Hannah Arendt, German Jewish Philosopher

This film is directed by German director Margarethe Von Trotta. She has also done other films with actress Barbara Sukowa, who's also German and portrays Hannah Arendt, the German Jewish Philosopher who studied and had a love affair with Martin Heidegger. BTW, Sukowa also portrayed Abbess Hildegard Von Bingen in Vision. Hildegard was quite a Renaissance woman for her time even though she was a nun. She was a healer, writer, composer and artist.

If you understand French, here's an interesting French documentary about Hildegard von Bingen:



One of the most beautiful examples of medieval music I've ever heard is an album of her recorded music titled A Feather on the Breath of God.
Here's another video I found online related to Hildegard:

I must apologize as I digressed, and this post is about the film Hannah Arendt.

The main plot of this film is about Hannah going to Israel and reporting on on the trial of Eichmann who was kidnapped and brought there to stand trial.

She writes a book titled Eichmann in Jerusalem and the New Yorker publishes her articles.

Many people are very upset by what she writes, especially by the fact that some Jewish leaders may have participated in the deportation and extermination of Jewish people. She was even pressured by superiors to resign her position as a professor. Despite the controversy, her classes were filled!

Arendt had left Germany for France with her husband and his mother. While there, she was imprisoned in Gurs, an internment camp for Jews in France. She was fortunate enough to escape just before a number of women were shipped off to Auschwitz. Through Hiram Bingham, she, her husband Heinrich and his mother were able to get visas to go to the United States.

One of the most touching elements in this film was the love between Hannah and her husband Heinrich. The love they had for each other was very, very special. Anyone who has such a love is very, very lucky in love!

Sukowa first got her big breaks into film working with German actor/writer/director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.


Some quotes from the film:

"You told everyone how smart and brave I was to escape from Gurs. ...Many women stayed for fear their husbands wouldn't find them if they left the camp. ...While it was still summer and warm we hoped it would soon be over. But then the waiting. More and more women let themselves go, stopped combing their hair. Stopped washing themselves. Just lay there on their straw sacks. I tried to encourage them. Sometimes I was strict, sometimes friendly. But then, one evening it had rained all day and the straw sacks were falling apart. I suddenly lost my courage. I was so tired. So tired that I wanted to leave the world that I so loved. And in that instant I saw you in front of me. How you'd look for me and not find me."-Hannah to Heinrich

Conversation between Hannah and Kurt about Eichmann:

"He's so different than I imagined." -Hannah
"He was with the SS. They're scary creatures."-Kurt
"But he's not. That's precisely it. He sits in his glass cage like a ghost. A ghost who happens to have a cold. He's not spooky at all. He's a nobody. ...He speaks in this awful bureaucratic language. He suddenly says things like: "I feel like a rump steak that's being grilled..."Incredible!"-Hannah


"The State of Israel bought four plane tickets to tell me that? You must have money to burn to waste it like that."-Hannah reply to Siegfried when he tells her he's there to request her to stop publication of her book on Eichmann.

"But, Kurt, you know me. I've never loved any people. Why should I love the Jews? I only love my friends That's the only love I'm capable of. Kurt, I love you."-Hannah to her friend Kurt Blumenfeld

"...That he had only obeyed orders. This typical Nazi plea makes it clear that the greatest evil in the world is the evil committed by nobodies. Evil committed by men without motive. Without convictions. Without wicked hearts or demonic wills. By human beings who refuse to be persons. And it is this phenomenon that I have called the banality of evil."-Hannah to her class

"Trying to understand is not the same as forgiveness. I see it as my responsibility to understand. It is the responsibility of anyone who dares to put pen to paper on the subject. Since Socrates and Plato we usually call thinking "to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself." In refusing to be a person, Eichmann utterly surrendered that single most defining human quality: that of being able to think. And consequently, he was no longer capable of making moral judgments. This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which one had never seen before. It is true. I have considered these questions in a philosophical way. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down."-Hannah to her class

Here are a few scenes from this film:

Here's the official trailer:

Warning: There's quite a lot of smoking in this film. After all, this was during the sixties, when many people were smokers. Check out my previous post with an article on smoking in films. BTW, Hannah Arendt died after having a heart attack. I wonder if there was any connection with her habit of smoking.

Only Human - A Spanish film review

Only Human 

Seres Queridos (Spanish title)

Directed by Dominic Harari & Teresa Pelegri

This Spanish-language film is a screwball comedy about a Jewish family. Great Argentinian actress Norma Aleandro portrays Gaby, the mother. It’s the age-old story of the daughter bringing her fiancé home to meet her parents with a modern twist. The daughter Leni brings home to her Jewish family her fiancé Rafi who's Palestinian. David is the teenage son who’s trying to practice being an Orthodox Jew much to the consternation of the rest of the family. Rafi, played by Guillermo Toledo is great as the intellectual fiance who's also a bit of a klutz. His clumsiness causes a terrible accident. As a new addition, Rafi will fit right in with this dysfunctional family. The father is usually absent. The sister is a nympho and her daughter thinks she's pregnant. There's also a blind grandfather who's going deaf. Included with this crazy cast of characters, is also a rescued duck!

Below are a few scenes from this film.

David practicing Jewish tradition.

Blind grandfather meets Rafi.

Norma Aleandro as Gaby, the mother.

Gaby with her husband.

Here's the trailer for Only Human.

Jeroen Krabbe --Dutch actor and director dies

Today Jeroen Krabbe, actor and director died after a snowboarding accident in Zermatt.

One film I've seen that he's directed is Left Luggage.  This film is about a young Jewish woman named Chaya (played by Laura Fraser), the daughter of Holocaust survivors (played by Marianne Sagebrecht and Maximilian Schell) who takes a job as a nanny for a Hassidic Jewish family.

Here's a scene with Maximilian Schell & Marianne Sagebrecht:

Chaya's father is obsessed with finding his left luggage and her mother is obsessed with preparing food and feeding it to her family.

The attractive Isabella Rossellini goes against the grain and takes on the challenging role of the Hassidic Jewish mother Mrs. Kalman. In addition to directing, Krabbe plays the role of the Hassidic Jewish Mr. Kalman.

Here's an image from Left Luggage of Jeroen Krabbe as Mr. Kalman:

Sidenote: one unfortunate habit that is shown in this film is the habit of feeding ducks. If you watch The Ducks & Us, you'll learn why people feed ducks & why it's not good for the ducks. But the ducks do stimulate Simcha, the quiet child to finally start speaking.

Here's an image from the film of Chaya with Simcha (Laura Fraser & Adam Monty)

By the way, Marianne Sagebrecht first gained attention in Percy Adlon's film Bagdad Cafe which also . starred C.C.H. Pounder and Jack Palance.

Krabbe who was originally born in Amsterdam, spoke four languages: Dutch, English, German and French.

Some other films he acted in that seem to be worth watching are:

• Immortal Beloved, a film about the composer Beethoven
• Ocean's Twelve, a heist film with George Clooney
• An Ideal Husband, a British film based on the play by Oscar Wilde
• Only Love, an American film based on a book by Erich Segal with Rob Morrow & Marisa Tomei

I think that actors who know more than one language can find many more opportunities to practice their craft. Rutger Hauer is another Dutch-born actor who speaks multiple languages (Dutch, German and English). He's been in a number of different films and TV shows but I still think that one of his best roles ever was Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

But here I digress, because the actor in Left Luggage that I really, really admired was Topol as Jacov Apfelschnitt.This character is the bridge between the secular and Hassidic world.
He has an excellent monologue. It's something like,

"You are no more to blame than the trees for standing by, the ducks for luring him or the water for embracing him."

I'm merely going on memory for this actual dialogue. The film is almost worth seeing for the amazing manner in which Topol delivered it! By the way, Topol is best-known for having frequently played the role of Tevye in the  Fiddler on the Roof

Update: I was just told by someone who has a connection with Jeroen Krabbe that he's still alive and that she would definitely know it if he had died recently. I'm going to try to find a link to substantiate that.
Okay, according to IMDB, he's still alive and was acting in 2013. 
Here's a link to his page in IMDB.