FASCIST FILM

AUGUST 28, 2020 – Last night my wife and I watched portions of the RNC. We wearied of the shameless fear-mongering and contemptuous disregard for truth. What put us over the top, however, was the dense, unmasked crowd on the South Lawn of the White House.

Cable commentators (GoebbelsNews excepted) couldn’t hide their dismay. Rudy Giuliani’s off-the-rails speech left Rachel Maddow momentarily speechless. When CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked senior producer, David Daniels, what the latter thought of Trump’s speech, Daniels exploded with a “take-down” of falsehoods. On a split screen, Cooper’s unrestrained facial responses reflected the force of Daniels’ blow-back.

My wife and I then watched some of Stephen Colbert. His first guest was former NJ Governor Chris Christie.  After three minutes of Christie’s bumbling defense of Trump’s response to the pandemic we’d had enough—as had Colbert.

My wife steamed off to her home office to distract herself from the politics of fascism. I too stormed off to distract myself by watching a movie about . . . fascism, as it turned out.  I’d just wanted to watch a movie, because I hadn’t seen any recently. Having done a ton of passive book-reading lately, I figured it was time for action. Thus, I signed on to Netflix, randomly selected Alone in Berlin and kicked back to divert myself from current politics.

Turns out, the film was about . . . current politics—inescapably, if not directly.  It was about a couple in wartime Berlin whose only child is killed in the German offensive against France. The film opens with the youth in uniform running alone in terror through a forest. A shot is fired by an unidentified pursuer. The boy-soldier falls, and under swaying treetops above, his life is drained of its future.

When the official notice of their son’s death is delivered to the parents’ apartment, the father—a taciturn, stern-looking factory foreman—hasn’t the courage to open it. He leaves that task to his aggrieved wife. Upon reading the letter, she shrieks, blaming the tragedy on the husband’s “Führer.” He says nothing; serves her a cup of coffee and leaves for work.

The stoic man becomes the image of courage. An accomplished amateur woodcarver (he carves a bust of the son), he adapts his skill to handwriting and practices a variety of styles. At random shops he buys picture postcards and writes messages on them in defiance of the regime. Attributes of the fascist regime are captured subtly, as well as overtly, in images interwoven with scenes of postcard “deliveries.” Our hero crisscrosses Berlin, often with his wife, to place the cards—one at time, well into the 100s—against the step-risers of staircases in various public buildings. The police take notice, but the defiant resister eludes them . . . at least until I hit “pause” when I realized that yesterday had become today.

I can guess at the denouement . . . of the film, as well as of the screenplay of today’s American fascist regime.

(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)

© 2020 by Eric Nilsson