Divided We Fall
Words of wisdom, from time immemorial. Divided we fall. Time heals all wounds. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Moderation is the key; the golden rule. Seek fulfillment and happiness within yourself. To some jaded individuals they are but bromides; to the good souls who walk among us they are the key to a successful life, a balm to troubled souls. For who can doubt we are indeed our brothers', our sisters' keepers?
The "Divided We Fall" which I'm referencing in this piece is a film, a Czechoslovakian film, a period piece which takes place during the Second World War, 1939 to 1945. This is a film with a bold purpose, filtered through the perception of an embattled population whose homeland has been invaded by the most merciless army of murderers in modern history, yet bathed in the warmth of humanity which seeks to do its best - on occasion. The screenplay for this film is a truly original one, augmented with fine acting, excellent cinematography, and a musical score which does much to enhance enjoyment of the amusing segments as well as those fraught with misery.
The topic of the film is that of an evil occupation, with the Holocaust as background. Yet there is much humour relevant to the human condition and survival injected into the story, and this is as it should be. Reality is grim enough and that particular reality so grim as to be unbelievable in that we face true difficulties understanding the extent of man's inhumanity to man.
This is one of those rare films which, having been viewed, you comprehend that you have not wasted your time. Its value as a statement of the human condition with all its foibles; humans demonstrating their potential to be good, to be evil, to be excessively ugly, looking the other way when a collective refusal to accede to the horrors of genocide might conceivably effectively derail its progress. As the tiny, courageous nation of Denmark demonstrated, to its eternal honour as a nation of heros. This film is as removed from the triteness, the insecurity and issue-triviliazing of a Hollywood-produced film as is ever possible to imagine.
A village in Czechoslovakia is captured in the net of Nazi German, its citizens wrapped in an all-encompassing web of fear. As everywhere else within Nazi Germany's spheres of occupation the most obvious and endangered targets are the Jewish population and it is to them that the final solution of race-obliteration is aimed with deadly accuracy and force. Those others in the captured populations whose compassion extends to assisting their former friends, companions, employers or simply village-dwellers are few and far between. Everyone, with good reason, fears for their life. To deliberately or even inadvertently offer assistance to a Jew is to invite instant death, a death which will extend to an entire family. Understandably, sufficient reason among a cowed and fearful population to ensure that no help will be forthcoming, and the Nazis will have the free hand that they antitipate as their due, in exterminating any Nazi-occupied population of their Jews.
In this story, the wealthiest family in the town is Jewish. The family, portrayed as a well regarded employer of many of the town's inhabitants in the family business, experiences the disenfranchisement of citizenship, the evaporation of property rights, and goes to live temporarily at the home of one of their Czeck managers, a young man, and his wife. Their stay there is interrupted when the Jewish family is sent on to a concentration camp. The young man of the Jewish family, David, escapes the camp and returns to the village where he seeks help from one of the family's erstwhile retainers, an older man of influence in the village (who in fact joins the resistance movement). When this man realizes who is confronting him and appealing for help in this nighttime encounter, he panics and refuses, insisting that his family, his children would be in danger. Then he goes even further and tries to hail a passing Nazi jeep with two soldiers, calling out to them "here is a Jew, here is a Jew"!. The soldiers, unheeding, pass on.
The young man with his burden of what he has witnessed in the concentration camp (his sister, older than him, was offered a position as a Capo, essentially a Jewish turncoat, used as guards to control their fellow Jews, as overseers helping usher the crowds of perishable humans into the gas chambers, as workers throwing bodies into the crematoria, first extracting any gold crowns from the corpses' teeth; separating clothing, human hair, valuables of any kind, all of which are destined for use by the Third Reich. To 'save her life' and 'prove' she had the proper mettle she is given a club and ordered to thrash her father and her mother to death. David, in relating this to the young woman whose husband has taken him in, describes his parents cowering before their daughter, yet pleading with her to comply in order to save her own life. She, however, refuses, and although it isn't made clear one might assume that David performs the unspeakable task of fratricide, matricide, patricide, and himself takes the coveted role of Capo, this keeping himself from immediate death.
Joseph and Marie Cizek, the two Czechs who have taken on the death-defying task of hiding David in their home portray the best of human nature's potential, while an old family friend and also former worker employed by David's family's enterprise who is a Nazi sympathizer constantly visiting the home of the Cizeks portrays the conflicted nature of humans uncertain of their place in society and the world.
The film revolves around the concealment of David, the dilemma facing Josef and Marie in ensuring that his presence in their home remains secret, and their growing realization of the suspicions of their Nazi sympathizer friend whose unwanted attentions they are painfully unable to deflect.
The film, despite its grim retelling of a dreadful segment in human history manages to inject humour and compassion into the story. There are brief glimpses of the manner in which others in the village manage to conduct their lives in constant fear of arrest and possibly, death. It is forbidden to hoard food, if food other than the very basic necessities of life can be found. Yet most villagers somehow do find 'excess' food and they place it in secret pantries for future use when, as inevitably happens, even basic foodstuffs become scarce enough to imperil survival.
The twists and turns and incidents both sobering and amusing lead the viewer to an improbable solution which is forced upon Josef and Marie to save their lives and that of David whom they continue to fiercely protect. There is a happy conclusion to the film, demonstrating aptly just how interralated we are in our needs, and how, in coming together, disastrous ' falls' can be averted.
The final scene in the film, a brief diversion from reality into a dreamworld where the noble dead are brought back to life to witness the world's return to sanity will haunt me for the rest of my life. Little wonder that this film was an Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film in 2000 (ugh! Hollywood), recipient of Czech Film Academy Awards, as well as being voted 'most popular film, 2000 at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 30, 2005
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