Studio 54, Documentary Film USA 2018, directed by Matt Tyrnauer, 8* out of 10

Matt Tyrnauer's film is an interesting record of an important cultural moment in time for New York, and indeed America. Studio 54, the club, was an integral part of a social revolution led by the rich and famous who reached out to the gay and black community to gay and black culture mainly for their entertainment. Tyrnauer’s documentary is a watchable and entertaining reminder of  30 months of abandon and bacchanalia New York City-style when Studio 54 shone ever so brightly. Above all, it is a testimony to an ingenious business couple who created an extraordinary theatrical and social experiment and paid a heavy price.

New York in 1977 was the sweet-spot in space and time when the trauma of the Vietnam War and the hippie love culture gave way to the desire for indulging oneself: partying, dancing, taking drugs, having sex and its feeling good. It was the time when money, celebrity, sex, drugs and disco music all seemed good and those indulging in it thought that there would be no price to pay. It was the time when the inclusion of gay lifestyle and black disco-rhythms provided heightened enjoyment for the privileged people in the fashion, entertainment industries and when art meant pop-art. Studio 54 was the place in New York which perfectly enacted this. 

In his documentary about the iconic club, Matt Tyrnauer looks at the two people who created and ran it on Manhattan’s West Side 54th Street and 8th Avenue, a sleazy area in a city plagued by street-crime. Two Brooklyn kids with big dreams of success New York style, Ian Shrager and Steve Rubell were the perfect business couple to fall upon the most outrageous right idea at the right time. 

Matt Tyrnauer’s film is mostly about these two people, who complemented each other perfectly. It shows how their outrageous business plan, became reality in a disused television studio come theatre and achieved immediate success. 

Studio54 was more like a crazy Broadway show, with the audience being the cast than a night club. The show began with the long queue of people wanting to gain entry and the triage at the door. 

The outward star of the documentary is the extrovert Steve Rubell. But the more interesting character is Ian Shrager, son of Max Shrager, a Jewish Toni Soprano also known as "Max the Jew". Ian, a lawyer and businessman, whose roguish charm and raspy voice reminds one of Robert de Niro’s best comedy-drama performances.  Ian Shrager is a serious and engaging character. Answering Tyrnauer's questions, he charts the meteoric rise and hard descent of the Shrager-Rubell partnership. He recalls the frantically energised Studio 54 fantasy-world, and the business-couple's downfall followed by the (by New York City standards) slow rise from the ashes. A rise that was punctuated by tragedy and shared with many who were all totally unprepared for the impending doom of the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

Matt Tyrnauer's documentary captures a brief an important period in the cultural history of New York. Studio 54 was an integral part of a social revolution led by the rich and famous who reached out to the gay and black community to gay and black culture, mainly for their own entertainment. And it looked for a moment like the rest of the world did not have to be considered. The arc of history would run not towards ever more divided identity-thinking but towards the late Martin Luther King’s ideal, a world where we would all recognize our commonality as human beings and our separate “identities” would be secondary. 

That was the feeling on the dance floor of Studio 54, where we see images Liza Minelli and Andy Warhol. We see a shy Michael Jackson dropping in on Steve Rubell. Caught unprepared, he genuinely gives his full endorsement to Rubell and Shrager’s creation. Nile Rogers of Le Freak C’est Chic reflects on what Studio 54 meant for the social and musical scene of the late 1970s, and he can't help smiling as he remembers. 

Tyrnauer’s documentary is a watchable and entertaining reminder of a unique short moment of abandon and bacchanalia 1970-New- York-City-style shining ever so brightly for a brief moment in time. Recommended for everyone interested in 1970s New York.

https://www.facebook.com/studio54doc/

The text of the original blog-post has been edited and corrected to eliminate some of the grammatical errors and repetitive phrasing in the early version.

Ratlines - Human Rights Lawyer, Author, Podcaster Professor Philippe Sands at the Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, Vienna 9* out of 10

Prominent International Lawyer Philippe Sands in an enthralling wide-ranging conversation with Austrian journalist and author Tessa Szyszkowitz on International Criminal Law, family history and Brexit. You can watch the award-winning documentary starring Sands and listen to his Podcast series Ratlines by following the links below.   

A Professor at University College London and a Barrister at Matrix Chambers, Philippe Sands is a renowned International Lawyer specializing in International Human Rights Law. In 2015 he published East-West Street, a book on the origins of the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity and a report on the search for his own origins. By fate or coincidence, Raphael Lemkin and Hersh Lauterpacht, the protagonists behind these two profound and competing milestones in the progress of International Human Rights Law, developed and applied at the Nuremberg Trials in the wake of World War 2 and Sands’ grandfather’s family all lived at some point in their lives in the city of Lemberg, Lvov, Lviv. This city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of Poland and today is in Ukraine, which explains why it has at least three names. It was Philippe Sands who, when he discovered this connection, proceeded to unearth and tell the story of two great legal minds’ invention of two key concepts in International Humanitarian Law.  He also unearthed his own family history, a family most of whose members fell victim to such crimes.

Having gained fame as a writer of a popular book about the history of international law Sands went on to star in a BBC Storyville documentary My Nazi Legacy: What our Fathers Did. He took 2 sons of key figures on the German/Austrian/Nazi side of his story whom he had met during the research for his book to Lviv. Niklas Frank is the son of the notorious War Criminal Otto Frank who headed the Nazi Administration in Poland. Horst Wächter is the son of SS-Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter who under Otto Frank headed the civil Nazi Administration in Lemberg. Civil in its designation it was not civil in its behaviour.  Niklas Frank detests his father who was found guilty and hanged at the Nuremberg Trials after World War 2. Horst Wächter, in the face of overwhelming indications to the contrary, is convinced of his father’s innocence. To his credit, Horst Wächter has opened all the family correspondence, as he desperately wants to find indications that his father under whose direction as head of the civil administration the Jews of Lemberg were sent to their death, was a good man who participated, if at all, only reluctantly in the abominable crimes so deliberately and efficiently directed by his good friend and boss Otto Frank. Sands, whose relatives were murdered under Frank’s enthusiastic leadership maintains throughout most of the documentary the persona of the accomplished barrister looking for the facts and prepared to defend or prosecute as the barristers’ code of ethics demands. He says he is not proud of the moment where he temporarily loses his professional cool with Horst Wächter.

The award-winning film led Sands to research what happened to Otto Wächter after the war. How had Wächter escaped the attempts of the allies to catch him? The story is revealed in a suspenseful entertaining and chilling manner in a BBC Podcast – The Ratline, with a cameo appearance by John Le Carré, master of the spy novel and Sand’s neighbour in London’s Hampstead neighbourhood. 

The Ratline is the name given to the operation of a network by the highest levels in the Catholic church in Rome to help Nazi war criminals escape from justice. Since soon after the end of the War the Western Allies were putting what they perceived as their own interest ahead of the pursuit of justice, most senior German and Austrian Nazis had their crimes whitewashed in return for helping the Western Allies fight the threat of Soviet Communism. 

This prompted me to raise my hand in the Q&A session and ask Sands how he would answer the question: Do "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" pay, if not for the perpetrators at least for their perpetrators' legally innocent descendants? The dead cannot have descendants anymore while most Nazi-criminals and their descendants, the latter being innocent of their parents' crimes, can live rich and comfortable lives undisturbed by survivors and any descendants or other relatives of the murdered? No, answered Sands, the passionate International Lawyer, International Criminal Law is a long game with small but important steps having been made over hundreds of years, and big steps having been made by the adoption of Crimes against Humanity and Genocide into International Law in the 20th century.  

In a wide-ranging conversation with the London based Austrian author and journalist Tessa Szyszkowitz, Philippe Sands showed himself as great raconteur thoughtfully reflecting on the experience of his journey through the history of his family during World War II and explaining the competing ideas of "Crimes Against Humanity" and "Genocide" and their origins. Charming, eloquent and a trifle self-possessed, as one would expect from a barrister, Sands showed himself as a man who can listen as well as talk. He is passionate about the importance of facts and possesses the persistence needed to look for such facts in all the most unlikely places. His persistence is so often rewarded that in Sands’ case serendipity appears to have become a trusty companion.

Sands spoke about the research and the writing of East West Street as a search for his identity. But listening to him, it becomes clear that the identity he exudes with the most natural confidence is that of the gifted lawyer driven by curiosity to tell the story based on where the facts lead him.

Horst Wächter, the son of the protagonist of Ratlines, was also in the audience and asked to speak, trying to convince us all that his SS-father who had joined the Nazi party in Austria in the 1920s and stood with Hitler on the balcony of the Heldenplatz after the Nazi-German invasion of Austria in March 1938, would never have willingly participated in the killing of innocent people including the deportation and killing of Jews. After the event, Horst Wächter, now Philippe Sands' friend, took 10 minutes to try and convince me personally of this too. So, he deserves at least 8* out of 10 for effort; but the weight of the facts speaks against his father’s “reluctance”. Horst Wächter did tell me that he had brought with him letters of people vouching for his father and showing that he had saved numerous Jewish people from certain death. Perhaps we’ll hear if Horst Wächter has made a dent in Philippe Sands’ view of Otto Wächter. 

Ably interviewed by a knowledgeable and thoroughly prepared Tessa Szyszkowitz, an Austrian journalist and author living in London, Sands effortlessly switched from intriguing secrets of the past to British politics of the present.  As a prominent international lawyer in Britain, he is involved in advising on the legal aspects of Brexit and was as eloquent and interesting when speaking about that topic as he was about the past. Although a convinced “remainer”, Sands delivered a stinging critique on the European Court of Justice for being unwilling to submit itself to the European Court of Human Rights on Human Rights issues. With democracy coming under strain and scrutiny in Europe and beyond, Sands indicated that the protection provided individuals and groups by the rule of law is becoming an important counterweight against attempts to limit the rights of the individual by the means of a democratic majority as some governments in former liberal democracies are veering towards authoritarianism. He answered questions on Trump’s USA, the Uighurs in China the reach of International Criminal Law today. A very interesting evening at the Kreisky Forum.

Below I have listed a number of links to Philippe Sands book, podcasts, and films. Anybody with an interest in contemporary history and politics who would like the role of international law explained clearly and in context will enjoy reading, watching or listening to Philippe Sands. If you get the chance don’t miss it.

Philippe Sands

Links to books, youtube videos, and podcasts:

EAST WEST STREET, ON THE ORIGINS OF “GENOCIDE” AND “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” By PHILIPPE SANDS

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227917/east-west-street-by-philippe-sands/9780525433729/

Documentary Film: My Nazi Legacy: What our Fathers Did 
Available on Youtube 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LVZOgmvPCk

BBC 10-part Podcast: The Ratline on BBC Sounds:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/radio-4-the-ratline-podcast

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06hmv8c

East West Street: A conversation with Philippe Sands recorded at the London School of Economics November 2016 on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP8XccDAPB8


I made a number of spelling/grammar corrections and small editorial updates to the original blog entry on 17 March 2019.

La Promesse de l’Aube (Promise at Dawn) Film (France 2017) co-written and directed by Eric Barbier, 8* out of 10

Adapted from Romain Gary’s autobiographical novel, Eric Barbier, his cast and crew have made a beautifully designed and photographed film that tells a powerful story based on true events in the turbulent Europe of the first half of the 20th century. Pawel Puchalski as the very young Romain Gary and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Romain's mother Nina shine.

Mexico 1960 – Day of the Dead, amid the crowd of the celebrations, Lesley Blanch (Catherine MacCormack) is looking for her French husband Romain Gary (Pierre Niney). He is feverish and believes that he may be dying. On the five-hour taxi ride to Mexico City to take her husband to the hospital, she reads the manuscript of his autobiographical novel, which comes to life before her eyes. Young Roman Kacev (Pawel Puchalski) comes from Russia where he was born to Polish Vilna (today Vilnius the capital of Lithuania) as a child with his mother Nina (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her maid Aniela (Katarzyna Skarzanka). Nina hails from a Jewish family, is a seamstress with an imagination that is larger than life and a love of everything French. She puts her creativity into her clothes as well as into her marketing efforts and she puts a boundless ambition into her son Roman. Her willingness to share the ambition she has for her son to become a leading recognized figure in the arts, in the French military and diplomatic corps, does not only lead to most of her neighbours considering her megalomaniac but makes her son’s social life hell. Yet Nina goes further: she quite practically ensures that between the ages of 8 and 14 her son practically prepares for the fantastical life she has ordained for him: Roman learns French, takes dancing lessons, takes pistol shooting lessons and acquires other skills, some more successfully than others. Although talented in painting, he is not allowed to become a painter, since, in Nina’s view, great painters have sad lives and only get recognition after death; this is certainly not what she wants for her boy Roman. What follows is the story of Nina imposing a giant sublimated Oedipus Complex on Roman which leads him on the road to seemingly reluctant multitalented achievement and almost effortless success in obtaining the attentions of beautiful women. Yet inner unrest and suffering are growing inside Roman as time passes. No matter how many successes he may try for to please his much-larger-than-life-mother, he cannot will happiness and everlasting life for Nina and himself.

Adapted from Romain Gary’s autobiographical novel, Eric Barbier, his cast and crew have made a beautifully designed and photographed film that tells a powerful story based on true events in the turbulent Europe of the first half of the 20th century. The story of young Roman and his mother's early days in Vilna is particularly well told and acted; Charlotte Gainsbourg as Nina and the Pawel Puchalski as the very young Roman shine. In the second half of the film, the telling of the story is still very competent and the production values are impressive, but the psychological depth of the relationships is lost somewhat. It is too much up to the viewers to add this aspect in their imagination. Nevertheless, the multi-award winning Promise at Dawn is a spellbinding film based on a true story of courage, promise, ambition, talent, and love.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5061360/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1

Promise at Dawn

The Who and the What, play by Ayad Akhtar translated from English into German by Barbara Christ, Akademietheater Wien, 7* out of 10

Ayad Akhtar’s comedy/drama is watchable, entertaining and raises important issues of growing up in different and especially since 9/11 often conflicting emotions concerning living in America, as an American of South East Asian/Muslim heritage, in the first and second generation. But faced with an all-white cast I asked myself: are there no German-speaking competent actors of Southeast Asian extraction? If so, it is high time for something to be done about this by theatre schools in Europe's German-speaking countries.

Atlanta, Georgia, USA 2010. Afzal (Peter Simonischek) originally from Pakistan is a widower and successful owner a local taxicab company. He has two grown-up daughters, who he brought up in a modern interpretation of his traditional Muslim faith. The elder one Zarina (Aenne Schwarz) is a writer who is respectful yet interested in exploring deeper questions of faith and culture. Her sister Mahwish (Irina Sulaver) is prepared to make painful compromises to maintain outside appearances of following her faith while being attracted to leading a modern life without the religious and cultural restrictions of her Pakistani ancestry. Mahwish has presumably chosen a high school sweetheart from her own cultural group as her future husband. For Zarina, Afzal starts a search for a partner on the internet site muslimlove.com. As Afzal, Zarina and Mahwish each try to reconcile modern American life and the traditions of the Pakistani Muslim heritage in their own way, serious conflicts arise. Will the love and respect they have for each hold up in the face of the choices they need to make in their professional, personal and spiritual lives.

Ayad Akhtar’s comedy/drama raises important issues of growing up with different and especially since 9/11 often conflicting cultures and emotions. It is about living in the US, as an American of South East Asian/Muslim heritage, in the first and second generations. It also touches on questions concerning second-generation Pakistani Muslim American women. The play is written by a man, so given this limitation, it does what it can to portray the dilemmas from the perspective of the female protagonists. Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize with his first more edgy and dark play Disgraced which deals with similar subjects from different perspectives. The German translation of the play by Barbara Christ is good, although I was unable to divine why Ms. Christ did not translate the title of the play. Perhaps the money of the organisation commissioning the play ran out just when she was about to deal with the play’s title? European Film Award Best Actor Winner Simonischek (for his role in the Oscar-nominated film Toni Erdmann) leads a competent cast. Felix Prader’s direction is straightforward and clear.

It takes some adjusting to watch a modern American play in German translation, but it is not too much of an effort. My problem is with white actors (thankfully not black- or brown-face though) playing the roles of people of South East Asian/origin. Are there no German-speaking competent actors of Southeast Asian extraction, i.e. Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi etc.? A young woman in the audience raised this issue with her parents after the play and made the point that it was said that she was the only person in the audience who even noticed or cared. This was not quite correct, as there were at least two of us, but I believe she had a point. The answer by her parents that the public would not accept anyone but the best actors in what is being performed by a cast of the famous Burgtheater and that would today exclude German-speaking actors of colour is not a satisfactory one. It is time that the German-speaking theatre finds young people of all colours and backgrounds to train. After all, metropolitan areas in Germany, Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland have become very diverse. I can see and hear Viennese dialect spoken by people of all backgrounds and colours every day.

In summary, The Who and the What at the Burgtheater’s Akademietheater in Vienna is watchable and entertaining but left me with questions and mixed feelings about the production.

https://www.burgtheater.at/de/spielplan/produktionen/who-and-what/termine/2019-02-17/983613186/

The Favourite, Film UK 2018, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos 9* out of 10

The Favourite is an excellent film with a witty screenplay,  beautiful sets, costumes and photography. Direction and editing are excellent.  The ensemble acting performances by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are outstanding. Highly recommended.

England in the early decades of the 18th century. Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is suffering from gout and her trusted friend and advisor Sarah Churchill, the Duchess Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) makes many decisions concerning the affairs of state on the Queen’s behalf. Sarah’s husband the Duke of Marlborough is a successful commander of the British army in the Wars of the Spanish Succession against the French. But parliament is divided between 2 parties, the Whigs who favour continuing the war to beat the French decisively and the Tories who largely pay for the war effort and wish to see the war come to an end as soon as possible. Sarah uses her influence with the queen to support her husband and the Whigs. When Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) an impoverished cousin of hers asks her for a job in the royal household, Sarah helps her to a lowly position; but young cousin Abigail is cunning and ambitious. Moreover, Queen Anne is not always as malleable as Sarah would like her to be. A fateful dance of personal and political intrigue, affection and sexual desire is beginning to take its meandering course.  

The eccentricities of English politics and its protagonists are spectacularly on display these days as the story of Brexit is unrolling before our eyes. What we may have assessed to be as edgy exaggerated and satirical in Yorgos Lanthimos highly entertaining telling of the fiery triangular relationship of three deceptively headstrong women and the effect it has on the politics of the kingdom is probably pure realism. 

Not long ago, an expense scandal in the UK parliament uncovered that a member of parliament put in an expense claim for a custom- built duck-house another for the cleaning of his moat. When Lanthimos shows us a Tory prime minister awaiting an audience with the Queen with his cherished racing-duck Horatio in his lap, we may conclude that 300 years is a short time in politics. Moreover, Lady Sarah's descendants include Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and the princes William and Harry.

The Favourite is an excellent historical costume drama which manages to wrap the personal, political and satirical in a rather moving and entertaining package, where All About Eve meets Saturday Night Fever without detracting from the historical narrative. An excellent, witty screenplay is the starting point, sets, costumes and photography are striking, direction and editing are excellent. The acting performances, jointly and severally, by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are outstanding.

A highly entertaining film about some larger than life female characters in a little-known chapter of English history. The prizes and the 10 Oscar nominations for The Favourite are deserved. Highly recommended.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5083738/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Caphernaüm (Capernaum), Lebanon 2018, co-written and directed Nadine Labaki, 8.5* out of 10

With Caphernaüm, Nadine Labaki and her team have made an important and powerful film that deserves prizes but makes for difficult viewing. Not easy to stop one's eyes from welling up with tears of anger and emotion. The unsentimental acting performance by the young charismatic Zain al-Rafeeah is brilliant and memorable. It stays with us long after the film has ended.

Beirut 2018. Serving a five-year jail sentence for a violent crime 12-year-old Zain (Zain al-Rafeeah) is suing his parents Selim (Fadi Yousef) and Souad (Kawsar al Haddad) for bringing him into this world. What follows is a flashback which shows Zain's life in Beirut’s poorest quarters where children are brought up as slaves of their parents being farmed out to unscrupulous employers. They must learn to beg steal borrow in the chaos, dirt, and cruelty that surrounds them in order to survive from hour to hour. Zain’s best friend is his 11-year-old sister Sahar (Haita 'Cedra' Izzam); but his father sells her into marriage and seals her fate. Zain rages against his parents against the chaos around him. He runs away and finds a friendly adult in the illegal immigrant Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) from Ethiopia who asks him to babysit her one-year-old child Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole). We follow Zain, Rahil, Yonas and the others as their lives are thrown into ever more unbearable chaos within which they are trying to survive with a last remnant of human dignity.

Caphernaüm, named after the chaotic biblical city in Northern Galilee, near where today’s Israeli town of Kfar Nahum stands, is near enough cursed to hell in the New Testament Matthew 11:23 “And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.” That is the hard-hitting accusation that Nadine Labaki brings against all those who allow a place where young children face the chaotic violent and hopeless living conditions in full sight of the Lebanese government and the international humanitarian community. Living conditions forced upon their children by parents, relatives and neighbours who see themselves as victims of "the system" too. 

Accepting the fantastical premise of the boy dragging his parents to court and a court dealing with the case is a bit of a stretch to our credulity, but the hard-hitting almost unbearable depiction of the lives that street children and asylum seekers face in the poorest quarters of Beirut every day is heart-breaking. The moment when Zain decides that his best chance of getting food and a future is copying a young Syrian refugee-girl's accent and making up a war-story for himself to get food rations from UNHCR is shocking. There are a few scenes of humour too, but not of relief.

The chaos of the precarious street life is impressively captured by Nadine Labaki and her team. The viewer feels right in the middle of it,  looking at it from a child’s perspective, and it is gut-wrenchingly uncomfortable. 

The acting performance by young charismatic Zain is brilliant and memorable. It will stay with the audience long after the film has ended. Zain is unsentimental. He curses, he fights and he accuses the adult world around him with an unrelenting harshness of judgment that it deserves. 

Caphernaüm won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for a Golden Globe and is Lebanon’s entry for Best Foreign Movie at the 2019 Oscars. 

Nadine Labaki and her team have made an important and powerful film that deserves prizes, but it makes for difficult viewing. Therefore, I would advise discretion in deciding whether to go and see it. While the ending is somewhat unbelievably not all doom and gloom, I did not sleep too well in my oh-so-comfortable bed in my oh-so-comfortable apartment after seeing Caphernaüm.


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8267604/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Colette, Film 2018, co-written and directed by Wash Westmoreland, starring Keira Knightley, 8* out of 10

With Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette this biopic costume-drama fin-de-siècle France has a most interesting and astonishingly modern subject. While the chance for a more edgy treatment was missed, this is still a well made and highly entertaining film. Keira Knightley shines in the title role.  

Burgundy, France, late 19th century. Strong-willed country girl Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) meets the 14 years older Henri-Gauthier Villars (Dominic West), a successful publisher and self-publicist with a posse of ghost-writers spreading his literary fame in find de siècle Paris. Henri and Gabrielle fall in love, get married and she moves to Paris. Far from being intimated by the French metropolis, its freedoms and opportunities for the comfortably-off, Colette, as she will become to be known, begins to take Paris by charm, in the shadow of her illustrious husband and eventually by storm in her own right. In a deceptively equal partnership with her brilliant PR man and lovable cad of a husband, she manages to turn her literary and other artistic talents into a means to leading the life she wants to lead.  Colette breaks many taboos but somehow succeeds in turning her transgressions of bourgeois norms into desirable trends and fashions. 

Colette’s life is a tour de force of sexual liberation and self-realization that swings all ways (and always). Driven by her strong-willed intelligence and a flawed but perfectly matched “partner-in-crime” and companion, who at some point will become unable to keep up with her let alone control her, she leads the transition to a libertarian Zeitgeist with good cheer and integrity.

Colette the film does what British period biopics (even f they are about France) do so well: give an aesthetically pleasing impression of place and time with great sets, beautiful costumes and pleasing colourful pictures. In this case, pictures of the bourgeois intellectual and just a little bit decadent life of fin-de siècle Paris, and the Burgundy countryside. 

A well-written screenplay tells the story in a straightforward manner, a story which strikes a 21st-century audience with themes that chime with our own times in terms of the concepts of a woman questioning men’s privileges on behalf of her sex. Colette did so with verve, intelligence and a good-natured humorous attitude often lacking today. She did so enlisting support from talented friends and lovers she chose with great skill and good fortune. 

Another parallel to contemplate is the ruthless marketing, merchandising and branding of Colette the author (initially falsely presented as Gauthier-Villars under his pen-name Willy) and her literary creation “Claudine”, both of whom are made to go viral, in an anticipation of social media based techniques. 

All this makes this film very interesting and entertaining viewing.  Keira Knightley beautifully portrays a multifaceted and deep character like Colette through the different stages of a long and productive life, a strong performance by Dominic West as her caddish, yet loving and supportive husband. As usual, when British actors are at work, there are very pleasing performances in supporting roles too, notably Fiona Shaw, as Sido, Collette’s mother, and Sloan Thompson as Colette's lesbian lover, friend and long-time partner Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belboeuf.

Personally, I would have liked an edgier form of telling the story than the straightforward costume drama. On the positive side, the strong screenplay by Westmoreland, Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz presented “Frenchness” in English without giving way to the temptation of satirizing it from an English viewpoint. 

All in all, Colette the movie is interesting, entertaining and rewarding film, skilfully made. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5437928/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Cold War (Zimna Wojna), Film Poland 2018, co-written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, 10* out of 10

After Ida (2015) this is another brilliant film by Pawel Pawlikowski apparently inspired by the story of Pawlikowski’s own parents.  Cold War succeeds by beautifully interweaving the personal, political and musical with memorable cinematography in black and white by Lukasz Zal and an unforgettable performance by Joana Kulig as Zula.


Poland 1948. Wiktor (Tomasz Klot) is a musician helping to set up a folk music group in post-World War 2 Poland, where the Communist Party is using patriotic feelings to make its Soviet dominated internationalist ideology palatable nationally and internationally. Zula (Joana Kulig) escapes a prison sentence for using violence to defend herself against an abusive father by joining the newly formed folk music group the Mazurki (named after the Polish Mazurka folk dance). Wiktor and Zula fall in love and begin a deeply passionate, sensuous and poisonous relationship, where strong feelings of love alternate with feelings of contempt, while over many years they jointly and severally physically cross from East to West and back again. The political developments in Poland and Eastern Europe, represented by the political commissar and director of the folk group Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) and the relationship political climate between East and West, represented by Paris, form an unusual, vivid and interesting context for Wiktor and Zula’s turbulent personal story of “je t’aime, moi non plus”.

Pawel Pawlikowski succeeds by beautifully interweaving the personal, political and musical with memorable cinematography in black and white by Lukasz Zal. The influence of the Lodz film school is evident. The strength of the story is underlined with a beautifully judged understated performance by Tomasz Klot as Wiktor and an unforgettable performance by Joana Kulig as Zula. Seeing an evolving communist Poland from inside and the experience of being a Polish musician in exile in the Paris of 1950 are insightful and unusual perspectives for audiences in the West. 

After Ida (2015) this is another brilliant film by Pawel Pawlikowski apparently inspired by the story of Pawlikowski’s own parents. It’s a story that now belongs to the history of Europe of which Poland is now an integral part, something we in Western Europe have not yet internalised as we should have. On the latest count Pawlikowski, who grew up in Poland, the UK and Germany, has received over 60 nominations and 22 awards for Cold War, all of which are richly deserved.  Highly recommended; do not miss it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6543652/?ref_=ttawd_awd_tt

RBG, Documentary Film, USA (2018), written and directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, 9* out of 10

RBG, the documentary, has been an unexpected box-office hit among young people in America and it deserves a wide audience beyond.  The portrait and life story of a highly intelligent woman fighting with her outstanding talent and well thought out strategy for a worthy cause: women’s rights. Don't miss getting to know Justice Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Imagine God looking down on the United States of America that has given rise to Donald Trump and everything that implies – and she is not best pleased. If you were to advise, who would you pick to help people reinterpret their foundational texts and lay down the law? 

Well, how about a 155cm tall fragile yet austere looking Jewish lady in her eighties whom her grandchildren affectionately call by the Yiddish “boobbah” (grandma)? Yes, God has a sense of humour as well as a penchant for being effective. RBG are the initials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America appointed to this position by President Bill Clinton in 1993, only the second female justice of four ever to be confirmed to the court. 

And RBG is the title of a hagiographic documentary on the life and times of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. At 85 years of age, the woman referred to as “this witch, this evildoer, this monster” and as a “liberal super-hero” prepares herself for a work-day like Rocky Balboa prepared himself for his bout with Apollo Creed in Rocky 1.

RBG tells the story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life from its beginnings to the present day based on extensive interviews with the lady herself and admiring fans and adversaries and audio archive footage of her appearances as a lawyer arguing cases in front of the then Supreme Court to claim for several women (and a man) the equal protection of their rights under the law that the US Constitution supposedly grants to everyone. In one of her court appearances, she memorably quotes the 19th century abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimké: “I ask no favour for my sex. All I ask of my brethren is that they take their feet off our necks”.

What emerges is the portrait of a highly intelligent woman fighting for women’s rights with great talent and a brilliant feel for strategy. In a quiet, unassuming way, she exudes seriousness, intelligence and the ability to listen and convince with a quiet voice and powerful arguments. She strikes up unlikely, yet genuine, deep friendships on her way, such as the one with ultra-conservative Justice John Scalia, a colleague and determined adversary on the court. Being moderate in tone and clear in argument at the beginning of her career on the Supreme Court, the film shows how she has become ever more outspoken. Remaining highly respected by her colleagues she writes trenchantly argued dissenting minority opinions as recent Republican Presidents' appointments to the court have changed its balance towards the conservative right. 

Most recently, she has ever less reluctantly become an unlikely pop icon of the young generation of social media savvy women who celebrate her in Tumbler blogs like “The Notorious RBG”, a reference to Brooklyn rap artist The Notorious BIG, and a regularly parodied character on the widely-watched Saturday Night Live television comedy show.

RBG shows all this while making no secret of the admiration and affection the film-makers have for their subject. But then Ruth Bader Ginsburg is clearly a highly intelligent woman with an outstanding talent for the law and an enormous amount of civil courage, who has made a deep and important impact for the good of society in the USA.

RBG, the documentary, has been an unexpected box-office hit among young people in America and it deserves a wide audience beyond. There is nothing much special about this documentary other than its content and its subject, and these make for a highly interesting and surprisingly moving experience. Don’t miss it!

https://www.rbgmovie.com/

First Reformed, Film USA 2018, written and directed by Paul Schrader, 8* out of 10

"First Reformed" is only slightly marred by a weak ending. Ethan Hawke in the role of a troubled priest in troubled times leads a strong ensemble of actors, but the cinematography by Alexander Dynan is the true stand-out in this thought-provoking drama.

New York State 2017. Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the priest in a small picturesque village community church in upstate New York which was founded by Dutch Protestants in the 18th century and provided shelter to black slaves escaping with the help of the Underground Railway. Starved of funds and with a very small congregation, Toller’s church survives because it is part of Abundant Life a large modern evangelist congregation with its own broadcasting facilities. It also has a large modern church and community center and attracts young people and wealthy donors, among them Mr. Balq (Michael Gaston) the founder and CEO of the major local industrial company whose donations ensure the upkeep of Toller’s small church. 

Reverend Joel Jeffers (Cedric Antonio Kyles) who heads Abundant Life has helped Toller obtain his post so that he can free himself from the demons of a difficult past which haunt him. The small congregation and the occasional tourist group looking for a guided tour of the historic church are not very demanding, but the upcoming Jubilee celebrations for his little church are an unwelcome source of limelight and stress for the troubled priest.

One day after services one of Toller’s congregants the young pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him for advice and guidance for herself and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). Michael has been away in Canada where he has become part of a radical environmental activist group. He has come to believe that the future for humanity is bleak and hopeless due to capitalisms nefarious impact on the environment and wants Mary to abort. At Mary’s urging, Toller reluctantly agrees to speak to Michael. But with his own troubles, Toller is quite vulnerable to pessimism, particularly when it is not unfounded. As the pressure slowly mounts events take a dramatic turn.

First Reformed is an understated drama that slowly builds up suspense. The issues raised in tense conversations are big issues of our time.  It is a credit to the writing that they are not dealt with in a preachy way, but serve as triggers to moral dilemmas that cause inner turmoil and desperate actions by some of the protagonists. Apart from the decidedly lackluster (non-)ending, this is a good story well told. The direction and the ensemble acting performances are all strong. What makes First Reformed stand out, however, is the cinematography by Alexander Dynan. The almost sepia tones of some of the landscape scenes and the static wide-angle view with people moving through the picture are very well matched to the pace and feel of the story. 

Is there is any damaging development whose future impact we feel confident in predicting that justifies us resorting to violence against people who are maliciously or willfully blind? This is not about using violent self-defense against imminent mortal danger as authorized by the law, but violence against a longer-term threat. There is apparently something deceptively and disturbingly attractive in having a cause which authorizes an inner drive to give way to righteous indignation leading to the feeling of justification for “righteous violence”. Given mankind’s evolutionary path violence is always a temptation and violence authorized by a strongly held belief, whether religious or secular, is apparently hard to resist. 

First Reformed is a movie that makes one think, a visually appealing, thought-provoking and suspenseful drama.

Disgraced (Geächtet), by Ayad Akhtar directed by Tina Lanik, Burgtheater Vienna, (in German translation from the American Original), 7* out of 10

Producing "Disgraced" in a German version is challenging regarding casting and linguistic characteristics, as the play's plot centers around place, time and the ethnic identities of its protagonists. The straightforward Burgtheater production suffers somewhat from this and from imperfect acoustics. Nevertheless, the ensemble acting was competent throughout and "Geächtet" can be recommended to native German-speaking theatergoers who feel uncomfortable with watching a straight play in English. 

Manhattan 2011. Amir Kapoor (Fabian Krüger) American born with roots in the Indo/Pakistani subcontinent is a high earning and successful senior business lawyer on partner track in a New York law firm with exclusively Jewish name partners. Brought up in a strict version of Sunni Islam and a heavy dose of Jew-hatred by his mother, he has decided to leave Islam and change his original family name of Abdullah (Muslim) to Kapoor (which can be Hindu or even Sephardic Jewish). Amir is married to the WASP artist Emily who draws her artistic inspiration from the medievally enlightened Islamic sources in Spain and North Africa. Amir’s female black work colleague Jory (Isabelle Redfern) is married to liberal Midwest born Jewish gallery owner Isaac (Nicholas Ofczarek). Emily hopes that in his next exhibition, Isaac will include some of her latest works. As the action evolves, Amir will increasingly be confronted with issues in his professional and private life against a background of the post-9/11 identity politics in America. Amir’s cultural adaptations will be put to a severe stress test as some bad weeks at work and at home culminate in a disastrous small dinner party in whose course conversation about religion and politics followed by revelations concerning Amir’s professional and private lives have dramatic consequences. 

In the tradition of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf”, and Yasmina Reza’s “The Gods of Carnage” (Les Dieux du Carnage), Ayad Akhtar’s multi-award-winning drama poses the question of whether the statement “you can take the boy out of Pakistan, but you cannot take Pakistan out of the boy” was true in post 9/11 liberal wealthy New York society under President Obama. The playwright answers this question by holding a mirror to the smug, self-satisfied liberal America which has built a veneer of identity-politics-based tolerance. Is it a faux-tolerance which covers up suspicion and resentment towards Middle Easterners bubbling underneath? The American 9/11 post-traumatic stress syndrome is (still) very much at work here. Amir’s defensive armour which he has constructed to adapt to the demands made upon a successful Manhattan business lawyer on the partner track has been tested to the limit by 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan. It is cruelly sliced and diced by his professional colleagues, private acquaintances and nearest family. Stripped down to his core identity he reacts strongly and the situation escalates.

Disgraced is a rather dark and pessimistic about the presumed melting pot that New York is often seen to be and the high-handed, high-earning highly educated Obama-Clinton voters who inhabit it. In the process, it demonstrates the limits of political correctness. 

In the Burgtheater the set and the direction (Tina Lanik) are uncomplicated. The acoustics are somewhat challenging in that parts of the conversation on the stage is at times barely audible when it comes from towards the back of the stage or when an actor is facing away from the audience. The acting is competent. Nicholas Ofczaerek who has the most thankful role of the double-dealing gallery owner Isaac makes the most of it.

The translation of the play from American English into German by Barbara Christ is good, except perhaps the title: the English "disgraced" is translated as the German word for "ostracised", “geächtet”. 

Although a native German speaker, I found watching a quintessentially New York play quite difficult to follow and get into. I believe, this is mainly due to the ethnic identities of the characters being central to the plot: it took me a while to figure out that the main character was supposed to be of parents who came to the United States from the Indian subcontinent. At least he had dark hair; his supposedly Pakistani nephew looked altogether white and blond; I even initially missed that Jory was black, but that was me – the role is cast with a black (or mixed-race) actress. 

For me, therefore, the play had an effect not unlike watching an American movie in a dubbed version – somehow things don’t quite fit together and one is not quite captured by the action on stage. This is not something that happens with all translated plays. Yasmina Reza’s conversation-plays, for instance, work nearly as well in the translations as in the original (probably because place and ethnic identity are not key in her plots).

Therefore, I would say if you are a native German speaker who does not feel comfortable seeing straight plays in English “Geächtet” at the Burgtheater is a worthwhile play to go and see. If you feel comfortable with watching a play in the English original, you may want to watch it in the English original if the opportunity presents itself. In the light of the changeover from Obama to Trump and all this entails for liberal attitudes and political correctness the play may seem a bit dated already. In my view, Mohsin Hamid’s novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” remains an unmatched treatment of the subject.

https://www.burgtheater.at/de/spielplan/produktionen/gechtet/termine/2018-11-20/982778079/

The Inheritance, play by Mathew Lopez, directed by Stephen Daldry, Noël Coward Theatre, London, 9* out of 10

Inspired by the English novelist E. M. Forster “Howards End”, Matthew Lopez' long but never dull play (2 times four hours) is a beautifully written piece full of quiet drama and subtle humour with engaging characters and plots; excellent performances by Kyle Soller, John Benjamin Hickey and a brilliant understated one by Paul Hilton.  Highly recommended for all who like the theatre.

New York City 2016. Eric Glass (Kyle Soller) lives with his boyfriend Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap) in the rent-protected apartment in New York which the family has inhabited since Eric’s grandmother moved in as a young woman and which Eric loves as a part of him. A cloud hangs over his future as the owners of the apartment have started proceedings to bring the tenancy under which he stays there to an end. Eric, modest and self-effacing, tries to live life with Toby and a group of friends all gay men, trying not to think about the changes that losing his beloved home will bring for him and his relationship with Toby. Toby who is outwardly fun, confident prone to outrageous behaviour likes to live day to day, enjoys the good life and contrary to the reliable and thoughtful Eric avoids introspection, thinking about his past and fears longer-term commitment. Eric and Toby also have two older friends a married gay couple, Henry Wilcox (John Benjamin Hickey) and his husband Walter. Henry is a real estate billionaire devoted to his business interest Walter his companion devoted to supporting him. Eric has visited Henry and Walter at the lovely country House in upstate New York not far from New York City.  When Henry and Walter move into an apartment in the same block as Eric and Henry is on a long business trip, Walter and Eric meet several times and develop a friendship based on mutual affection. Walter tells Eric about the support he gave to gay friends and strangers during the height of the deadliness of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s in his beloved house and garden in the countryside and the effect this had on his relationship with Henry. Eric tells Walter about his dream about a stable marriage and about his fears of losing his home. The short but intense period Eric and Walter and their very open communication about the important things in will in around about ways have far-reaching consequences. While they unfold, we follow several other plots concerning Eric, his boyfriend Toby who writes a play and their wannabe actor friend Adam (Samuel H. Levine) and others in their circle of gay young men-friends who are awaiting Hilary Clinton’s election as the first woman President of the United States with keen anticipation.

Inspired by the English novelist E. M. Forster “Howards End”, Matthew Lopez' long play (2 times four hours) is a beautifully written play full of quiet drama and subtle humour with engaging characters and plots as entertaining for straight men and women as for gay men who with very few exceptions make up all characters. For the audience, it feels like binge-watching an amazon prime or Netflix series where one cannot stop watching as one wants to know what happens to all the characters who have walked into one’s life. Apart from E. M. Forster whose spirit has a palpable presence I was reminded of the writing of Armistead Maupin in his “Tales of the City”. The 2 times 4 hours pass rather quickly as the writing, direction and beautiful ensemble acting, with excellent performances by Kyle Soller, John Benjamin Hickey and a brilliant understated one by Paul Hilton. And then there is Vanessa Redgrave with a poignant performance; she who played the character of Henry Wilcox’ wife Ruth in the 1992 Merchant Ivory film adaptation of “Howards End”.

Everything in the theatre starts with good storytelling and here the good story inspired by one of the great English writers of the 20th century E. M. Forster is beautifully extended adapted and written with rhythm, wit and feeling by a talented young playwright. Director and actors have excellent material to work with and they are doing an outstanding job. For anyone who likes straight plays (rather than musicals), this is one not only about being a gay man in New York but also about being a human being of any gender anytime anywhere. Highly recommended for theatregoers and E. M. Forster fans, The Inheritance Parts 1 and 2 having transferred from a successful run at the Young Vic are now booking in London’s Noël Coward Theatre until 19 January 2019. 

https://www.inheritanceplay.com/

   

Matthew Lopez - playwright

   

The Waldheim Waltz, Documentary Film, Austria (2018), written and directed by Ruth Beckermann, 9* out of 10

Ruth Beckermann’s documentary The Waldheim Waltz consisting entirely of archive material, including her own first experiences with using a camera to document political events, is a skilful and timely piece of modern political history. With populism rising, it is also painfully relevant. The Waldheim Waltz has deservedly won several awards including the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. This is highly recommended viewing for anyone interested in modern politics. 


When the artist, writer, filmmaker and public intellectual Ruth Beckermann found a videotape copy of her first experiments with documenting events she was involved in on film and viewed the material, the idea slowly matured to make it the basis of a documentary on the events marking the Austrian presidential election of 1986 which put Austria in the international spotlight - and not in a complimentary way. It was in the run-up to that election that Austria found itself under unwelcome scrutiny from an American human rights NGO, the World Jewish Congress.

A very convenient foundational lie underlying the post-World-War- II re-birth was that in March 1938 Austria and its citizens had been the first victim of Nazi-German aggression. This lie was comforted by the all powers who were allied against Nazi-Germany and guaranteed the country's existence in the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. The catholic-fascist Austrian republic of 1938 had indeed been eliminated and annexed by Hitler’s Germany, but the Austrian people were anything but victims in the process, if one excludes Jews, Roma, communists and a few other courageous political opponents, most of whom were not really ever accepted by the vast majority of their co-citizens as part of the "true" Austrian people. Nevertheless, modern Austria's foundational lie was so convenient to many inside as well as outside of Austria that the country's international image of Mozart, the Sound of Music, Sachertorte and idyllic skiing holidays could cover some very dark and nasty truths of many of its people's willing adherence to Nazi Germany.

And so it came that a tall thin Austrian diplomat and former foreign minister by the name of Kurt Waldheim was proposed as Secretary General of the United Nations by Bruno Kreisky, an Austrian chancellor with Jewish roots, who curried favour with the Austrian people by showing great tolerance towards Austrian politicians with a questionable record during World War II. Kurt Waldheim was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations held this office from 1972 to 1981.

In 1986 Waldheim became a candidate for the Austrian presidency for the Austrian People’s Party, a political party in this overwhelmingly Catholic country. that sees itself as based on Christian values. Waldheim’s campaign got off to a good start when a poster showed his aquiline facial features in front of a panorama of New York City, the twin towers still firmly standing to the left of his smiling portrait proclaiming the slogan: “The man whom the world trusts”.

But then the journalist Hubertus Czernin took the trouble to check on Waldheim’s official military records and found that they contained mention of voluntary memberships in unsavoury Nazi organisations, including a riding club that was part of the Nazi Sturm-Abteilung. A few years later Czernin, to whose memory the film is dedicated, would also play a role in the saga of the reluctant restitution by Austria of a famous painting, Gustav Klimt’s The Woman in Gold to its rightful Jewish owners in the United States, and is fictionally represented in the film of the same name, which dramatized the story and starred Helen Mirren.

Responding to Czernin’s findings was the beginning of the Waldheim Waltz, a dance of unbelievable claims, implausible denials, pretences of falsely righteous indignation, thinly veiled disdain for Jews who dared to be unrelenting in digging up evidence that kept contradicting Waldheim’s ridiculous explanations and forced him into a corner where he would have to choose: either to own up to the truth or continue to occupy the metaphorical dance floor in ever more frantic movements making room for himself with sharp elbows and metal capped dancing shoes.

Kurt Waldheim chose the latter and as his cold-eyed smile turned into a nervous smirk, Ruth Beckermann was there as part of a small group of mainly young intellectuals in Austria who were mostly on the left of the political spectrum and believed that uncovering and telling the truth was indispensable for the future of Austrian society. Despite this not going down well with the large majority of their compatriots who were whipped into an anti-Semitic hate-fest by Waldheim and his campaign managers, they persisted. 

Things really began to take off internationally when historians working with the Word Jewish Congress uncovered documents and a photograph that irrefutably placed Waldheim in the Balkans as the intelligence officer of the notorious General Alexander von Löhr who after the war was executed for war crimes against the civilian population in a brutal German campaign against Yugoslav partisans.

At that point, Waldheim “waltzed” frantically into the public television dominated studios to decry a calumnious campaign against him and the Austrian people no less by a small number of Jews in the United States directed by his Austrian opponents.

For a young Jew from Austria like me, who had left the country over ten years earlier for London because I could not see a professional future there without my Jewishness always being an issue, it was confirmation that my move had been right. I was looking on from my posting with Bank of America in San Francisco and London as the international reporting of the Waldheim Affair unfolded and I remember how very relieved and happy I felt about having left my country of birth.

For the few young Jews then living in Austria including Ruth Beckermann the political climate turned from uncomfortable to downright nasty.

With archive material filmed by her younger self and collected from many other sources, Beckermann chronicles a key episode in Austria’s history which is also a timely contribution to the study of populist strategies which have now gained a stronger and visible foothold worldwide. She lets the protagonists speak for themselves including some very unpleasant Austrian vox-pop 1986-style. She also helpfully provides context. There is the German Chancellor Kohl standing with Ronald Reagan by the graves of members of the SS; there is an interview with Waldheim as Secretary General with the French television, where he explains that as Secretary General of the United Nations he does not have armies but he has no one he is accountable to no President above him, no Parliament. He is the highest moral authority on earth. In the light of what transpires about his prodigious talent for being economical with the truth, this interview turns out to be the height of irony and cynicism.

Ruth Beckermann's voice as she reflects on her own role at the time seems to be tinged with monotonic sadness. Yet resistance was not entirely useless: It arguably prevented a first-round win for Waldheim by a whisker, forcing him to waltz ever more frantically against his will. And the convenient lie to the world that Austrians were the first victims of Nazi-Germany became untenable. Although Austrian elected him he was now the man whom the world distrusts and did not receive a single invitation to a state visit during his tenure.

But time went by and a new populism became mainstream not only in Austria. In 2018 a coalition government under the 32-year-old Austrian People’s Party Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is arguably the most skilful and successful of right-leaning populist governments in the European Union and beyond. Kurz’ idealised young and determined face adorns Newsweek Magazines cover page in October 2018 with the ominous title “Austria Rising”. There will be more battles to fight and document for Ruth Beckermann and her friends.

It has also occurred to me that The Waldheim Waltz should be watched as a double bill with Quentin Tarantino’s World War II fantasy “Inglorious Basterds” as a kind of allegory with the Inglorious Basterds depicting the World Jewish Congress and SS Colonel Hans Landa providing a smoother more elegant version of Kurt Waldheim in his Wehrmacht years. The character of Hans Landa is brilliantly played in an Oscar-winning performance by the Austrian actor Christoph Waltz – and here the title of Ruth Beckermann’s documentary, Waldheim’s Waltz takes a second equally resonant meaning.

Even without the Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds as a companion piece, Ruth Beckermann’s deservedly multi-award winning documentary is a brilliantly devised and compelling piece of recent political history of great relevance to current events. Don’t miss it.


http://www.thewaldheimwaltz.com/en/

Ruth Beckermann

   

Dust, written and performed by Milly Thomas, directed by Sara Joyce, Trafalgar Studios, London, 9* out of 10

A devastatingly honest and heartfelt play about depression and suicide which manages to be moving and funny too. Milly Thomas' writing and performance go under the skin; an unforgettable tour de force. 

Alice (Milly Thomas) a young woman suffering from depression looks at her own lifeless body on a slab in the mortuary. As her inner suffering has become unbearable she has tried to escape it by ending her life. But here she is now, a ghostly presence among those she has left behind: her grieving father, her devastated mother, her speechless brother, her comfort-seeking boyfriend, her practical busy-body of an aunt. Telling her story of the time leading up to her suicide and observing the time following it, she slips into all these characters with devastating honesty and a wicked sense of humour. She becomes increasingly aware of the big hole she has left behind in the lives of those she loved and who loved her and sees herself and her own life in a new light. But once an attempt at suicide succeeds there is no way back.

Milly Thomas performs her own play in the Trafalgar Studios. Her writing is true, gripping from beginning to end and at times very funny. Her performance goes under the skin, an unforgettable tour de force. The intimate space of the small stage of Studio 3, direction (by Sara Joyce), mirror, lighting all contribute. But Thomas' facility as the narrator for inhabiting all the characters and switching seamlessly between them is outstanding.

The play has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017, at the Soho Theatre in 2018 and now at Trafalgar Studios. It’s a reminder of the young talent in writing and performing which shines in the UK and for which the Edinburgh Fringe and the smaller London theatres with their eager audiences are an invaluable incentive and showcase.  

For those who have observed depression from close by or suffered from it themselves this one-woman play will be painful and poignant, yet it is also compelling and rewarding. No doubt, Milly Thomas knows what she is writing and speaking about here. "Dust" is also a piece of activism in the best sense, as Thomas is working with the Samaritans, an organisation dedicated to suicide- prevention. Every day and night the Samaritans save many valuable lives. Whenever they succeed,  they prevent the grief and lasting pain that one person’s suicide leaves behind in the heart of their family and friends.

Unfortunately, "Dust" has come to the end of its run at Trafalgar Studios, London. Those who have not seen it and would like to, will have to keep an eye out for a future run.

 Milly Thomas in "Dust"

Prof. Timothy Snyder, 2018 Vienna Lecture at Vienna City Hall, Vienna Humanities Festival 2018, 9.5* out of 10

Timothy Snyder's 2018 Vienna Lecture and the following conversation with the Director of the Institute for Human Sciences Prof. Shalini Randeria were a thoughtful and thought-provoking delight. His book The Road to Unfreedom on which his lecture was based is an invaluable and lasting contribution to a most important problem of our time. A great start to this weekend's 2018 Vienna Humanities Festival. 

The 2018 Vienna humanities festival takes the form of a series salons (for which 19th century Vienna was famous) bringing together leading figures from academia, the arts and culture. About half of the events are held in English.

The festival started last night with a 30-minute lecture by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder. Snyder is a meticulous researcher specialising in the 20th-century history of central Europe. But he is so much more:  a gifted writer, a brilliant speaker, and an inspiring educator. 

For him, history is not only there to explore and explain the past, but to provide a structure to understand it and analyse the present and the future. Despite spending many years of his research on arguably the darkest chapters of world history emanating from Europe and taking place in the heart of this continent, or perhaps because of it, Snyder is not a pessimist or fatalist. He believes in the power of agency, driven by a sense of individual human responsibility. We can and must distinguish between good and bad (or at least between better than bad and downright evil) based on the solid pursuit of facts and a fact-based pursuit of truth. Here Snyder is emphatic: facts exist, truth exists and all of us, but young people, in particular, deserve to be encouraged to pursue both from a normative perspective, i.e. taking a view, even if it might vary individually of what they consider good and bad.

In his latest book The Road to Unfreedom, Snyder speaks about two views of history that seem to have dominated the intellectual and political worldview after the fall of the iron curtain. The first is “inevitability” as exemplified by Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”. This view claims that there is no alternative to the route leading from where we were. to capitalism and liberal democracy. The only room for discussion is the extent to which the capitalist order needs mitigation and regulation. The view that it needs rather little of both, fuelled the crisis of 2008 and the political response of bailing out the banks. Snyder believes that there were other alternatives, but the inevitability view blocks us from considering them. Criticising this worldview is also what Snyder sees as his mild criticism of Obama and Hilary Clinton.

The other worldview is the “cyclical view” of history. This is the view that history is an ever-repeating cycle of intranational and international conflict and victimhood and cannot ever truly progress. Gains for all will always be temporary phenomena as sooner or later history will repeat itself as tragedy or farce, and we must not be fooled by it. This is the view propagated by the Putins and the Trumps of this world who gain and maintain power not by claiming to be able to improve their people’s lives but by explaining whose fault it is that those they govern are suffering. 

To do this, they make use of time honoured techniques such as the so-called  “active measures” which the Russian authoritarians employed already in the 19th century. Here the manipulator finds some disposition in the target and gets them to do something that is not in their interest. Our dispositions to be at least a little bit racist, misogynist and threatened by open displays of homosexuality are candidates for employing this technique.  And the internet and social media have given the potential effectiveness of active measures an enormous boost. 

Snyder identifies the Russian government as the main villain of the peace – perhaps a little too much. He says that fascism was based on “The One Big Lie” (i.e. everything is the fault of the Jews), while the politicians exercising power under the cyclical view of history today work by the propagation of the many medium-sized lies. At the same time, they discredit the belief that there is such a thing as the truth and encourage the view that everybody lies anyway. As the author Peter Pomerantsev has put it succinctly in the title of his excellent book on Putin’s Russia: “Nothing is true and everything is possible”. 

Snyder rejects both the inevitability view and the cyclic view of history. The future of human affairs cannot be predicted for certain. Here he joins Karl Popper’s theses as expressed in The Open Society and its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism.  Snyder emphatically believes in the power of agency by individuals and organisations to shape the future.  Ideas and actions based on an understanding of the structure of history which is accessible to us all are important to make the exercise of that agency beneficial. (Snyder in contrast the general accessibility of the study of history with the study of advanced physics which is not accessible to everybody.) He emphasises the importance of fact and the need to proceed on an understanding of what is good and what is bad, or at least what is a little bit better and a little bit worse and what is truly evil. Finally, the importance of fact-based high quality local investigative journalism is crucial to give such an effort a chance to succeed and allow liberal democracy to flourish.

Unlike some other academics, Snyder takes his role as an educator as seriously as his job as an historian. Shakespeare’s Hamlet describes the world into which the Danish prince is thrown and says: “Time is out of joint”. These words contributed to Snyder feeling compelled to write The Road to Unfreedom (The similarity to the title to Viennese School economists Friedrich Hayek’s seminal Road to Serfdom may not be entirely coincidental, although Snyder comes from a very different school of thought than Hayek). Becoming a historian who - controversially for the members of his profession- looks at the present and the future through the lens of a thorough and structured analysis of the past. Snyder does so in a sharp-eyed yet moving and entertaining way. He may not be right in every aspect, but Snyder makes an invaluable and lasting contribution to a most important debate of our time. 

Snyder’s lecture was followed by a conversation with the Director of the Institute for Human Sciences Prof. Shalini Randeria who probed his ideas carefully and critically bringing China India and other key world players into the debate and allowing Snyder to clarify some of the concept and ideas he raised in his lecture and his book. He did so with great clarity, modesty giving occasional glimpses of a fine sense of humour. The interview rounded up another memorable evening with one of the great historians, communicators, and educators of our time. Thoughtful, thought-provoking an entertaining.

https://www.humanitiesfestival.at/

http://timothysnyder.org/books

Note: A number of error corrections and editorial changes to improve the readability of this text have been made several hours after it was first published.