Well folks, Harry here and it seems the wheels of Toronto are moving forward again... Anton didn't fill us in on the last 24 hours though, but rather the film he saw, before walking out into the lobby and discovering that the world had changed. Tim Blake Nelson's THE GREY ZONE sounds absolutely harrowing... and to walk from that to what Anton did... from black to the abyss... Read on...
"Laugh while you can, monkey boy."
- E. Lizardo
Day Seven
Tuesday night, like many of you I suspect, I fell asleep in front of the television.
All film festival activities- including the Italian Trade Commission dinner at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, where I’d been hoping to discuss Frida Kahlo with Salma- had been suspended. The fragile dream bubble that we in the festival community all live in for ten days had disintegrated, reality had gone mad around us, and the idea of celebrating anything- particularly our escapist celluloid fantasies- was poisoned.
Because there was no escape from the images of the morning of September 11th.
On Wednesday I awoke in a daze, not sure which of the nightmares in my head were my own and which had come true, with the strangest sound hanging in the air. Everything seemed unreal, but the noise even more so. I drew the curtains aside and peered out, trying to piece it together.
Across the street, in the schoolyard, children were playing, playing and laughing and shouting with delight.
I stared, hardly daring to breathe lest I break the spell, and watched as they played together until a bell rang, and they piled inside the school. Just as they had done yesterday, and the week before, and the year before, in Toronto and all across the world.
And as I showered and went through the motions of getting ready I made a choice. Because no matter what happens, no matter what we do to each other, the Great and Secret Show will go on, with us or without us.
So I moved through the day, straining to hold on to everything- drinking an imported Italian soda; walking in the rain; talking to an old friend I had not seen in ages. All of it mattered, but no more or less than it had the day before. The world had not changed overnight, even if I had.
Even if we all had.
* * * * *
I have only included one review today, although I have many more backlogged at the moment- Hotel, the Hired Hand, Buffalo Soldiers, others. As with the fest itself, in the next few days I will have some catching up to do. So be it.
I can be reached at Anton2001Fest@yahoo.com
The Grey Zone (2001, directed by Tim Blake Nelson)
(Please note that I saw this film on Monday, before the events of 9-11.)
This is a film so far out on the margins that logic ceases to be logical, that the normal rules are crushed and twisted by a strange gravity, that morality itself ceases to exist and every choice is equally supportable, and equally damning.
It is also a true story.
The Grey Zone tells the tale of the 12th Sonderkommando, a unit of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz who performed the tasks the Nazis did not wish to in exchange for luxuries and a few more weeks of life- They manned the furnaces, handled the corpses and- most monstrous of all- shepherded those from each new trainload destined for the showers. The 12th was the most efficient group yet, and when the movie begins have lasted longer than any of their predecessors.
The 12th also harbors a secret- in conjunction with their Polish counterparts and a small group of women working in a nearby munitions factory they are planning an uprising, not to escape, but to destroy the ovens.
At the start of the film I thought it wasn’t all that good. It betrayed its stage-bound origins and featured seemingly reams of stilted dialogue. The performances were all good to excellent (surprisingly excellent in the case of David Arquette) but there seemed to be an emotional detachment in the intensely philosophical conversations that was at odds with the horribly matter-of-fact details of their duties.
As the film progressed, though, I realized this was intentional- the endless debates on the ethics of their actions were their escape from the reality of those actions. And in that moment I realized my own constant ongoing analysis (how is Keitel’s accent, does Buscemi really work in a period piece etc. etc. etc.) served the same purpose, acting as a defense mechanism against what I was seeing. My mind was keeping its distance. My body, however, was not. The slowly accumulating horror of the images was having an effect- I sat in the theater with shoulders hunched, bent forward over my knees, occasionally experiencing involuntary shudders and twitches, as though I was the one in that place, I was the one being tortured.
I don’t believe I’ve ever reacted that way to a film before. Normally I watch films with my defenses down, but the Grey Zone not only caused me to raise those defenses, it then cut through them like tissue paper.
As the plot progressed, as the Sonderkommando find themselves at odds with a camp doctor whose moral balancing act is even more precarious than their own, and all their plans and tenuous rationalizations are put in jeopardy when a young girl miraculously survives the gas, the effect was only compounded. I won’t say the film was an endurance test- that would be cruel and inaccurate- but it was an ordeal.
This is not Schindler’s List. In many ways this is the antidote for some of Spielberg’s Hollywoodizations.
And I wish, more than anything in the world, this story had never needed to be told.
