era, which I discussed in the previous section of this chapter. Yet, rather than denouncing this practice, Skolimowski

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shares Rodak’s contemptuous attitude to the ordinary Polish workers. Not unlike in Moonlighting, they are depicted as a materially and culturally impoverished herd, easily excited and manipulated. The only member of this crowd whom Skolimowski endows with an individual identity, the leader of the Polish extras, Mr Gienio, is reduced to an animal-like existence. He is practically homeless, camping in the back of a restaurant, deprived of basic facilities and privacy. Skolimowski does not attempt to investigate the roots of his situation; like Rodak, he uses him only as a vehicle to fulfil his protagonist’s project. Rodak’s play, which has the same title as Skolimowski’s film, Success Is the Best Revenge, accentuating Skolimowski’s identification with Rodak, synthesises elements of different media and periods, and different discursive regimes, as well as multiplying the locations and breaking down the boundaries between stage and audience, performers and spectators, art and life. The scenes from Polish streets during martial law are re-enacted by the Polish extras. They show encounters between police and workers, but it is also possible that rather than acting, the emigrants, enraged by not being paid for their ‘spontaneous’ performance, really do fight with each other. The live performance of actors and extras is accompanied by showing a multiple-screen projection of a football match between Poland and England, followed by the voice of the speaker (possibly Rodak). The speaker comments on Polish history, while presenting pictures of events from the Yalta conference by Feliks Topolski, part of Topolski’s Chronicle. This multimedia and multi-layered performance is viewed by spectators driven in buses, as if they were tourists, observing the bloody spectacle from a safe distance. The commentary to these shows suggests that Rodak’s project concerns not only martial law but also, in a wider sense, the Western attitude to the Polish plight. From this perspective, Western indifference to Polish martial law is but the last stage of a perpetual lack of interest in Polish affairs. There is a striking similarity between Rodak’s Success Is the Best Revenge and the theatrical experiments of Allan Kaprow, the pioneer of performance art. However, unlike Kaprow’s performances, Rodak’s show is a failure. The main reason seems to be the obsolescence of Rodak’s project. While Kaprow’s performances felt fresh in the 1950s, by the mid-1980s the form employed in Success Is the Best Revenge comes across as outdated. The elements Rodak uses in his spectacle (a coffin covered with black and red flowers, candles, a figure of the Virgin Mary), borrowed, so to speak, from the Polish romantic imagination, were so often used during martial law that they became perceived as clichéd and treated with mistrust by the public (Klejsa 2006: 155). However, Rodak’s failure

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should not be equated with Skolimowski’s failure because it is likely that the director aimed at achieving the impossible task of presenting Polish martial law to foreign audiences and, perhaps, even ridiculing Polishstyle patriotic art. If this was the case, he succeeded. Hence, it is only natural that the film follows the logic of the Deleuzian time-image. The story of Alex joining his family in London and staging a play is intertwined with the plot of his son Adam’s preparation for leaving for Poland. Paradoxically, Alex is the main reason for his son’s departure. We can assume that when Alex was in Poland, to his family he stood for the ‘real Poland’. His coming to London revealed that his relationship with Poland was less genuine, or it became so when he used martial law as an ‘artistic project’ or, perhaps, even as a tool to fulfil his ambition to become some kind of national poet-prophet, in the vein of Adam Mickiewicz.6 In this sense, Adam’s criticism of his father foreshadows criticisms voiced after the collapse of communism in Poland towards many Solidarity activists and ‘fake’ activists, who used their apparent martyrdom during martial law as a means to careers in politics, business and even the arts. Success Is the Best Revenge can be regarded as an Oedipal story, in which father and son compete not for their real mother but for their motherland, Poland. This ‘mother’, as Maria Janion argues, for Polish nineteenth-century romantics, of whom Alex and Adam are successors, constituted the highest value, and it was not a gentle and merciful goddess but rather a ruthless and demonic entity that did not allow a man to have any other objects of affection ( Janion 1989: 10). Alex tries to recreate or, as Combs puts it, ‘reimagine Poland on foreign soil’ (Combs 1984: 390). Adam does not believe it is possible and regards his father’s love of Poland as fake, and tries to convince himself, his father and the viewers that he will be Poland’s ‘true lover’. In his last inner monologue he says: ‘No more substitutes. I want real enemies. I want to play for Poland and help her win.’ Perhaps the Rodaks are the last contemporary characters in the films made by a Polish director who adulate their country so much. Adam’s returning to Poland is also romantic in the sense of being merely a theatrical gesture; indeed as theatrical, misplaced and ineffectual as his father’s staging of the performance. Its artificiality is encapsulated by Adam painting his face and hair red on the plane to Poland, so that he looks like a British punk rather than an ordinary young Pole in the 1980s. Not surprisingly, his rebellious appearance awakens suspicion in the border guard who demands that he relinquish his passport and wash his face, cutting short Adam’s attempt to show

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his motherland his new face. Judging from this episode, Adam would face serious problems trying to serve Poland or even simply getting used to the new environment. My last example is Passion by Jean-Luc Godard, which casts as the main character a Polish director who travels to Switzerland from Poland under martial law. The fact that Godard referred to this event is not surprising in the light of his long-term interests and views. First, it is Godard’s habit to mention war in his films; in this respect Passion can be situated somewhere between Le petit soldat (1960), where he refers to the Algerian war, and Notre musique (2004), which is largely about the Balkan and Palestinian–Israeli conflicts. Second, Godard always showed interest in resistance to the dominant political system, be it capitalism or socialism. The early success of the Solidarity movement was proof that such resistance is possible. This resistance was immortalised in two films by Andrzej Wajda, the previously mentioned Man of Marble and Man of Iron, in which the main parts of Mateusz Birkut and Maciek Tomczyk were played by Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, whom Godard subsequently cast in Passion. As I previously mentioned, Radziwiłowicz was so strongly identified with these roles that he became one of the symbols of Solidarity along with its real leaders. I suggest that in Passion Godard wanted to check what happens to such a symbol when it is dislocated to foreign soil and to a different type of cinema. Radziwiłowicz is not the only ‘transplanted symbol’ in Godard’s film; another is Hanna Schygulla, the star of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who in Passion also, in a sense, repeats her old roles in Fassbinder’s films (MacBean 1984: 19). In Passion, Radziwiłowicz, not unlike Michael York in Success Is the Best Revenge, and endowed with his real name Jerzy, also plays a Polish artist struggling with an impossible project. His project consists of making a film, called Passion, of tableaux vivants of paintings by, among others, El Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt, Delacroix and Goya. Although, of course, none of these paintings refer to Polish martial law and the vast majority of them represent events from earlier centuries, many of them depict the aggression of military forces on the civilian population, often in colonies. In this sense, there is an analogy between Jerzy’s film and the situation in Poland, as well as between Jerzy’s film and Alex Rodak’s play. Both artists attempt to historicise and universalise the situation taking place in their country. Also, in common with Rodak, Jerzy is over-budget, struggling with the limitations of technology (despite working in the best-equipped studio in Europe), in conflict with his producers and collaborators, and lacking direction. The viewer is not even certain if he is willing to finish his film at all. He returns to Poland

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without completing his assignment. The fact that each of these Polish artists ultimately fails might suggest that martial law was too parochial or lacking in drama to be inscribed in History with a capital H. Yet unlike Skolimowski’s film, Passion does not show martial law directly, either as a ‘reality’ or as theme of artistic representation. Not surprisingly, virtually all the critics who wrote about this film played down or ignored its references to martial law. Fredric Jameson even claimed that Godard’s invocation of Solidarity is ‘vacuous’ ( Jameson 1992: 177). However, both the very scarcity of such direct references and the critics’ inability to decipher what I regard as indirect references are meaningful, as they point to the lack of any deeper understanding or interest of Western people in the situation of the Poles. This lack of interest is also illuminated in the dialogues about Poland which Jerzy conducts with his collaborators. For example, when his script-girl tells him that ‘here we care a lot about what happens in Poland’, he dismisses her clichéd remark by saying that ‘no country cares about what happens in another country’. It appears that this conviction is the main reason why he does not want to engage in talks which will have no other consequence than to comfort and flatter some indifferent people by pretending that he believes that they care about Poland. It is also plausible to assume that the situation back in Poland plays a part in his difficulty in finishing the film as it seems that while shooting Passion he is mentally elsewhere: in Poland, as conveyed by his sullen posture and suddenly switching from French to Polish. The fact that Jerzy comes from a country enduring a ‘state of war’ furnishes him with a romanticism which other characters are lacking, a trait commented on sarcastically by Michel Boulard, the owner of a factory neighbouring the studio, where Jerzy’s Passion is shot. This makes him especially attractive to women, of which Jerzy takes full advantage, becoming erotically involved with three women, whilst also having a wife in Poland. In common with Alex in Success Is the Best Revenge, Jerzy has to employ physical labourers to work as extras in his films and encounters people working in Mr Boulard’s factory. Initially, he also treats them with indifference, even harshness, preoccupied with his lofty ideas. Stuart Hall describes Jerzy as a ‘first-class slob’ (Hall 1992a: 49). However, whilst Skolimowski shares Rodak’s perception of the poor emigrants and workingclass people at large as a faceless and potentially dangerous mob, who can only be feared or pitied, never admired, Godard regards them as individuals possessing agency, and forces Jerzy to pay attention to their plight. The vehicle of Jerzy’s connection or, one can say, reconnection with the working classes is Isabelle, a shopfloor worker recently made

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Figure 4.5 Isabelle Huppert as Isabelle and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz as Jerzy in Passion (1982), directed by Jean-Luc Godard

redundant by Boulard, in whose factory she was employed (Figure 4.5). She stops Jerzy’s car, asking him to join the meeting of people from the factory. Unlike Mr Edzio, the main representative of the working class in Skolimowski’s film, who appears devoid of any consciousness, class or otherwise, Isabelle, played by the charismatic Isabelle Huppert, despite her stutter (which might signify the difficulty working-class people have to express themselves), is able to talk about her condition and fight for her rights. She comes across as a complex and spiritual person, a consequence of her being modelled on Simone Weil, who in the 1930s gave up a job teaching philosophy in order to work in the Renault factories of Billancourt, before travelling to Spain to fight in the Civil War (Morrey 2005: 142). Gradually Jerzy enters into a close relationship with her, which includes erotic liaisons. The discussions, at the factory and in her home, in which Isabelle participates, and which concern such issues as how much one should earn to live in dignity and why working in a factory is unsatisfactory, in a sense mirror the discussions of Polish workers that led to the Solidarity revolution and were echoed in the 1980s. They also foretell the problems Polish working-class people experienced following the end of

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martial law and the fall of communism in Poland. However, as I argued in the earlier parts of this chapter, these discussions are absent in Polish films about martial law. Hence, in a sense, Passion makes the connection between martial law and the worldwide struggle of the working classes for a better life,7 moreover one in which women play a central role. For this reason I regard it as much more than a footnote about martial law; indeed, as an important film on this topic. In the end Jerzy returns to Poland, together with the three women with whom he was romantically involved. Their trip might be regarded as a sign that for people from the West Poland under martial law is a site where they can play out their heroic and romantic fantasies and find there a passion and authenticity which are lacking in their current lives. For Isabelle, Poland appears to be what Spain during the Civil War was for Simone Weil. Of course, we do not know what will happen to them when they arrive in Poland, as with his typical humility Godard never represents foreign cultures, only takes issue with his inability to represent them.8 Ultimately, both Skolimowski and Godard show that martial law and, perhaps by extension, any historical event taking place in a different country cannot be adequately represented from outside. However, this inability is also worth exploring, as it offers insights which films made from the inside are missing.

Conclusions Despite martial law belonging to the relatively recent history of Poland, one can identify a surprising variety of modes of representing this event: from solemn, neo-socialist realistic films, through equally solemn films harking back to the tradition of the Polish School, to postmodern comedies. Taken together, these films reflect the main paradigms of the history of Polish postwar cinema. At the same time, this event did not inspire any new movement or style. I will explain this partly by the very character of the event, lacking in drama, characteristic of the Second World War or even Polish Stalinism, and being somewhat liminal, neither fully belonging to the history of communist Poland nor to Polish postcommunism. With this is connected the relatively minor role martial law played in shaping the identity of Polish directors. For the older ones, it was just one example of the many ways in which the communist authorities tried to crush the introduction of democracy in Poland. The younger ones, who started making films after 1989, preferred to take issue with changes following the collapse of communism and typically distanced themselves from the last chapter in the history

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of People’s Poland. Another symptomatic feature of films about martial law is the foregrounding of the men’s role in the events at the expense of women. In the films discussed women are silenced and situated at the margins of history. Such a representation of the division of labour, both in pro-communist and anti-communist films, largely reflects the misogynist attitudes to women that prevailed in official discourses after 1989. It is also worth noting that martial law, as represented in Polish films, unlike the victory of Solidarity of August 1980, does not occupy any specific site of memory. The settings of the films vary: from the seaside to Silesia in the south of Poland, from Warsaw to the east of Poland, and abroad. Having said that, I shall add that the films convey the sense that martial law most affected provincial Poland or, conversely, due to it Poland became more provincial and bleak than ever before. On the other hand, there is a ‘site’ with which martial law is strongly associated – that of the television screen. I found over ten examples of quoting the famous General Jaruzelski speech in Polish films. This obsessive returning to his speech signifies the distance, the lack of involvement, an average Pole felt towards the events of the years 1981–84. It also foreshadows the changes taking place after the fall of communism, namely the decline of mass movements, including that of Solidarity. Films about martial law made abroad complement the cinematic picture of this event. Not only do they show how martial law was seen in other European countries, but problematise the role of the working classes in this event, which can be regarded as the last episode in Polish history in which workers were regarded as a privileged class.

5 Goodbye Lenin or Not: Cinematic Representations of the End of Communism

In Specters of Marx Jacques Derrida maintains: ‘Communism was essentially distinguished from other labour movements by its international character. No organised political movement in the history of humanity had yet presented itself as geo-political, thereby inaugurating the space that is now ours and that today is reaching its limits, the limits of the earth and the limits of the political’ (Derrida 1994: 38). Derrida thus points to two reasons why it is essential to discuss the end of communism in this book: it was an important event and it had a global dimension. This view is echoed in numerous works about contemporary history or the end of communism specifically. A sign of it is the frequent use of the term ‘break’ and ‘revolution’ in this context. Piotr Sztompka claims: ‘The year 1989 was a major cultural and civilizational break, a beginning of the reconstruction of the deepest cultural tissue as well as civilizational surface of society’ (Sztompka 1996: 120). Michael Kennedy begins his book Cultural Formations of Postcommunism with the words: ‘The world was radically transformed in 1989, much as it was in 1789 or 1848. Political and economic systems and everyday lives were radically changed’ (Kennedy 2002: 1). Another term which appears in the discourses on the transition to postcommunism is that of ‘return’ or even ‘rebirth’ (for example Soltan 2000). The new system embraced by the people of Russia and Eastern Europe was also returning, in a sense, to what was before communism, which often required refreshing the old traditions or creating new ones which were meant to legitimise this metaphorical return. In my native Poland, it led to introducing several new state holidays to commemorate important anniversaries, including the winning of battles with its neighbours. Finally, the end of communism meant almost everywhere a need to close various gaps between the old socialist East and capitalist West: gaps in technology, productivity, 174

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capital, environment, motivation, legislation and democracy, to name just a few (Ševic´ and Wright 1997: 20–1). The emphasis on break, returning to the old, noble times of independence and prosperity and catching up with those ahead of it, constitute common features of postcolonial discourse. Indeed, postcolonial theory proved to be a useful tool to research the new/old cultures emerging from what was regarded as communist rubble (see, for example, Cooke 2005; Barrington 2006; Kelertas 2006) and I will apply it in the course of my analysis. Conversely, the end of communism drew attention to the exclusion of former Soviet satellites from postcolonial studies, resulting from, among other reasons, an unwillingness of left-leaning Western academics to confront the realities of living under the Soviet regime in places such as Estonia or Latvia (Chioni Moore 2001). The end of communism also meant different things to different nations and people. Even its date is different for Hungary on the one hand and Estonia on the other. In the first case the creation of a democratic state took place in 1989; in the second it was in 1991. Thus, there were many real and symbolic ends of communism even from the perspective of History with a capital H. There were even more ends of communism for those who experienced it first-hand. Each witness of the end of communism has his own vision of this event, which might concur or disagree with the version of his neighbour and those of professional historians. Some of these ends have not finished yet; communism is still falling, haunting politicians and historians, as suggested by Derrida. Unlike memories of the Second World War, which are fast disappearing due to the dying out of the generation which participated in it, the memories of the end of communism are relatively fresh; they belong to communicative memory. Accordingly, one might expect that this subject will be widely reflected in European cinema, especially in its Eastern part. Yet, the number of films devoted to this topic and their status in national and international cinema vary greatly across the old Soviet bloc. It is most widely represented in Germany, where there is a whole wave of ‘end of communism’ films, some of which gained international recognition, shaping Europe-wide perceptions about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is also well represented, especially in the light of the overall low film production, in the Baltic states. By contrast, Polish filmmakers, despite the fact that the postcommunist ‘revolution’ started off in their country, made no films devoted specifically to this event. There, the end of communism is overshadowed by films about the first Solidarity and martial law, both events preceding by almost a decade the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union

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(see Chapter 4). Although the end of communism is also an event in Western history, only West German directors took notice of it; French, Italian, Spanish and British directors practically ignored it.1 That said, Western cinema often addresses (typically negative, in its view) consequences of the end of communism, such as increase in emigration, in films such as Lilja 4-ever (2002) by Lukas Moodysson or Import/Export (2007) by Ulrich Seidl. In this chapter I will focus on the countries in which the end of communism made the greatest impact on cinema: the Baltic states, Germany and Romania, focusing on one film from each country: Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories, 1992) by Peeter Urbla and dedicated to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia; German Good Bye Lenin! (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker; and Romanian A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest, 2006), directed by Corneliu Porumboiu. I chose these films because of their significant national and international recognition and their focus on remembering the fall of communism (and, by extension, communism before it collapsed), rather that on the ‘unmediated’ event. Inevitably, this chapter will also be devoted to what happened afterwards: how the fall of the communist regimes affected the situation and identity of people who were previously living under communism and, conversely, how the years which passed influenced their perception of this change. These films were made in different moments of the (still short) history of postcommunism and belong to different genres. Baltic Love Stories is practically concurrent with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and is a melodrama, Good Bye Lenin! and 12:08 East of Bucharest are made from a perspective of over a decade and are comedies. The very fact that at the beginning of postcommunism we find drama, and later comedy, is meaningful, as it echoes the famous saying of Marx, who in it himself repeated and corrected Hegel: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce’ (Marx 1973: 146). One task in this chapter is to find out whether postcommunism is seen in these films in Marx’s terms.

The burden of the past in Baltic Love Stories Baltic Love Stories is directed by an Estonian filmmaker, Peeter Urbla, but it is a Finnish–Estonian co-production. This fact partly explains why it deals with the situation in all three Baltic countries and offers a nonnationalistic approach to the regaining of independence by Estonia,

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Latvia and Lithuania and the thorny issue of the relationship between the indigenous population and the Russians. The very title of this film suggests a change in the dominant narrative in the Baltic region: from one centred on public life in Soviet times, to that focused on private existence after the fall of communism. Yet, Urbla’s objective is not to represent his love stories as divorced from a larger socio-political context, but to demonstrate how politics and history affect the most intimate spheres of human life. Urbla revealed a deep preoccupation in the intertwining of the personal and the political in arguably his best film, Ma ei ole turist, ma elan siin (I’m Not a Tourist, I Live Here, 1988). This film, set in Tallinn in the late 1980s, concentrates on the engagements, affairs and soul-searches of two middle-aged Estonian men: an illegal estate agent of flat exchanges and a former stage actor. As Eva Näripea argues, these characters are defined by a fundamental sense of homelessness, a longing for belonging and psychological security (Näripea 2003). Having been appropriately diagnosed as an artistic analysis of a moment, the film is replete with numerous attributes of the era, including those relating to the national liberation movement (national Estonian flags, the picket of students protesting against phosphorite mines etc.). Despite the abundance of national attributes, Tourist is permeated with considerable difficulties in narrating the nation-space, which finds its clearest expression in the fact that the film’s protagonists, the natives of Tallinn, as well as the city itself, are haunted by a constant sense of dislocation and drifting, dissolving the fixed fabric of national narrative into small and fragmented, complicated and unstable threads of personal experiences, intimate meditations, multiple and shifting identities, providing no clear conclusions (Näripea 2010b). A similar description also suits Baltic Love Stories. The film attempts to capture the specific moment when the Soviet Union disintegrated, paving the way for the Baltic republics to become independent states. Its narrative is even more complicated than I’m Not a Tourist, I Live Here, as it involves characters representing many nationalities and walks of life. The film consists of three parts, set in 1991 in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in this order, marking their regaining of independence in that year and other momentous events in the Soviet Union. Each story was shot and takes place in a different season: Estonia in spring, Latvia in summer and Lithuania in autumn. The Estonian part was made when the Soviet Union was still in existence; the Latvian episode two months before the putsch in Moscow; and, finally, the Lithuanian one was finished when all the Baltic countries had achieved their independence.

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The connection between the film’s narrative and the political context of its making was so strong that each episode developed in parallel or predicted something which happened only days or weeks later and, according to the director, people who observed the filming of Baltic Love Stories took it for reality.2 In two of the three Baltic Love Stories the relationship between the Baltic country and Russia is of utmost importance. Not surprisingly, as for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the end of communism meant primarily the change of this relationship. Almost from one day to another, the Russians, from being their occupiers, became their second-class citizens and an object of policies which to some extent attempted to reverse the rules applied previously to the colonised nations, such as the requirement to use a local language in public institutions in Estonia and Latvia (Nørgaard 1996). In the Estonian episode, Mattias and Ann, demoting the Russians from the position of colonisers/occupiers takes place symbolically when the monument of Lenin is dismantled in front of a celebrating crowd. This event is observed by the film’s main character, Mattias, a well-known dissident and the last Estonian political prisoner who, following his release from a Moscow prison, walks through Tallinn with his old pal, Jaanus. Jaanus proposes to those witnessing the event that they honour Mattias by putting him on the pedestal vacated by Lenin. Several people lift Mattias and for a moment he becomes a new ‘statue’ to be admired. This monumentalising effect is accentuated by a low-angle shot, in the way the monuments of Soviet leaders, especially Lenin, were represented in socialist realistic films and on posters, as well as the main character in Andrzej Wajda’s famous film, Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble, 1977). Mattias, however, does not enjoy his position as the ‘new man of marble’ for long. He voluntarily climbs down from the pedestal (perhaps remembering the fate of other ‘men of marble’ in this part of Europe), walks away and mixes with the crowd. Subsequently he meets a young man who confesses that he remembers him from the time Mattias was a famous dissident, worshipped by people of his generation as a hero. To express that he still holds him in high esteem, the young man offers Mattias a Russian prostitute, whom he ‘advertises’ as better than Estonian girls. Initially Mattias is reluctant to be served by her, but when she performs fellatio on him, he cries out, expressing orgasmic pleasure or relief. Again, the camera in this episode is situated near the ground, underscoring the domination of Mattias over the woman. The image invites a metaphorical reading, pointing to the reversal of the relationship between Estonia and Russia: the latter being

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reduced to serving the nation which it previously ‘raped’; rape being a common trope of postcolonial discourse (Shohat and Stam 1994: 156–65). At the same time, it awakens associations with many stories, real and cinematic, of Russian women forced into prostitution, especially after the end of communism. Probably the best known of such stories is Lilja 4-ever by Lukas Moodysson, on which Urbla was involved as a co-producer. Baltic Love Stories can even be seen as a forerunner to Moodysson’s film. Both films propose the idea that the prime victims of the end of the Soviet empire are Russian women, despite the fact that it was predominantly Russian men, politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats who previously brought misery and humiliation to Baltic people. The shooting of the episode with Lenin’s monument evinces the intertwining of on- and off-screen reality in Urbla’s film. According to the director, he wanted to include in his film footage of the removing of Lenin’s monument in Tartu, but he arrived with his crew too late to capture the moment: the monument was no longer there because it had been destroyed by the National Liberation Guard, an organisation fighting for Estonia’s independence from the Soviet Union. The authorities granted the director permission to replace the bronze statue of Lenin with a plastic one and film that. Not only was the filming successful but, as a bonus, the crew got great applause from Latvian tourists, who were passing by in their bus exactly at the moment when the crane raised the plastic Lenin into the air. Of course, they considered the event to be a real one. The on- and off-screen situation of this episode suggests that destroying monuments during the fall of communism was a means to create a new ‘postcommunist community’. Such an idea is proposed by Svetlana Boym: The monuments frequently became scapegoats onto which anxieties and anger were projected … Symbolic violence gives instant gratification – the intoxication of revenge; yet, there was more to that monumental catharsis. This was the only collective attempt on the part of Soviet citizens to change the official public sphere without intervention from above by using direct action, not private irony, jokes or doublespeak. (Boym 2001: 89) The ‘real’ love story in this sketch concerns Mattias and Ann, an Estonian actress, who was Mattias’s girlfriend before he went to prison. The dissident returns to Tallinn and to the theatre where they worked together hoping to rekindle their relationship. The choice of theatre is not accidental: culture was an important locus of anti-communist

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resistance in postwar Estonia (Lauristin and Vihalemm 1997: 74–5; Lauristin 1997). Theatre is also a place where one can test new identities, therefore it can be regarded as a metaphor of the postcommunist situation, in Estonia and elsewhere. Ann appears to be happy to see Mattias and they make love in the backstage area. Afterwards, however, she confesses that during his absence she had an affair with his best friend, Jaanus, to whom she is now married. Her story thus bears resemblance to that of Veronika in Letyat zhuravli (The Cranes are Flying, 1957), directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, who married her fiancé’s brother, Mark, when her beloved Boris left to fight in the Second World War. Kalatozov’s film is also evoked by showing briefly at the beginning of the film a young woman with a bunch of flowers at a railway station, looking for somebody who did not arrive, and by the motif of a flock of birds, observed by Mattias. They might be regarded as a symbol of his regained freedom, but also of sadness at the passage of time which cannot be recaptured. Urbla shows that the 1990s Estonia is not like Russia in the 1940s and Ann is not like Veronika. Veronika’s marriage to Mark was a consequence of wartime hardship and her failure to find a letter Boris left for her prior to his departure. During her marriage to Mark Veronika was missing Boris and was increasingly estranged from her shallow and philandering husband. By contrast, Ann explains her behaviour to Mattias as a result of sexual frustration; she gave in to a man who, as she puts it, ‘saw a woman in her’ and does not have any sense of remorse about her betrayal. Neither does she want to leave her husband for her old lover, although she suggests a possibility of accommodating Mattias in her life. In common with Ann, Jaanus, whose role in the narrative parallels that of Mark in Kalatozov’s film, has no sense of guilt for being a political conformist when Mattias fought to overthrow the Soviet regime. He even presents himself as a kind of hero, fighting for new Estonia on the ground, while hotheads such as Mattias were absent from the country, due to emigration or imprisonment, which brings memory of the discourse of communist and Nazi collaborators in Jan Hrˇebejk’s films (see Chapter 6). At the same time, Jaanus dismisses Mattias’s anti-communist activities, such as working for Radio Free Europe and distributing antiSoviet leaflets, as childish and ineffectual. Jaanus’s interpretation of the past can be seen also in the wider context of memory contests in postcommunist countries, which include questioning the role of dissidents and intellectuals in overthrowing the system. Jaanus suggests that this role was always exaggerated and should be corrected. Mattias does not oppose this view, choosing to remain silent, which might suggest the

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silencing of intellectuals in Estonia post-1991 or the difficulty of sharing the traumatic experience of being a dissident with somebody who did not go through the same ordeal. The second episode, Sergei and Regina, casts as the main characters a young Latvian woman and her Russian boyfriend, a paratrooper stationed in Latvia, whose unit is about to be demobbed. Focusing this part on a Latvian–Russian love is both paradoxical and understandable. Paradoxical, because, of the three Baltic republics, Latvia suffered the most at the hands of the Soviets during the communist period, as testified, for example, by having the lowest proportion of the population indigenous, which in 1980 was 53.5 per cent against 64.5 per cent in Estonia and 80.1 per cent in Lithuania (Hiden and Salmon 1991: 206). This low percentage reflected the ruthlessness of the colonising policies of the Soviet centre, which included deportations of the Latvian population to far-off republics and settling large numbers of Russians in Latvia. On the other hand, the high proportion of Latvian citizens and, especially, Latvian men who disappeared from the country as a result of deportation and, later, emigration to the West, made relations, including intimate ones, between Russians and Latvians inevitable. Latvian– Russian love was almost a condition of economic and physical survival for the Latvians. Such a reading of postwar Latvian history is confirmed by demographic data. Inter-ethnic marriages in Latvia were four times as common as in Lithuania and Estonia and 15 per cent of Latvians married Russians, Ukrainians or Belorussians (Nørgaard 1996: 176). The national realities, as depicted by Urbla in this episode, are highly gendered. Latvia is represented by three females of different generations, all lacking men. Regina’s mother first parted with her boyfriend and then with her husband, who during the Second World War fought on opposite sides of the barricade: one joined the Soviet, the other the German army. The tragedy of the Baltic men who fought against each other, defending somebody else’s lands and ideas, impinged on the Baltic women: they lost their men and their freedom. Regina was abandoned by her Latvian husband who emigrated to Sweden and never returned, leaving her with a small child. Regina’s daughter is thus fatherless. The loss of these men is partly compensated for by the strong bond between the women, who live together, support each other and do everything in perfect harmony, as conveyed by the gesture of joining hands, which closes Sergei and Regina. Another way to alleviate the lack of husbands, lovers and fathers is through a connection with a wider community, as demonstrated during their trip to the country, where they meet their relatives and friends. Yet, Urbla also shows that these Latvian women

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still need a man to help them in various masculine tasks and to fulfil their emotional needs. Russia, by contrast, is represented by three men, whose hypermasculinity is accentuated by their military attire and masculine play under the shower in their barracks, which opens the Latvian episode. This play might even suggest a semi-homosexual bond between the soldiers. The sense that this hyper-masculine world is self-contained is reinforced by the story about their Afghan exploits told by one of the paratroopers. He says that Sergei was pronounced dead in combat, but his pals did not believe the news and searched for him in their helicopter and eventually found him alive, although wounded, under a pile of corpses of other Russian soldiers. Sergei’s friend adds that Sergei’s female relatives believed the news about his death in Afghanistan and did nothing to rescue him. For him it is proof that women play no positive role in Sergei’s life; if anything, they are a hindrance. Yet, at the same time, these men are shown as lacking women, in the same way the Latvian women are lacking men. In the case of Sergei, this is proven by his tender relationship with Regina. Sergei appears to be well equipped to fulfil the role of the missing man not only in her life, but also for her mother and daughter, as shown by driving them in his military jeep to the countryside and carrying all three women to their home. The other two men are also not immune to female attractions, as shown in the third part of the film, set in Vilnius, where they go to a strip club. But the fact that the only contact with women which they allow themselves is from a distance, suggests a pathological mentality, caused by isolation and violence. Urbla also conveys the difference between Russia and Latvia by situating the latter on the side of nature, the former on the side of culture, albeit one that is diseased. Regina decides to go to the countryside to celebrate the summer solstice (St John’s), whose origin is pagan, and saves a snake from the well. We also see the three women adorned in wreaths made of flowers and bringing milk directly from the farmer. The women are also attached to traditions. Regina wants to spend her first night with Sergei in the countryside, where her female ancestors slept with their men prior to marrying them. No doubt for these women nature and centuries-old traditions during the communist times were a way of resisting the Soviet occupation with its disrespect for nature and onslaught on any traditions which were deemed non-Soviet. Unlike the Latvian women, the Russian men, with their helicopters, jeeps and uniforms, stand for the man-made world. The traditions and values they adhere to can be traced back to the communism period, such as privileging

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camaraderie over family bonds and communities based on shared values (principally Soviet Union) over those based on shared ethnicity. Regina, her mother and daughter and her friends all appear to accept Sergei, although on the way to the country the mother advises him to hide all signs of his military past, to avoid inciting conflict with the locals. In the village the couple take part in St John’s celebrations, dancing, feasting, running in the meadows and chatting with friends. The choice of day is symbolic: it marks the beginning of summer, the shared life of Regina and Sergei and the birth of free Latvia. However, the pleasant atmosphere of the day is interrupted when, without Sergei’s knowledge and will, his army pals arrive. The soldiers enter into an argument with a local man and then strip and nearly rape Regina, making Sergei, whom they restrain, witness the scene. They justify their behaviour to Regina claiming that Sergei belongs to them, because they rescued him during the Afghan war, and predicting that Regina will eventually get rid of him anyway because he is Russian. Reluctantly, both lovers accept this diagnosis and Sergei joins his Russian pals, while Regina returns to her daughter and mother (Figure 5.1). Although the actions of Sergei’s comrades represent nationalism at its worst, adhering to the view common in the Baltic region that Russian people are wild and untamed (Neumann 2002: 127–8), they are in a large part a reaction to their Latvian interlocutor’s behaviour. He provokes the men by asking which country they are defending, and when they answer ‘the Soviet Union’, he contrasts this country with Latvian ‘good neighbours’: the Finns and Swedes. Their verbal exchange, which leads to a scuffle, demonstrates how ethnic hatred is incited and perpetuated, both on the small scale of families and local communities and on a larger one of nations and countries. This situation also demonstrates that postcolonialism in the case of the Baltic countries does not involve a simple erasure or reversal of the colonial order, but consists of a complex state of affairs in which the old forces, albeit diminished, combine with the new ones. The fragility of the new political situation is encapsulated by the fragility of Sergei’s identity. During the course of the film he drifts between the past and the future, Regina and his Russian friends, the secular and military culture of the barracks and the feminine pagan Latvian festivities, switching from a military jeep to a bicycle and jumping back into the jeep. He combines the characteristics of a superhero with that of a ‘new man’ and in a different reality he might become a hero, as will be the case with Alex in Good Bye Lenin! However, in postcommunist Latvia, Urbla suggests, it is not possible: old wounds do not easily heal,

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Figure 5.1 Regina after the assault by Sergei’s friends in Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories, 1992), directed by Peeter Urbla

the past does not mix with the future. He also shows that it is mostly men, both Russian and Latvian, who are the custodians of the old, colonial order and an obstacle to change. Women want to leave history behind and move on. The same division, between men as custodians of history and women as signifiers of the new order, is proposed in the last part, set in Vilnius, Vytatutas and Juozas (Figure 5.2). This part centres on a young student at a theological seminary who, while jogging through the city parks, encounters a young woman from Estonia and falls in love with her. His feelings are reciprocated and the couple begin an affair. Their romance is, however, complicated by their different occupations, ethnicity and cultures. He is training to be a priest and has never slept with a woman before. She is a stripper, which is a profession suggesting sexual experience (although during the film she emphasises that she is not a prostitute).

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Figure 5.2 Vytatutas and Juozas in Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories, 1992), directed by Peeter Urbla

He lives in Vilnius, she in Tallinn, and is in Vilnius only for work at the Jazz Sex club. They do not know each other’s language and communicate in broken English. The fact that they use English, rather than Russian, is meaningful. Either they do not know Russian, which was compulsory in Soviet schools, or they do not want to use it. Despite these differences, they decide to give their love a chance and Vytatutas is meant to join his girlfriend at the station, in order to go together to Tallinn. However, in the end the woman goes alone; Vytatutas stays in Vilnius. The reason is the death of his uncle, a famous Lithuanian priest and political dissident, with whom Vytatutas shared an apartment and who was an important factor in his choice of the priesthood. However, when his uncle was alive, the young man grew increasingly unwilling to follow his path, sacrificing his life to any idealistic cause, saying provocatively ‘I want to chase girls.’ The uncle did not obstruct his choice, being aware that his own decision to become a priest was a product of circumstances which no longer exist. As he explains, it was the harshness and the speed of history, forcing him first to oppose the Germans, then the Soviets, rather than indifference to the opposite sex, which was the reason why he never slept with a woman. As his nephew now lives in free Lithuania, he does not need God to resist the enemy. If Vytatutas’s

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decision to stay with his dead uncle means not only to postpone his visit to Estonia, but to become a priest, then it will work as a sign that certain political ideas and values affect people’s lives only when they become history, when they become detached and therefore nostalgic about them. Vytatutas’s new respect for the past is conveyed by his careful washing of his uncle’s body, which recollects the care given to Jesus’ body once he was taken down from the cross. While Vytatutas stands for respect for tradition, his Estonian lover, due to her profession, physical mobility and willingness to adjust to change, signifies modernity. From the stories presented by Urbla we can deduce that Baltic love is impossible because of the communist past. The old wounds cannot be healed, therefore the national borders cannot (metaphorically) be crossed, or at least this cannot be done in the foreseeable future. By showing the Russian soldiers moving from one country to another and pretending that they are not Russians, Urbla also foretells the new sense of homelessness experienced by Russians living in the Baltic region, as testified by the relocation of many thousands of so-called Baltic Russians to Russia3 and the subsequent conflicts between the Russian minority and the indigenous populations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which often concerned commemorating and interpreting the past.4 In due course, however, the conflicts subsided and the past in the Baltic region became less contentious. Despite the disfranchised and alienated Russian minorities, an unstable Russian centre and the significant attention of the international media in cases of the mistreatment of Russian minorities in the Baltic countries, this region did not experience anything like the bloody warfare in Yugoslavia (Bremmer 2006). Different ethnic groups peacefully co-exist in today’s Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. While the narratives in Baltic Love Stories suggest the impossibility of parting with the past, the aesthetics used in the film points, on the contrary, to the possibility of overcoming the national histories. A large proportion of the film is set in places of transit, such as railway stations, on the streets, on the trains or in cars. The characters themselves frequently run, ramble or dance, as if trying to avoid fixation. The camera is also very mobile, often encircling the protagonists, adding to the sense of their uncontrollable, sometimes mad movement. Looking at this frantic motion, it is difficult to believe in the power of the past over the present. Rather it feels like the present is crumbling under the weight of the future.

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Gleaning from the past to create a better future in Good Bye Lenin! Good Bye Lenin! is by a large margin the most popular film about the fall of communism. It proved very successful with domestic audiences on both sides of the fallen Berlin Wall. In its first year it had an audience of 6.5 million and took 35 million euros at the German box office to become the biggest hit of 2003, ahead of Anglo-American blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Cooke 2005: 128–9). It was also very successful internationally, together with The Lives of Others (discussed in the next chapter) being the most successful German films of the past decade. In my opinion the important reasons why it attracted such a large and varied audience was its cinematic form and its ‘ideology of reconciliation’, easier to accept more than a decade after the fall of communism than, as was the case with Urbla’s film, immediately after the end of the old system. There is a strong correspondence between the form of this film and the work of memory. Becker does not show us ‘objectively’ what happened in 1989, but adopts the perspective of a young television technician named Alex Kerner, who during the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) leaves his adolescence behind. Alex reminisces on past events, using a voice-over. As Michel Chion observes, the voice-over is a powerful tool for shaping the opinions and sympathies of the viewers, even the very way their vision is structured (Chion 2000: 112–14). This is the way the voice-over is used on this occasion – we accept Alex’s voice as our guide to the kingdom of the past. We do it even more eagerly as Alex is armed with insights which other characters are lacking. This affords him superiority, which he conveys by irony. However, he uses it most often to laugh at his old self and mixes scorn with compassion towards those who shared his experiences. This well-disposed attitude to East Germans, combined with a good knowledge about the popular culture of the GDR, made the viewers think that the film was directed by an East German. However, Wolfgang Becker came from the West and the same features which were regarded as the signs of the film’s ‘East Germanness’ can be viewed as signs of the director’s Western bias. For example, Alex’s, and by extension the author’s, sympathy for the characters and his unwillingness to judge them according to their political position betrays the attitude of an outsider for whom it is easy to understand and forgive, precisely because he was not a victim of the political situation of the GDR.5

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Another feature of the film which on the surface suggests an insider’s perspective, but in reality betrays the point of view of a Wessi, is Becker filling Alex’s memories with the stuff which belonged to the official history of the GDR. As Paul Cooke observes, Becker ‘ignores the importance of western points of reference within the GDR, particularly for its youth culture’ (Cooke 2005: 131): a phenomenon which is described as self-colonisation and is well documented in practically all national cinemas of the old Eastern bloc (for example Hanáková 2008; Mazierska 2010). This phenomenon is also represented in Sonnennallee (1999), a film almost contemporaneous with Good Bye Lenin!, about ordinary life in the GDR and made by insiders: an East German director, Leander Haussmann, from a script by Thomas Brussig. As a Westerner, Becker might find it difficult to appreciate the Eastern struggle to be more Western than Westerners and, perhaps, if he was aware of it, he might have been unwilling to address it to avoid patronising the Easterners. This lack of reference to the infection of East Germans with the virus of Western culture helps to explain Alex’s attachment to the way things were done in the GDR when his country ceases to exist. The similarity between Becker’s film and the work of memory also results from the extensive use of flashbacks, presenting earlier episodes from East German history. Among them is the flight to the moon by the first East German (and German) cosmonaut, Sigmund Jähn, whose exploits were perceived in the GDR as winning a metaphorical war for technological and cultural superiority over its Western neighbour. Each event from the history of the GDR (or its cultural memory) is presented as a fragment of Alex’s private past. The small Alex watches Jähn’s trip on television and at the same time observes his mother being harassed by Stasi officers. This visual connection between the public and the private is reinforced by the voice-over of the adult Alex, who pronounces that since Jähn’s exploits things started to go seriously wrong in his family. Such a statement underscores the lacuna between the private and the official life of the GDR and the socialist world at large. In the official history everything was always good and still getting better; in private things went from bad to worse. The gap between the public and private perceptions reaches a crisis point during the pompous celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the GDR, which are marred by anticommunist protests and lead to the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Alex’s flashbacks are saturated with images shown on television and moments immortalised by Alex’s camera and cine-camera. But even those events which are stored only in Alex’s memory are presented as fragments of an old film, repeatedly rewound and reviewed. This alludes

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to the way the history of the twentieth century is remembered: as a series of events immortalised and transformed by the mass media, principally film and television. We find such a concept of history, as mentioned elsewhere in this book, in Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma. In this respect Good Bye Lenin! also lends itself to a comparison with Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amelie, 2001), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Amelie’s past, as Alex’s past, is intricately interwoven with a wider history and she remembers and imagines her life as if it were an old film. Another point of correspondence between these two extremely successful films of the past decade are their scores, which are not only similar, being ostensibly nostalgic and sentimental, due to their simplicity, repetitions and the use of such instruments as the accordion, but are even written by the same composer, Yann Tiersen. This type of music might awaken nostalgia or, conversely, prevent a ‘naïve’ nostalgic reading by drawing attention to the gap between ‘true past’ and its sentimentalised memory or representation on screen. In this context it is worth mentioning Svetlana Boym’s categorisation of nostalgia into types: the restorative and the reflective, which proved a useful tool to analyse postcommunist cinema (Boym 2001; on its application to German films see Bechmann-Pedersen 2009). The first tries to restore the lost home as an idealised essence and not as an image in flux created in the present. This form is unaware (or refrains from admitting) that it is nostalgic, but considers itself truth seeking. The second type of nostalgia, the reflective, knows that it is being nostalgic; it is thus imbued with irony. It expresses the longing simultaneously with a realisation of the impossible redemption of the longing. The reflective nostalgia stresses the longing for a past time, algia, which situates it firmly in a present, whereas the restorative nostalgia has the phantom-home, nostos, as its core. The reflective nostalgia dynamically relates a present, from which the nostalgia reaches out, to the past. Of course, these types, which can be mapped into the divisions between ‘reconstructionist’ and ‘deconstructionist’ history (see Introduction), are ideal models; in reality they can exist at the same time. My argument is that Good Bye Lenin! is open to both types of nostalgic reading: the restorative and the reflective. A restorative nostalgic reading dominated the interpretations of Becker’s film, especially in the popular press. In some reviews Good Bye Lenin! was even heralded as an epitome of Ostalgie: nostalgia for the (comununist) East, a sentiment experienced not only by those from the East, but from the West as well. A clear sign was its spanning a merchandising business. In Berlin for a250 one can rent Germany’s most famous living

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room – the prefabricated apartment where the Kerner family lives in the film. The location has been billed as the perfect place for an Ostalgie party by a local tabloid. Renting the uniform of an East German police officer costs a55 a week. One can also bid for an original Goodbye Lenin coffee set on eBay, buy Goodbye Lenin T-shirts or mugs or discuss the film with others in a special online forum. Certain movie-theatre halls have even been asking viewers to bring along their East German souvenirs. A theatre in the dreary eastern Berlin suburb of Hellersdorf now displays old East German newspapers, confirmation certificates and faded East German scout T-shirts. In the first week that the film opened visitors could also pay for their tickets in the now defunct East German Deutschmarks (‘Goodbye, Lenin, Hello Humor!’ 2003). I have no intention of questioning the ‘ostalgic’ reading of the film, but in common with authors such as Paul Cooke, Elizabeth Boa and Seán Allan, I argue that Good Bye Lenin! offers a more ambiguous approach to the East German past (Cooke 2005; Boa 2006; Allan 2006). Becker’s film acts as a perfect metonym; what happens to its characters reflects the fate of German society at large. Each character is both representative of a larger group and unique. At the centre is a typical East German family, consisting of a single mother, Christiane, who used to work as a teacher, and two adult children, the previously mentioned Alex and his sister Ariane, a student and also a single mother. The doctor father fled to West Berlin, which encapsulates the typical feature of the GDR and Berlin itself as a divided city. It is also symbolic of the hybrid/postcolonial identity of people like Alex post-1989: with an East German mother and West German father, his heart might still be in the East, but he has to accept the power of the Western patriarchal order. The typicality of the family is also underscored by the name of the protagonist, Alex, which is a popular shortened name of the most important Berlin square where the protesters gathered in 1989. As Elizabeth Boa notes, it signals the protagonist’s rebellion against communist Germany (Boa 2006: 78–9). It also points to the connection of Alex Kerner’s life with the history of the GDR, because the square, due to being destroyed during the war, was used as a showcase of socialist architecture, including a huge television tower. ‘Alex’ also bears association with Berlin Alexanderplatz, the famous novel by Alfred Döblin (1929), and its adaptation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1980) about working-class people living in Berlin between the world wars. True to his name, Alex acts as a bridge between different layers of German history. At the start of the film Alex tells of his father’s defection to the West. During this part of the film we get an insight into the GDR as a ‘Stasi

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state’, which was the dominant narrative of East Germany in the first decade after unification (Cooke 2005). We learn that the father had a difficult life because he was not in the Communist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) and his disappearance had a devastating effect on the remaining members of the family. The mother was interrogated by the secret services and, following this experience, she withdrew from life, behaving as if she was catatonic. The children were left to be cared for by strangers. It was Alex’s persistent asking his mother not to abandon them which prevented her from committing suicide and eventually brought her back to sanity and reunited her with her children. Or, at least, she returned to sanity Soviet style, as after returning home from the psychiatric hospital she became an ardent communist, throwing herself into work to improve the daily lives of fellow citizens, organising camps for pioneers and writing petitions to the factories producing substandard goods. As a number of authors observe, in her desire to educate and take care of the lives of fellow citizens she epitomises Muttirepublik (a nanny state). In the communist context, such an approach could easily be criticised, as disempowering and infantilising those subjected to it. However, as Elizabeth Boa observes, in the new capitalist world, where nanny states are fast disappearing, her actions arouse more positive attitudes (Boa 2006: 78–80). Becker does not disclose whether Christiane’s actions were the result of brainwashing she suffered in the psychiatric ward, the effect of a genuine change of heart or a cover for her true beliefs which remained anticommunist. This ambiguity can be seen as pertaining to the behaviour of millions of people like Christiane across the whole Soviet bloc, whose motives to support (or oppose) the communist regime were complex and might have evolved with the passage of time (on the situation in East Germany see Fulbrook 1995: 57–86). The mechanism which was most likely at play on this occasion can be presented as follows: ‘If you cannot change the system, try to make it work for you and others like you.’ Christiane conveys this approach to the adult Alex when he criticises political authorities, but she does not force Alex to accept her views. When he comments in a derogatory way on a speech by Honecker, she tells him: ‘If you do not like it, don’t watch.’ Such a remark can be read as an encouragement to practise ‘inner emigration’ or ‘inner exile’, a strategy adopted by many East European intellectuals who did not agree with the communist ideologies and policies and indeed by dissidents across the world (Naficy 2001: 11). Although ‘inner emigration’ was a form of political opposition, it was convenient to the communist authorities, as it effectively eliminated the dissidents from political life

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(see Chapter 6). Alex understands this, as he frowns at his mother’s advice and soon we see him among the anti-communist protesters. The mother again withdraws from reality during a counter-demonstration to the official celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the GDR, upon noticing that Alex takes part in it. She collapses on her way to collect a medal for her meritorious actions for the communist cause from Erich Honecker, suffers a heart attack, falls into a coma and wakes up after eight months. By this time Honecker has been deposed, East Germany has been incorporated into West Germany, the GDR’s currency has been abolished and the most important stages in the country’s transformation into a capitalist state have been completed. The changes at the top of East German society are reflected by changes at the bottom. In the case of the Kerners, it means moving the old furniture to the cellar and getting rid of old clothes, and for Alex’s sister, Ariane, giving up on studying and beginning to work in a fast-food restaurant. The acceleration of history, as conveyed by Becker, brings to mind the concept of ‘schizophrenia’ as discussed by Fredric Jameson (1985). The sense of rapidity is further accentuated by Becker granting little time for each of these momentous changes and presenting them in fast motion. This mad speed of history is an important reason why the East Germans, as much in ‘reality’ as on screen, feel disorientated and anxious, and cling to memories of the old times. Another is the fact that not all changes brought about by the fall of the Berlin Wall are for the better. During the course of the film we learn, for example, that many Ossis lost their jobs and what they cherished suddenly became obsolete. Of course, Alex’s mother is unaware of what happened. In this sense she is similar to Rip van Winkle (Bradshaw 2003b), the eponymous character in Washington Irving’s story, published in 1819 and set in America around the time of the American Revolutionary War. Rip van Winkle falls asleep in an English colony and wakes up after 20 years in a whole new country which is no longer under King George III’s rule. The difference between the amount of time the authors of the respective works need their characters to sleep in order to wake up in an entirely different country (eight months against 20 years) testifies to the acceleration of history at the end of the twentieth century. Unlike Rip van Winkle, who has to deal on his own with his archaic habits and views, unwelcome in the new social order, Christiane is sheltered from the new reality by Alex. In order to spare her the shock of finding out about the new political situation, which according to a doctor might kill her, he pretends that nothing of importance happened when she

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remained unconscious. To sustain this fiction, Alex brings back old furniture from the cellar, asks Ariane to put her baby daughter into plastic pants, procures newly hard-to-find brands of pickles and coffee and pays some children to perform in pioneer costumes for Christiane’s birthday. Furthermore, pressed by his mother, who wants to have a television in her bedroom, Alex, assisted by his friend from West Germany, produces television programmes for her which are meant to present a familiar world. Making them involves recycling old footage shown on state television and recording new material for Christiane’s favourite news programme, Aktuelle Kamera. Typically, in his broadcast Alex shows the achievements of the GDR’s economy and the failures of its Western neighbour. Alex’s ability to use the past for his purposes would not happen if not for the accessibility of video equipment which enables cheap recording, storing, editing and projecting of images and sounds. The new media technology is thus presented as a vehicle to support, manipulate and obliterate private and public memories. It is not the technology per se which preserves or destroys the past, but the humans who use it for contradictory purposes. This idea is by no means a new one; we can find it, for example, in the work of Russian formalists, socialist realists and the work of Godard, especially from his militant period. However, it is worth recollecting in this context, because the invention of video and, later, of digital media, led to a growing doubt about the correspondence between reality and its media representation. Becker’s film adds to this doubt. Peter Bradshaw observes that: Without knowing it, Alex has mobilised almost every agency of a communist state. He distorts and concocts the news media; he coerces people into acting against their real natures and principles by a mixture of bullying and emotional blackmail, manipulating their loyalty to a ‘leader’ figure. It is a farce, founded on dishonesty: like the old regime itself. And Alex has become the neurotic, control-freak prime minister, acting on behalf of an ageing, debilitated monarch. (Bradshaw 2003b) Yet, although Bradshaw is right in drawing an analogy between Alex and the communist state, he was unique in doing so and using this analogy to criticise Alex. Almost all reviewers focused on the nobility of Alex’s actions, as did the director himself (Cooke 2005: 130). They excused Alex because he acted out of love for his mother. However, the same could be said and was said about the communist regimes: they

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coerced and cheated their citizens claiming that they acted with good intentions, for these citizens’ welfare or out of love for their motherland. An important reason for why we excuse Alex is that he is an excellent communicator, always explaining his actions to his family, friends and us, the ‘wider’ audience, unlike the communist leaders who with the passage of time became detached, even grew ‘autistic’.6 Alex’s communicative skills bring to mind those of Gorbachev, who appears in Becker’s film, albeit only on television. For Christiane, Gorbachev is a hero: a caring and approachable communist. The main reason why she wants to receive her medal during the GDR’s anniversary is an opportunity to see this ‘new man’ of international communism. In Alex’s broadcasts the old material smoothly overlaps and mingles with the new, leading to the creation of a harmonious flow of events. Such a seemingly effortless intertwining of the old with the new elements reflects the way memory operates in ‘normal’ time, leading to the creation and sustaining of a healthy identity. This is one reason that Alex is very content with his shows not only as a gift to his mother, but also to himself. They provide him with a refuge from the world outside which due to its speed and instability threatens his sense of selfhood, bringing the risk of becoming the Jamesian schizophrenic. The threat of losing one’s history and oneself is an important reason why, as Svetlana Boym observes, the outbursts of nostalgia are most common after dramatic changes, especially revolutions (Boym 2001: xiv). Another factor why the broadcasts bring comfort not only to Christiane, but also to Alex, is that they allow him to rewrite the history of the GDR. In this history East Germany becomes a truly socialist state, in the way Christiane and Alex always wanted it to be. Not only does it offer its citizens social security, but it is affluent, technologically superior over its Western neighbour and democratic. The attractiveness of such a country is confirmed by the inhabitants of West Germany, who in their thousands leave their country and arrive in East Berlin by jumping through the Wall. Of course, such a rewriting of one’s past using the mass media and television especially is nothing new. It happened everywhere in the twentieth century and especially in the socialist East. However, it was always the history passed from top to bottom, from the authorities and elites to the masses. On this occasion, by contrast, we observe the ‘people’s history’: the history created by ordinary people for themselves. Alex and others like him need the narrative about the GDR as an attractive place because unification brought about the destruction of pride the East Germans might have had in their country. The unification happened on Western terms: the Ossis had to accept their brothers’

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conditions without protest and the West Germans incorporated the GDR in a way which minimised its material and symbolic input into the joint future, allowing the transition and translation of only a small proportion of their memories to the joint pool of German history (Maier 1997: 286). It can thus be viewed as colonisation, although it did not include the use of force. The most poignant sign of the humiliation experienced by the Ossis was the abolition of the East German currency. In the film, it has a particularly unfortunate effect on the Kerners because Alex’s mother, following her heart attack and coma, cannot recollect where she had kept her savings, and when she eventually remembers, it is too late to exchange them for the Western currency; the deadline for doing so had just passed. When Alex brings the savings to the bank, he is informed by the bank clerk that the money is now worthless and, when he protests, he is thrown out of the bank by the security guard. We share Alex’s frustration, because, like him, we are aware of the disparity between the lifelong effort of his mother to save for her children and her own dark hour on the one hand, and the ultimate futility of her efforts. And, at the same time, the story of the hard-earned money which became worthless is one which is very familiar in the German and Eastern European context, because hyper-inflation and change of currency were common there. Equally, in Germany, it marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one: the repetitions of ‘year zero’. Another example of the downgrading of East Germany’s history to a meaningless rubbish heap is the fate of the cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, who is reduced to driving a smelly Russian car. Whilst Alex is unable to protect his mother’s money from oblivion, he is able, literally and figuratively, to save Jähn, giving him a role in his fake broadcasts as the new Prime Minister of Germany. Alex’s method of filmmaking can be compared to that used in the tourism industry, due to his employing the strategies of beautification, romanticisation, idealisation, homogenisation, decontextualisation and mystification (Albers and James 1988; Urry 1990; Wang 2000). In his broadcasts, Alex includes only ‘gem objects’, such as perfectly working factories and the buildings of which the GDR was most proud, and represents them in a flattering way, by showing them from below, which creates the monumentalising effect. Alex endlessly repeats the same images of certain historical buildings and details, not least because he literally recycles old television programmes. Furthermore, his programmes are decontextualised: cut off from the flow of life and pasted with footage shot at a different time and place. We are poignantly aware of this when something unplanned appears on Alex’s camera and he has to create

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a whole new story to justify its presence. The tourist gaze has much in common with the socialist realistic mode of representation (Näripea 2009). Not surprisingly, when producing his broadcasts, Alex models himself on East German filmmakers or even, more specifically, television broadcasters who were more faithful to the socialist realistic mode of representation than filmmakers who were allowed a greater margin of freedom to experiment. Alex’s programmes poignantly demonstrate that the people living under communism were more in favour of socialism than their Western counterparts (Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln 2007) and the revolutions which took place at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s were more about improving communism than about introducing capitalism. As a person who changes the direction of history for the sake of another person, Alex can again be compared to Amelie in Jeunet’s film, who upon finding a box of old toys embarks on a mission to return it to its old owner and in this way forces him to reconcile with his family. Alex pretends to change History with a capital H in order to make his mother happy. This, however, turns out to be impossible in the long run. As in The Truman Show (1998) by Peter Weir, time and again Alex’s fake world clashes with true reality and the more freedom Christiane achieves, the more discrepancies she discovers between her microcosm and the external world. There is no satisfactory solution to the problem of how to be happy in a world which changed so drastically when one is used to a much slower pace of life, therefore the narrative solution chosen by Becker is Christiane’s death. From her demise we can concur that many people of her and older generations would not be able to find a place for themselves in the new Germany; they would be condemned to marginalisation and spiritual death, which indeed happened to many citizens of the old GDR and Eastern Europe at large. Accepting such a conclusion is also encouraged by Becker through his portrayal of Christiane’s old friends and neighbours, who all seem to be unhappy about the new ways and regard her old-style room as an oasis in a desert. In creating his utopian microcosm Alex is assisted by his West German friend Denis, with whom he works in a firm installing satellite dishes (Figure 5.3). Their collaboration is harmonious and based on common interests, again in contrast to the wider framework of unification, where the input of East Germans was marginalised. Denis can be compared to Becker himself, because while making Good Bye Lenin!, he also cooperated with the East German cast and crew and helped East Germans to dignify and relive their past. The involvement of the real and fictional

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Figure 5.3 Florian Lukas as Denis, Alex’s friend and the presenter on Aktuelle Kamera in Good Bye Lenin! (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker

West Germans in the recreation of the GDR supports the view that Ostalgie is, in some measure, a Western phenomenon. Alex’s West German friend is not the only ‘foreigner’ cast in Becker’s film. Alex’s sister, Ariane, gets a West German boyfriend and Alex falls in love with Lara, a pretty girl from Russia, who trains in East Berlin as a nurse. Their choice of partners reflects the wider cultural preferences of the siblings. Ariane is Western and future oriented; she rejects anything from the East and from the past. As Seán Allan observes, ‘for Ariane, change cannot take place fast enough’ (Allan 2006: 121). Alex, by contrast, looks at the East and the past with a sympathetic eye, attempting to retrieve from them their hidden gems. Lara is such a gem and she embodies qualities opposite to those associated with the Soviet Union. She is pretty and, of course, a woman, unlike the typical hyper-masculine Soviet coloniser, encapsulated by political leaders such as Stalin or Brezhnev or the Soviet army stationed in the GDR and elsewhere, as shown in Baltic Love Stories. She does not exploit the Germans, but in her profession as a nurse serves them, most importantly Alex’s mother. She is not attached to communist ways but boldly opposes them, as demonstrated by her taking part in an anti-communist demonstration, where she meets Alex.

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For these reasons, she is well integrated into German society, unlike most Russians represented in German films of the postcommunist period, such as Neben der Zeit (1995) by Andreas Kleinert. The harmonious life of East Germans, West Germans and Russians in the Kerner household can be seen as realising the socialist ideal of brotherly cooperation of people of different nationalities but of the same class. Equally, such representation betrays the director’s Western liberal and cosmopolitan mindset, as revealed in his earlier film, Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (Life is a Building Site, 1997), where the meeting between Germans and foreigners is a source of hope and moral renewal for all of them. The all-embracing attitude, advocated by Becker, is also conveyed by Alex’s visit to his father on the other side of the no-longer-existing Berlin Wall. There, without introducing himself, he sits with his newly met half-siblings, happily watching with them the cartoon programme Sandmännchen (Little Sandman). This experience has a double connotation. On the one hand, it can be interpreted as an additional act of Alex’s indulging in Ostalgie, as Little Sandman was the most popular programme for children in East Germany and the eponymous figure was even taken by Jähn into the cosmos, where the children’s character symbolically married Mascha, its Soviet counterpart. We can also regard it as a sign of Alex’s willingness and ability to fit into his ‘new’ family which too, albeit to a small extent, is affected by East German culture. The vehicle which takes Alex to West Berlin is, meaningfully, a Russian Lada, driven by Jähn, stripped of his old celebrity. It appears that wherever Alex turns, he connects the present with the past, East with West, and transforms it into a new quality. Another testimony to Alex’s hybrid identity and ability to bridge the gap between various extremes is his mother’s funeral, to which he invites representatives of different sides of the old Berlin Wall, such as his mother’s old friends, her ex-husband and Lara. Instead of burying his mother in a grave, he scatters her ashes using a miniature rocket, a clear reference to East Germany’s past successes in conquering the cosmos and an expression of Alex’s rejection of nationalism. Alex’s ability to transcend political divisions makes him an attractive figure not only for East and West Germans, but universally. This is because, to some extent, everybody is in Alex’s position, as identities are never fixed, but are always in the process of transformation (Hall 1992b). In the epoch of postmodernity it is especially the case, or we are particularly aware of it. Becker welcomes this process of hybridisation, regarding it as natural and productive, leading to a better understanding of people and, on a wider scale, producing a better society (Cooke 2005: 103–40).

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However, although the image of Christiane’s funeral is an optimistic one, it gains different connotations in the context of Becker’s previous film, Life Is the Building Site, which is set several years after the unification of East and West Germany. Elsewhere I wrote that in this film Becker depicts decentred, often lost characters, in a coreless, postcommunist Berlin (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2003: 122–7). Good Bye Lenin! can be seen as a prequel to this film, attempting to establish how Berlin became coreless: by literally or metaphorically losing its oldest generation, the caring mothers and fathers. The title of the film refers to the removal of Lenin’s monument and carrying it by helicopter, which Christiane observes with astonishment. Such images of communist leaders and heroes being removed from their pedestals are frequent in the films and other types of media set in postcommunist Europe. We saw them in Baltic Love Stories. Dislodging the old leaders from their pedestals also has a metaphorical meaning; it signifies the end of the old order and the beginning of the new one. The fact that Lenin is chosen to be removed, rather than Honecker, suggests the end of communism/socialism in Eastern Europe in all its forms, rather than a transition from one of its types/stages to another, which is a diagnosis offered by one of the leading critics of postcommunist order, Slavoj Žižek (Žižek 1997). Becker also suggests that once a certain idea becomes frozen in marble or in an official portrait it stops appealing to people; when it is communicated by a real person it becomes attractive again. Accordingly, Lenin’s socialism is devoid of meaning, but Alex is able to resuscitate it. In summary, in Good Bye Lenin! Becker proposes to construct postcommunist reality not by rejecting the past indiscriminately, but by hybridising what was best in the past with new elements. At the same time, he shows awareness that such a project might be utopian or at least will not work for everybody. For example, it is easier to shed the ‘old skin’ for the young than for the old, for those who are better educated than for those who are not. Becker is well aware, as was Washington Irving, that there is no dramatic political and social change without victims, but, at the same time, he knows that without such changes there might be even more victims. His film thus provides an idea on how to minimise the costs and maximise the advantages of transformation.

The anatomy of socialist men in 12:08 East of Bucharest Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest is also made under the sign of memory. This is a typical feature of what is described as the

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Romanian New Wave. The majority of films belonging to this movement are made by young directors who attempt to assess the Romanian communist past from a postcommunist and postmodernist perspective. They focus on history as experienced from below, by those at the margin of society, such as old people, pregnant women trying to arrange an abortion and sexual minorities, and look at the legacy of Ceaus¸escu’s rule, such as poverty, disorganisation and nepotism. Their style is minimalistic; the mise-en-scène tends to be simple, music is used sparsely and they avoid the extremes of comedy and melodrama (Nasta 2007). Such a style partly reflects their low budget, partly their authors’ decision to create the impression of ‘reality itself speaking’ and then only allowing it to find the right voice. 12:08 East of Bucharest was Porumboiu’s first full-length feature film, made on a shoestring budget, and contains a mixture of comedy and tragedy. The film is about commemorating the sixteenth anniversary of the fall of Ceaus¸escu, which happened on 22 December 1989. At 12:08 precisely Ceaus¸escu fled Bucharest, following a series of demonstrations in Timis¸oara and Bucharest. 12:08 thus constituted a divide between the revolutionary avant-garde and arrière-garde, heroism and conformity. The Party leader’s attempt to escape was captured live on national television and projected into the homes of millions of Romanians, triggering celebrations across the country. What was soon to be known as the Romanian Revolution, in common with many other political events of the past 30 years or so, including the imposition of martial law in Poland (see Chapter 4), was thus a media event. Peter Siani-Davies in his book about December 1989 in Romania even claims that it was the first televised revolution, bringing Romania to international prominence (Siani-Davies 2005: 2). Porumboiu’s film concerns events which took place before Christmas 1989 in Vaslui, a town south-east of Bucharest and his own birthplace. Its action revolves around establishing whether any of its citizens, in common with people in Timis¸oara and Bucharest, protested against Ceaus¸escu’s regime before it collapsed or whether they limited themselves to effectively joining the winners. The medium to explore it is (again) television: a talk show combined with a live phone-in discussion. Such a programme, popular as much in the postcommunist East as in the West, can be regarded as an epitome of democracy because it allows ordinary citizens to voice their views directly and uncensored. Due to its directness and egalitarianism it provides a contrast with television under communism, when the viewer was projected as a passive recipient of messages sent from the top, as we have seen in Good Bye

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Lenin! (although often s/he was able to read between the lines). At the same time, this type of programme is frequently accused of presenting distorted views of the population, because those who appear on it represent only its small section and often have personal reasons to phone, as we also learn on this occasion. Moreover, the interviewer guides the answers by asking interviewees specific questions and has the authority to cut or dismiss their answers. There is also a danger that what comes across as a spontaneous contribution might be actually prearranged. The television programme in Porumboiu’s film, like the city where the film is set, is provincial (Figure 5.4). It battles with a shortage of equipment and employs only a handful of people, mostly poorly trained, each combining a number of functions. Its host, Virgil Jderescu, is also the owner of the studio, who due to being unable to secure more prominent guests, invites two rather unremarkable local men, Tiberiu Manescu and Emanoil Piscoci, each claiming to have been at the city’s square during the momentous night before 12:08. If the claim of either of these men is confirmed, it will be proof that Vaslui was at the forefront of the Romanian liberation movement. If, on the other hand, the discussion fails to establish this fact, then Vaslui is condemned to the position of a humble follower of metropolitan trends, a place at the literal and metaphorical periphery of Romanian politics and history. Before the talk show begins, Porumboiu allows us an insight into Vaslui and the lives of the three main characters. True to its provincial status, the city comes across as frozen in the communist past. We see a Christmas tree at the centre of the city adorned with flickering lights which slowly die, the lamps on potholed streets gradually being extinguished and finally a series of grim blocks of flats, in which lights also give way to darkness. The disappearance of light is reminiscent of the frequent power cuts in the Ceaus¸escu era and, metaphorically, suggests the extinguishing of hope for any improvement in Romania following the change of regime. The parallel was not lost on the film’s reviewers. One wrote: ‘This is Romania as it is today – a country that is clearly very poor. The revolution offered so much promise, and while it did bring about a more democratic state, little else appears to have changed’ (Haq 2007). The only providers of light and excitement are the youngsters illuminating the wintry air with firecrackers. Of course, their action also has a metaphorical meaning: it suggests a chance for the social renewal of Romanian society, offered by the young, but also a danger that it will be fragile and short-lived. The three characters represented by Porumboiu also hark back to Ceaus¸escu’s times. Manescu, a history teacher at the local school, comes

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Figure 5.4 Television studio in A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest, 2006), directed by Corneliu Porumboiu

across as a typical representative of the social strata described in communist times as the ‘working intelligentsia’, which included teachers and clerks. This class was marked by low income, low status and the requirement to constantly conceal one’s true views, due to acting as a mouthpiece for the political authorities. Belonging to this category was particularly painful for men; therefore, as I argued elsewhere (Mazierska 2008), the masculinity of a ‘socialist man’ was thwarted, as is the case with Manescu. Poorly paid, scorned by his wife who cannot see in him any benefit as either a breadwinner or a helper in domestic tasks, frustrated in his job due to the lack of academic success of his students, he makes up for his failures with excessive consumption of alcohol. Yet alcohol allows for the reversal of Manescu’s state only temporarily and in the long term exacerbates his problems. When drunk, Manescu buys alcohol for all the guests in his local pub, which increases his debt and his wife’s hostility, and insults the local Chinese proprietor of a novelty shop, from whom he later tries to borrow money. By including Manescu

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in his film, Porumboiu demonstrates that in Romania the thwarted ‘socialist man’ has not disappeared with the fall of communism, but survived, only his frustrations found new targets: capitalism and the Asians, which replaced socialism and the Russians. Equally, a mind(set) typical of colonised people survived in the postcolonial setting. Paradoxically, although Manescu is a history teacher, he is unable to situate his life in a historical context, in relation to socialism and capitalism. For this reason he is also unable to teach his students history. The majority of his class fails the exam in this subject and when doing their resit they prefer to write about the French rather than Romanian Revolution, despite the fact that in 1989 both in Romania and in the West parallels were drawn between these two events (Siani-Davies 2005: 279). On the other hand, the inability to connect historical events in which one participated with other events, as already noted by Hegel, is a consequence of being inside one’s own history (Hegel 1975: 12–24). Only people detached from it, by living in either a different time or a different place, are able to make connections. Emanoil Piscoci, the second guest on Jderescu’s programme, a pensioner known in his town as a Santa Claus impersonator, is one of many people of his generation who regard the fall of communism as being a change for the worse. This is partly because his entire life was linked with the ups and downs of communism in Romania and partly because capitalism, as practised in postcommunist countries, including Romania, privileges the young and the strong, at the expense of the old and the weak. The sense that Piscoci’s life changed for the worse is symbolised by the state of his Santa Claus costume. He discovers that it has been eaten by moths, but he cannot afford to buy a new costume. Another sign that revolution did not bring him anything of value is the state of his apartment, which is neglected and full of junk. Finally, Virgil Jderescu, the phone-in show host, comes across as a provincial Party official who is used to ‘fixing’ things and making socialist, low-quality copies of capitalist products. As with the communist bureaucrats, he is never intimidated by his own incompetence and puts the blame on other people. We can guess that he acquired the media business thanks to a network of connections with the old Party bureaucrats (nomenklatura), rather than because he was a brilliant journalist. This suspicion is confirmed during the programme when he admits that he did not have any journalistic training or experience prior to becoming the owner of the television channel. Jderescu, as well as an ex-secret agent turned into a successful businessman who phones in to Jderescu’s programme, point to the fact that the revolution in Romania did not

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go deep enough, because Ceaus¸escu’s close collaborators retained political power following his execution (Calinescu and Tismaneanu 1992: 16–17). Vladimir Tismaneanu, in his Foreword to the book devoted to transitional justice in Eastern Europe, uses 12:08 East of Bucharest as a perfect illustration of the need to thoroughly investigate the postcommunist past (Tismaneanu 2010: xiii), a theme which will be discussed in the last chapter of this book. Manescu and Piscoci meet on Jderescu’s programme, where they are expected to reminisce about the night when Ceaus¸escu’s regime collapsed. During the broadcast, Manescu attempts to project himself as a local hero. He claims that he sparked off a rebellion in the town square along with three other teachers, after which they celebrated by drinking in a nearby pub. However, his colleagues cannot confirm his version, because they are either dead or emigrated, and his description of the momentous night is contested by those who phone in to the television station. In the end, Manescu is pronounced a liar and a drunkard and the only person who takes his side is the Chinese proprietor of the novelty shop. Yet, although Manescu does not conform to the traditional image of a revolutionary, he fits the model of a ‘Romanian revolutionary’. This is because Romania had no equivalent of Václav Havel or Lech Wałe˛sa and there the division between the dissident and the party apparatchik was more blurred than in other Eastern European countries (Siani-Davies 2005: 270). Manescu’s version is not so much contested as complemented by Piscoci, who associates the Romanian Revolution with Ceaus¸escu’s promise to give each citizen 100 lei, which was never fulfilled because of his deposition, and Piscoci’s desire to impress his wife by showing her that he can act as a hero. The fact that 16 years after the change of the political order Piscoci still ponders on Ceaus¸escu’s unfulfilled promise demonstrates that the fall of communism did not bring him any improvement. Such a diagnosis concurs with the historians’ vision of the revolutions at large and the Romanian one in particular. Peter SianiDavies quotes Tocqueville’s claim that revolutions often bring about far less change than revolutionaries claim and in Romania the honeymoon period, when euphoria and hope are dominant, was to prove conspicuously short-lived, giving way to widespread disappointment about politics and the economy (ibid.: 272–3). The people who phone Jderescu’s show add their own versions of the event. Each version is made from a different perspective which does not agree with that of any other witness. Together, they undermine the image of heroic, collective action we normally associate with the term

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‘revolution’. In a wider sense, Porumboiu’s film points to the fact that memories of witnesses of important events (or, for that matter, of any events) do not amount to a coherent narrative. This is, however, as many postmodern post-Foucault historians will argue, not a reason to dismiss these disjointed, fragmented, very personal and often pathetic relations. On the contrary, their ‘raw’, fragmented and inconsistent character testifies to their sincerity. A narrative which in the end finds its place in history books makes its way there not because it is ‘true’, but because the competing versions were dismissed and silenced. History is thus to a large extent a function of political power (see Introduction). In Romania this rule is perfectly demonstrated, because the losers, Ceaus¸escu and his family, were literally silenced by their executioners. Porumboiu implies that the same also happened to those who were the bravest in opposing the regime. This idea is expressed by a woman who phones to say that her son lost his life in a demonstration in Bucharest. Her story is met with hostility by Jderescu, who says that the fate of her son is irrelevant to his programme, which, of course, is a paradoxical statement, taking into account its topic. The mother of the killed youngster also says something which summarises any revolution and its aftermath: ‘It is snowing today. Enjoy it because tomorrow it will be mud’: the beauty, purity and excitement of the communal action will give way to the dirt of recriminations. While Good Bye Lenin! and Baltic Love Stories are dynamic films, privileging places of transition and using mobile cameras, 12:08 East of Bucharest is a static film. It shows characters imprisoned in cramped interiors and a deserted townscape. The second part of the film is especially static, due to being set entirely in the television studio and shot with a single, static camera. The effect of such a visual style is a sense of the difficulty of introducing any change into Romanian society; the past in this country appears to be heavier than in East Germany or Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as suggested in the previously discussed films. Porumboiu’s vision of history as fragmented, contradictory and inconclusive conforms to the view that the Romanian Revolution is a mysterious event which does not lose its enigma with the accumulation of factual data, but becomes even more puzzling the more one learns about it. It also concurs with the recent conceptualisation of history as cultural memory which I presented earlier in this book. Furthermore, it brings to mind Godard’s insistence of not choosing one version of the past at the expense of another, but leaving them together, equally valid, as if they were Hegelian thesis and anti-thesis which are not leading to a synthesis. Although these concepts are not new, it is difficult to find

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a film which conveys them so simply and successfully as 12:08 East of Bucharest.

Conclusions European cinema after 1989 has not offered a unified and coherent narrative of the end of communism. Instead, we get a plethora of images reflecting different national and personal experiences of this event. On each occasion we get the idea that although the political, social and economic systems which were in force in Eastern Europe after the Second World War were not worth prolonging, what followed hardly deserves celebration. In hindsight, this disappointment is natural. It reflects high expectations, typical of all revolutionary changes and anti-colonialist movements, which could not be fulfilled because, broadly speaking, the past haunts the present. In the case of postcommunist revolutions and overcoming socialist-style colonialism, it means that, on the one hand, people did not expect and did not want all the changes which were introduced, such as capitalism, because they wished an improvement of socialism. On the other hand, the postcommunist revolutions did not overcome some of the worst features of communism, such as aggressive, albeit hidden nationalism and domination of nomenklatura in various structures of power. A wide disappointment with the changes brought about by the ending of communism, yet also a conviction that they cannot be reversed, and a sense of déjà vu are important reasons why comedy is often employed to depict them. This is because comedy perfectly conveys disappointment and a sense of the inevitable. Comedy can be described as the ‘genre of a loser’ and a means to come to terms with loss.

6 Twists of Fate: Secret Agents, Communist Collaborators and Secret Files in German, Polish and Czech Films

The communist secret services, which combined political police and intelligence, were the most hated and dreaded element of the apparatus of power in the Soviet bloc. These negative emotions were directed towards their employees, agents and secret collaborators, and to files containing shameful secrets and fabricated evidence, able to destroy reputations of the most respected citizens. One of the consequences of the collapse of communism was thus the opportunity to dismantle these services and access their archives. The first opportunity was used almost immediately: the communist secret police was replaced in the early 1990s by new institutions practically across the entire communist bloc, although whether they were new in spirit, as well as in letter, remains a subject of debate (see, for example, Williams and Deletant 2001; Stan 2009b). The fate of the secret files proved more contentious. In each country the arguments of those in favour of disclosing them to the public at large clashed with those who proposed to limit the right to access them to special categories of people, such as historians or well-respected dissidents, or even discard them entirely. Adherents of the idea of placing the files in the public domain argued that this would quench the curiosity about how the secret services operated, who was corrupted by them and who resisted their pressure, and what was the relation between the secret police and other centres of official and unofficial power, such as the Churches. Another reason to open them was the conviction that the harm inflicted by the secret police should not go unpunished and forgotten: their functionaries and collaborators should be punished and/ or forbidden from holding any positions of power in the new democratic countries, which would not happen without screening the secret files. Opponents of opening the files, as well as those who wanted to postpone it or restrict access to them to ‘experts’, claimed that as a source of 207

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historical evidence the files are unreliable, not least because the secret servicemen added the names of innocent people to the lists of collaborators to hide the identities of the latter or to disgrace members of the opposition. Only the ‘experts’ would be able to distil the truth from the magma of information. They also argued that placing the files in the public domain causes distress to people who were forced to collaborate with the secret services under torture or blackmail, draws society’s attention to the past, deepens current political divisions and drains the state’s financial resources (Schwartz 1994: 141–8; see also Stan 2009b). The policy of limiting the participation of secret agents and collaborators in successor political positions, civil service, academia and so on, on the basis of the documents kept by the communist intelligence and secret police (and sometimes other communist institutions) in most countries was labelled lustration, from the Latin term lustratio, meaning purification. It is worth mentioning that in Polish the word lustracja is similar to lustro: a mirror, therefore lustration bears association with looking at oneself in a mirror or mirroring something else, most importantly a contemporary political situation (Wolen´ski 2007). Lustracja is thus a very apt term to convey the connection between the past and the present. The question of accessing the files and using them as a basis for contemporary political decisions – the so-called problem of ‘transitional justice’ – was answered differently in each country concerned, reflecting their varied pasts and no less different presents (for comparison see Moran 1994; Schwartz 1994; Welsh 1996; Williams and Deletant 2001; Stan 2009b). According to Timothy Garton Ash, the two countries most dissimilar in their approach to this issue were Germany and Poland. In the first country, the files of the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, were opened early and widely, allowing ordinary people to find out who spied on whom and with what effect. Such an approach followed the widespread conviction that this country’s history after the Second World War was based on a policy of forgetting, to the detriment of justice and the psychological wellbeing of the nation as a whole.1 It was believed that if injustices are to be prevented, forgetting and forgiving should not be allowed to happen again. In Poland post-1989, the ‘thick line’ (between the communist past and postcommunist present) pronounced by Poland’s first non-communist Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki (although largely unjustly, taking into account the context of Mazowiecki’s utterance), ‘rapidly became proverbial and was understood to stand for the whole

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“Spanish” approach to the difficult past’ which can be summarised as let bygones be bygones; no trials, no recriminations; look to the future, to democracy and “Europe”, as Spain had done’ (Garton Ash 2002: 267). The countries in which the secret files feature most prominently in national cinemas, Germany and Poland, are those which initially adopted opposite approaches to their communist past. I will devote a large part of this chapter to them, in order to establish whether they convey these contrasting attitudes to the communist past, as presented by Garton Ash, and whether, in the case of Poland, films about the secret services evolved in step with changes of attitudes towards the files which occurred after the historian made his assessment. The third element of my comparison will be Czech films. The workings of the secret services were also widely represented or alluded to in films made before the fall of communism. During the time of socialist realism the dominant image of a secret policeman was that of a brave officer who makes his country safe from foreign spies and domestic saboteurs, helps people to solve their everyday problems and, on top of that, is extremely attractive. Secret informers were also presented in a flattering way. Such positive representations we find, for example, in Polish films Niedaleko Warszawy (Not Far from Warsaw, 1954), directed by Maria Kaniewska, and Pos´cig (Chase, 1954), directed by Stanisław Urbanowicz, and Czechoslovak Král Šumavy (Smugglers of Death, 1959), directed by Karel Kachyn ˇa, and Zpívající pudrˇenka (The Singing Powder-Box, 1959) by Milan Vošmik. In the later decades, during political thaws and periods of democratisation, the filmmakers attempted less positive portrayals of the secret agents, as in Žert (The Joke, 1968), directed by Jaromil Jireš, Ucho (The Ear, 1970), directed by Karel Kachyn ˇa, and Polish Indeks (Index, 1977), directed by Janusz Kijowski, Przesłuchanie (Interrogation, 1989), directed by Ryszard Bugajski, and Człowiek z z˙elaza (Man of Iron, 1981), directed by Andrzej Wajda (Zwierzchowski forthcoming). One would expect that, in line with this trend, filmmakers in the postcommunist period would offer us a damning representation of the secret services. Whether this happened is the subject of my investigation.

A Stasi as a good man in The Lives of Others The files of the East German secret police entered the public domain earlier than in other postcommunist countries. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, German protesters stormed the Stasi headquarters to

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stop the destruction of personal files by the Stasi functionaries, but also, as it was later alleged, to acquire files that might incriminate collaborators. In October of the same year, a new government agency was founded called the Office of the Federal Commissioner Preserving the Records of the Ministry for State Security (BstU), known as the Gauck Commission, from the name of its first head, Joachim Gauck, a German Protestant pastor and human rights activist. In 1992, the Stasi records were opened, allowing ordinary citizens to access their files. Between 1990 and May 1993 over 2 million individuals applied to see any files which had been kept by the Stasi on them and most of the applications were from former citizens of the GDR (Childs and Popplewell 1999: 195). Also in the early 1990s, the process of lustration, known as a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) in the old East Germany began. In academia, where it proved most contentious, lustration led to the liquidation of departments devoted to MarxismLeninism, disqualifying of Stasi collaborators, egregious SED time-servers and those who were notorious for dismissing dissenting students (Maier 1997: 303–11). The swift and wide opening of files and speedy and relatively thorough lustration in Germany is explained by the unification of East and West Germany. As Garton Ash observes: After 1990, the total takeover of the former East Germany by the Federal Republic meant that, unlike in all other post-communist states, there was no continuity from old to new security services and no hesitation about exposing the evils of the previous secret police state. Quite the reverse. In the land of Martin Luther and Leopold von Ranke, driven by a distinctly Protestant passion to confront past sins, the forcefully stated wish of a few East German dissidents to expose the crimes of the regime, and the desire of many West Germans (especially those from the class of ’68) not to repeat the mistakes made in covering up and forgetting the evils of Nazism after 1949, we saw an unprecedentedly swift, far-reaching, and systematic opening of the more than 110 miles of Stasi files. The second time around, forty years on, Germany was bent on getting its Vergangenheitsbewältigung, its past-beating, just right. Of course Russia’s KGB, the big brother of East Germany’s big brother, did nothing of the kind. (Garton Ash 2007) Placing Stasi files in the public domain so early was an important reason why from all the features of communism, the work of the East German secret police attracted the greatest national and international attention, as demonstrated by the sheer amount of popular and serious

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literature as well as media reports devoted to it. Another factor in this interest is the association of the Stasi with the apparatus of repression in Nazi Germany. Even the rhyming ‘Stasi’ with ‘Nazi’ suggests a connection between these two institutions.2 Such an association implies that the Stasi were the most fearsome of the institutions invented in the Eastern bloc. It is difficult to say, however, whether such an opinion is grounded in reality, as insufficient research was done comparing the security systems in various countries of the Eastern bloc (especially between Eastern European countries and the Soviet KGB). Another reason why the Stasi became so ‘fashionable’ is the greater internationalisation of German history than of any other European country, in the sense of being scrutinised by foreign specialists, following the huge role Germany played in the European history of the twentieth century (Betz 1997: 40; Fritzsche 2006: 37; see also Introduction). For some historians, such as David Childs, the co-author of many books on East Germany who was spied upon by the Stasi in Britain and Germany, and Garton Ash, who studied in Berlin in the 1970s and had a Stasi file, the history of the Stasi was their own, most personal past. Garton Ash even devoted to his relationship with the Stasi a book-length study, The File (1997). The proximity of East Berlin to the West added to the Stasi’s exoticism in the Western eye. The perception of the Stasi as both close and exotic informs Stasiland, a bestselling book by Australian Anna Funder. Funder focuses on the most absurd aspects of the behaviour of the East German secret police, juxtaposing, often on one page or in one paragraph, its bureaucratic meticulousness with extreme perversity. She mentions the huge volume of the Stasi files, claiming that ‘In its forty years, “the Firm” generated the equivalent of all records in German history since the middle ages’ (Funder 2003: 5) and their method of searching for dissidents by capturing their smells from their underwear and later using sniffer dogs to recognise them on the basis of the smell samples. In her description of the Stasi methods she also juxtaposes a 1989 calendar with naked women, hanging above the Stasi desk, with the communist insignia hanging on the wall. The overall impression is of people who were fanatical, narrowminded and depraved, not unlike the Nazi stereotype. Whenever possible, Funder attempts to play up the difference between the bad Stasi and the rest of the world: ‘them’ and ‘us’. Inevitably, the Stasi entered cinema too. One such film, Good Bye Lenin!, was discussed in the previous chapter. Another notable example is Helden wie wir (Heroes Like Us, 1999), directed by Sebastian Peterson. However, both these films situate the Stasi as the background against

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which the young characters grow and which allow them to formulate their own views. A different picture emerges from Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, where the Stasi officer takes the central stage and his psychology is of utmost importance for the film’s narrative and ideology. Along with Good Bye Lenin!, The Lives of Others belongs to the most successful German films nationally and internationally, as testified by the audience in Europe exceeding 7 million people, its winning an Oscar in 2007 for the best foreign film and numerous other awards. In common with Wolfgang Becker, the director of Good Bye Lenin!, von Donnersmarck comes from West Germany and on account of his social background (signalled by his long name and the aristocratic ‘von’) and education, including a degree in philosophy from Oxford University, he epitomises a cosmopolitan and liberal mindset, as well as an affinity for Hollywood cinema,3 which is conveyed by The Lives of Others’ ideology and style. It is set in an Orwellian year of 1984. In East Germany this year belonged to what can be described as an Orwellian decade due to the Stasi’s increased vigilance which lasted till the fall of the Berlin Wall (Childs and Popplewell 1999: 174–92). The clearest indication of that was the lifting of restrictions on the Stasi spying on Party members in 1986 (ibid.: 176). At the same time, paradoxically, during this period the influence of the secret service on the SED’s ‘geriatric’ leadership diminished. The Stasi were often used as an entertainment and shopping service for Party officials, and the gathering of intelligence was increasingly an art for art’s sake (ibid.: 178–80; Koehler 1999). Inevitably, it led to the frustration and disillusionment of many secret policemen. The escalation of the Stasi’s actions on the one hand and the sense that their work is a waste due to the corruption of the Party leadership and its detachment from society provides the background to The Lives of Others. The film begins with the scene of an interrogation, demonstrating that the Stasi are utter professionals, able to extract confessions with the maximal efficiency. They use odour samples, as mentioned by Funder, have dogs specially trained to sniff fear, and classify the suspects into specific types, such as ‘hysterical anthropocentrists’. The reasons why these cruel methods are used against fellow citizens are never spelt out by the characters, either because it goes without saying why they do what they do or because, as in decadent institutions, the employees work in a mechanical way, without questioning their motives. By highlighting the quasi-scientific approach to the task of the destruction of fellow human beings and to the anti-humanist ideology of the

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Stasi, von Donnersmarck likens East Germany to Nazi Germany. At the same time he suggests, as often happens in discourses on totalitarianism (for example Žižek 2001) that communism was a more inhuman system than fascism. This is because in Nazi Germany everybody who was loyal to Hitler, or was only opposing him in a ‘quiet’ way, was safe from persecution. By contrast, in East Germany nobody is trusted by the state. This idea is conveyed by a peculiar reversal of external and internal spaces in The Lives of Others. The houses, which normally play the role of buffers against external intrusions, here offer no respite from the relentless spying. Only outside the houses, in the parks and on the streets, people can sometimes find privacy and solace. Von Donnersmarck suggests that there are two types of people working in the secret police, as in the whole communist hierarchy: those who joined out of conviction, who are in the minority, and the rest, who did so to advance their career.4 Again, this division into idealists and conformists brings associations with the Nazi period. The difference is that then the majority of idealists worshipped Hitler, while in East Germany there is nobody of a similar charisma. The First Secretary of the Party, Erich Honecker, is hardly mentioned in the film and when he is, he is only the subject of jokes.5 The main character, Captain Gerd Wiesler, due to being middle aged and committed to ‘real existing socialism’, represents the average MfS officer in the 1980s (Dennis 2003: 79) (Figure 6.1). Initially he is a perfect Stasi officer, for whom the state is like a god: to admire and obey. His devotion to his country is epitomised by his sparsely furnished apartment, devoid of books and personal mementoes. There Wiesler spends his free time watching a black and white television, eating unappealing meals and having occasional sex with prostitutes. Wiesler’s lack of intellectual interests, poor taste in interior décor and clothing, a certain automatism of reaction and even his face, which adorned with headphones resembles the face of a crane operator or welder, renders him also as a working-class character as imagined by an upper-class filmmaker.6 Wiesler can be described as a labourer in the Fordist surveillance factory. His working-class appearance helps to awaken viewers’ sympathy for the protagonist. Sympathy is also facilitated by the use of the camera. We look where Wiesler directs his gaze; we hear what he (over)hears, and the visions and voices come across as objective. Granting him the power of the gaze can be compared with furnishing Alex in Good Bye Lenin! with the voice-over, as discussed in the previous chapter. The actor chosen to play Wiesler is another reason why we sympathise with him. Wiesler is played by Ulrich Mühe, an East German actor able to convey both ordinariness, idealism and mystery.7

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Figure 6.1 Ulrich Mühe as Gerd Wiesler in Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

These features were noted by a number of reviewers, including Anthony Lane who wrote, ‘One of the marvels of Ulrich Mühe’s performance – in its seething stillness, its quality not just of self-denial but of selfhaunting – is that he never distils Wiesler into a creature purely of his times. You can imagine him, with his close-cropped hair, as a young Lutheran in the wildfire of the early Reformation, or as a lost soul finding a new cause in the Berlin of 1933’ (Lane 2007). Wiesler’s bare existence is contrasted with the lives of a distinctively upper-class couple, Georg Dreyman, a well-known and talented playwright, and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Figure 6.2). They come across as decent people and have friends amongst German dissidents, but are also accepted, even pampered, by the political hierarchy. Their ability to occupy the golden middle ground is conveyed by the name of the protagonist, Dreyman: the third man, neither communist nor a dissident. In his political position and his work the playwright models himself on Bertolt Brecht, the ‘dreyman’ in the previous period of East Germany’s history, due to being celebrated by the communist authorities, whilst enjoying artistic and commercial freedom (including an account in a Swiss bank) and managing to preserve his dignity. In his play Das Leben des Galilei (Life of Galileo, 1937–39) Brecht advocated

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Figure 6.2 Sebastian Koch as Georg Dreyman and Martina Gedeck as ChristaMaria Sieland in Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

hiding one’s true beliefs when faced with persecution in order to better disseminate them, as well as preserve one’s physical existence. Such advice, no doubt, was attractive to Dreyman, to whom living and dying a martyr had little appeal. However, von Donnersmarck shows that in the 1980s the golden middle became more difficult to sustain than in the previous periods of the GDR’s history. Upon going to the theatre with his boss Grubitz, where he watches Christa-Maria perform and Dreyman observing her performance, Wiesler proposes they spy on them. His decision results from Wiesler’s perception of the couple’s otherness, marked by their upper-class ways and the couple’s mutual affection, tacitly undermining the communist idea of the primacy of the state over private welfare. Wiesler’s superiors, of course, agree with Wiesler’s proposal. Especially keen is the obnoxious culture minister, Hempf, who is erotically interested in Christa-Maria, and therefore perceives Dreyman as an obstacle in his conquest of the beautiful actress. Hempf explains his support for surveillance of the couple by a rule that the more suspicious one is about the most apparently loyal people, the ‘truer’ one is to the spirit of socialism (and the greater the chance of moving up in the communist hierarchy). Such an

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approach is ultimately self-destructive, but in a world where so many people perish either physically or psychologically every day, nobody expects to live happily for a long time. Surviving a day is a success. Surveying the apartment of Dreyman and Christa-Maria allows Wiesler access to the ‘lives of others’ which, understandably, he finds more interesting than his own existence. Von Donnersmarck suggests that in his urge to observe while being invisible himself Wiesler is by no means an exception among the citizens of the GDR: the country was a gigantic panopticon.8 To underscore their interest in the ‘lives of others’ he organises his film as a series of scenes in which somebody is gazing at somebody else. First Christa-Maria is looked at by Dreyman, Hempf and Wiesler at the theatre, then Dreyman and Christa-Maria are observed by Hempf when they are dancing in their apartment, then Wiesler follows and writes down the couple’s every move in his role as a Stasi surveillance officer. Christa-Maria and Dreyman also observe each other, as well as making an effort not to see and not to be seen to see. In the end Wiesler is also observed by his superiors, who lose trust in him. Watching the film also makes the viewer realise that he shares the spy’s joy of looking through a keyhole and overhearing. When a Stasi officer admits that he prefers to spy on artists than on priests or peace activists, it feels like the confession of an ordinary filmgoer. The sense that the Stasis are not so different from us is reinforced by how the loft where Wiesler is spying on Georg and Christa-Maria looks, like a television studio or CCTV control room.9 Gazing is also a substitute for talking, touching and loving and, ultimately, living. By extension, the GDR comes across as an impoverished world or even a non-world, whose real passions are dislocated and projected on somewhere else, perhaps the West. Such a reading is confirmed by the appearance of the main couple. As Garton Ash observes, ‘The playwright … in his smart brown corduroy suit and open-necked shirt, dresses, walks, and talks like a West German intellectual from Schwabing, a chic quarter of Munich, not an East German’ (Garton Ash 2007). Christa-Maria, in her equally Westernised clothes, sexiness and drug addiction, conforms to the stereotype of a Western star or prewar star, such as Veronika Voss from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (Veronika Voss, 1982). During the surveillance operation the lives of both Dreyman and Wiesler undergo a profound change. Dreyman’s position as a ‘third man’ becomes untenable and he moves to the side of anti-communist conspirators. He attends the funeral of his director friend who committed suicide and writes an article denouncing East German policies

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which cause many people to take their own lives. He also asks ChristaMaria not to attend a meeting with the lecherous Hempf. Each of these moves would be sufficient for the authorities to pronounce Dreyman an enemy of the state, but we are led to believe that his fate was practically sealed when the decision to bug his apartment was made, because according to the topsy-turvy logic of a totalitarian state the fact that the state does not trust its citizen is proof that he is not trustworthy. Wiesler, on the other hand, rather than looking for incriminating material about Dreyman and his girlfriend, attempts to protect the couple from the vicious Hempf. One factor in Wiesler’s change of heart is his attraction to Christa-Maria, represented as a non-sexual yearning and contrasted with Hempf’s physical lust. Wiesler might also be motivated by his realisation that nobody in the Stasi or the wider circle of Party officials believes in socialist ideas. Yet, the most important cause of Wiesler’s betraying his previous ethos is his attraction to art, to which Dreyman and Christa-Maria unknowingly introduce him. His transformation begins when he observes Christa-Maria performing in a play. Then he is moved by the poems of Bertolt Brecht in a book he takes from the couple’s apartment and finally by music played in their house. The idea that art can change a man for the better is openly expressed by Dreyman who rhetorically asks Christa-Maria whether a man who truly heard a piece of music, entitled Sonata for a Good Man, can be a bad man. Of course, it is impossible to prove Dreyman wrong due to the vagueness of the expression ‘truly hear’. Nevertheless, such faith in the redemptive potential of art appears naïve in the light of the well-known fact that many high-ranking Nazis were art connoisseurs, especially fond of music.10 Such love did not make them any more humane in their relationship with their victims, rather it added perversity to their cruel acts. The idea of a redeeming power of art has reappeared in cinema of the past decade. Garton Ash draws comparison between Wiesler’s behaviour and that of Wilm Hosenfeld, the ‘good German’ in Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), who spares Władysław Szpilman’s life upon hearing him play the piano. I will also mention here The Reader (2008) by Stephen Daldry, where the illiteracy of a concentration camp guard is represented as the main reason for her committing crimes and being punished more severely than other Nazi perpetrators. The idea that art might completely overhaul a person’s value system (no doubt flattering the artists) was also common under socialism. On the one hand, it was the basis for severe censorship of art, and on the other, it prompted many people to smuggle forbidden books into socialist countries, as well as taking the work of dissidents abroad in the hope that they would

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persuade Western countries to save them from the clutches of communism. The importance attached to art in the socialist East also explains the privileged position enjoyed by Georg and Christa-Maria. Although Wiesler’s bad advice to Christa-Maria not to give in to Hempf’s sexual advances is the ultimate cause of her betrayal of Dreyman and her death, Dreyman, upon learning about Wiesler’s attempts to save the couple, not only forgives him but dedicates a novel to him entitled Sonata for a Good Man. The title conveys Dreyman’s conviction of Wiesler’s high moral standing and his belief that exposure to art made a good man of him. Dreyman’s dedication is thus a sign of his narcissism, to which his attending the premiere of his own play, The Lives of Others, in postcommunist times also points. Hempf is also present there as in communist times and, as before, he does not follow the play carefully, but leaves during the crucial scene. From the conversation between Dreyman and Hempf we learn that the situation of ‘Hempfs’ did not change substantially in the united Germany: they still possess knowledge others are lacking and enjoy their old aura of superiority, suggesting that lustration in Germany hardly hurt those at the top. By contrast, at this stage Wiesler does not go to the theatre, either because he has lost interest in art entirely, or because theatre without ChristaMaria does not excite him or, perhaps, because as a dispatcher of junk mail, to which he was reduced in postcommunist times, he cannot afford such a luxury. In Hempf and Wiesler we can see the new incarnations of characters familiar from the films about the Second World War. The first man, played by the overweight and physically unattractive actor Thomas Thieme, whom Garton Ash remembers in the role of a Nazi in a theatre performance (Garton Ash 2007) and who would later play the judge in the trial of the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Uli Edel’s film (see Chapter 3), brings to mind cinematic versions of the representatives of the higher ranks of the Gestapo and the NSDAP (Nazi Party). However, Hempf exceeds them in his level of cynicism and selfishness, as if to confirm the opinion that state communism was a worse system than Nazism. Wiesler, according to the director’s own words, was modelled on Schindler from Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (quoted in Funder 2007: 20). Such representation of a Stasi officer is open to similar criticism to that of Spielberg’s representation of a member of the Nazi Party. One objection concerns the typicality of their characters. Spielberg chose an exceptional case; his good Nazi was by no means a typical representative of the NSDAP or even of the German population at large and he did not include in his portrayal any features which could tarnish the image of Schindler

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as a ‘holy Nazi’. Schindler’s List is thus regarded as a film which creates a myth, instead of representing history in an unbiased way (Cole 1999: 73–94, see Chapter 1), and this myth, to some extent, helps to rehabilitate the Nazis at large. Von Donnersmarck is even more open to this criticism because, as Anna Funder argues, there were ‘no Schindlers’ among the Stasi, not least because it was more risky to help fellow citizens in the GDR than Jews in Hitler’s Germany. Therefore, she adds, ‘For demonstrations of conscience and courage, one would need to look to the resisters. And it is this choice – to make a film about the change of heart of a Stasi man – that turns The Lives of Others, for some, into an inappropriate plea for the absolution of the perpetrators … A story like Wiesler’s plays into the hands of the ex-Stasi as they fight for their reputation’ (Funder 2007: 20). For me, however, the most problematic aspect of the representation of Wiesler from a moral perspective is pronouncing him a hero and a martyr due to his late and unsuccessful attempts to save Dreyman and Christa-Maria. The idea of a redemption by a single act (which has its roots in the Gospel) was strongly opposed by the famous Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, who noted that it is difficult to find any person, including a Nazi, who did not do any good deed in his life. This is not a reason, however, to forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Levi’s idea is that for the sake of justice for the victims of such hideous crimes as those committed in the death camps, we should look into the totality of human behaviour (Levi 1988). This line of reasoning is also elaborated by Žižek, whose Violence is a bitter indictment of people who come across as good in their private existence or even in certain spheres of their public lives, but whose policies are disastrous for wider populations (Žižek 2009). I have no doubt that von Donnersmarck anticipated objections of this type, but he ignored them aware that the Hollywood cinema, to which he aspires, has a special taste for prodigal sons. Unlike the three men who physically and psychologically survive the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dreyman, Wiesler and Hempf, even if somewhat bruised, Christa-Maria does not make it into the postcommunist period. She is also effectively erased from the memory of the survivors. Dreyman is watching a performance of his play, in which she had the main part, sitting next to an attractive woman, most likely his new girlfriend or wife. Later neither Dreyman nor Hempf mention her in their conversation, despite the fact that they reminisce about the old times. Dreyman’s novel, Sonata for a Good Man, is dedicated to Wiesler, not to the memory of Christa-Maria. The way the memory of Christa-Maria is treated in the film is symptomatic of the attitude towards the struggle and suffering of

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women under communism in postcommunist countries: it is either forgotten or, at best, regarded as of secondary importance in comparison with the male martyrs. Here the role of a woman is limited to providing an opportunity for a bad Stasi to redeem his sins. It is thus both ironic and fitting that the name of the female protagonist evokes both the name of Christ and his mother. Like Christ, Christa-Maria suffers for sins which are not hers and, like Mary, she acts as a mediatrix between men rendered by History as more significant than she. Dreyman is able to decipher his past thanks to the Stasi office being accessible to the general public. Here the playwright goes to consult his file. Although Wiesler falsified his reports about Dreyman, Dreyman leaves with a sense that he solved a crucial puzzle about his life and we share his cathartic pleasure. The efficiency with which the employees of the archive deal with his queries, the perfect order of the files and their ‘right size’ (they neither overwhelm Dreyman by their volume, nor force him to search further due to their incompleteness) and the library-like ambience of the room where he reads them, reassures Dreyman and the viewer about the mirror-like connection between the Stasi archive and the communist past. Such representation of the archive of the secret services validates Germany’s policy of opening the files, but comes across as problematic in the light of the reports about the sheer amount of documents collected by the Stasi, many of them being shredded and needing to be reassembled using special computer software. The Stasi archive even became emblematic of the near impossibility to master contemporary archives due to their immense size and, yet, their incompleteness. The Hollywood ‘zero style’ of the film, marked by its linear narrative, classical acting, static frames and the prevalence of medium shots, compels the viewer to regard the story told in it as objective and, by extension, to trust von Donnersmarck’s take on History. Again, in this sense The Lives of Others can be compared to Schindler’s List, which also gives a sense of objectivity. For many viewers, Schindler’s List is the ultimate film about the Nazi atrocities; The Lives of Others is on its way to occupy a similar position in relation to the history of the GDR. A sign of its importance in the cinematic discourse on ‘Stasiland’ is the subsequent absence of films on this subject, as if directors were too shy to compete with the powerful rendition offered in this film.

An ubek as a superhero in Dogs In postcommunist Poland the approach to the secret services and files was initially different than in Germany, which pertains to the fact that

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unlike in its Western neighbour, where there was a clear break between the old and the new political orders, in Poland the postcommunist system was in some measure a continuation of the old regime (on detailed discussion on lustration in Poland see Stan 2009a).11 This was promised by the Solidarity side in the Round-table Negotiations of 1989, whose purpose was to ensure a peaceful transition of power from the communist authorities to the Solidarity elite (see Chapter 4). As a consequence, elimination of the communist nomenklatura through a ruthless lustration was practically out of the question. Nevertheless, the first postcommunist government, led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, dismantled the communist secret police (Słuz˙ba Bezpieczen´stwa, SB) in 1990, replacing it with the Office for State Protection (Urza˛d Ochrony Pan´stwa, UOP), and ordered a verification of its members, which led to the dismissal of over 6000 people (Stan 2009a: 78). In the same year it set up a commission, consisting of prominent historians and members of the anti-communist opposition, including Adam Michnik, to research the files of the SB in order to decide what to do with them. The commission decided that it should not be made public, on the grounds that some files were destroyed, others were incomplete and many were unreliable due to the widespread practice of adding to the list of secret informers the names of people who were not, in order to protect the real collaborators (Wolen´ski 2007; Czuchnowski 2009). The decision not to allow ordinary people to make up their minds about the content of the SB archive led to accusations that the so-called ‘Michnik Commission’ and the government protected the members of the current political elite who in communist times behaved less than nobly. It was followed by online publication on the internet of various lists of secret collaborators, which included Lech Wałe˛sa (Stan 2009a: 81). This man, to whom the world is largely indebted for overthrowing communist rule, in the postcommunist period was repeatedly accused of being a communist agent with the pseudonym ‘Bolek’ (Cenckiewicz and Gontarczyk 2008). Verification of the members of the SB and the destruction of some of its files, which took place in 1990, prompt the narrative of Psy (Dogs, 1992) by Władysław Pasikowski. Unlike The Lives of Others, the film did not become an international hit, partly because Polish history is less internationalised than German history and partly because it targeted the domestic audience. Indeed, Dogs became one of the greatest successes in post-1989 Polish cinema. In the first two weeks after its premiere it was watched by 300,000 people in Poland (Fiejdasz 2006), a record for a Polish film in this year, and in due course it sparked a franchise, Psy 2. Ostatnia krew (Dogs 2, 1994) and Demony wojny wedlug Goi

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(Demons of War according to Goya, 1998), a unique phenomenon in East European cinema. Dogs also became a cult film, as testified by fragments of dialogue entering the idiom of young men in the 1990s (Lisowski 1997). The popularity of this film would not come as a surprise if not for the fact that it was almost universally explained by the attractiveness of its main character, Franz Maurer, a secret policeman, popularly known in Poland as ubek (from Urza˛d Bezpieczen´stwa, UB – the earlier name of the Polish secret police). In the 1990s, he became a role model for young people. Even in the 2000s, Polish film critics complained that there was nobody to replace Maurer; he was the last superhero of Polish cinema ( Janowska 2005). The period when Dogs had its premiere, 1992, played a part in its enthusiastic reception. At the time the old Solidarity camp fell apart, the economic situation in Poland worsened and the majority of society treated politicians of Solidarity pedigree with distrust, even hostility. This was combined with a widespread nostalgia for communist times, which became associated with the period of stability and relative prosperity for all. A year later, in 1993, the main postcommunist party, SLD, won the parliamentary elections in Poland and, two years later, the postcommunist politician Aleksander Kwas´niewski became the Polish President. Dogs was thus made at the peak of the Polish version of Ostalgie and, although this nostalgia did not include yearning for interrogations and imprisonment by the secret police, it facilitated the forgiveness of functionaries of the old system. Pasikowski sets his film shortly after the fall of communism, represented as a time of great upheaval. The old dissidents become the new top dogs and demand all the perks connected with political power. At the same time, those who previously enjoyed some privileges (which were modest, as Pasikowski suggests), attempt to find a place for themselves in the new reality. There is a sense that big fortunes can be made or broken and this depends on one’s speed of reaction: one false move and one is metaphorically or even literally dead. This sense of confusion and hope is felt most acutely among the secret police. As members of the most disgraced institution in Poland, they are aware that their new masters have no reason to prolong their service, but hope that they will be moved to a civil police. Verification is meant to establish who from the old SB should be allowed such a transition. Pasikowski shows how this mechanism affects a group of ubeks working in Warsaw and, while doing so, he universalises and dignifies their plight. Whenever the ubeks talk about their problems, it sounds like the talk of ordinary Poles complaining about the difficulties they encounter following the fall of

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communism. They are concerned about losing jobs and employment privileges, such as free housing and having to learn new skills. Their meetings in the SB canteen are full of talk about what proportion of the employees of SB were sacked in different regions of Poland and one can imagine similar talks taking place in the canteens of many factories across the whole country. It is worth mentioning that in the first half of the 1990s Polish filmmakers avoided the subject of unemployment; films about this problem erupted only in the following decade. Thus the director of Dogs was at the forefront of the postcommunist cinema of social concern. The ubeks contrast their situation marked by struggle for material survival with that of the politicians who fight for power and discuss lofty ideas (this was during the time of the heated discussion about the right to abortion) in their own circles. When one of the ubeks says, standing on top of a rubbish heap, ‘Politics is us, here, on this rubbish heap,’ he expresses the disappointments of many ordinary people who felt abandoned by the new class of politicians. His utterance is reminiscent of Maciek Chełmicki, the protagonist of the famous film by Andrzej Wajda, Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds, 1957), who died on a rubbish heap, which symbolised the new authorities forgetting about former members of the Home Army. The memory of Maciek is evoked again near the end of the film, when Franz Maurer shoots his opponent using a similar pistol (bought from a Russian soldier) to that used by Maciek. Pasikowski also dignifies the plight of the secret servicemen by making them embody friendship and communality, whose disappearance from social life was mourned in postcommunist Poland (as elsewhere in Eastern Europe). Their importance for the ubeks is conveyed by the title of the film, which refers to the way they call themselves: they are ‘dogs’ because they act in a pack. Thanks to adhering to these values, in the end Maurer wins over a new recruit, nicknamed Młody (the Young), who initially shows the ex-secret servicemen contempt. However, we also see how the group, following the change in political regime, disintegrates, and the film makes us lament its fragmentation and destruction. The term ‘dogs’ also evinces that the secret policemen work for masters; the masters might change, but the ubeks remain in their subservient position, therefore before passing judgement on the ‘dogs’ (or dogsbodies) of the communist system, we should look first to their masters. Pasikowski’s characters also ‘sniff’ out their suspects and attack them; a large pack of Alsatians locked in cages next to their office points to their methods of work. Maurer even smiles to the dogs, baring his teeth as if he were a wolf. Such a connection between secret policemen and dogs anticipates

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The Lives of Others, but unlike in von Donnersmarck’s film, where we see the Stasi functionaries at work with all the literal and metaphorical blood and stench such work produces, in Pasikowski’s movie these aspects are kept comfortably (from the perspective of the main characters) offscreen. The film show us the ‘dogs’ when their political mission is practically over and there are no flashbacks to the time when they conducted interrogations. We learn about their past only from their own testimonies, and their memory is, of course, highly selective. They reminisce on events and personalities which, in the light of the disappointments caused by the Solidarity camp and its main ally, the Catholic Church, might awaken schadenfreude in the viewers. This includes stories of lecherous and greedy priests, pompous university professors who became dissidents to gain extra prestige, and teenagers for whom distributing anti-communist leaflets was a way to prove their macho masculinity or find a boyfriend. Yet, the most important reason why Pasikowski succeeded in making the audience sympathetic to the plight of ubeks are the specific features of his main character, Franz Maurer (Figure 6.3). We meet Maurer for the first time when he is interrogated by the Verification Tribunal, which is meant to decide whether Maurer is fit to join the civil police. The facts revealed during the interrogation, such as his marriage to the daughter of a communist dignitary, suggest that he cynically supported the communist regime to progress in his career. However, we also learn that he was a marksman of the highest standard (he was able to shoot a man from over 200 metres), acted independently and saved the lives of innocent people. During his interrogation Maurer, sitting in front of a bench full of hostile people armed with files and pens, comes across as a lonely hero, fighting for his survival in an unequal game. The dignity and courage, verging on arrogance, with which he answers the questions of his interrogators, make the audience sympathetic to his predicament. Maurer’s opponents have no moral right to pass judgement on him, because they were no less implicated in the communist system than he. In the chief interrogator, Senator Wencel, Maurer recognises a functionary who ‘verified’ him politically many times before and he makes a sarcastic comment about how the systems change, but his interrogator carries on with his job as before. The comparison between Maurer and Wencel, not unlike the comparison between Wiesler and Hempf, shows the moral superiority of ordinary employees of the secret police over high officials, who enjoyed all the privileges of their positions without getting their hands dirty. Representing the interrogator passing judgements on ubeks as beneficiary of the communist system also concurs

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Figure 6.3 Bogusław Linda as Franz Maurer and Marek Kondrat carrying secret files in as Olo in Psy (Dogs, 1992), directed by Władysław Pasikowski

with the then widespread opinion that those in power in Poland either previously collaborated with the communist system or emulated the old authorities. Casting choices help the viewer to sympathise with Maurer, and to feel hostility towards his chief opponent, Wencel. Both Bogusław Linda, who plays Maurer, and Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, as the chief interrogator, at the time of Dogs’ premiere were strongly associated with the Cinema of Moral Concern, the paradigm which exposed the malaise of Poland in the last stages of communist rule and in some ways foretold the imminent change of system. Linda played innocent men who fell victim to the political system, as in Przypadek (Blind Chance, 1981) by Krzysztof Kies´lowski or Kobieta samotna (A Woman Alone, 1981) by Agnieszka Holland. Zapasiewicz’s most memorable role was playing a cynical and careerist academic in Krzysztof Zanussi’s Barwy ochronne (Camouflage, 1976). Zapasiewicz in the role of a high official sends out the message that the political order in Poland might change after 1989 but not the political structures or people who take advantage of the status quo. Of course, if people as cynical as Wencel are in a position to verify secret files, then we are to believe that it is better to leave them to the secret

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servicemen themselves, who at least had first-hand knowledge about the cases. Pasikowski also adds to Maurer’s charisma through furnishing him with many attributes of an affluent Westerner. Maurer drinks whisky rather than Polish vodka, smokes Camels, unlike his boss, who prefers Polish cigarette brand Radomskie, and wears either a leather jacket and jeans or a trendy white shirt. Furthermore, he lives in a spacious and tasteful house fitted with an open fireplace and drives a BMW. To prevent the suspicion that Maurer acquired these goods through taking bribes or blackmailing his victims, Pasikowski provides his protagonist with an affluent ex-wife, who conveniently emigrated to the West with their child, leaving him all her wealth (or this is how it initially appears). These attributes make Maurer look almost more Western than the people from the West. The Germanic sound of his name, bringing connotation of a Mauser (a type of pistol), confirms the bravery and virility of its bearer. The most famous Polish secret agent on screen prior to Franz Maurer was a Polish officer working under the pseudonym Hans Kloss, during the Second World War, in a popular series Stawka wie˛ksza niz˙ z˙ycie (More Than Life at Stake, 1967–68), directed by Andrzej Konic. Kloss’s allure was partly due to combining stereotypical features of the German and Polish upper class, for example sporting a virile Wehrmacht uniform, while having impeccable manners when in contact with women. Pasikowski, undoubtedly, refers to this lineage. These Western attributes lead the viewer to believe that Franz Maurer joined the secret services not for material advantages or to serve communist causes, but for adventure, to prove himself as a male at a time when men had little opportunity to fight in wars, in a similar way the young men in the West joined institutions such as the FBI, CIA or MI5. This association is augmented by him frequently being referred to as ‘the Saint’, which refers both to Franz’s selfless behaviour and to the popular British 1960s series about a spy, played by Roger Moore. In common with the secret agents in Western films, women find Maurer very attractive, but he rarely succumbs to their charms. Not surprisingly, Jane Perlez of The New York Times saw in Linda a local incarnation of an eternal macho type and compared him to Mickey Rourke (Perlez 1994). The director envelops Franz with an aura of nostalgia. He does so by showing Franz’s large house almost empty, which encapsulates the momentous change he has to undergo in his professional life and the devastating effect of his splitting with his wife. His ex-wife’s demand that he gives her back the house and the car adds to his sense that happiness belongs to his past and his life is practically over. This is most

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poignantly expressed by the way he speaks, namely by his preference for using the past tense and placing the predicate at the end of the sentence, as in the ‘cult’ phrase ‘Because a bad woman she was’ (Bo to zła kobieta była) (Lisowski 1997: 238). The nostalgic effect is augmented by jazzy music and occasionally slowed-down motion. The story is shot in a limited range of colours, with a prevalence of sepia. Such use of colour denaturalises the image, making it look as a re-presentation. It is also reminiscent of Polish war films. All these means create a sense of déjà vu: everything which Franz experiences in the present is a version of his or somebody else’s past. As a civil policeman Franz fights a group of criminals smuggling cars and drugs. During his work Franz loses the bulk of his friends, is expelled from the police, kills his old pal from the SB, Olo, who joined the mafia following his failure of verification, and eventually ends up in jail. Franz’s lonely fight allows Pasikowski to paint the landscape of postcommunist Poland as a moral desert, in which Franz stands alone against a sinister syndicate consisting of Polish, German and Russian criminals, corrupt politicians (again represented by the infamous Senator Wencel) and prominent lawyers, ex-ubeks and ex-Stasi. This exotic coalition of dark forces, proposed by Pasikowski, adheres to the vision of Polish postcommunist history advocated in the early 1990s by some Polish right-wing authors and politicians (Zybertowicz 1993). Thus, paradoxically, unlike in The Lives of Others, where we sympathise with the Stasi officer because he changed, in Dogs we support the ex-ubek because he did not change: his adherence to the old values promises resistance against the godless postcommunist reality. The surprising representation of an ex-secret serviceman as a hero for the new Poland was not lost on the film reviewers. As one of them put it, it belongs to a wider paradox of Polish cinema that ‘while the most popular film character in communist Poland [Maciek Chełmicki in Ashes and Diamonds] was a member of the Home Army, the favourite character of free Poland is an ubek’ (Demidowicz 1995; see also Szmak 1992). Glorification of an ubek, however untypical, also puzzled some prominent members of the public, including Andrzej Wajda. In an interview in which he emphasised his pride in making Man of Iron, he claimed that observing the viewers’ enthusiastic reaction to Dogs made him realise that he had lost contact with the Polish audience. Instead, Pasikowski knew something about the audience that Wajda did not know (Sobolewski 1993: 6). The case of Olo, who after failing the verification and losing his apartment agrees to work for the mafia and is responsible for the death

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and misery of many people, including his reformed colleagues, can be regarded as a warning against a harsh lustration. Pasikowski suggests that it brings about a danger of disfranchising the old secret servicemen from mainstream society, producing criminals and ultimately punishing those whose interest lustration was meant to protect. A similar argument was used after the Second World War by those opposing any harsh de-Nazification of Germany. Inevitably, by dealing with ex-ubeks, Pasikowski also tackles the issue of secret files. It happens when the ubeks themselves burn their files, to prevent the new authorities from accusing them of fighting political dissidents, who may now seek revenge. This activity, however, does not attract the attention of a wider public. The only person who attempts to stop the ubeks is the law-obsessed new recruit, the previously mentioned Young One. From this lack of a wider interest we can deduce that in the early 1990s the minds of ordinary Poles were focused on other problems. The director also plays down the issue of the files’ content, which would be central in The Lives of Others and Polish films made in the following decade. In his film hardly anybody looks at the content of the files; instead, much attention is devoted to the very act of burning. The secret servicemen look at the fire with tenderness, like over-grown boy scouts, reminiscing on the old times and the viewers share their nostalgic gaze. Rather than signifying the most disgraced aspect of life in the People’s Republic of Poland, the files in Dogs thus stand for something personal and precious. This impression is strengthened by Franz’s involvement with Angela, the teenage daughter of a priest, whose case Franz investigates during his transition to the civil police. It is not clear why he decides to pursue her father’s case, indeed any case at all now that his job description does not include such activities any more. Most likely the director includes her to be faithful to the logic of a gangster/ noir film, which requires the presence of attractive women causing the male protagonist some trouble. By finding Angela, rescuing her from an orphanage or borstal where she leads a boring and oppressive life, having an affair with her and offering her a luxurious lifestyle, Franz gives the impression that the ubeks’ main occupation was rescuing damsels in distress. Such a representation encourages comparison with The Lives of Others where the Stasi also become involved with female members of the families of dissidents, but not as knights rescuing them from an intolerable situation but as blackmailers and rapists. By ‘emerging from a file’ almost like Venus from the froth, Angela beautifies the secret files, while suggesting that they contain dark secrets of the Polish Church rather than dark secrets of the Polish secret police.

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Despite setting Dogs in the circle of the ubeks, Pasikowski does not include in his film their informers and collaborators or, indeed, anybody occupying the grey zone between the ardent supporters of communism and the opposition. This omission might be explained by the convention of gangster cinema, which prefers to neatly divide reality into black and white. It also reflects the heated political atmosphere of the early 1990s in Poland, when politicians belonging to different camps hardly talked to each other. In due course the political polarisation gave way to more subtle divisions of Polish society and a more nuanced approach to the secret services and their archive. To these films I will turn in the next section of this chapter.

A communist collaborator as an enigma in Twists of Fate and Scratch Korowód (Twists of Fate, 2007), directed by Jerzy Stuhr, and Rysa (Scratch, 2008), directed by Michał Rosa, were made over ten years after Dogs. From the perspective of attitudes to the communist secret files and lustration it was a very different period from the early 1990s when Dogs had its premiere. Since then the files got more attention from politicians, rather than less. In 1997 Poland got the Lustration Court and in 1999 its equivalent of the Gauck Commission, The Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamie˛ci Narodowej, IPN), which took possession of the archive of the SB. Its function is to educate society by informing it about communist crimes and to persecute the communist perpetrators. The political and popular interest in secret files was at its highest in the middle of the 2000s, when the right-wing party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwos´c´, PiS) reached the zenith of its electoral success (Wolen´ski 2007; Czuchnowski 2009). In 2005 PiS won the parliamentary elections in Poland and the leader of this party, Lech Kaczyn´ski, became the President of Poland, replacing (post)communist Aleksander Kwas´niewski. In 2006 Lech Kaczyn´ski’s twin brother, Jarosław, became Poland’s Prime Minister. PiS was very critical about the way lustration was previously conducted in Poland, arguing that the Lustration Court exonerated too many people from the accusation of collaborating with the secret services. It promised a new attitude to the secret files if they won the elections and, indeed, in March 2005 a new parliamentary Act was passed concerning lustration. The number of people who had to write about their relationship with the secret services, in order to retain their employment positions or apply for jobs in specific areas, previously 27,000, soared to several hundred thousand, and included

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academics, lawyers and journalists. The files were opened more widely; secret agents, their collaborators and victims were now allowed to consult their personal files. The change in the law produced many surprising disclosures of communist informers, including among previous dissidents and anti-communist politicians, the Catholic Church, pro-Solidarity journalists, as well as among popular actors and film directors. Among them we find poet Zbigniew Herbert, film director Marek Piwowski and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (Wolen´ski 2007: 48–50) and numerous politicians, including the chief of the Presidential Office of Lech Wałe˛sa, Tadeusz Kwiatkowski (Stan 2009a: 86). Inevitably the new law proved contentious, as was the old one. Especially hostile towards lustration was the Polish intelligentsia, practically irrespective of political sympathies, with the exception of the part which supported PiS. This is understandable, taking into account how many dissidents in the past 20 years or so were accused of collaboration with the SB. The two films I will present in this section can be seen as a voice in the discussion about introducing a more punitive lustration than that offered by the Mazowiecki government. Unlike Dogs, which chose ubeks as their main characters, they focus on secret collaborators and their families who were at the centre of political attention following the passing of the new law concerning lustration and access to files. They are set in Kraków, regarded as the centre of Polish cultural and intellectual life with strong prewar traditions, where being accused of collaboration with the secret services causes more offence than elsewhere in Poland. Twists of Fate tackles the cases of two middle-aged men, Adam, wrongly accused of being a collaborator of the secret services, and Zdzisław, the real collaborator, who for many years managed to conceal his true identity even from his wife and daughter, but now anxious that the truth would be revealed decides to fake his own suicide and flee abroad. The fates of these two men are interconnected. Zdzisław, who is now a university professor, when engaged in a student anti-communist conspiracy during martial law was caught by the police and blackmailed into working for the secret service or risk that his father would lose his job. He gave in to the blackmail and in due course used his position as an informer to disgrace Adam as a communist spy and a homosexual, at the time when Adam was a fellow student and a boyfriend of Aleksandra, a girl with whom Zdzisław fell in love. In the present time, Adam finds it very difficult to prove that he had nothing to do with the SB, and he needs such proof to avoid losing his job in academia as in the new political regime the alleged collaborators are about to be purged from positions of authority. He turns to the vice-chancellor of his university, who only

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gives him the belated advice that he should have been a member of the Party, as the secret services were forbidden from spying on them. The idea that being openly on the side of communism did not hamper one’s prospects in postcommunist times is also transmitted intertextually, by including the character of a young celebrity pursued by one of the characters for the sake of selling her photographs to a tabloid magazine. This celebrity is played by Aleksandra Kwas´niewska, daughter of the previous President, Aleksander Kwas´niewski. By showing that lustration in Poland causes harm to the dissidents and strengthens the position of the old communist functionaries, Stuhr undermines the way it was implemented in Poland by PiS. This does not need to entice condemnation of lustration tout court, but other ‘twists’ of the narrative suggest that it is indeed the case. Zdzisław’s case is juxtaposed with that of Bartek, a student who witnesses Zdzisław’s disappearance and follows him, and to whom the SB collaborator eventually tells the story of his life (Figure 6.4). Bartek earns his living writing university essays for a fee and taking compromising photos of famous people. He also simultaneously is having affairs with two women, whom he also involves, against their consent, in his dirty business. In addition, his following of Zdzisław is tinged with an expectation of financial gain. Although Bartek does not destroy the lives of fellow humans in the way Zdzisław did, he comes across as a less worthy person than Zdzisław. This is because Zdzisław is aware of his debt towards his competitor

Figure 6.4 Kamil Mac´kowiak as Bartek in Korowód (Twists of Fate, 2007), directed by Jerzy Stuhr

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and he sinned out of love – this is how he defends himself when telling the story of his life. Bartek, on the other hand, has no sense of remorse about either his private sins or his public misdemeanours. The accumulation of strange occurrences conveyed by the film’s title12 also supports the view that judging the old communists should be avoided because fate, rather than human agency, makes one man a villain, another a hero. ‘The twists of fate’ bears resemblance to ‘blind chance’ by Krzysztof Kies´lowski, who is regarded as Stuhr’s mentor (Piotrowska 2007). However, in Kies´lowski’s Blind Chance and his other films fate proved ‘heavy’: it prevented people from reaching moral comfort, which can be regarded as a metaphor of life under a totalitarian regime. The director sympathised with their predicament, but equally did not exculpate them. If anything, Kies´lowski’s films acted as a warning to be ‘morally vigilant’, because under communism every move has moral consequences. Stuhr, by contrast, appears to absolve his characters from guilt because in a situation when fate plays tricks with people, bringing consequences opposite to those intended, it does not really matter whether one’s intentions were noble or not. Such an attitude practically encompasses the anti-lustration position ‘forgive and forget’ on the grounds that life was too complicated ‘then’ to be judged ‘now’ or, to use Hartley’s metaphor, because ‘the past is a foreign country’. Stuhr’s take on lustration and morality in a wider sense left the audiences unconvinced, as testified by its moderate box-office results and critical reviews, especially by critics of a younger generation. For example, Bartosz Z˙urawiecki claims that the director, using the dancing steps he mastered when playing his most famous character, Lutek Danielak in Wodzirej (Dance Leader, 1977) by Feliks Falk, has bypassed the most important moral problems of contemporary Poland. The film, crowded with characters, narratives and problems makes it difficult to establish the filmmaker’s position aside from the fact that he is very critical of contemporary Poland and especially the cynical, career-oriented ‘multi-media youth’. (Z˙urawiecki 2007) Such an approach can be explained by Stuhr’s age – he was born in 1947, thus belongs to the generation of people like Zdzisław, who started their career in the 1970s, a period when it was very difficult for the Polish intelligentsia not to collaborate in one form or another with the authorities, not least because at the time the communist regime appeared more ‘user-friendly’ than in earlier decades. At the same time, as a spokesman for the generation of current fathers, Stuhr feels justified to criticise

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current youth, who allegedly squander the privileges of democracy in search of instant material gratification. The director of Scratch, Michał Rosa (b. 1963), belongs to a younger generation (my generation) than Stuhr, who only began their adult life during martial law and therefore tended to be less conformist (as it was relatively easy to rebel when the end of communism was in sight) and critical of their predecessors (see Chapter 4). Rosa claims that his film was inspired by a story of a Stasi informer who was spying on his own wife (quoted in S´miałowski 2008: 12). Most likely he refers to the case of a former dissident, Vera Lengsfeld, and her former husband, Knud Wollenberger, a collaborator with the Stasi, with whom she had two children (Boyes 2007). The bulk of Polish viewers, however, saw in Scratch a version of a local story about the marriage of a popular historian and dissident, Paweł Jasienica, and his second wife, Zofia O’Bretenny, a secret service informer.13 The main couple, Joanna and Jan, are both university professors in their late fifties to early sixties (Figure 6.5). They live in a spacious and tasteful apartment, full of antique furniture and personal mementoes, somewhere in the old part of Kraków. In this apartment the wife’s parents used to live before the war. The film begins when Joanna receives a

Figure 6.5 Jadwiga Jankowska-Cies´lak as Joanna and Krzysztof Stroin´ski as Jan in Rysa (Scratch, 2008), directed by Michał Rosa

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birthday present, a video tape with a fragment of a television interview with a popular ex-secret serviceman and historian about the methods used by the SB. He mentions that to learn about a prominent prewar politician, still active in communist times, the SB employed a young man, entrusting him with a mission to make the daughter of the politician fall in love with him. He succeeded, they married, and the husband continued informing his superiors about his father-in-law till the old man’s death in 1970. When watching the film, Joanna realises that the functionary is talking about her family. She shows the tape to Jan, who dismisses it, but rejects her idea to take the historian to court or write a letter to the press, protesting his innocence. Joanna attempts to find out where the tape came from, but with no success and in the end loses interest in the issue. What in the end matters to her is finding out whether Jan was indeed a collaborator with the SB and, if so, what she should do now. The second issue is at the centre of lustration: how to treat people tainted by working for the secret services. Joanna pursues her private investigation, which suggests that it is very likely that Jan was a collaborator, but it fails to provide her with conclusive evidence. Simultaneously she distances herself from Jan. Eventually she moves into a rented flat on the outskirts of Kraków. By this time she shows symptoms of mental illness which happens in two stages. First she loses her sense of taste, stops going to work and meeting friends, and spends her days walking purposelessly on the streets of Kraków. Her state can be explained as melancholia in the sense given to this word by Sigmund Freud, namely as a prolonged mourning, whose purpose is mourning itself, rather than coming to terms with a specific loss (Freud 2005). Joanna gives in to melancholia because she is uncertain about what she has lost and whether she can regain the lost object. Such a situation was accurately captured by Jacques Derrida, who in his Specters of Marx wrote: ‘Nothing could be worse, for the work of mourning, than confusion and doubt; one has to know what is buried where – and it is necessary (to know – to make certain) that, in what remains of his, he remains there. Let him stay there and move no more!’ (Derrida 1994: 9). Alexander Etkind, whose article I referred to in Chapter 1, quotes these words in the context of the uncertainty about millions of people murdered in Russia during the Soviet period (Etkind 2009). Of course, the scale of crimes and misery experienced in the Soviet Union greatly exceeds those alluded to by Rosa in his film. However, they pertain to the same problems: a lack of reliable sources (documents, personal testimonies) allowing assessment of the scale of loss and the need to mourn or, to use

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Derrida’s words, ‘ontologise remains, make them present’. By showing Joanna trying in vain to find more reliable sources about her family’s past, Rosa indirectly criticises the situation in Poland, where only the privileged few had access to the SB archive. The second stage of Joanna’s illness occurs when she invades the room in her rented apartment where the female owner keeps her belongings. There Joanna listens to old messages recorded on an old answering machine, tries on the other woman’s clothes and puts on her wig and, eventually, looks at herself in the mirror, which suggests her desire to appropriate a new identity. Eventually, however, she leaves the other woman’s belongings and her room and gradually returns to sanity, as if accepting that she cannot become anybody else: she has to accept herself and her life marred by ‘scratches’. Soon after that she forgives her husband. As in the story of Vera Lengsfeld and Knud Wollenberger, the reconciliation between Jan and Joanna comes when Jan falls seriously ill, suffering a heart attack. Joanna visits her husband in hospital where their roles are reversed. Whilst previously it was Jan who sought contact with Joanna and she rejected his attention and affection, now it is he who turns away from his wife while she attempts to regain the old intimacy. The situation is ironic, but consistent with the one represented in Twists of Fate: the honest person is ultimately left feeling guilty and ashamed of herself, whilst the SB informer awakens sympathy and pity. Also, in this episode Joanna starts washing Jan with a sponge, which can be seen as symbolically cleansing him of old sins. Except for Joanna, nobody in the film talks about her husband’s possible collaboration with the SB. For the couple’s friends and even for their own daughter, this subject is taboo. If they refer to it, they use an Aesopian language, not unlike the way history and politics were talked about in communist times. Everybody, including Jan, implies that what should matter for Joanna are not Jan’s unproved dealings with the SB, but his day-to-day devotion to his wife and their daughter, which exceeded Joanna’s sacrifices. The daughter even calls Joanna cruel and devoid of memory on account of her not remembering her husband’s selfless behaviour. This line of reasoning is reminiscent of that used by Zdzisław in Twists of Fate and Knud Wollenberger, who argued that they paid for their public sins by private virtues. In an interview the director confirms that his protagonist belongs to this category of public scoundrels – private saints (quoted in S´miałowski 2008: 12). Such a conclusion is also confirmed by Jan’s physical assault on the historian who broke the news about his possible involvement. The confrontation between Jan and the historian with a past of working for the secret services gains poignancy

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through casting choice. Jan is played by Krzysztof Stroin´ski, who specialises in the roles of sympathetic, but somewhat weak men; the role of the historian was given to Ryszard Filipski, the actor and director strongly associated with communism in Poland, representing so-called nationalistic (anti-Semitic) communism. One can draw two contrasting conclusions from Scratch regarding the need to disclose any documents concerning the communist past. One, which the director proposed off-screen, is that secret files should have been opened immediately and widely after the collapse of communism, so that truth could be revealed and false accusations challenged. Doing it in an inconsistent manner, as happened in Poland post-1989, when only some people had access to the files, bred a climate of suspicion and insecurity. Moreover, as a result of such an approach, the biggest culprits were likely to avoid paying for their crimes while those who were innocent or whose guilt was relatively small suffered disproportionately, as might be the case with Jan. Indeed, it is possible to imagine that the story told in Scratch could turn out similarly to The Lives of Others. After the opening of the files it is revealed that out of love for his wife, the husband took the thankless task of spying on her family but did it in a way which protected them from harassment and prosecution. The fact that the files are not open to the public, but only bits of information can reach interested parties, makes it impossible to check this hypothesis. According to the second interpretation, opening secret files and, indeed, any secrets from the communist past, brings no benefits, only misery, as shown by the destruction of the happy marriage of Joanna and Jan. The film also raises a question about whether communist informers should be forgiven and treated as every other citizen, but leaves the answer to the viewer. Joanna finds forgiving her husband very hard; it is easier for her to forget the past (even who she herself was) than to forgive. However, for the majority of society, as exemplified by Jan and Joanna’s friends, her daughter and son-in-law, crimes of this kind are minor and outweighed by the perpetrators’ ‘home virtues’, such as marital faithfulness and caring for children. For these people lustration is not only unnecessary, but harmful. Unlike The Lives of Others whose style adheres to the conventions of a Hollywood film, giving the impression of representing an objective reality, Twists of Fate and Scratch use styles which convey doubt on the objectivity of both past and present. In the first film contemporary Poland looks like Disneyland simulacra: flickering, harshly lit, adorned with gaudy colours. The past, registered in photographs, looks more authentic, but its authenticity is undermined by its ‘actors’, principally

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Zdzisław, who admits that the ‘documents’ were open to manipulation in which he himself participated. In Scratch, reality is reduced to a version of one person, Joanna, who lost her sense of objectivity. The difference in approach between the German and Polish films might be linked to the different histories of the secret files in postcommunist Germany and in Poland. In the first country they became imbued with reliability; in Poland they are perceived as elusive.

A collaborator as a dissident, a dissident as a collaborator in Pupendo and Kawasaki Rose Czechoslovakia introduced lustration earlier than Poland. In 1991 an Act of Parliament was passed introducing a rule to exclude former Party functionaries, officers of the secret services (Státní bezpeˇ cnost, StB) and their collaborators from a range of public offices: the upper reaches of the civil service, the judiciary, higher army positions, management of state-owned enterprises, the central bank, railways, high academic positions and the public electronic media. Ironically, candidates for the legislature did not have to be lustrated, and ministers in communistera governments were not on the blacklist. To avoid charges of revengeseeking and legal retroactivity, lustration was presented as a defence mechanism for the fragile new democracy. It was presented to society not as a means to serve justice, or help the country come to terms with the past, or criminalise activities that were legal at the time, but to prevent a repetition of the communist coup of February 1948. In practice, however, as Nadya Nedelsky argues, ‘On the continuum of East European transitional justice strategies, Czechoslovakia sits with East Germany nearer the “prosecute and punish” than the “forgive and forget” pole’ (Nedelsky 2009: 37). From 1991 to 1997, if one includes the lustrations also required by the law on the police service, a total of 303,504 screenings took place, of which 15,166 (5 per cent) resulted in positive certificates. As in Poland, there was criticism about the reliability of the files compiled by the secret police. Critics of the law pointed out that there was not a clear division between ‘candidates’, namely between someone identified by an StB recruiter as a potential agent but who often refused to collaborate, and the person who agreed to collaborate. Furthermore, the archive was regarded as incomplete, due to the transfer of the original documents into the microfiches since the 1970s and the destruction of the original documents (Williams 1999). But criticism of this kind affected the lustration policy in Czechoslovakia to a lesser extent than in Poland.

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In 2002, the Czech parliament also established the Office for Documentation and Investigation of the Crime of Communism. The office was charged with collecting and archiving information to map all injustices, atrocities and crimes related to the communist regime and its officials. In addition, it had the criminal justice task of filing cases and prosecuting individuals who were still subject to criminal liability, acting as both a symbolic and a pragmatic institution (Priban 2007). Although the fate of the secret files and lustration has proved in the former Czechoslovakia less politically contentious than in Poland, it also led to surprising accusations. The highest-profile case involved a famous dissident and émigré writer, Milan Kundera, who in an article published by the journal Respect was accused of denouncing to the police in 1950 a deserter from the army named Milan Dvoracek. Although the documents on which such accusations were based were in due course dismissed, the effect of this and similar allegations led to suspicions that even the most respected dissidents might have disgraced themselves at some point in their lives. On the other hand, they awaken distrust in the communist archives. Films about the secret collaborators and files in the Czech Republic were not as frequent as in Poland, but two crucial films on this subject, Pouta (Walking too Fast, 2009), directed by Radim Špaˇ cek, and Kawasakiho Ru ˚ že (Kawasaki Rose, 2009), directed by Jan Hrˇebejk, were made about the same time as the bulk of Polish films tackling the problem of communist collaborators, including Twist of Fate and Scratch. In this part I will focus on Kawasaki Rose and Hrˇebejk’s earlier film, Pupendo (2003). Pupendo does not really concern secret agents and secret files, but its characters operate in the shadow of the secret police and other institutions, intruding on the lives of its citizens. In this sense, it provides a useful background to Kawasaki Rose which deals openly with the issue of lustration. Jan Hrˇebejk (b. 1967) and his regular collaborator, the scriptwriter Petr Jarchovský (b. 1966), in common with the German director von Donnersmarck do not hold memories of the times they evoke in their films, as they belong to the generation of children or grandchildren of their characters. Hrˇebejk and Jarchovský are not much younger than Polish director Rosa, but they are divided by different experiences. Rosa, as I indicated, belongs to the rebellious ‘martial law’ generation, which has no Czechoslovak equivalent. Hrˇebejk and Jarchovský’s temporal distance from the events they represent might explain the fact that practically all their films advocate forgiving on account of adverse circumstances affecting their characters.

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There are no proper villains in them because, as one character puts it in Musíme si pomáhat (Divided We Fall, 2000), ‘You wouldn’t believe what abnormal times do to normal people.’ Another constant feature of Hrˇebejk and Jarchovský’s cinema is to focus on family life. Politics enters their characters’ lives through their bedrooms and kitchens. This was, most famously, the case in Oscar-nominated Divided We Fall and this also happens in Pupendo (Figure 6.6). The film is set in the early 1980s and presents two couples, one dissident and one conformist, whose lives are closely connected. Bedrˇich Mára is a talented sculptor who due to his anti-communist stand was expelled from the Prague art academy and stopped receiving public commissions. He earns a meagre existence for his family by producing kitschy ceramic piggy banks and cheating insurance companies, and lives on the outskirts of Prague. Due to his social and cultural marginality and loss of talent or willingness to use it, the sculptor can be compared to the silenced artists persecuted by the Stasi, as depicted in The Lives of Others. Yet, despite his thwarted creativity, Mára does not come across as an unhappy or defeated man. One even has the impression that he uses his position as a blacklisted artist to indulge in what he likes most: idleness. His wife, Alena, although continuously complaining about her husband’s laziness and affinity for alcohol, loves and supports him. Mára is also an object of affection

Figure 6.6 Pupendo (2003), directed by Jan Hrˇebejk

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for Pavla, a school pal of his older son, and of Pavla’s mother, Magda, Mára’s former pupil and an art historian with a high position in the artists’ union. Magda and her husband Míla, who is the headmaster in a secondary school, lead a much more affluent life, having a spacious apartment, attending parties and enjoying holidays abroad. Their relative affluence is a consequence of their belonging to the Party. However, as Míla puts it in a conversation with his son, he is a ‘different sort of communist’, as opposed to being a real one, because in the safety of his home he pronounces his opposition to communism. To a cynical observer, Míla is a hypocrite who pretends to support communism for his own material advantage. His attitude illustrates the mindset described by Václav Havel in ‘The Power of the Powerless’ and Miroslav Kusý in ‘Chartism and “Real Socialism”’ (Havel 1985; Kusý 1985). The core of Havel’s reasoning is that Czechoslovak society of the period known as real socialism (that covers the time depicted by Hrˇebejk in Pupendo) was post-totalitarian. The inner aim of the post-totalitarian system was not merely the preservation of power in the hands of a ruling clique (as is the case in a classical dictatorship), but making everybody in the system complicit with its aims and its functioning. Even those at the very bottom of the political hierarchy were thus both its victims and its pillars by automatically perpetuating the rituals prescribed to them by the ideology. By pulling everyone into its power structure, the post-totalitarian system made everyone an instrument of a mutual totality. Kusý in his article discussed how the system successfully tied people’s interests to the formal acceptance of the ‘as if’ ideology – to a ‘silent agreement’ between the powerful and the powerless. In this way, they both survived. Havel and Kusý pointed to the dependence of the system on citizens’ willingness to live a lie. Havel links this willingness to being consumptionoriented, rather than being focused on preserving one’s spiritual and moral integrity: ‘The post-totalitarian system has been built on foundations laid by the historical encounter between dictatorship and consumer society’ (Havel 1985: 38). Hrˇebejk supports this diagnosis, pointing to Magda and Míla’s willingness to lie in public and to the importance of material comfort for the couple and even, to some extent, for Bedrˇich and Alena. Yet, at the same time, Hrˇebejk sympathises with Míla’s self-perception as somebody who attempts to ‘soften’ the communist system from within, even a martyr, sacrificing his moral integrity for the dissidents who thanks to his efforts can express their opposition towards the authorities in relative safety. The line dividing a collaborator from a

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dissident in his films is very thin and Bedrˇich, Míla and Magda cross it during the course of the narrative. It happens when Magda and Míla, encouraged by Fábera, an old art historian with Solidarity sympathies, arranges two commissions for Mára: a wall mosaic in the school where Míla is the headmaster and a statue of a Russian marshal. Mára accepts the proposals, but does not fulfil them in a way expected from a good communist. He places an anti-communist message under the mosaic and attempts to back off from his promise to do the marshal. Thanks to the art historian, the names of the nonconformist artist and the conformist art historian are mentioned on the anti-communist radio station, Voice of America, praised as examples of resistance to communist precepts in Czechoslovak art and art history. They listen to the programme, drinking and trying to predict when they will be approached by the StB and what other punishment awaits them.14 Eventually they all go on holiday to Lake Balaton in Hungary. For Magda and Míla, the choice of location results from not receiving permission to travel to Yugoslavia, as a punishment for not behaving in the way expected of a ‘good communist’. Míla’s position as a self-sacrificing collaborator is well rooted in Czechoslovak cinema, especially films about the Second World War. We can regard him as a follower of Tóno Brtko from Obchod na korze (A Shop on the High Street, 1965), directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, who helped the old Jewish proprietor of a millinery shop in his capacity as its Aryan supervisor. Míla can also be seen as a descendant of Josef in Divided We Fall, who in order to protect a Jew in his house socialises with the Nazis and with Horst, a Nazi who helps Josef. The use of the same actors in the roles of dissidents and collaborators in both films – Bolek Polívka, who plays Josef and Bedrˇich, and Jaroslav Dušek, who plays Horst and Míla – strengthens the impression that in Czech cinema the dissident and the collaborator represent two sides of the same coin. If we compare the position of dissidents and collaborators in Pupendo with that in The Lives of Others then we learn that in Czechoslovakia it was much easier to realise the model ‘as if’ described by Havel and Kusý than in East Germany. In the GDR the lie had to be more convincing, the risk that the authorities would not accept it greater and the punishment more severe. In von Donnersmarck’s film the careers of the dissident couple are destroyed, in the Czech one they carry on living like before. Equally, the communist servant who loses his faith in the system is punished by being degraded to perform menial tasks; in Czechoslovakia he merely loses a holiday in Yugoslavia. The difference in the fate of the German and Czech characters pertains to different

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genres used by von Donnersmarck and Hrˇebejk, respectively melodrama and ‘family comedy’. However, the very fact that the authors of Pupendo were able to mould the stories of communist dissidents and collaborators into a successful ‘family entertainment’ illuminates the difference between their assessment of the past and that of von Donnersmarck. While in The Lives of Others we are offered a viewpoint of the postcommunist observer looking back, in Pupendo the director uses the perspective of people living under communism who look ahead, towards the time when communism will be defeated. This perspective is signalled by their frequent talking about the future of their children, by the motif of a message denouncing communism, hidden under the mosaic, and the references to Solidarity in Poland as a possible sign of the approaching end of the communist system. This perspective is also conveyed by the final scene in which the characters find themselves in Lake Balaton. The representation of their holiday is unrealistic: we do not know how they got there, they are naked (which is unusual behaviour for Eastern European holidaymakers) and presented in unrealistic poses, and the lake is covered in fog. I propose to see the lake scene as a Foucauldian heterotopia: an impossible space made up of real spaces (Foucault 1998). Hrˇebejk’s heterotopia is a metaphor for a political world where both dissidents and conformists can bare themselves without risking prosecution. Such heterotopia points towards the future, democratic Bohemia. Whether it would be fulfilled, we can check in Hrˇebejk’s subsequent films, especially Kawasaki Rose, which will be my last example. I previously mentioned that the twentieth century is remembered through film and as a film. Kawasaki Rose literalises this idea by telling the stories of a number of people involved in the pro-communist and anti-communist struggles through a (fictitious) television documentary about an eminent psychiatrist and dissident, Pavel Josek. In the process of making the film unexpected facts are uncovered, contained in an StB file. It turns out that Pavel’s past was not as spotless as the authors of the documentary assumed. In the 1970s he was an informer for StB, playing a role in discrediting and forcing to emigrate a young artist named Borˇek, who is currently living in Sweden. In order to unearth the facts the television crew travels to Sweden to interview Borˇek and approaches a former secret police interrogator, Kafka, an old man who coolly details his methods of investigation to the docu-makers. Pavel’s file is also handed to Pavel’s daughter, Lucie, ‘courtesy’ of her husband Ludeˇk, who works on the documentary as a sound recorder. He does not like his father-in-law and recently confessed to Lucie to having had an affair with a work colleague who also works on this programme.

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Thanks to reading the file and confronting her mother, Lucie learns that her real father is Borˇek. Subsequently, she travels with her daughter to Sweden to meet the missing member of their family, who now lives with an old Japanese man. While in Pupendo Hrˇebejk presented us with the case of a communist conformist who perceived himself as a closet dissident, Pavel in Kawasaki Rose is a dissident who becomes a collaborator and then decides to break with his past and becomes a dissident again, signing the famous Charter 77. The movement between opposite positions is presented by Hrˇebejk as a gentle shift, because it does not require a fundamental change of one’s identity (as was the case with Wiesler). Yet it brings dramatic consequences. Pavel himself comments on the transition to collaborator saying: ‘Drinking coffee with a prostitute is morally acceptable but following her into a hotel room is immoral. The problem with the StB is that it felt like you were still drinking coffee but you were already in the bedroom.’ The twists of fate, including the exposing of an eminent professor as a secret police collaborator and of his daughter learning that a man whom she regarded as her father is not her real parent, has many points of correspondence with Twists of Fate. Even the term used in the title by Hrˇebejk, ‘kawasaki rose’ (which refers to a difficult figure in origami), is not dissimilar to ‘twists of fate’, because they both point to the complexity of human life. However, in Stuhr’s film the complexity is ontological: the director of Twists of Fate suggests that life is twisted because fate plays tricks with us, bringing outcomes different from those we intend. In Hrˇebejk’s film, on the other hand, the complexity is epistemological. By analogy with a man who is able to fold a piece of paper to make an intricate rose and then unfold it, his film is able to unfold the past of the characters and reveal to us the steps which change a simple object into an elaborate structure and then, conversely, to ‘untangle’ the enigma of their lives. Ultimately, Hrˇebejk’s film is also more optimistic than Stuhr’s, as well as Rosa’s film, because it demonstrates that (albeit with some effort) people are able to reach and decipher the communist past, which in the Polish films proved impossible. They are also in charge of their lives and able to repent their sins and start afresh. This happens when Pavel, upon receiving an award for extraordinary achievements, admits in the presence of Borˇek that he betrayed him and has been living with the guilt, and when the two men eventually meet in the presence of ‘their’ women, they are able to look each other straight in the eye and put their past behind them. It is an episode which shows that

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sincerity and repentance are the necessary conditions of reconciliation. The final meeting of Borˇek, Pavel, his wife, daughter and granddaughter can be seen as an equivalent of the Balaton scene which ends Pupendo. However, in Pupendo, the coming together of people from different walks of life took place in ‘another space’, in Kawasaki Rose it happens in real space. Hrˇebejk’s film also differs from its Polish counterparts in using a moving image, rather than oral transmission or photography, as the main vehicle to reach the communist past. In this way it edifies film and television as a superior tool to present (or create) history. First, by showing that if the documentary had not been made, the truth about Pavel’s past (or its alternative version) would not have been revealed. Second, by using editing which juxtaposes and illuminates the connections between people and events which otherwise would remain hidden. Hrˇebejk’s montage is most effectively employed in the parts presenting the shooting of interviews with Borˇek and Kafka. We see how the same events related by the two men, as well as words and gestures repeated by them, acquire different meanings. In common with Twists of Fate and Scratch, as well as The Lives of Others and Dogs, Hrˇebejk also points to the impunity and power of those who yielded the greatest profit from serving the communist state. This category of men is represented by Kafka, who has no sense of guilt about ruining the lives of Pavel and Borˇek and others like them. Hrˇebejk construes Kafka in a way which is reminiscent of the aged Nazi perpetrators. His fingers, disfigured by arthritis, bring to mind the fragile old men who were once concentration camp overseers, hunted down in Argentina or Ukraine and displayed on television. However, unlike the Nazi perpetrators, Kafka does not need to hide – Czech law allows him to spend his final years in peace. Hrˇebejk also poignantly emphasises Kafka’s virtues as a family man. He does it first by directing the camera to Kafka’s wife who during his interview sits by the television crew looking at her husband with utter devotion and later, in the film’s coda, when we see Kafka being presented with an enormous birthday cake by his large circle of family and friends. The serenity of his birthday celebrations poignantly contrasts with the difficult and sombre celebration of Pavel’s successes. As in Twists of Fate, the sins of the fathers are compared by Hrˇebejk with those of a younger generation, as represented by Pavel’s son-in-law, Ludeˇk, who cheats on his wife when she is convalescing after a lifesaving operation on a brain tumour. His behaviour and the way he tries to wriggle out of responsibility for his betrayal suggest that if he was put

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in the same circumstances as Pavel he would betray both his country and his friends.

Conclusions The stories of secret agents, collaborators and files as represented in postcommunist German, Polish and Czech films proved versatile and complex, reflecting the differences in the approach to transitional justice in the countries of their authors and in the type of cinema they favoured. Nevertheless, it is possible to find some points of correspondence between them. The most important is their offering moral judgement according to what I would describe as vertical divisions of communist and postcommunist societies. They tend to condemn people with the greatest power: secret police officials and chief interrogators, top communist and postcommunist politicians and representatives of economic elites, criticising them for their cruelty, selfishness, cynicism and arrogance. The films’ authors also draw attention to the sense of continuous impunity and power of the greatest perpetrators of the communist period: top officials in the secret services, chief investigators and communist politicians. The cases of Hempf, Senator Wencel and Kafka poignantly illustrate this view. Conversely, they empathise with ‘ordinary people’, who either fought the communist system, paying a heavy price for their courage, or supported this system due to their misguided idealism or fear. For these reasons, the films reveal a negative attitude to lustration as an institution which tends to punish most those who sinned least, leaving the greatest perpetrators of communist crimes intact. To establish whether such lustration prevailed in Eastern Europe is beyond the scope of this book. However, it is worth mentioning here that this care of ‘an ordinary sinner’, as revealed in the films discussed, recollects the situation after the Second World War, especially in Germany but also, to some extent, in other European countries, where guilt for war crimes was attributed to those at the top of political and military hierarchies ( Judt 1992) and the crimes of the bulk of the population were forgotten. Judging from these films we can derive that it was the right course of action. Despite their critical attitude to lustration, these films give a qualified ‘yes’ to the question of whether the archives of the communist secret police should be available to the general public. They advocate their opening because they contain important historical documents showing the complex relationship between the personal and the political dimension of the communist reality, revealing the effects of communist policies on the fate of specific individuals and families and the results

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of the acts of individual people on a wider political reality. The value of learning about the files also lies in allowing the interested parties and, especially, the victims or persons close to the victims, to reach closure and move on. Conversely, the lack of relevant knowledge brings with it the risk of being trapped in the past and sentenced to melancholia, both for individuals and for the whole of society. We also derive from the films the idea that historical documents do not ‘speak’ by themselves, but only in conjunction with other documents and personal testimonies. Intertextuality is thus the key to accessing the past/creating history. Moreover, history is a play of discourses affected by numerous factors, such as political age, nationality and the political position of the historian. Although this conviction is nowadays widely held, as I argued throughout this book, it will be difficult to find examples which illustrate it so perfectly as the films about secret files.

Notes Introduction: Is the Past a Foreign Country? 1 In this respect Matuszewski’s writings foreshadow the work of another Polish film theorist, Karol Irzykowski, an author of X Muza (The Tenth Muse), published for the first time in 1924 (on Irzykowski’s views on film’s mimetic capability see Mazierska 1989). 2 However, Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma are practically ignored by professional historians. Even Robert Rosenstone, widely regarded as the main authority in the area of history and film, in a recent essay, ‘Space for the Bird to Fly’, published in the collection Manifestos for History (Rosenstone 2007), quotes Godard’s now rather clichéd remark about a beginning, a middle and an end of a story, but does not mention his monumental historical work. None of the essays in this collection, Manifestos for History, including Mark Poster’s ‘Manifesto for a History of the Media’ (Poster 2007), refers to Godard’s work, despite the fact that it fulfils all the main conditions of a ‘manifesto for history’ ( Jenkins et al. 2007).

1 The Burden of the Past and the Lightness of the Present: Dealing with Historic Trauma through Film 1 I refer here to the ‘Holocaust’ not in its original meaning, as ‘ritual purification’, but as a metaphor of the Nazi genocide. Despite the problems inscribed in this term, I find it less ambiguous and controversial than terms such as ‘Auschwitz’. Some scholars, however, object to using it (for example Lang 1990: xx–xxi). 2 The literature about the problems of representation of the Holocaust is huge and still growing. Nevertheless, the collection Probing the Limits of Representation, edited by Saul Friedlander, includes the most important, in my view, arguments about representability or unrepresentability of the Holocaust (Friedlander 1992; see also LaCapra 1994; Loshitzky 1997; Levi and Rothberg 2003; Rancière 2007: 109–38). 3 Žižek’s assertion is supported by the special position of a poem ‘Campo di Fiori’ (1943) by Czesław Miłosz, about the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, in the Polish memory of the Holocaust. 4 In Praise of Love and Ararat had a cinema audience in Europe of about 150,000 viewers; Weiser, which was shown only in Polish cinemas, 30,000. These and other box-office results quoted in this book are based on the Lumiere database (http://lumiere.obs.coe.int/web/search/), unless a different source is mentioned. 5 This also explains Godard’s fascination with the Polish film about the concentration camps, Pasaz˙erka (The Passenger, 1963) by Andrzej Munk.

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6 On numerous occasions Godard criticised Schindler’s List and even regarded it as his personal failure that he failed ‘to prevent M. Spielberg from rebuilding Auschwitz’ (quoted in Brody 2008: 562). However, Spielberg’s contribution to ‘Holocaust studies’ also includes the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which comprises over 1000 hours of archival footage. 7 Edgar’s impotence to change his ideas into a tangible product inevitably is reminiscent of Le mépris (1963) and Passion, where Europeans also proved unable to make films or at least had to rely on American funding to complete them. 8 The belated suicides bring to mind the suicides of some famous Jewish and non-Jewish survivors of the war and concentration camps, such as Tadeusz Borowski in 1951, in Poland, Paul Celan in 1970 and Romain Gary in 1980, in France, and Primo Levi in 1987, in Italy. 9 One can guess that for Said the attitude of the Canadian state towards ethnic identities is a form of Orientalism: a way of containing the ‘other’, preventing the emigrants from full assimilation with the West and retaining their original identities. Such criticism is valid, but in my view the practice also has the advantage of allowing the West to learn from the East, which often happens in Egoyan’s films. 10 Marczewski does not refer to Gross’s works, perhaps he did not even read them. Yet, the similarity between these two works supports Halbwachs’s claim that all memory is collective; people belonging to the same culture remember similar things and in a similar way. A factor in the similarity of Gross’s and Marczewski’s take on Polish anti-Semitism is their belonging to the same generation: Marczewski was born in 1944, Gross in 1947. For both of them the year 1968 was thus a formative experience. 11 The attitudes of Poles and artists to the Jews perishing in ghettos are discussed by Jan Błon´ski in his essay ‘Biedni Polacy patrza˛ na getto’ (Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto). This essay, published for the first time in the influential Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny in 1987, played an important role in changing Polish attitudes to the Polish Jewish past (Błon´ski 1987). 12 Juliana is played by Juliane Köhler, who in due course would play Eva Braun in Downfall, where she encapsulates a woman who as close to ‘history’ as anybody can be, but at the same time unable or unwilling to face it, therefore prefers to ‘seize the day’. Her role in Marczewski’s film prefigures this type.

2 ‘Our Hitler’: New Representations of Hitler in European Films 1 The makers of films about Hitler are in this respect in a similar position to artists creating anti-fascist monuments (on anti-fascist countermonuments see Young 2003). 2 This blocking of the memory about involvement in Nazi atrocities and giving into Hitler’s charm was facilitated by the Allied-supported policy of the integration of former Nazis into the new West German society and, in a wider sense, by the realities of the cold war (Herf 1997, 2002; Judt 1992). It was also in a measure a legacy of the First World War (Geyer 1997).

Notes to Chapter 2 249 3 Yet, European cinema is not free of these ‘sins’. Practically all European cinemas have indigenous traditions of melodrama, and commercial pressures also exist in them. 4 The perceptions of Nazism as ultra-modern and anti-modern can be reconciled. The first perception pertains to a victim and observer of Nazism, as privileged in Bauman’s book, which focuses on the industrial and bureaucratic character of Nazi killings. For Hitler’s followers, by contrast, sheltered (at least initially) from Nazi barbarities, what mattered was the promise of returning to an old German bucolic ideal. It can be argued that Hitler attempted to return to a premodern past by accelerating modernity. Not surprisingly, his project failed. 5 Sokurov’s depiction of the Berghof remains in contrast with the image of the Berghof we receive from documentary footage and photographs, some made by Eva Braun, of a spacious mansion set in a sunny, idyllic landscape. However, it partly conforms to the depiction offered by Traudl Junge in her memoirs, who emphasises the fog enwrapping the mountains, the difficulty of leaving the house due to its physical location and being confined by her benevolent master ( Junge 2004: 56–103). 6 The motif of mother and son also reflects the director’s specific taste for the mother–son relationship, as conveyed by his earlier film, Mat i syn (Mother and Son, 1997). 7 As Joachim Fest observes, Hitler himself declared that ‘with the exception of Richard Wagner he had “no forerunners”, and by Wagner he meant not only the composer, but Wagner the personality, “the greatest prophetic figure the German people had had” ’ (Fest 1974: 49). Fest lists many parallels between Hitler and the composer, from their obsessions about the destiny of the German people, affinity for theatricality and pomp, through morbid hatred of Jews, vegetarianism, ‘which Wagner ultimately developed into the ludicrous delusion that humanity must be saved by a vegetarian diet’ (ibid.), an idea to which Hitler also alludes in one of his deranged monologues, included in Sokurov’s film. 8 This attitude, most likely, was true about Hitler – whilst in his public pronouncements he expressed contempt for Stalin and his people, in reality he regarded Stalin as an equal, even surpassing him in some respects. Similarly, he was forced to accept that Russian soldiers proved superior to German soldiers ( Junge 2004: 145–8). 9 As commander of Bavarian Group Command IV, Mayr became one of the ‘midwives of Hitler’s political career’ (Kershaw 1998: 122). He sent Hitler on a course in ‘civic thinking’ (Fest 1974: 113). This course was a reward for Hitler’s achievements as an informant for the commission which was set up to look into the events during the Soviet rule in Bavaria. In due course, Mayr, urged by his superior to write a paper on the subject of ‘the danger Jewry constitutes to our people today’, asked Hitler to do it, ‘addressing him as “My Dear Herr Hitler”, an unusual salutation from a captain to a corporal’ (ibid.: 115). The response Hitler gave was very similar to that we hear in the film. On both occasions Hitler condemned an emotional anti-Semitism, which finds its expression in pogroms, opting for ‘anti-Semitism of reason’, which leads to the planned judicial opposition to and elimination of the privileges of Jews and, ultimately, to the removal of the Jews altogether (ibid.).

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10 Hitler, in reality, being 175 cm tall, was of over-average height. In many photographs we see him as taller than the bulk of men who surround him. However, in most films he is represented as of below-average height, reflecting a desire to undermine him. 11 Hitler’s performances were versatile; he was able to intertwine accusations with expressions of hope, drama with humour. Moreover, as Norman Stone observes, ‘Most speakers who had the mental ability to keep their thoughts in some kind of order were all too pompous and academic in their style to have any mass appeal: they would simply read learned tracts to their audience. On the other hand, men like Drexler [the first leader of the National Socialists], who were quite uneducated, might talk the language of the people, but would have nothing much to say in it. Hitler, educated enough to expound his views coherently, also spoke a popular language. He could be very funny, in an untranslatable, wholly German way’ (Stone 1980: 9). 12 In his approach to life as a form of art (staged, exaggerated, ritualised), Hitler borrowed from Richard Wagner and some minor and nowadays forgotten figures. Some of Hitler’s contemporaries were able to see his project of melding art and politics, most famously Walter Benjamin, as the death of true art (Benjamin 2007). For others, especially Leni Riefenstahl, it amounted to granting art a position which it never enjoyed before. Riefenstahl took full advantage of that making Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), where Hitler utters the words: ‘For future generations our demonstrations might be no more than spectacles.’ 13 Yet, Hitler fiercely opposed Jewish assimilation into German culture, complaining about the ‘infamous deception of Jews trying to appear “Germanic” ’ (Fest 1974: 23). In this attitude he was not alone. Pierre Vidal-Naquet argues that Western-style anti-Semitism was in part reaction against Jewish assimilation (Vidal-Naquet 1996: 204). 14 Max’s death at the hands of Nazi rowdies can also be regarded as an illustration of Hitler’s tendency to discard people who once helped him. One such man was Reinhold Hanisch, the man with whom Hitler stayed in the house for men in Vienna and formed a partnership, with Hanisch selling Hitler’s watercolours, sharing their proceeds on a 50–50 basis. According to Fest, in 1938, when Hitler could do so, he had Hanisch tracked down and killed, most likely to erase the humiliating memory of his beginnings (Fest 1974: 46). 15 Ben van Os, production designer for Meyjes’s film, was also responsible for the design of a number of films by Peter Greenaway, who in his films also plays with the idea that humans are no more than pawns in a game of fate. 16 In this way Žižek points to the immense subversive potential of ‘paracinema’, as previously mentioned. 17 A detailed analysis of the relationship between Downfall and ‘historical truth’ (or historical discourses) is offered by Roel Vande Winkel. Vande Winkel also surveys previous ‘Führer bunker films’ and discusses critical reception of Hirschbiegel’s film (Vande Winkel 2007). 18 In reality Junge was interviewed by André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer for the documentary Im toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin (Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary, 2002). 19 Primo Levi, examining the various ‘grey zones’ existing in Auschwitz, points to the fact that his oppressors were not monsters, and even committed some good

Notes to Chapter 3 251 deeds, but this is not reason to forgive them (Levi 1988). Slavoj Žižek mockingly points out that all great dictators are remembered as the kindest men by the members of their own families and their secretaries (Žižek 2009: 40–1).

3 A Clear Dividing Line?: Cinematic Representations of German, Italian and Irish Terrorism 1 However, as Alan O’Leary observes, in Italy ‘terrorism’ is more associated with left-wing than right-wing extremism. The latter is described as stragismo (large-scale, largely indiscriminate bombing) (O’Leary 2005: 168). 2 Godard, who also recently made Notre musique (2004), deserves the title of the leading film expert on terrorism and leading expert on film terrorism due to his penetrating films concerning the phenomenon of armed resistance against the political order and his talent to subvert the existing cinematic conventions in a way attracting the larger public. 3 The role of the Springer Press in influencing anti-RAF sentiments is reflected in the incident which took place on 1 April 1968. That day a young right-wing worker, Josef Bachmann, shot charismatic student leader Rudi Dutschke three times and, when he was arrested, he said that he was acting to protect his country from communism, which Dutschke threatened, and that he had gained his information from Bild, the Springer Press’s flagship tabloid (Moncourt 2009: 4–5). 4 The RAF was not unique in combining condemnation of the Holocaust with criticism of Israel. We find a similar stance in the work of Godard, for example in Notre musique, autobiographical JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de décembre (1995) and Histoire(s) du cinéma (Wright 2000). 5 Julian Preece quotes over 20 films made on this subject (Preece 2008: 227). 6 The letter is published in Bauer 2008: 171–7. 7 In reality, the gap between her lifestyle and her values did not slip Meinhof’s attention. As Karin Bauer claims, by this point ‘Meinhof was becoming dissatisfied with the limitations of journalism, and the discrepancy between her bourgeois lifestyle and her political objectives’ (Bauer 2008: 38). 8 This does not mean, however, that the targets of the Red Brigades were solely Italian citizens. In December 1981, the group abducted American General James Lee Dozier, who was working as the deputy chief of staff for logistics and administration at NATO’s headquarters in Southern Europe (Drake 1999–2000: 67). 9 The question of the involvement of a middle-class person in a movement whose goal is to liberate the working class is also tackled by Godard in Lotte in Italia (Struggle in Italy, 1969), whose protagonist, Paola, is a member of a post-1968 revolutionary organisation, Lotta Continua (Unceasing Struggle). However, unlike Pasolini and Bellocchio, Godard argues that coming from the bourgeoisie, although an obstacle in fitting into the world of the underprivileged, ultimately does not preclude becoming a revolutionary. 10 According to the bulk of authors writing about the representation of Northern Ireland in cinema, inability or unwillingness to see the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants ‘historically’ is this cinema’s cardinal sin (Rockett et al. 1987; McIlroy 1993).

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4 From Socialist Realism to Postmodernism: Polish Martial Law of 1981 in Polish and Foreign Films * A preliminary version of part of this chapter was published in Communist and Post-Communist, 42, 2, 2009, as ‘Polish Martial Law of 1981 in Polish PostCommunist Films: Between Romanticism and Postmodernism’. 1 The factual part of this section is largely based on the accounts provided by Norman Davies and Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki (see Lukowski and Zawadzki 2001; Davies 2005). 2 Such an interpretation of Polish history follows the loss of Polish statehood at the end of the eighteenth century. 3 After Man of Iron there were few and mostly unsuccessful attempts in Poland to unite the nation through film, and if it did happen, the filmmakers used as their material events more distant in time, such as the Katyn´ massacre, depicted in Katyn´ (2007) by Andrzej Wajda. 4 Jan Kubik draws attention to the importance of symbols in Polish resistance towards communism, especially to symbols and ceremonies used by Solidarity (Kubik 1994). 5 Such perspective is applied also in Smarzowski’s The Wedding. 6 Adam Mickiewicz is regarded as the greatest Polish Romantic poet and one of the greatest Slavic poets, inferior only to Alexander Pushkin. In Poland he has also the status of the model Polish patriot, yet one who paradoxically spent a large part of his life abroad, mostly in Paris, where he wrote his famous epic poem, Pan Tadeusz, published in 1834. 7 This aspect of the film is mentioned but not explored by Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki, who claim that Jerzy ‘introduces the notion of an international proletariat into the film’ (Silverman and Farocki 1998: 178). 8 A seminal example of this attitude is his Camera-Œil, belonging to the anthology film Loin du Vietnam (1967), which is the response of some French directors to the Vietnam war.

5 Goodbye Lenin or Not: Cinematic Representations of the End of Communism 1 An exception is Jean-Luc Godard, who alluded to the end of communism in a number of his films, and devoted a few films in particular to that subject, most importantly Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, 1991), meaningfully set in East and West Berlin. 2 I received this information in correspondence with Peeter Urbla. 3 The number of Russians living in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania declined significantly after the fall of communism, from over 1.7 million in 1989 to 1.2 million in 2007. 4 An example is the protest of the Russian inhabitants of Tallinn in April 2007 against the removal of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, the Soviet World War II memorial, considered by the majority of Estonians as a symbol of the country’s occupation and oppression by the Soviets. This protest, known as the April Unrest or the Bronze Night, manifested by riots and looting, brought the danger of plunging Estonia into a civil war.

Notes to Chapter 6 253 5 Joachim Gauck, for example, who was put in charge of administering the Stasi archives, criticised West Germans for advocating amnesty for former GDR politicians and officials and reconciliation with the past because of their indifference to the GDR’s past (Childs and Popplewell 1999: 193). 6 Peter Siani-Davies discusses this phenomenon of the communist leaders’ detachment from the masses in relation to Ceaus¸escu (Siani-Davies 2005).

6 Twists of Fate: Secret Agents, Communist Collaborators and Secret Files in German, Polish and Czech Films 1 Jeffrey Herf argues that the policy of forgetting led to the marginalisation and even persecution in Germany of the principal victims of the war, the Jews, and allowing many prominent Nazis to retain positions of power (Herf 1997). Tony Judt discusses the policy of forgetting in a wider context of postwar Europe, arguing that putting the blame on the Nazis for all the crimes committed during the war affected postwar politics and history negatively ( Judt 1992; see also Chapters 2 and 3). 2 It is worth mentioning that the last incarnation of the secret services in the GDR, Amt f u ``r Nationale Sicherkeit, introduced by the government of Hans Modrow in November 1989, has the unfortunate acronym ‘NASI’ (Childs and Popplewell 1999: 191). The association between the apparatus of power in the GDR and Hitler Germany existed already in the communist past. I encountered it, often in a humorous context, when living in communist Poland. 3 Von Donnersmarck was born in 1973 and grew up among the uprooted German aristocracy. His parents fled from the eastern parts of the Reich at the end of the Second World War. His next film, following The Lives of Others, The Tourist (2011) is a Hollywood production with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie in the main parts. 4 In the opinion of Childs and Popplewell, the vast majority of Stasi functionaries were idealists (Childs and Popplewell 1999). A similar view is presented by Mike Dennis, although he concedes that material privileges also played a role in choosing a career as a Stasi (Dennis 2003: 83–9). 5 This attitude is typical for late communism when the leaders appeared corrupt and devoid of charisma or even personality, examples being Leonid Brezhnev, Nicolae Ceaus¸escu and Gustáv Husák. This changed in 1985, when the youthful Mikhail Gorbachev showed the possibility of a different style. 6 This also reflects the fact that the MfS officers in the Honecker era ‘tended to have a lower level of formal educational qualification than their peers in the party and the other state organs’ (Dennis 2003: 79). 7 In his career Mühe also played victims, most importantly in Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler, made after The Lives of Others (see Chapter 2). 8 The concept of the panopticon was introduced at the end of the eighteenth century by Jeremy Bentham, but is most widely associated with Michel Foucault, who in Discipline and Punish evoked it as a metaphor for (post)modern society with its penchant for observation and regulation (Foucault 1977b: 195–228). Although Foucault refers to power relations in the Western world, his observations are no less valid in relation to the communist East, as various authors observe. For example, Mary Fulbrook writes in relation to East Germany: ‘There

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Notes to Chapter 6 was to be no area of “civil society”, no “public sphere” beyond the reach of state control: every aspect of life, work, and leisure in East Germany was to be under the control, ultimately, of the communist state’ (Fulbrook 1995: 58). In the series of articles devoted to The Lives of Others by Sight and Sound there was one by Chris Darke, which discussed von Donnersmarck’s film in conjunction with other recent European films about the culture of surveillance, such as Red Road (2006) by Andrea Arnold and Unrequited Love (2006) by Christopher Petit (Darke 2007). This motif is persistent in Polish Holocaust films, such as Passenger by Andrzej Munk and Kornblumenblau (1989) by Leszek Wosiewicz. I discussed the relationship between music and Nazism in my book on Roman Polanski (Mazierska 2007: 106–14). As it was, for example, in Romania, where it resulted in this country adopting ‘transitional justice’ late and the ‘mild’ treatment of ex-employees of the Romanian secret police, Securitate (Stan 2002). The original title of the film, Korowód, means ‘pageant’ or ‘manifestation’. In due course the story of Jasienica and O’Bretenny inspired another Polish film, Róz˙yczka (Little Rose, 2010) by Janusz Kidawa-Błon´ski. Such expectation was very rational. For example, the famous Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko mentioned in an interview that Jirˇí Sýkora, the main actor in his film Vtaˇ ckovia, siroty a blázni (Birds, Orphans and Fools, 1969), emigrated and worked for the Voice of America. And always on the radio, on the Voice of America, he would reminisce about what a great time he had had making this film. But despite the fact that Jakubisko did not listen to the Voice of America, he always knew when he had been talked about, because the police came and interrogated him (quoted in Hames 2004).

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Index Adenauer, Konrad, 93 Adjuster, The, 40 Adorno, Theodor, 24–6, 63, 255 A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest), 20, 176, 199–206 Agamben, Giorgio, 36, 83, 255 Aimée & Jaguar, 78 Akerman, Chantal, 46 Albers, Patricia, 33, 195, 255 Alesina, Alberto, 196 Allan, Seán, 190, 197, 255 Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero), 28, 37, 110, 252 Amelie (Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain), 189 Amelio, Gianni, 120 Anderson, Benedict, 8, 14, 255 Anderson, Perry, 3, 24, 66, 88, 255 Andropov, Yuri, 72 Aragay, Mireya, 16 Ararat, 17, 19, 22, 38–48, 54, 56–7, 59, 247 Arendt, Hannah, 69, 84, 123, 255 Arnold, Andrea, 254 Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament), 141–2, 223, 227 Assmann, Aleida, 5, 255 Assmann, Jan, 5, 17, 87, 255 Aust, Stefan, 100, 105–6, 114, 124, 255 Baader, Andreas, 102, 105–6, 110–15 Baader Meinhof Komplex, Der (The Baader Meinhof Complex), 19, 20, 86, 92, 99–115, 120–4 Bachmann, Josef, 251 Bad Luck (Zezowate szcze˛s´cie), 154 Bajon, Filip, 158 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 8–9, 20 Balabanov, Aleksey, 159 Balti armastuslood (Baltic Love Stories), 20, 176–86, 197, 199, 205 Barbie, Klaus, 32

Bareja, Stanisław, 150 Barkai, Avraham, 77, 255 Barrington, Lowell, 175, 255 Barton, Ruth, 126, 255 Barwy ochronne (Camouflage), 225 Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin), 15 Baudrillard, Jean, 68 Bauer, Karin, 101–3, 108, 251, 256 Bauman, Zygmunt, 67, 83–4, 230, 249, 256 Bazin, André, 11–12, 15, 256 Bechmann-Pedersen, Sune, 189, 256 Becker, Jillian, 101–3, 106, 256 Becker, Wolfgang, 19, 176, 186–99, 212 Bellocchio, Marco, 20, 99, 117, 251 Bender, Thomas, 9, 255 Benigni, Roberto, 68, 85 Benjamin, Walter, 9, 11, 15, 250, 256 Bennett, Dianne, 120 Bentham, Jeremy, 253 Berendse, Gerrit-Jan, 102, 256, 271 Berger, Stefan, 93, 256 Berlin Alexanderplatz, 190 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 120 Betz, Hans-Georg, 211, 256 Bhabha, Homi, 14, 256 Bielik-Robson, Agata, 138, 256 Birds, Orphans and Fools (Vtacˇkovia, siroty a blázni), 254 Birth of a Nation, The, 15 Black Box BRD, 105 Bleibtrei, Moritz, 112–13 bleierne Zeit, Die, 115 Blind Chance (Przypadek), 225, 232 Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary (Im toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin), 250 Błon´ski, Jan, 248, 256 Blow to the Heart (Colpire al cuore), 120 Boa, Elizabeth, 190–1, 256 Body of Evidence, 107

274

Index 275 Bonnie and Clyde, 103 Bonsaver, Guido, 124, 256 Bormann, Martin, 72 Borowski, Tadeusz, 85, 248, 256 Bourdieu, Pierre, 27 Boyes, Roger, 233, 256 Boym, Svetlana, 40, 179, 189, 194, 257 Bradshaw, Peter, 34, 76–7, 115, 192–3, 257 Braghetti, Anna Laura, 100, 117 Brandt, Willy, 107 Brashinsky, Mikhail, 73, 257 Braszka, Jerzy Aleksander, 141 Braun, Eva, 70–1, 73, 92, 248–9 Brecht, Bertolt, 214, 217 Breloer, Heinrich, 105 Bremmer, Ian, 186, 257 Bresson, Robert, 37 Brezhnev, Leonid, 72, 137, 197, 253 Brison, Susan, 23, 257 Brody, Richard, 248, 257 Bromski, Jacek, 156 Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin), 15 Broszat, Martin, 62, 66–7 Bruegel, Pieter, 158 Brumlik, Micha, 80, 257 Brussig, Thomas, 188 Bugajski, Ryszard, 13, 156, 209 Bullock, Alan, 64, 257 Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night), 20, 99–100, 115 Burke, Peter, 5, 7, 11, 257 Burleigh, Michael, 67, 93, 255, 257 Buruma, Ian, 56, 257 Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The (Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari), 65 Calinescu, Matei, 204, 257 Calvelli, Francesca, 124 Camera-Œil, 252 Camouflage (Barwy ochronne), 225 Cargo 200 (Gruz 200), 159 Carrier, Peter, 35, 257 Caruth, Cathy, 23, 26–7, 49, 257 caso Moro, Il (The Case of Moro), 116 Caton-Jones, Michael, 129 Cavani, Liliana, 25

Ceaus¸escu, Nicolae, 72, 200–1, 204–5, 253 Celan, Paul, 248 Cenckiewicz, Sławomir, 221, 257 chagrin et la pitié, Le (The Sorrow and the Pity), 32 Chaplin, Charles, 63, 66, 91, 95 Charlesworth, Andrew, 58, 257 Chase (Pos´cig), 209 Che˛cin´ski, Sylwester, 20, 150–2, 154 Childs, David, 210–12, 253, 258 Chinoise, La, 14, 98, 133 Chion, Michel, 187, 258 Chioni Moore, David, 175, 258 City of Your Final Destination, The, 88 Clavin, Patricia, 9, 258 Clift, Montgomery, 16 Coen Brothers, 158 Cole, Tim, 33–4, 43–4, 53, 219, 258 Colombar, Andre Pierre, 32, 258 Colpire al cuore (Blow to the Heart), 120 Colvin, Sarah, 101, 111, 258 Combs, Richard, 118, 168, 258 Control, 88 Cooke, Paul, 92, 93, 175, 186–7, 190–1, 193, 198, 258 Corbijn, Anton, 88 Cornils, Ingo, 102, 256, 271 Cornish, Kimberley, 77, 258 Cortázar, Julio, 54 Cosgrove, Mary, 1, 256 Cranes are Flying, The (Letyat zhuravli), 180 Crang, Mike, 9, 258 Crofts, Stephen, 10, 258 Crying Game, The, 126 Cudowne miejsce (Miraculous Place), 54 Cusack, John, 75 Czas nadziei (Time of Hope), 140–4, 149 Czekalski, Andrzej, 13 Człowiek z … (Man of ...), 154 Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble), 13–14, 147, 154, 156, 169, 178 Człowiek z z˙elaza (Man of Iron), 139, 147, 154, 158, 169, 209, 227, 251 Czterej pancerni i pies (Four Tank Men and a Dog), 13 Czuchnowski, Wojciech, 221, 229, 258

276

Index

Daldry, Stephen, 217 Dance Leader (Wodzirej), 232 Danquart, Didi, 79 Darke, Chris, 254, 258 Dark House, The (Dom zły), 158–61 Da un paese lontano (Giovanni Paolo II), 157 Davies, Norman, 137–8, 252, 258 Dean, James, 102 Death as a Slice of Bread (S´mierc´ jak kromka chleba), 20, 145–50, 152, 154 Death Game (Todesspiel), 105 Dejczer, Maciej, 165 Delacroix, Eugène, 169 Deletant, Dennis, 207, 208, 272 Deleuze, Gilles, 8, 14–15, 20, 36, 47, 110, 149, 168, 258 del Toro, Guillermo, 68 Demidowicz, Krzysztof, 227, 258 Demony wojny wedlug Goi (Demons of War according to Goya), 221–2 Dennis, Mike, 213, 253, 258 Depp, Johnny, 253 Derrida, Jacques, 2, 174–5, 234–5, 258 Despair – Eine Reise ins Licht (Despair), 72, 80 D’Est (From the East), 46 Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), 98, 104, 110, 112, 114, 122, 126 Diba, Farah, 108 Dignity (Godnos´c´ ), 139–44, 149–50 Divided We Fall (Musíme si pomáhat), 239, 241 Döblin, Alfred, 190 Dockhorn, Katharina, 86, 258 Dogs (Psy), 220–30, 244 Dogs 2 (Psy 2. Ostatnia krew), 221 Dom zły (The Dark House), 158–61 Donnersmarck, Florian Henckel von, 19, 210–20, 238, 241–2, 253–4 Donoso, José, 54 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 69 Downfall (Der Untergang), 19–20, 62, 86–95, 105, 127, 132, 248, 250 Drake, Richard, 99–100, 116–17, 133, 251, 259 Dreiser, Theodore, 16

Dušek, Jaroslav, 241 Dutschke, Rudi, 251 Dylan, Bob, 106 Dzie˛dziel, Marian, 159 Ear, The (Ucho), 209 Edel, Uli, 19, 86, 99, 121, 123, 218 Educators, The (Die fetten Jahre sind forbei), 93 Egoyan, Atom, 17, 19, 22, 26–7, 38–48, 56–7, 248 Ehe der Maria Braun, Die (The Marriage of Maria Braun), 65 Eichinger, Bernd, 86–7, 102, 105–6 Eichmann, Adolf, 84 Eisenstein, Sergei, 15, 69 El Greco, 169 Elley, Derek, 88, 259 Elliott, Kamilla, 16, 259 Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love), 17, 19, 22, 27–38, 40, 42, 46, 57, 68, 247 Elsaesser, 63, 65, 104–5, 123, 131 Engels, Friedrich, 118, 259 Ensslin, Christiane, 122 Ensslin, Gudrun, 101–2, 105, 109–11, 113–15, 122 Erikson, Kai, 23–4, 259 Eroica, 153 Etkind, Alexander, 26–7, 234, 259 Ezra, Elizabeth, 10, 99, 256, 259 fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, Le (Amelie), 189 Falk, Feliks, 232 Färberböck, Max, 78 Fargo, 158 Farocki, Harun, 252, 270 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 65, 72, 80, 90, 98, 104, 114, 169, 190 Feingold, Henry, 84 Felman, Shoshana, 23, 49, 52, 55, 259 Ferrara, Giuseppe, 116 Fest, Joachim, 60, 62–6, 74–5, 77–8, 86–7, 95, 249–50, 259 fetten Jahre sind forbei, Die (The Educators), 93 Fiejdasz, Małgorzata, 221, 259 Filipski, Ryszard, 236

Index 277 Film socialisme (Socialism), 28 First Days of the Republic (Rzeczpospolitej dni pierwsze), 144 Fists in the Pockets (I pugni in tasca), 118 Five Minutes of Heaven, 20, 86, 94, 99–100, 125–32 Five Moons Plaza (Piazza delle Cinque Lune), 116 Foley, Malcolm, 34, 265 Ford, Aleksander, 15 Foucault, Michel, 2, 4, 7–9, 12, 15, 32, 36, 148, 205, 242, 253, 259 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile), 131 Four Tank Men and a Dog (Czterej pancerni i pies), 13 Freud, Sigmund, 6, 234, 260 Friedlander, Saul, 6, 61, 63, 68, 247, 260 Friedrich, Jörg, 93 Fritzsche, Peter, 211, 260 From the East (D’Est), 46 Frycz, Olga, 50 Fuchs, Anne, 1, 260 Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola, 196, 255 Fuentes, Carlos, 54 Fukuyama, Francis, 3, 36, 260 Fulbrook, Mary, 191, 253–4, 260 Funder, Anna, 211, 212, 219, 260 Funkenstein, Amos, 6, 260 Gajos, Janusz, 148 Ganz, Bruno, 89 Garton Ash, Timothy, 208–10, 216–18, 260 Gary, Romain, 248 Gattaca, 68 Gauck, Joachim, 210, 253 Gaulle, Charles de, 32 Gaulle, Geneviève de, 31 Gawin, Dariusz, 138, 260 Gedeck, Martina, 108, 113, 215 Gemünden, Gerd, 87, 260 Genette, Gérard, 16, 260 Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst), 98, 104, 110, 112, 114, 122, 126, 133 Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (Allemagne 90 neuf zéro), 28, 37, 252

Geyer, Michael, 67, 247, 260 Gibbons, Luke, 269 Giddens, Anthony, 42, 260–1 Gilman, Sander, 30, 261 Ginsborg, Paul, 100, 116–17, 122–3 Giovanni Paolo II (Da un paese lontano), 157 Glemp, Józef, 136 Glin´ski, Robert, 156 Go-Between, The, 1 Godard, Jean-Luc, 14–20, 22, 26–37, 48, 51, 56–7, 86, 98, 113, 161, 169–72, 189, 193, 205, 247–8, 251–2, 261 Godnos´c´ (Dignity), 139–44, 149 Goebbels, Joseph, 72, 81, 85 Goebbels, Magda, 72, 91–2 Goeth, Amon, 90 Gontarczyk, Piotr, 221, 257 Good Bye Lenin!, 19–20, 176, 183, 187–99, 201, 205, 211–13 Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte), 20, 99–100, 115 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 194, 253 Göring, Hermann, 52 Gorky, Arshile, 38, 42–4, 46–7 Goya, Francisco, 169 Graebner, William, 120, 256 Great Dictator, The, 63, 66, 81 Greenaway, Peter, 250 Greene, Naomi, 32, 261 Grey Zone, The, 68 Griffith, D. W., 15 Grosch, Georg, 77 Gross, Jan Tomasz, 51, 53, 56–7, 160–1, 248, 261 Gruz 200 (Cargo 200), 159 Grzymkowski, Jerzy, 144 guerre est finie, La, 57 Gupta, Dipak, 97, 261 Guzek, Mariusz, 150, 152, 261 Halbwachs, Maurice, 5–7, 248, 261 Hall, Stuart, 170, 198, 261 Halligan, Benjamin, 73, 261 Hames, Peter, 254, 261 Hanáková, Petra, 188, 261 Hands Up! (Re˛ce do góry), 52 Haq, Mubin, 201, 261

278

Index

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 187 Hartley, L. P., 1, 9, 125, 232, 261 Harvey, David, 8, 261 Haussmann, Leander, 188 Havel, Václav, 204, 240–1, 261 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 6, 20, 176, 203, 261 Helden wie wir (Heroes Like Us), 211 Hellboy, 68 Heller, André, 250 Herbert, Zbigniew, 230 Here and Elsewhere (Ici et ailleurs), 98 Herf, Jeffrey, 248, 253, 262 Heroes Like Us (Helden wie wir), 211 Herold, Horst, 114 Herrendoerfer, Christian, 63, 65 Hibbert, Guy, 100, 127, 262 Hiden, John, 181, 262 Higson, Andrew, 10, 262 Hilberg, Raul, 83–4, 262 Hill, John, 126, 262, 269 Hillgruber, Andreas, 62, 66–7, 88 Himmler, Heinrich, 61, 262 Hirohito, Emperor, 69 Hiroshima, mon amour, 57 Hirsch, Joshua, 23–4, 46, 49, 262 Hirsch, Marianne, 4, 22–3, 25, 38, 56, 262 Hirschbiegel, Oliver, 19–20, 62, 86–95, 99, 127–32 Histoire(s) du cinéma, 15, 18, 27, 29, 37, 189, 247, 251 Hitler, Adolf, 16–17, 19, 32, 52, 60–96, 103, 213, 248–50 Hitler – eine Karriere (Hitler: A Career), 63, 65 Hitler – ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler: A Film from Germany), 63–4, 66, 73, 80, 86–7, 95, 105 Hobsbawm, Eric, 1, 7, 9–10, 100, 262 Hodgkin, Katharine, 23, 262 Hoerschelmann, Olaf, 105, 262 Holland, Agnieszka, 161, 225 Homewood, Chris, 104, 262 Honecker, Erich, 72, 191–2, 199, 213 Hope-Jones, Mark, 109, 262 Hosenfeld, Wilm, 217 Hrˇebejk, Jan, 20, 180, 238–44

Hubbard, Phil, 9, 262 Huelle, Paweł, 48, 54, 58 Huffman, Richard, 102, 105, 262 Huizinga, Johan, 11 Huppert, Isabelle, 171 Husák, Gustáv, 253 Hutton, Patrick, 5, 262 Huyssen, Andreas, 3, 262 Iannone, Pasquale, 125, 263 Ici et ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere), 98 Identification Marks: None (Rysopis), 52 Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter), 25 I’m Not a Tourist, I Live Here (Ma ei ole turist, ma elan siin), 177 Import/Export, 176 Im toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin (Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary), 250 Indeks (Index), 209 Inglorious Basterds, 83 In Praise of Love (Éloge de l’amour), 17, 19, 22, 27–38, 40, 42, 46, 57, 86, 247 Interrogation (Przesłuchanie), 13, 209 Invasion, The, 86 I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pockets), 118 Irons, Jeremy, 161 Irving, Washington, 192, 199 Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona, 52, 263 Irzykowski, Karol, 247 Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible), 69 Ivory, James, 88 Jacob the Liar, 85 Jähn, Sigmund, 188, 195, 198 Jakimowski, Andrzej, 157 Jakubik, Arkadiusz, 159 Jakubisko, Juraj, 254 Jakubowska, Wanda, 53 James, William, 33, 195, 255 Jameson, Fredric, 2, 7–9, 12, 68, 72, 170, 192, 263 Jamieson, Alison, 116, 263 Janda, Krystyna, 156, 158 Janicka, Boz˙ena, 151, 263 Janion, Maria, 152, 168 Jankowska-Cies´lak, Jadwiga, 233 Janowska, Katarzyna, 222, 263

Index 279 Jarchovský, Petr, 238–9 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 18, 136–7, 142, 144, 156, 173 Jarvie, Ian, 12, 263 Jasienica, Paweł, 233, 254 Jaubert, Maurice, 37 Jenkins, Keith, 2, 247, 263 Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, 189, 196 JFK, 109 Jireš, Jaromil, 209 JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de décembre, 251 John Paul II (Pope), 137, 157 Joke, The (Žert), 209 Jolie, Angelina, 253 Jones, Kathryn, 32, 263 Joplin, Janis, 106–7 Jordan, Neil, 126, 129 Judt, Tony, 1, 100, 245, 248, 253, 263 Junge, Traudl, 70, 87–91, 249, 263 Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, Das (The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari), 65 Kachyn ˇ a, Karel, 209–10 Kaczyn´ski, Jarosław, 229 Kaczyn´ski, Lech, 229 Kadár, Ján, 241 Kaes, Anton, 3, 62–3, 65, 73, 263 Kalatozov, Mikhail, 180 Kanał (Kanal), 92 Kaniewska, Maria, 209 Kansteiner, Wulf, 5, 263 Kant, Immanuel, 8, 263 Kaprow, Allan, 167 Karbowiak, Małgorzata, 143, 263 Kassovitz, Peter, 85 Katyn´, 15, 42, 54, 252 Kawalerowicz, Jerzy, 141, 143 Kawasakiho Ru˚že (Kawasaki Rose), 20, 237–8, 242–5 Kelertas, Violeta, 175, 263 Kennedy, Michael D., 174, 263 Kershaw, Ian, 61, 63–4, 69, 94–5, 249, 263 Khanjian, Arsinée, 39 Kidawa-Błon´ski, Janusz, 254 Kiesinger, Georg, 107 Kies´lowski, Krzysztof, 224, 232 Kijowski, Janusz, 209 Kilar, Jerzy, 146

King Lear, 28 Kitchin, Rob, 9, 262 Kitty Returns to Auschwitz, 46 Klausmann, Rainer, 109 Klein, Kerwin Lee, 3–5, 264 Kleinert, Andreas, 198 Klejsa, Konrad, 167, 264 Klos, Elmar, 241 Kluge, Alexander, 90, 98, 104, 114 Knights of the Teutonic Order (Krzyz˙acy), 15 Kobieta samotna (A Woman Alone), 225 Koch, Gertrud, 56, 264 Koch, Sebastian, 215 Koehler, John, 212, 264 Koenen, Gerd, 103, 116, 264 Koepnick, Lutz, 78–80, 264 Köhler, Juliane, 248 Kolski, Jan Jakub, 53–4, 58, 158 Kondrat, Marek, 49, 225 Konic, Andrzej, 13, 226 Korczak, 121 Kornblumenblau, 254 Korowód (Twists of Fate), 20, 229–33, 235–6, 243–4, 254 Kowalewski, Krzysztof, 150 Kracauer, Siegfried, 11, 14–16, 62, 65, 264 Král Šumavy (Smugglers of Death), 209 Krzystek, Waldemar, 165 Krzyz˙acy (Knights of the Teutonic Order), 15 Kubik, Jan, 135, 252, 264 Kugelmass, Jack, 56, 264 Kundera, Milan, 238 Kurz, Iwona, 13, 264 Kusý, Miroslav, 240–1, 264 Kutz, Kazimierz, 20, 145–50, 152–4, 264 Kwas´niewska, Aleksandra, 231 Kwas´niewski, Aleksander, 139, 222, 229, 231 Kwiatkowski, Tadeusz, 230 LaCapra, Dominick, 23–4, 247, 264 Lacouture, Jean, 31 Lalanne, Jean-Marc, 70, 73, 264 Lane, Anthony, 214, 264 Lang, Berel, 24, 247, 264

280

Index

Lanzmann, Claude, 6, 15, 24, 45, 59, 82, 264 Laqueur, Walter, 97, 264 Lara, Alexandra Maria, 87–8 Last Exit to Brooklyn, 107 Last Ferry, The (Ostatni prom), 165 L’Atalante, 37 Laub, Dori, 23, 49, 51, 55, 259 Lauristin, Marju, 180, 264–5 Leben der Anderen, Das (The Lives of Others), 19–20, 85–6, 186, 209–20, 227–8, 236, 239, 241–2, 244, 253 Leben des Galilei, Das (Life of Galileo), 214 Leben ist eine Baustelle, Das (Life is a Building Site), 198–9 Lee, Bruce, 129 Lenin, Vladimir, 69, 178, 199, 265 Lennon, John, 34, 265 Lengsfeld, Vera, 233, 235 Letyat zhuravli (The Cranes are Flying), 180 Levi, Neil, 247, 265 Levi, Primo, 219, 248, 250–1, 265 Levy, Dani, 20, 62, 80, 86 Lewin, Moshe, 69, 263 Life is a Building Site (Das Leben is eine Baustelle), 198–9 Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), 68, 85 Life of Galileo (Das Leben des Galilei), 214 Lilja 4-ever, 176, 179 Linda, Bogusław, 225 Lisowski, Tomasz, 222, 227, 265 Little Rose (Róz˙yczka), 254 Little Sandman (Sandmännchen), 198 Lives of Others, The (Das Leben der Anderen), 19–20, 85–6, 196, 209–20, 227–8, 236, 239, 241–2, 244, 253 Loin du Vietnam, 252 Lorenc, Michał, 144 Loshitzky, Yosefa, 24, 33, 247, 265 Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, The (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum), 97 Lotna, 146 Lotringer, Sylvère, 8, 271 Lotte in Italia (Struggle in Italy), 251 Lowenthal, David, 1, 265

Lubelski, Tadeusz, 53, 58, 149, 154, 265 Ludwig I, 78 Lukacs, John, 61, 69, 265 Lukas, Florian, 197 Lukowski, Jerzy, 140, 252, 265 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), 131 Luxemburg, Rosa, 101 Lyotard, Jean-François, 9, 26, 68, 265 MacBean, James Roy, 169, 265 Macbeth, 158 Machulski, Juliusz, 156–7 Mac´kowiak, Kamil, 231 Macnab, Geoffrey, 77, 265 Maddin, Guy, 73 Ma ei ole turist, ma elan siin (I’m Not a Tourist, I Live Here), 177 Maier, Charles, 195, 210, 265 Man of ... (Człowiek z …), 154 Man of Iron (Człowiek z z˙elaza), 139, 147, 154, 158, 169, 209, 227, 251 Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru), 13–14, 147, 154, 156, 169, 178 Mann, Thomas, 61 Mantsev, 69, 73, 265 Mao Tse-Tung, 99 Marcuse, Herbert, 99 Marczewski, Wojciech, 17, 22, 26–7, 48–58, 248 Marinca, Anamaria, 131 Markowski, Ryszard, 156 Márquez, Gabriel García, 54 Marriage of Maria Braun, The (Die Ehe der Maria Braun), 65 Martinelli, Renzo, 116 Martin-Jones, David, 14, 265 Marwick, Arthur, 115, 265 Marx, Karl, 6, 20–1, 99, 118, 176, 265 Masculin féminin, 113 Mat (Mother), 143 Mat i syn (Mother and Son), 249 Matuszewski, Bolesław, 10–11, 15, 17, 266 Max, 19, 62, 68, 74–80, 82–3, 95 Mazierska, Ewa, 16, 40, 52–4, 188, 199, 202, 247, 254, 266, 268

Index 281 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 138, 145, 208, 221, 230 McCarthy, Todd, 77, 266 McIlroy, Brian, 126, 251, 266 McSorley, Tom, 40–1, 266 Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler), 20, 62, 80–6, 95, 253 Meinhof, Ulrike, 101–3, 107–8, 110–15, 122, 251 Mein Kampf, 74 Meins, Holger, 111 mépris, Le, 248 Meyjes, Menno, 20, 62, 68, 74–80, 82, 250 Michael Collins, 129 Michnik, Adam, 138, 221 Mickiewicz, Adam, 168, 252 Miller, Alice, 82, 266 Miłosz, Czesław, 247 Miodek, Mariusz, 155, 266 Miracle of Bern, The (Das Wunder von Bern), 93 Miraculous Place (Cudowne miejsce), 54 Mis´ (Teddy Bear), 150 Mitscherlich, Alexander, 23, 64, 67, 88, 93, 266 Mitscherlich, Margarete, 23, 64, 67, 88, 93, 266 Moeller, Robert, 66, 266 Moloch, 12, 62, 69–74, 95 Moncourt, André, 103, 251, 266 Monroe, Marilyn, 102 Montanelli, Indro, 133 Moodysson, Lukas, 176, 179 Moonlighting, 20, 161–6 Moore, Roger, 226 Moran, John, 208, 266 More Than Life at Stake (Stawka wie˛ksza niz˙ z˙ycie), 13, 226 Moretti, Mario, 116 Morgenstern, Andrzej, 13 Moro, Aldo, 100, 116–25 Morrey, Douglas, 33–5, 37, 171, 266 Morrison, Jim, 102 Mother (Mat), 143 Mother and Son (Mat i syn), 249 Mozgovoy, Leonid, 71

Mückenberger, Christiane, 65, 92, 267 Mühe, Ulrich, 81, 85, 213–14, 253 Müller, Jan-Werner, 136, 267 Müller, Melissa, 87, 263 Mungiu, Cristian, 131 Munk, Andrzej, 153, 247, 254 Munslow, Alun, 1–2, 8–9, 267 Muriel, 57 Musíme si pomáhat (Divided We Fall), 239, 241 Naficy, Hamid, 8, 40, 191, 267 Nałe˛cki, Konrad, 13 Napoleon, 61, 63 Näripea, Eva, 8, 177, 196, 267 Nasta, Dominique, 200, 267 Neben der Zeit, 198 Nedelsky, Nadya, 237, 267 Neeson, Liam, 129–30 Negri, Antonio, 99 Nelson, John, 99, 267 Nesbitt, James, 129 Neumann, Iver, 183, 267 Neupert, Richard, 14, 267 Niccol, Andrew, 68 Niedaleko Warszawy (Not Far from Warsaw), 209 Niethammer, Lutz, 3, 36, 267 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 267 Nightingale, Florence, 79 Night Porter, The (Il portiere di notte), 25 Nirumand, Bahman, 108 Niven, Bill, 93, 267 Nolte, Ernst, 62, 66–7 Nora, Pierre, 2–4, 6–7, 18, 28, 56, 267 Nørgaard, Ole, 178, 181, 268 Not Far from Warsaw (Niedaleko Warszawy), 209 Notre musique, 28, 169, 251 Nouvelle vague, 37 Obchod na korze (A Shop on the High Street), 241 O’Bretenny, Zofia, 233, 254 Odd Man Out, 126 O’Leary, Alan, 115–16, 120–1, 251, 268 Opania, Marian, 151 Ophüls, Marcel, 32

282

Index

Os, Ben van, 250 Ostatni prom (The Last Ferry), 165 Ostrowska, Elz˙bieta, 53, 268 Paisà, 119 Pan Tadeusz, 252 Papon, Maurice, 32 Pasaz˙erka (The Passenger), 247, 254 Pasikowski, Władysław, 221–9 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 120, 251, 268 Passenger, The (Pasaz˙erka), 247, 254 Passion, 20, 28, 161, 169–72, 248 Paul VI (Pope), 99, 123 Pawlukiewicz, Marek, 143, 268 Pearl in the Crown (Perła w koronie), 145–7 Penn, Arthur, 103 Perła w koronie (Pearl in the Crown), 145–7 Perlez, Jane, 226, 268 Peterson, Sebastian, 211 Petit, Christopher, 254 petit soldat, Le, 98, 169 Pfefferman, Naomi, 79, 268 Pianist, The, 92, 217 Piazza delle Cinque Lune (Five Moons Plaza), 116 Pickpocket, 37 Piotrowska, Anita, 232, 268 Piwowski, Marek, 230 Place in the Sun, A, 16 Pod gwiazda˛ frygijska˛ (Under the Phrygian Star), 140, 143 Polanski, Roman, 92, 217, 254 Polívka, Bolek, 241 Pollock, Griselda, 46–7, 268 Pollock, Jackson, 38 Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds), 141–2, 223, 227 Popplewell, Richard, 210, 212, 253, 258 Porumboiu, Corneliu, 20, 176, 199, 206 Pos´cig (Chase), 209 Poster, Mark, 247, 268 Pouta (Walking too Fast), 238 Preece, Julian, 105, 251, 268 Priban, Jiri, 238, 268 Proust, Marcel, 29, 33, 51 Przesłuchanie (Interrogation), 13, 209

Przypadek (Blind Chance), 225, 232 Psy (Dogs), 220–30, 244 Psy 2. Ostatnia krew (Dogs 2), 221 Pudovkin, Vsevolod, 143 Pupendo, 237–8, 242–3, 244 Pushkin, Alexander, 252 Putzulu, Bruno, 29 Radstone, Susannah, 23, 262, 268 Radziwiłowicz, Jerzy, 147, 156, 158, 169, 171 Rakowski, Mieczysław, 144, 268 Rancière, Jacques, 36, 142, 247, 268 Ranger, Terence, 7, 262 Rascaroli, Laura, 199, 266 Raspe, Jan-Karl, 105, 113 Rawlinson, Mark, 24, 268 Reader, Keith, 37, 268 Reader, The, 217 Re˛ce do góry (Hands Up!), 52 Red Road, 254 Reed, Carol, 126 Reitz, Edgar, 98, 104 Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn, 169 Remembrance of Things Past, 30, 64 Resnais, Alain, 57–8 Riefenstahl, Leni, 250 Roberts, Julia, 34 Rob Roy, 129 Rockett, Kevin, 251, 269 Rodowick, D. N., 12, 269 Röhl, Klaus Rainer, 107–8 Romney, Jonathan, 42, 45, 48, 269 Rooney, David, 124, 269 Rosa, Michał, 229, 233–6, 238, 243 Rosenbaum, Ron, 69, 78, 82, 269 Rosenfeld, Alvin, 61, 69, 269 Rosenstone, Robert, 12–14, 247 Rossellini, Roberto, 119, 269 Rostworowski, Karol Hubert, 158 Roszak, Theodore, 107, 269 Rothberg, Michael, 247, 265 Rottmann, Karl, 78 Rourke, Mickey, 226 Rowden, Terry, 10, 99, 256 Róz˙ewicz, Stanisław, 146 Rozmowy kontrolowane (Tapped Conversations), 20, 150–5

Index 283 Róz˙yczka (Little Rose), 254 Rubens, Peter Paul, 169 Rufanova, Yelena, 71 Rysa (Scratch), 229, 233–7, 244 Rysopis (Identification Marks: None), 52 Rzeczpospolitej dni pierwsze (First Days of the Republic), 144 Sadowski, Marek, 143, 269 Said, Edward, 9, 40–1, 248, 269 Salmon, Patrick, 181, 262 Salt of Black Earth (Sól ziemi czarnej), 145, 147 Sandmännchen (Little Sandman), 198 Sansa, Maya, 117 Santner, Eric, 23, 46, 65, 67, 269 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 99, 103 Saxton, Libby, 33, 269 Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina (Slap the Monster on Page One), 118 Schenck, Ernst-Günther, 91 Schindler’s List, 13, 24, 33, 35, 46, 53, 59, 88, 90, 129, 218–20, 248 Schindler, Oskar, 53, 86, 218 Schleyer, Hanns-Martin, 103, 105–6, 113–14, 123 Schlöndorff, Volker, 98, 104, 114, 161 Schmiderer, Othmar, 250 Schmidt, Helmut, 107 Schmitz, Helmut, 93, 269 Schneider, Helge, 81, 85 Schreiber, Gerhard, 66 Schwartz, Herman, 208, 269 Schygulla, Hanna, 169 Sconce, Jeffrey, 66, 269 Scratch (Rysa), 229, 233–7, 244 Scribner, Charity, 135 Seed, Patricia, 40, 269 See␤len, Georg, 93 Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Die (Veronika Voss), 216 Seidl, Ulrich, 176 Ševic´, Željko, 175, 269 Shakespeare, William, 158 Sharpley, Richard, 209, 269 Shoah, 6, 15, 24, 45–6 Shohat, Ella, 179, 269 Shop on the High Street, A (Obchod na korze), 241

Siani-Davies, Peter, 200, 203–4, 270 Silverman, Kaja, 252, 270 Singing Powder-Box, The (Zpívající pudrˇenka), 209 Skolimowski, Jerzy, 20, 52, 161, 170, 172 Skoller, Jeffrey, 6, 14, 270 Slap the Monster on Page One (Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina), 118 Slemon, Stephen, 54, 270 Smarzowski, Wojciech, 158–61, 252 S´miałowski, Piotr, 233, 235, 270 S´mierc´ jak kromka chleba (Death as a Slice of Bread), 20, 145–50, 152, 154 Smugglers of Death (Král Šumavy), 209 Sobchack, Vivian, 8, 270 Sobolewski, Tadeusz, 140, 144, 227, 270 Socialism (Film socialisme), 28 Sofair, Michael, 35, 270 Sokurov, Aleksandr, 19, 62, 69–74, 249 Solidarnos´c´, Solidarnos´c´ ... (Solidarity, Solidarity …), 154–8, 164 Solntse (The Sun), 69 Soltan, Karol, 174, 270 Sól ziemi czarnej (Salt of Black Earth), 145, 147 Sonnennallee, 188 Sontag, Susan, 65, 270 Sophie’s Choice, 43 Sorrow and the Pity, The (Le chagrin et la pitié), 32 Špacˇek, Radim, 238 Speer, Albert, 85, 90, 94 Spiegelman, Art, 25 Spielberg, Steven, 24, 33–5, 68, 80, 88, 90, 129, 218 Spitzer, Leo, 56, 262 Springer, Axel, 101, 109 Stalin, Joseph, 62, 69, 124, 197, 249 Stam, Robert, 8, 16–17, 179, 270 Stan, Lavinia, 207–8, 221, 230, 254, 270 Starship Troopers, 68 Stawka wie˛ksza niz˙ z˙ycie (More Than Life at Stake), 13, 226 Steinberg, Stefan, 80, 85, 270 Steiner, George, 24

284

Index

Stevens, George, 16 Stone, Norman, 250, 270 Stone, Oliver, 109 Stone, Philip, 34, 269 Strajk – Die Heldin von Danzig (Strike), 161 Stratton, David, 73, 270 Strike (Strajk – Die Heldin von Danzig), 161 Stroin´ski, Krzysztof, 233, 235 Struggle in Italy (Lotte in Italia), 251 Strzelczyk, Florentine, 68, 270 Stuhr, Jerzy, 20, 229–33, 243 Success Is the Best Revenge, 20, 161, 166–9 Sullivan, Moira, 120, 270 Sun, The (Solntse), 69 Sweets, John, 32, 270 Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, 63–4, 66, 80, 87, 95–6 Sýkora, Jirˇí, 254 Szaniawski, Jeremi, 69, 72–3, 270 Szczepan´ski, Tadeusz, 54, 271 Szczerba, Jacek, 158 Szmak, Andrzej, 227, 271 Szołajski, Konrad, 154 Szpilman, Władysław, 217 Sztompka, Piotr, 174, 271 Szumowska, Małgorzata, 157–8 Szyma, Tadeusz, 144, 156, 271 Tamm, Marek, 5, 271 Tapped Conversations (Rozmowy kontrolowane), 20, 150–5 Tarantino, Quentin, 83 Taurus (Telets), 69 Taylor, Elizabeth, 16 Taylor, Noah, 74–5 Teddy Bear (Mis´ ), 150 Telets (Taurus), 69 Temple, Michael, 15, 271 Tesson, Charles, 37, 271 Thatcher, Margaret, 165 Thelen, David, 9, 271 Thieme, Thomas, 218 300 mil do nieba (300 Miles to Heaven), 165 Thrift, Nigel, 9, 258 Tiersen, Yann, 189

Time of Hope (Czas nadziei), 140–4, 149 Tismaneanu, Vladimir, 204, 257, 271 Tobias, Herbert, 102 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 204 Todesspiel (Death Game), 105 To Kill a Priest, 161 Tomlinson, John, 42, 271 Topolski, Feliks, 167 Tourist, The, 253 tragedia di un uomo ridicolo, La (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man), 120 Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), 250 Trotta, Margarethe von, 104, 114–15 Truman Show, The, 196 Trzaskalski, Piotr, 157 Turim, Maureen, 58, 271 Turned Back, The (Zawrócony), 150, 152–4 12:08 East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-a fost? ), 20, 176, 199–206 Twin Peaks, 107 Twists of Fate (Korowód), 20, 229–33, 235–6, 243–4, 254 Tym, Stanisław, 150 Tyrrell, Ian, 9, 271 Ucho (The Ear), 209 Ulysses, 64 Under the Phrygian Star (Pod gwiazda˛ frygijska˛), 140–1, 143 Unrequited Love, 254 Untergang, Der (Downfall), 19–20, 62, 86–95, 105, 127, 132, 248, 250 Urbanowicz, Stanisław, 209 Urbla, Peeter, 20, 176–87, 252 Urry, John, 33, 195, 271 Ussher, Clarence, 42, 45 Vande Winkel, Roel, 87, 93, 250, 271 Varon, Jeremy, 98–9, 102–3, 271 Veiel, Andres, 105 Verhoeven, Paul, 68 verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, Die (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum), 97 Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss), 216

Index 285 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, 250, 271 Viehjud Levi, 79 Vigo, Jean, 37 Vihalemm, Peeter, 180, 265 Virilio, Paul, 8–9, 271 vita è bella, La (Life Is Beautiful), 68, 85–6 Vošmik, Milan, 209 Vtacˇkovia, siroty a blázni (Birds, Orphans and Fools), 254 Wagner, Richard, 72, 249–50 Wajda, Andrzej, 13–15, 42, 92, 121, 141, 146, 153–4, 156, 164, 169, 209, 223, 227, 252 Wałe˛sa, Lech, 136–8, 156–8, 204, 221, 230 Walking too Fast (Pouta), 238 Wang, Ning, 33, 195, 271 Wedding, The (Wesele), 159, 252 Weil, Simone, 171–2 Weingarten, Hans, 93 Weir, Peter, 196 Weiser, 17, 19, 22, 48–58, 247 Weiser Dawidek, 48 Welsh, Helga, 208, 271 Wenders, Wim, 65, 87, 90, 94, 272 Wesele (The Wedding), 159, 252 Westerplatte, 146 Where the Truth Lies, 48 White, Hayden, 12–13, 15, 20, 25, 32, 36, 91, 109–10, 272 Whittaker, David, 97, 125, 272 Wiene, Robert, 65 Wieviorka, Annette, 26, 272 Williams, James, 271 Williams, Kieran, 207–8, 237, 272 Williams, Linda, 106, 110, 272

Wilson, Emma, 40, 272 Winter, Jay, 4, 272 Wionczek, Roman, 139–44, 148 Witt, Michael, 15, 272 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 78 Wodzirej (Dance Leader), 232 Wojciechowski, Piotr, 91, 272 Wokalek, Johanna, 113 Wolen´ski, Jan, 208, 221, 229–30 Wolff, Stefan, 97, 272 Wollenberger, Knud, 233, 235 Woman Alone, A (Kobieta samotna), 225 Wood, Nancy, 4, 32, 272 Wortmann, Sonke, 93 Wosiewicz, Leszek, 254 Wright, Alan, 15–16, 251, 272 Wright, Glendal, 175, 269 Wunder von Bern, Das (The Miracle of Bern), 93 York, Michael, 169 Young, James, 248, 272 Zanussi, Krzysztof, 157 Zapasiewicz, Zbigniew, 225 Zawadzki, Hubert, 140, 252, 265 Zawrócony (The Turned Back), 150, 152–4 Žert (The Joke), 209 Zezowate szcze˛s´cie (Bad Luck), 154 Žižek, Slavoj, 25, 36, 69, 85, 97–8, 101, 142–3, 164, 199, 213, 219, 247, 250–1, 273 Zpívající pudrˇenka (The Singing PowderBox), 209 Z˙urawiecki, Bartosz, 232, 273 Zwierzchowski, Piotr, 144, 209, 273 Zybertowicz, Andrzej, 227, 273