Watching Human Rights

The 101 Best Films

Mark Gibney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317249351
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In order to be able to protect human rights, it is first necessary to see the denial of those rights. Aside from experiencing human rights violations directly, either as a victim or as an eyewitness, more than any other medium film is able to bring us closer to this aspect of the human experience. Yet, notwithstanding its importance to human rights, film has received virtually no scholarly attention and thus one of the primary goals of this book is to begin to fill this gap. From an historical perspective, human rights were not at all self-evident by reason alone, but had to gain standing through an appeal to human emotions found in novels as well as in works of moral philosophy and legal theory. Although literature continues to play an important role in the human rights project, film is able to take us that much further, by universalizing the particular experience of others different from ourselves, the viewers. Watching Human Rights analyzes more than 100 of the finest human rights films ever made-documentaries, feature films, faux documentaries, animations, and even cartoons. It will introduce the reader to a wealth of films that might otherwise remain unknown, but it also shows the human rights themes in films that all of us are familiar with.

Part I
Feature Films

1
Schindler's List
(Steven Spielberg, 1993)

It is only appropriate that the Holocaust serves as the backdrop for the top-rated feature film. For one thing, there is simply no historical parallel for the systematic slaughter of Europe’s Jewish population. But the Holocaust is important to human rights for another reason: the international response to it set in motion the human rights revolution of the twentieth century. Before World War II, how a state treated its own citizens was viewed as a purely domestic matter and outside the purview of the international community. All this has now changed. Now international law mandates that states are obligated to protect the human rights of not only their own citizens but of individuals in other lands as well.

* * *

Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Schindler’s List tells the story of a German industrialist (Oskar Schindler) who goes to occupied Poland to make his fortune manufacturing war kits for the Nazi regime and ends up risking his life and his fortune in an effort to save his Jewish workers. What is so remarkable about Oskar Schindler is how unremarkable he is, at least at the outset of the film. Schindler is the ultimate capitalist who wines, dines, and bribes German officials in order to increase his business opportunities. There is no altruism involved in Schindler’s decision to employ Jewish workers. He does so only because he does not have to pay them wages, thereby increasing his own profit as well as his ability to pay off Nazi officials. Like so many others, Schindler does not see—nor does he want to see—the enormous horrors and injustices going on all around him. Business is business, and business with the Nazis is particularly lucrative for Oskar Schindler.

Schindler’s metamorphosis in the movie begins during the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto, but not as one might imagine. As this scene develops, Schindler is out horseback riding with one of his young female lovers in the hills overlooking the city. Schindler is at first oblivious to the slaughter and mayhem going on directly below him. But a small child in a red dress—one of the very few times that color is used in the film—wandering the streets in search of safety catches his eye. As for so many of us, for Schindler the death of millions is incomprehensible, but the fate of one helpless young child is something that can be understood. And it is the reality of this fleeting image that begins the transformation of Oskar Schindler from an otherwise ordinary, self-serving business operative to a most remarkable and honorable person.

If Liam Neeson’s portrayal of Oskar Schindler was the role of a lifetime, Ralph Fiennes was his equal as Amon Goeth, the commander of the Plaszow concentration camp. Goeth is a sadistic psychopath who finds great joy in randomly shooting camp inmates and severely beating his Jewish mistress. But Fiennes achieves the remarkable task of making Goeth into a human being—albeit an extraordinarily flawed one. Somewhat less effective is Ben Kingsley who plays Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s Jewish assistant who runs his business and is in charge of hiring, and thus saving, his Jewish workers. Kingsley is a fine actor, but the character is a bit of a stock figure: the self-effacing but saintly Jew.

It might sound like a truism to talk about the ability of a single individual to change the world, but Schindler’s List is no make-believe story. The real Oskar Schindler is buried in Jerusalem, and he has been honored as a hero to the Jewish people. The truth is that he is a hero for all people, and Schindler’s List does a superb job of telling this story. In the final scene, now filmed in color, many of the surviving “Schindler Jews” honor him by walking up to his simple grave and placing upon it a single stone. Schindler’s List is filmmaking at its very finest; and Oskar Schindler represents humanity at its finest as well.

Also of Note

The Last Days (James Moll, 1998)

The Holocaust has been portrayed in a number of movies, feature film and documentary alike, many of which are analyzed later on. However, special mention should be made of three outstanding documentaries that also deal with efforts to save Jews. The Last Days focuses on five Holocaust survivors from Hungary who now live in the United States. Two questions continue to haunt these five—and perhaps all Holocaust survivors: First, why did the genocide against the Jews occur, and second, why did I survive?

The best feature of this film involves the small and personal stories that the survivors tell. One relates using the latrine at the concentration camp as a place to sing Jewish songs with the other children. Another involves one of the survivors, who put on a bathing suit as a reminder of better times before her family was rounded up, and then realizing this when she found herself in the shower at Auschwitz—with the bathing suit still on. The five are all deeply conflicted when they return to Hungary, although all are accompanied by family members and all use this as an opportunity of trying to educate the younger generations. One of them, Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the US Congress, takes his young grandchildren to his old hiding places—where he hid when he was just a few years older than they are now. Toward the end of the film, notwithstanding all of the horrors he has been put through, Lantos seems to feel that he is a blessed man because he and his wife (whom he has known since childhood) have been given the greatest gift of all: children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And watching them frolic on the family lawn, certainly no one could dispute this.

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (Mark Jonathan Harris, 2000)

Into the Arms of Strangers is an uplifting documentary about the Kindertransport program. This program, instituted a few days after Kristallnacht, transported some 10,000 Jewish children to the United Kingdom from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, until hostilities ended the program. Every child who was transported survived the war and nearly all lived happy and productive lives after that. Given the fact that the Nazis eliminated somewhere in the realm of 1.5 million Jewish children, in all likelihood most (if not all) of these survivors would have been killed if they had stayed back home with their families. At the end of the war, some of the children were reunited with their families, but in most instances they came to learn of the demise of their parents and other relatives. Thus, for many, what began as a temporary measure became a new life with a new family in a new country. Or as one survivor commented: “I ceased to be a child when I boarded the train.”

Anne Frank Remembered (Jon Blair, 1995)

Tens of millions of people have read The Diary of Anne Frank, and yet few of us know much about this young girl who has almost singlehandedly come to symbolize the horrors of the Holocaust. Thus, one of the unexpected joys of this fine documentary is learning something that we thought we knew—but did not. The film has no shocking revelations, but the viewer gets to see Anne as a person and not just an icon or symbol.

2
The Lives of Others
(Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)

Younger readers may not even be aware that at one time there were two Germanys: East Germany and West Germany. The decades-long separation was the result of the Cold War, which pitted the United States and its Western allies against the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries it dominated, which included Poland, Hungary, Romania, and East Germany. Although Berlin was physically located within East Germany, West Berlin remained part of West Germany, and this section of the city served as a beacon of hope for the oppressed people of East Germany and an avenue of escape for a lucky (and brave) few. All this ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which remains one of the signature moments in the human rights movement.

* * *

It has become common to restrict our notion of what constitutes a human rights violation to such things as genocide, torture, and massive starvation. Yet what is portrayed in The Lives of Others is a much quieter, but equally insidious, form of oppression. The story centers around three central characters: Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) is a successful East German playwright and one of the darlings of the communist government; Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) is his live-in actress girlfriend; and Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is the Stasi agent who has been assigned to spy on this couple. In addition, there is Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), who is Wiesler’s immediate superior, and Hempf (Thomas Thieme), a government minister who has compromised Sieland for sexual favors in exchange for illegal drugs and the acting roles she covets.

What The Lives of Others provides is a chilling account of a society that is this in name only. Although there are a few harsh interrogation scenes, the East German state usually did not have to operate in such a heavy handed fashion. Instead, government operatives were well aware—often because neighbor spied upon neighbor, and family members spied upon other family members—of each “citizen’s” personal weaknesses, and it routinely used this information (or merely threatened to use it) as a means of maintaining its power and dominion. Thus, when Stasi agents break into Dreyman’s apartment in order to install a bugging device, Wiesler knocks on the apartment next door and informs the frightened neighbor that if she makes any mention of this, her daughter will lose her treasured spot at the university. No physical threat is used—or needed.

As Wiesler goes about spying on the couple, he becomes aware that Hempf intends to have Dreyman imprisoned for acts against the state so that he can have Christa-Marie for himself. Although Wiesler is a staunch adherent to socialist values, this act of government overreaching, along with his growing attachment and even admiration for the couple, begins to change him. In response, Wiesler arranges to make Dreyman aware of Sieland’s relationship with Hempf.

In one of the movie’s most effective scenes, a short time later Sieland goes out for the evening, against Dreyman’s vehement wishes, and she wanders into a nearly deserted bar where Wiesler also happens to be after his shift eavesdropping has ended. He knows Sieland, but she has no idea who he is. Wiesler pretends to be a fan of hers, and he tells her what a great actress she is. She in turn tells Wiesler what a “good man” he is, and she then returns to Dreyman, where she promises never to see Hempf again.

One central issue in the film is the state’s attempt to control the country’s artists and writers. One of Dreyman’s friends, Albert Jerska, has been blackballed by the government and has not been able to direct a film for more than seven years. At a party, Jerska presents Dreyman with the sheet music for “Sonata for a Good Man” and shortly thereafter hangs himself. Shaken by this, Dreyman sets out to publish an article on the high suicide rates in East Germany. Because the government keeps tabs on all of the typewriters in the country as a means of ensuring censorship, a miniature one is smuggled in from the West and then hidden under the floorboard between two rooms in Dreyman’s apartment. The conspirators operate under the belief that Dreyman is not being spied upon, but the reason for this (mistaken) belief is that Wiesler has started to censure his reports, and he purposely does not pass along certain pertinent information to his superiors. In that way, the location of a simple typewriter serves as the dramatic force of the film.

Wiesler’s transformation as a person—one might even say to a person—lies at the heart of The Lives of Others. At the outset, his adherence to the socialist system is made to be quite understandable and even noble. Like many of his countrymen, he truly does believe that communism was an advance over capitalism, and that enemies would do everything in their power to destroy this more humane type of governance. Thus, what was needed was a state security system that would “guard” the people. It is interesting to note that Wiesler never totally rejects the system he was brought up on, but he does exert his own individual will by small acts of resistance. Certainly his bravest move comes after Sieland is arrested for obtaining drugs illegally, and she informs on Dreyman by confessing where the typewriter is hidden. However, before the other members of the secret police can conduct a search, Wiesler rushes to the apartment and removes it. Unaware of this, when Sieland returns home and sees government agents she becomes guilt-stricken and runs out into the street and into the path of an oncoming car, where she is killed.

Sensing Wiesler’s involvement in all this, Grubitz demotes him to opening mail, where Wiesler toils until the day the Berlin Wall comes down. After reunification, Dreyman is informed by Hempf that his apartment had been bugged, and he also discovers that Sieland had not heroically removed the typewriter as he had thought. After reading his secret police file, Dreyman comes to the realization that Stasi Agent HGW XX/7 (Wiesler) had purposely filed inaccurate reports in order to protect him, and through the trace of red ink that is on a piece of paper in his file, he is also able to figure out that this same agent had removed the typewriter. Dreyman is able to track down Wiesler, now working distributing leaflets, although he does not approach him. However, two years later Dreyman publishes a novel titled “Sonata for a Good Man” and he dedicates the book: “To HGW XX/7, in gratitude.” Likewise, we owe our own gratitude to director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for making this remarkable human rights film.

Also of Note

Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut, 1966)

A much earlier film that also deals with life under totalitarian rule is Fahrenheit 451, which is set in some indeterminate time in the future where books have been banned and firemen are termed this because their job is not to put out fires but to start them—by burning books. The problem, it seems, is...