Culturewatch

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, directed by David Yates (2009).
This article was first published on Culturewatch, and is republished here by permission. © Tony Watkins

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) has grown up a great deal in the last few years. Since he first stepped into the Great Hall at Hogwarts School, his wide-eyed wonder and innocence has been ripped away. He has faced the harsh realities of a world in which evil is finding new strength, and is focusing that strength on destroying him. The difficulties Harry experienced living with the Dursley family are nothing compared to the dangers, anguish and loss he has endured since. His friends have stuck by him throughout, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emily Watson) remaining fiercely loyal despite their disagreements. The three of them have learned more about the world than they cared to, and have developed skills which have been tested in the most extreme circumstances.

Harry has also grown tremendously as a result of being mentored by the greatest wizard of the age, Professor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). It’s a wonderful relationship. As well as giving him wise advice, the old man’s trust in Harry gives him confidence to act courageously and to lead others. It empowers Harry to fulfil his potential. The protectiveness which the Order of the Phoenix members feel for the young wizard means that Harry is in the fortunate position of having a group of good adult friends, who are totally committed to his safety and well-being.

As Harry has changed over the years, so have the films. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a far cry from the stiff acting, shoddy effects and sloppy direction of the first two films, which strived too hard to be faithful to the books. Later directors (Alfonson Cuaran, Mike Newell and David Yates) have had much more freedom to make the films work well on their own terms, partly helped by the simple impossibility of putting the entirety of much larger books into two and a half hours. While the standard of the films has improved, each instalment is darker than the one before as J.K. Rowling’s epic story builds towards its astonishing climax.

Dumbledore needs a crucial memory in his efforts to defeat Lord Voldemort. He has a version which has been tampered with, but he needs the real one from former potions master Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent). Since Slughorn is preoccupied with comfort, security and the status that results from having taught famous wizards, he is easily lured back to Hogwarts by the promise of a bigger office and, especially, teaching Harry Potter. With Slughorn teaching potions, Snape (Alan Rickman) takes over teaching Defence against the Dark Arts, to Harry’s distress. The advantage for Harry and Ron is that the exam requirements for taking Slughorn’s classes are lower than they would have been if Snape was still teaching potions. This means they have arrived without textbooks, and when Slughorn suggests they take old copies from his cupboard, Harry discovers the tatty copy he receives is full of notes written by its former owner, the Half-Blood Prince. In their first potion-creating task, he discovers that the notes in his book are corrections to the recipes, and they work much better than the printed ones.

Storm clouds continually loom over this film, both literally and figuratively. The wizarding world, which at our first encounter seemed so exciting and vivid, is dark, grey and forbidding. So many scenes are gloomily monochrome that the few bright ones come as welcome relief. Many of these concern the adolescent romantic turmoil of Harry and his friends. Harry is beginning to see Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) in a new way, but she’s going out with Dean Thomas; Hermione, somewhat perplexingly, has developed a bit of a thing for Ron, but he’s entangled with Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave). The combination of raging hormones and a powerful love-potion ending up in the wrong stomach provides much-needed humour to lighten the chilling central plot line. But there is perhaps a little too much of it, resulting in a somewhat uneven, episodic feel, although it will appeal to the teenage target market as much as the rest.

The darkness keeps reminding viewers of the pervading sense of menace facing the wizarding world, caused by the resurgence of the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. Harry’s life is in particular danger from Voldemort, but everything good is under threat from this unspeakable evil. LIberty is curtailed, security is fragile and trust is ebbing away. Those who stand up for virtue, truth and freedom – in particular, members of the Order of the Phoenix – endure the destruction of their homes, physical attacks and even death.

Nevertheless, Dumbledore and his allies are resolute in their determination to fight evil, whatever the personal cost. They are all grimly aware of the risks, but the peril is such that there can be no triumph without great sacrifice. Their courage in resisting evil, and their willingness to lose their lives for their friends are inspiring. We live in a society in which it has been rare for many years to be in such extreme circumstances. Members of the armed forces face them, of course, but the situation in the wizarding world is much more like that faced by Christian communities in several places around the world where churches and homes have been destroyed and thousands of Christians have been killed in recent years – all without the western news media paying much attention.

As the odds they face seem increasingly insurmountable, Dumbledore in particular is driven on by a deep conviction that good will ultimately triumph over evil. This assurance springs from a belief that, as in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, there is a deeper, good magic that powers of evil cannot comprehend or conquer. Harry was saved from Voldemort’s attempt to kill him by his mother’s self-sacrifice for him, and sacrifice will eventually be what brings about the Dark Lord’s destruction. Meanwhile, Harry and his friends are driven on by the certainty that goodness and truth and freedom are so overwhelmingly important that personal comfort, even life itself are worth expending in order to achieve them.

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It is easy to portray human brokenness and the dismantling of the human soul cinematically. Indeed, the world is overflowing with such films. However, what is rare and exceedingly difficult to portray is the wonder of human redemption, the power of unconditional love, the presence of genuine goodness, the reality of hope and the boundless joy of living a worthwhile life.

Greg Jesson, ‘Defining Love Through the Eye of the Lens’ in R. Douglas Geivett and James S. Spiegel (eds.), Faith, Film and Philosophy: Big Ideas on the Big Screem (Downers Grove, Il., IVP, 2007) p. 52

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Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstacy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic good and evil.

With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive profound, and full of charm.

Simone Weil On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God

It was interesting to come across this quote again last night after thinking about Lars von Trier yesterday. Some critics have applauded him for having the courage to show evil and despair so unflinchingly. I’m not convinced. I think what Weil’s quote suggests is that von Trier has taken the easy road, since it’s not difficult to portray evil in increasingly dramatic ways. Mike Leigh faced a much harder task with Happy-Go-Lucky, having a central character who is genuinely good.

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Almost as soon as I’d posted, the feed from Ebert’s blog brought news of a second, more in-depth post on Antichrist. He starts by noting that the film ‘will not leave me alone’ and goes on to say, ‘I rarely find a serious film by a major director to be this disturbing. Its images are a fork in the eye. Its cruelty is unrelenting. Its despair is profound.’ He quotes one of the comments on his blog, which asks, ‘If it is in fact the most despairing film you’ve ever seen, shouldn’t it be considered a monumental achievement? Despair is such a significant aspect of the human condition (particularly in the modern western world) so how can this not be a staggeringly important film, given your statement?’ Ebert acknowledges that there is some truth in this, and remarks

In the first place, it’s important to note that “Antichrist” is not a bad film. It is a powerfully-made film that contains material many audiences will find repulsive or unbearable. The performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are heroic and fearless. Von Trier’s visual command is striking. The use of music is evocative; no score, but operatic and liturgical arias. And if you can think beyond what he shows to what he implies, its depth are frightening.

I cannot dismiss this film. It is a real film. It will remain in my mind. Von Trier has reached me and shaken me. It is up to me to decide what that means.

With its very explicit theological connections, and since von Trier is extremely interesting on spiritual issues, I’m very interested in what the film has to say. The trouble is, it sounds so shocking that I have absolutely no desire to watch it. Ebert says he thinks it’s an ‘exercise in alternative theology’, a reflection on the beginning of Genesis (Ebert says Exodus) where humanity is driven from Eden after rebelling against God. He writes:

The Prologue, a masterful sequence lovely b&w slow motion, shows a couple, He and She, making love while their innocent baby becomes fascinated by the sight of snow falling outside an open window, climbs up on the sill, and falls to his death. This is Man’s Fall from Grace. Consequently, She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) falls into guilt and depression so deep she is hospitalized. That is one half of Original Sin. The character named He (Willem Dafoe) insists she cut off her medication. He will cure her himself. That is the other half. Her sin is Despair. His is Pride. These are the two greatest sins against God.

These are not quite the greatest sins against God, though pride is very close to it. The greatest sin, the fundamental act of rebellion against God, is to put something other than God at the centre: idolatry. This is why the first of the ten commandments is ‘You must not have any other god but me’ (Exodus 20:3). Pride is close to this because it puts us at the centre; it makes us our own gods. All other sins follow from this basic act of defiance.

He and She go to Eden, where He psychologically tortures She, and She phsyically tortures He. Ebert explanation of this gruesome-sounding film is:

The title Antichrist is the key. This is a mirror world. It is a sin to lose Knowledge rather than to eat of its fruit and gain it. She and He are behaving with such cruelty toward each other not as actual people, but as creatures inhabiting a moral mirror world. As much as they might comfort and love each other in our world after losing a child, so to the same degree in the mirror world they inflame each other’s pain and act out hatred. This would be the world created by Satan.

If I am right, then von Trier has proceeded with perfect logic. Just as a good world could not contain too much beauty and charity, an evil world could not have too much cruelty and hatred. He is making a moral statement. I’m not sure if he’s telling us how things are, or warning us of what could come.

All of which leaves me asking ‘Why?’ On the evidence of this, von Trier would seem to be very conflicted, even disturbed, character. According to Wikipedia, he was brought up in an atheist family by Communist parents who were also nudists. Several childhood holidays were spent in nudist camps, which may explain why his films have featured very explicit sexual content. He describes his upbringing as ‘unbelievably lax’, to which he attributes his well-known neurotic nature. He has been interested by religion, perhaps as a result of religion being banned in his childhood home.

I’m not yet sure what he’s trying to say in Antichrist, whether he is now attacking Christian faith with a parodic inversion of the account of the Fall. Ebert’s phrase, ‘It is a sin to lose Knowledge rather than to eat of its fruit and gain it,’ might be the key. He misunderstands the Fall again at this point. It is not knowledge itself which is the problem in Genesis 3, but that human beings wanted the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ for themselves so that they could be like God. It is an expression of idolatry again, wanting themselves at the centre, not God. The issue was that they declared themselves to be the ultimate moral authorities in their lives and grasp at a kind of knowledge from which human beings should be free (since our knowledge of evil is from the inside, as evildoers, not the objective, external knowledge of a God who is absolutely untainted by evil). But He and She are not losing this knowledge, they are embracing it more wholeheartedly – leading to the despair Ebert referred to. What they do lose is the knowledge of Good because they turned away from their responsibility to protect it, to protect innocence. In which case, it sounds like von Trier has expressed with conviction the madness and despair that ultimately results from turning away from God.

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Mike Hertenstein writes a very interesting piece about ‘Movie Nazis’ over at Filmwell. Primarily it’s a piece reflecting on After the Truth, a film written by Americans but finally made by German filmmakers in the late 1990s. But in a long introduction, Hertenstein explores our love-hate relationship with Nazis in films. He examines the way they are often presented as evil incarnate, yet we find often find them compelling. We view them as monsters, and yet, as philosopher Hannah Arendt famously observed at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the reality is that evil often seems banal. I was very struck by the quotation with which Hertenstein begins:

Having failed to recognize one of Hitler’s most specifically diabolical features – his way of localizing all the evil beyond his own borders, so as to make himself appear innocent – we have fallen into the same error as himself: we have made of Hitler an image of the Demon wholly external to our own reality. And while we were watching it with fascination, the Demon approached us again from behind to torment us beneath disguises which could not arouse our suspicions.– Denis de Rougemont, The Devil’s Share

This is an enormously important point. While we can point elsewhere – to anywhere but ourselves – as the place where evil is to be found, we excuse ourselves of moral responsibility. The reality is that evil lives within our hearts too, and we are not so far removed from the ‘monsters’ as we might imagine. We too nurture hatreds, and the notion that our darkest thoughts might at some point express themselves in our actions is horrifying. Yet we must also make moral judgments of those who play a part in such terrible events as the Holocaust. This, it seems, is the dilemma, or the tension, at the heart of After the Truth, which I now am desperate to see.

I’m particularly intrigued to read Mike Hertenstein’s article now, since over the last few weeks I have found myself wondering why there seem to be so many films about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in recent months and years. Good has just been in UK cinemas, and in the last six months or so we’ve also had The Reader, Valkyrie and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. What is especially interesting about these examples is that they don’t simply give us the embodiment-of-pure-evil Nazis that Hertenstein is talking about in the first part of his essay. With varying degrees of success, they face us with the moral dilemmas of being a German citizen in the years before and during the Second World War. Good uses the moral carelessness and compromise of one man as a synecdoche of the entire nation. While some knew perfectly well what they were doing, many simply went with the flow after decades, centuries even, of anti-semitism and years of vigorous pan-Germanic nationalism. This is brought out in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which its author John Boyne describes as a fable. The mother of Bruno, the child at the centre of the story, knows what she thinks about Jews, but has no idea – or chooses to shut from her mind – what her husband’s work involves. And he is presented as a good father early on, with a steady sharpening of the focus on the evil with which he is associated. Such films make us ask how we would have behaved if we had been there, what it would have taken for us to become monsters too. They make us look at the darkness of our hearts and the corruption of our wills, and remind us that we need rescuing.

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This article was first published on Damaris’s Culturewatch website, and is used with permission.
© Copyright Tony Watkins, 2009

How does an ordinary, decent man become part of one of the world’s greatest evils? This enigma is at the heart of Good, and has been pondered over and over, especially with regard to the Holocaust. Within just a few years, the Nazi regime exterminated almost four out of every five Jews living in German-occupied territory during the war, as well as many more from groups they found objectionable. The moral responsibility for this cannot be laid at the feet of a small minority – Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele and the men who willingly worked with them – whom we easily dismiss as monsters. No, it goes much further, as was explored to some extent recently in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. In what ways are the majority of ordinary citizens, who had no connection with what happened in the camps, implicated in what happened? Good, based on the acclaimed play by C.P. Taylor, suggests that everyone who simply goes with the flow is culpable.

The film begins in 1937 with Dr John Halder (Viggo Mortensen), a professor of literature, visiting Berlin to see officials in the Nazi Party. He is interviewed by Herr Bouhler (Mark Strong), chair of the party’s censorship committee about some views which he had expressed in a novel on the right to life – ‘a matter of personal importance to the Führer’. Halder is understandably nervous.

In flashback, we see some of the events which have led to this interview. After the Nazis come to power in 1933, they banned books by Jewish, communist or ‘degenerate’ auhors, and burnt piles of them. Halder is dismayed to see this going on outside the lecture theatre where he is teaching, and even more so when his head of department comes to tell him that he may no longer teach Proust if he wants to keep his job. Naturally he concedes for the sake of his career; this political interfering in the curriculum is surely not much more than a temporary inconvenience. It raises an important question for the viewer: Is this the beginning of a process of disempowerment and persecution against which he will vainly struggle, until he is called to account by Herr Beuhler? Or is it the first of many small compromises? We are kept guessing, but while we viewers know how things will develop in Germany over the ensuing years, at this point, Halder himself has no idea of what is ahead. He just wants to protect his job. He certainly has no intention of joining the Nazi Party – unlike his father-in-law with whom there is some tension over the issue. He and his best friend Maurice (Jeremy Isaacs), a secular Jewish psychoanalyst, are scornful of the party and its ideology, and assume that things will soon return to normal.

Jason Isaacs and Viggo Mortensen in Good (Lionsgate, 2009)

John Halder has other problems which consume his energies away from the university. His wife Helen (Anastasia Hille) is a brilliant pianist, but suffers from some nervous disorder which makes her almost incapable of coping with the demands of being a housewife. Unusually for his time and place, Dr Halder is happy to take care of the domestic responsibilities when he comes home. Helen knows what an unusually caring man her husband is, but she doesn’t realise that the pressure is growing within him. Another burden is his mother (Gemma Jones) who lives with them because she suffers from dementia. When a pretty young student, Anne (Jodie Whittaker), shows an interest in him, Halder is flattered and entranced. When he confesses to Maurice that he is preoccupied by thoughts of her, his friend gives a typically psychoanalytic response: ‘Taking refuge in fantasy might be a rational response to an irrational world.’

At this point, the film takes us forward in time again, to his interview with Beuhler who asks him to write a paper setting out the same argument for euthanasia as in the novel. ‘It is essential,’ Beuhler says, ‘that humanity should be at the centre of our work.’ The party’s flattery of Halder is juxtaposed with Anne’s, and he soon allows himself to be seduced by both. Halder is clearly now making compromises which affect the core of his life, not just his work. He is on a slippery slope, and Good powerfully explores how a succession of steps, many of which are in themselves insignificant (though having an affair is not remotely trivial), can become a journey to hell.

He is repeatedly shown as being unsure of what he should do, but his wife tells him to, ‘Have a little faith in yourself and do the right thing. You always do.’ This may once have been true of John Halder, but is now far from the reality. He does have faith in himself, in the sense that he makes his own choices without consulting anyone, except occasionally Maurice. But his choices are entirely based on what is expedient for him, what will make life easier for him, and never on what is morally right. At one point, Freddie (Steven Mackintosh), his new best friend in the SS, encourages him in his affair, saying, ‘If you’re with us, the old rules no longer apply.’ Halder is a weak man and asks, as if seeking some absolution, ‘Anything that makes people happy can’t be bad, can it?’

Good is a clever, well-structured morality play with a central character with whom one easily identifies, allowing us to feel the difficulties of his situation and the strong temptations that come his way. While Halder’s world is safe, we understand why he thinks that no real harm will come of his actions. He is a good example of the dangers of making decisions on the basis of short-term convenience or happiness, since the longer-term consequences are hard to predict and may be disastrous. There are moments when Halder knows what he should do, but doesn’t do it because it’s not a good time for him. But, as Martin Luther King insisted, ‘The time is always right to do what is right.’ Halder is not simply weak, he is cowardly.

Viggo Mortensen in Good (Lionsgate, 2009)

Halder’s personal circumstances may be improving, but Maurice’s are deteriorating (in fact, the Nazis banned psychoanalysis in late 1933, so his continuing presence at this stage is a little anachronistic). Maurice is delighted at Halder ‘seizing the day’ and moving out of home to live with Anne, but is disgusted when he realises that his friend has joined the party. Halder’s accommodation with the Nazis drives a wedge between them, and things become worse as the party makes things increasingly difficult for Jews. It takes the upheaval of Kristallnacht in November 1938 to make Halder realise just what has happened to him.

One stylistic feature from Taylor’s play which screenwriter John Wrathall retains is the musical interludes. From time to time, Halder thinks he hears the people around him singing extracts of Mahler. These moments make Halder question his sanity, but it is wrong to assume that he is insane, and therefore not in full control of his moral faculties. Rather, these moments reveal something of the pressure and tensions he is experiencing, and they increasingly exemplify his moral madness.

The moral decline of this once-decent man becomes increasingly apparent. And the film uses his moral trajectory to reflect that of the entire nation. Just as he sleepwalks into a nightmare, so does the nation. It is chillingly fascinating to see how this man who believes in freedom ends up contributing to its destruction. A man who begins by loving his wife and mother self-sacrificially becomes a man who only loves himself and fails to act in love to those who need him. A man who begins with teaching about ‘clarity of perception’ from Proust ends in a fog of confusion. Good is a powerful, but bleak, exploration of moral cowardice, which has a great deal of resonance for our own day. C.P. Taylor’s premise was that this story is not just about a particular people at a particular moment in history, but about anyone – and everyone. It is a stark reminder that we must not stand by or make numerous small compromises while liberty is eroded. It challenges us to think seriously about what governments do, to discuss the morality of their actions, to resist ignoring what happens if it doesn’t impact us directly. Very recently we have seen the publication of US Government reports justifying the use of controversial interrogation techniques. The argument is that the ultimate goal of the state’s security warrants these extreme measures, which many consider to be torture. Clearly, security is a very important issue. Nevertheless, the question of whether this is an acceptable compromise, or whether this is a denial of the moral principles for which the United States has historically stood is a vital, though contentious, one. For myself, I find it deeply troubling that ethical principles lose out to the consequentialist argument. John Halder’s first moral compromises were, he believed, the way to freedom – a small price to pay for his greater good. We need to be constantly asking the question of whether our governments are stepping onto the same kind of slippery slope. Good’s greatest challenge to us is to resist compromise, to do what is right, not what is expedient.

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