Question Of The Day – Where Is The Line?
“This kikess finds herself less rattled by hate-speech nutballs festering in rural Montana than by other movie reviewers whose work I respect, many of whom waved briefly at Black Book
April 19, 2024
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
I don;t think what she’s accusing Verhoeven of doing…is correct or in fact What she says Verhoeven IS doing.
There are always going to be people of pygmy intellect who will make what they will of a situation, doesn;t mean that they are correct, (or she is, in her estimation of the movie’s worth).
There were great evils promoted and perpetuated by Nazis and collaborators in WWII, I don;t think Black Book denies that in any way. It does show that there were many chess game type things that went on with the Resistances in Netherlands, France and even in Germany (the Red Orchestra) that made people wonder who was on what side at any given time.
I think Verhoeven is taking a look at black and white and many shades of gray in a small group of people based on some true historical events/people of the time and Those individuals perceptions and excuses and reconstructions they made themselves.
Verhoeven is not applying moral relativism to the Nazi machine and the horrors it accomplished, nor is he apologizing for it.
“Verhoeven is not applying moral relativism to the Nazi machine and the horrors it accomplished, nor is he apologizing for it.”
You sure? I just recently read an interview of Verhoeven (most likely linked from MCN) in which he said that his goal for Black Book was to show that ‘good is not good, and bad is not bad’ (I’m paraphrasing). Perhaps DP remembers the article and can find it?
I found an EW interview where he says it:
“A lot of my motivation for doing the movie was to show that good is not good and bad is not bad: A Nazi can still be a human being.”
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20016395,00.html
Is that really such a controversial statement? The Nazis were human beings. The fact that they committed such evil is what compels us to stories about them. They started from roughly the same place as the rest of us– that place being humanity– and then turned bad. If you think of them simply as an inhuman embodiment of evil, there’s nothing interesting about them.
Gah, I had this long post about the obvious undercurrents from Verhoeven learning so late in life of his own fathers Nazi past and blah blah blah.
Then realized I was confusing Joe Eszterhas’s biography for some odd reason.
But up to that realization it was a brilliant piece of amateur psychoanalysis.
There’s a big difference between illustrating moral complexity and surrenduring to moral ambivalence.
Sure, but I think you can’t assume one or the other from the quote. And every interview with Verhoeven I’ve ever seen has suggested that his English is not quite perfect. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
(Haven’t seen Black Book, by the way, so I’m open to the possibility that the content of the movie itself would answer these questions more definitively.)
I think Rosenbaum would admire Schindler’s List more if it didn’t have the name “Steven Spielberg” attached to it.
Well Rosenbaum clearly is a Verhoeven fan. Didn’t he pick HOLLOW MAN for his top 10 that year? I still agree with his take on the movie way more than Taylor’s.
agreed, Jeff. Spielberg earned the historically inaccurate “if I’d sold…” ending with the rest of the movie, and no one ever mentions that Spielberg’s only self reflexive moment in his career comes at the coda of Schindler’s List, and in my mind is a million times more effective than any of Godard’s ridiculously high praised use of the technique.
And who put such a high price on emotional distance for the holocaust? Wasn’t that part of the horror of Adolf Eichmann, that he had complete emotional separation from his actions? Our ability to respond emotionally to the tragedy is part of what distinguishes us. Spielberg made a movie that put faces to the tragedy that put emotions to the cold historical numbers involved. And why should artists be condemned for telling a story about surviving the holocaust, how is any film about that feel good? Even Life is Beautiful is not a feel good movie, the humor only provides a counterpoint to the tragedy, and helps us get through the experience of recreating it.
Schindler’s List is one of the finest films ever made and I get really tired of critics attacking it for completely meritless and baseless reasons. Even though I usually like Jon Rosenbaum, and think he’s one of the best critics working today, I lost a little respect for him knowing that he’s so blind to a film like Schindler’s List.
It’s his characterization of SL as a ‘feelgood movie’ that is most off. Granted it has a ‘happy’ ending, but it’s hardly a movie that lets the viewer off the hook, nor is it one that presents a simplistic moral view. Plus there’s a whole tangle of critics who believe that Shoah is the only worthy Holocaust film, which I reject.
“For starters, Spielberg works up loads of suspense about whether a bunch of Jewish women will be gassed at a Nazi camp, only to elicit grateful sighs of relief from us when they aren’t (the “gas chamber” turns out to be a shower). I seriously doubt that Verhoeven would ever stoop to such a ploy..”
Of course he would (it’s not like Verhoeven isn’t shameless in his own way), but when he did, the critics would hail his “black humor.”
I’m tired of ‘Moral Relativism’ being tossed around as an insult towards people who reject notions of clear cut black & white and instead prefer to examine the gray area in between the two.
I won’t speak for Verhoeven’s intentions, but I didn’t leave the film feeling like he was suggesting a defense Nazis or incriminating all members of the Dutch resistance. I felt he was using Nazism as an extreme to lend weight to the idea that all humans are capable of great good and great evil. He’s not rewriting history so much as using it to explore human nature. In her original review Taylor gets caught up in what Verhoeven is saying specifically about his subjects, but is missing the bigger picture. When she acknowledges their may BE a bigger picture, she dismisses Verhoeven’s musings as “banal”.
Maybe I’m a simpleton, but that’s crazy. More than ever, we seem all too anxious to paint the world in binary opposites: black/white, left/right, liberal/conservative, right/wrong and any impulse that draws us toward more complicated reasoning is a good one.
Black Book, like all of Verhoeven’s best work, is intoxicating trash. It’s basically saying that some Nazis were great in the sack, and who are we to argue?
Rosenbaum clearly misses the point of the sequence. The scene is about cruelty. The Nazis get off on messing with the captured’s emotions. We may sigh in relief that it turns out to only be a shower, but our relief is cut short as we realize that the Nazus are just delaying their plans for their cruel amusement.
I’m usually not this snobbish, but critics who question Spielberg’s technique probably shouldn’t be trusted.
I have not seen Black Book, but will when I can. A
few thoughts…
1. I suspect most critics are not dismissing its moral relativism because it is a well crafted thriller in technique. More likely it is the moral relativism itself that is driving the praise, the belief that there is no right or wrong or any true evil being a driving force of ‘intellectual thought’ in the 21st century.
2. Any critic who brushes off Schindler’s List so easily is a fool. That is merely a fashionable thing to do (like brushing off Forrest Gump) exactly because Spielberg dared to show pure evil unrelentingly and not give up. It is one of the greatest and yes, most moral films ever made. That is its strength as art, not weakness. Schindler’s List shows that you can make choices. The Ralph Fiennes character is not grey once he makes a choice. His choices define him. This is not a simplistic notion but a complex one.
3. Yes, Verhoeven is a great technician but as someone said, most of his work is highly elevated pop art, not art masking as pop.
4.
cjkennedy wrote,
“I’m tired of ‘Moral Relativism’ being tossed around as an insult towards people who reject notions of clear cut black & white and instead prefer to examine the gray area in between the two. ”
There is definite good and evil. There is much grey in between. You have to wade through the grey to find the right or wrong of a situation. The problem with too many pop intellectuals is that they see no good or evil whatsoever and equivocate everything.
Not all acts are equivocal. It is like a balance. Are the relativists in the crowd really going to say there is no moral difference between a willing soldier for the National Socialists or Gandhi?
I will see Black Book but if it really is the relativist mumbo jumbo I am reading…then I will not look forward to it.
Nicol D. As an intellectual exercise, I think it’s ok to approach something with the idea that there is no right and wrong, but in the real world it’s a crazy notion. Verhoeven is playing with the idea in his typically extreme way, but I just didn’t see he was claiming “there is no good or evil”. I saw him saying that the distinction is just not always clear. Maybe stating the obvious for some, but for others a worthy message.
I’d also add that there seems to be another kind of moral relativism: One that suggests that when you’re fighting something evil enough, it’s ok to be evil yourself. This is a dangerous situation not unlike we find ourselves in today. If anything, I think Verhoeven is attacking this idea. He acknowledges the Nazis were evil, but doesn’t allow that fact to excuse the horrible acts perpetrated by our own side. In fact in a way, sometimes the latter is worse because we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.
Verhoeven isn’t trying to ennoble the Nazis, he’s holding the supposed good guys responsible for the evil they commit themselves.
Having seen the movie only one time, I could be misreading it, but that’s my take.
cjkenendy,
Well, now I can’t comment on the ‘evil’ the Allies may commit in the film because I have not seen the film.
I have no problem with spoilers so if you’re wiling to, could you please post a big spoiler warning and tell me what acts you are talking about.
Not all acts of violence are equivocal. If a man comes home and sees another man raping his wife, and he kills that man in defense of his wife, both men committed violence, but while the rapist is committing evil, the man who defends his wife and home is not. One could even argue he is committing a flat out good.
That was one of the problems I had with A History of Violence. I love Cronenberg, but the film was very facile in its equivocation of all violence.
If this is what Black Book is about, it is not complex, but facile…even moreso if it is not rooted in historical fact.
***Spoilers***
Nicol D, if you see it, you may well see a moral relativist message in which case your only enjoyment of it will come from the twists and turns of the plot in a Perils of Pauline kind of way. Because of that I’m going to be really vague. Suffice it to say, much of the plot revolves around the acts of supposedly ‘good’ people who were ostensibly helping the Jews but who were in fact simply taking advantage of them for their own purposes. Also, once the war is over, Verhoeven goes to great lengths to show some of the revenge the Dutch dished out on suspected Nazi sympathizers.
***End Spoilers***
It’s important that throughout this ambiguous haze, Verhoeven’s sympathies clearly lie with his hero (though he does seem to take graphic pleasure in humiliating her…that’s the subject of a whole other discussion). He makes it clear she will do whatever she has to do (and she does a lot) to make it through the war, but she’s still one of the good guys. Her countrymen may question her actions, but Verhoeven never does. If he was a true moral relativist, wouldn’t he be trying to say she was as bad as everyone else?
As I said, I’ve seen the movie but once and that was weeks ago. I usually like to have another viewing before getting all serious about something, but Taylor’s original review pushed a button.
I also want to point out I’m not an unabashed fan of the film. I’ve got issues I’m working through, but the fact I still think about it all these weeks later is a positive sign.
I’d like to step in here for a moment to defend Jonathan Rosenbaum, who can certainly be picky, but shouldn’t be jumped on simply because he appears to not think Schindler’s List is a flawless masterpiece.
If you read his actual review of Spielberg’s film on the Chicago Reader website, you will find he had this to say:
“Steven Spielberg’s best film doesn’t so much forgo the shameless and ruthless manipulations of his earlier work as refine and direct them toward a nobler purpose.”
“Spielberg does an uncommonly good job both of holding our interest over 185 minutes and of showing more of the nuts and bolts of the Holocaust than we usually get from fiction films. Despite some characteristic simplifications, he’s generally scrupulous about both his source and the historical record.”
“Spielberg’s capacity to milk the maximal intensity out of the existential terror and pathos conveyed in Keneally’s book…is complemented and even counterpointed by his capacity to milk the glamour of Nazi high life and absolute power.
Now obviously he’s critical of S’s tendencies, but this seems pretty level-headed to me. In addition, he wrote one of the more glowing reviews of the divisive A.I. upon its release, so he certainly isn’t gunning for the guy.
I find Schindler’s to be extremely overrated, for while it’s great filmmaking, the cheap ploy of the aforementioned shower scene (which is as reprehensible and indefensible as the cheating, POV switching of Saving Private Ryan’s bookends), and the falsified breakdown of Schindler himself put a really bad taste in my mouth, not to mention the coda, which made me want to pick up a rock too, except I’d throw it through Spielberg’s window instead of placing it on any of my Jewish relative’s gravestones.
When J-Ro describes Schindler’s as a “feel-good” holocaust film, it’s in the way that the audience is given an easy out with the main character. He breaks down and throws himself on the mercy of moviegoers, Jews, and AMPAS, so you don’t have to wrangle with the ethical and moral issues any longer. And while it’s still a weeper (Kleenex and Scott Tissue may as well have paid for audience product-placement), you get the closure, the sense that the good guys won despite how many they lost, and the real-life coda says “Hey, we’re survivors and made it to a country where we belong and can be free”. That’s not feel-good?
The key line remark isn’t about feeling good but about refusing to let the audience off the hook. I haven’t seen Black Book yet, but I can tell you that Spielberg certainly throws his viewers back into the water after reeling them in. Always has, always will.
The bookends in Saving Private Ryan are not only defensible, they are essential if you pay attention to what the film is actually about. Likewise, Rosenbaum is so wrapped up in Spielberg’s ‘manipulations’ that he fails to connect with what the film is actually doing/saying so that his observations, while generally acute, are also beside the point.
I think it can be said that filmmakers who ‘keep their audiences on the hook’ can be just as lazy/facile/whatever as those who don’t, depending on the film. A moral stance of harshness and ambiguity can be just as lazy and offensive as one that isn’t.
And to continue on Nicol’s thread: like most postwar degenerates, I don’t believe that there is a true objective ‘evil’ (which could only be objectively measured with reference to some supernatural source) but I think that it’s a useful concept – just like ‘up’ and ‘down’ don’t exist in outer space but you’re sure as hell going to reference both of them when you’re trying to fix the space shuttle.