He and his wife Fani, even after having produced three daughters, are deeply, sensuously in love. His village lies below towering peaks shrouded in mist, with green hills rolling to distant horizons. Then, knowing what I was in for (it’s nearly impossible to see a movie these days without already knowing about its plot), I went to my local theater and watched A Hidden Life, another true story of passive resistance to the Nazis.įranz Jägerstätter is no urban sophisticate but a devout Catholic farmer living an idyllic life in Austria’s Tyrolian mountains. The next day, somewhat shaken by that film, thinking of people who really had sacrificed for their principles, I went for a hike in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery, where a series of random (?) turns took me past the grave of Fred Korematsu, who had refused to cooperate with the government’s internment of his fellow Japanese-American citizens and had fought for decades to clear his name and secure compensation for them. Otto and Elise Hampel were sent to the guillotine in Berlin on April 4 th, 1943. Perhaps they want to get caught perhaps their protest, dangerous as it is, is not enough. Indeed, the film’s ending is a bit ambiguous. Having offered up their son to the State (in reality it was her brother, but that doesn’t matter), they ultimately sacrifice themselves. They leave some 200 handwritten, anti-war postcards all over the city until the Gestapo arrests them. A middle-aged German husband and wife, grieving for their son who’d been killed in the war, can no longer passively accept the authority of the Nazi death cult. The other night, having already planned to see Terrance Malick’s new film A Hidden Life, I discovered the 2016 film Alone in Berlin on Netflix and watched this dramatized true story. One had better be prepared to drop what one is doing, to sacrifice some trivial pleasure or responsibility, and just listen. I’m simply observing that one when is committed to his art – in my case, writing about historical, political and cultural issues through a mythological lens, when one asks to be a conduit for other voices – when one tries to pay attention – then one had better be prepared for synchronicities. Every good deed brings its own punishment.
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