Eden (2012)

As Alyssa Rosenberg of ThinkProgress recently pointed out, audiences and content providers have reached the peak of anti-hero narratives. Thus, a film about a woman who works her way from sex slave to trafficker-in-training should not be that transgressive in the age of Walter White, Dexter Morgan, and Don Draper. Even if the film was based on the real life story of Chong Kim, a Korean-American who was forced to work as an “escort” in the early 1990s before she escaped her captors. Instead the most distressing aspect of Eden is its indictment of our own complicity in a thriving underground economy.

The narrative arc of Eden begins with an innocent bit of law breaking: two underage girls use fake IDs to gain access to a bar. There they meet a dashing young firefighter who promises to take one of them (Jamie Chung) home. Instead he sells her to a trafficking syndicate where she is renamed Eden and joins scores of other girls who make up a sick stable.

Eden’s first attempt to escape ends badly. She mutilates a john’s member with her mouth and dressed in a schoolgirl uniform with blood streaming down her chin runs into suburbia in search of help. Vaughn (Matt O’Leary), her handler, while slow-witted is not slow on his feet and quickly runs her down. But not before she stumbles upon a garden party of elderly women, pleading through tears for assistance. Vaughn pulls her to the ground and handcuffs her, assuring the women that he is a police officer and Eden is a dangerous drug addict. The women seem to not believe this story, asking themselves if they should call the police. As Vaughn takes Eden away he admonishes her, “It doesn’t matter if you scream. They’re cowards.”

The ugliness of complicity is further explored as Eden begins to try and convince Vaughn of her usefulness as an apprentice, a strategy she employs in order to survive beyond her expiration date (most of the girls are killed once they reach 18, Eden is already 19 but has successfully kept her age a secret).

Eden finally has her moment at a frat party when two girls escape while Vaughn is otherwise occupied. In a panic Vaughn drives Eden around the city in search of the runaways. He is desperate and swearing, finally collapsing over the steering wheel. As he puts his head down the audience and Eden both see the runaways across the street in a convenience store. The camera holds for an agonizingly long time as Eden merely stares at the girls. Will she alert Vaughn to their presence? Will she encourage Vaughn to go on without them?

Director Megan Griffiths is not waiting for Eden to make a decision, but rather the audience. What do we want her to do? Should she allow her fellow captives to get away, hoping they will bring the police back to the compound? Or should she alert Vaughn and begin the process of embedding herself within the cartel? What do we want Eden to do? Once we make that decision it becomes easier for us to either justify or demonize the rest of Eden’s actions. We are given the opportunity here to become an accomplice. The camera cuts away just before we see what Eden’s decision was, cutting to a shot of the two runaways subdued in the back of the van. The viewer and Eden now have to live with whatever decision we made.

It’s a chilling moment and Griffiths revisits the same technique a couple more times in the course of the film, giving Eden a way out, agonizingly pausing for her to make a decision, then cutting away just before we can determine which path she chose.

In some ways Eden reminded me of another “ripped-from-the-headlines” film that came out last year with much more buzz: Compliance. Just like Eden, Compliance compels the audience to ask “What would I do in that situation?” The stakes are considerably higher in Eden, but both films are fundamentally about characters attempting to justify actions that appear to beyond the scope of morality. In Compliance the justification is made possible by a Milgramesque authority figure, in Eden the justification is survival.

The one time Eden does not pause to consider her options is when a brief window is opened in which she can poison Vaughn. This is an opportunity she seizes upon immediately and uses to ultimately escape. Eden does earn a measure of redemption in the film’s closing minutes, but maybe not enough to cleanse the horrible acts she was involved in to earn her freedom. She is alive, yes, but the lives she helped ruined may be too much for her to bear alone.

In reflecting upon the film I keep returning to Vaughn’s outburst upon Eden’s escape attempt. While Vaughn is clearly referring to the women who ultimately decide not to help Eden, he could just as easily be talking about society as a whole. We think of the sex industry as being either legitimate, as demonstrated by mainstream companies such as Vivid or Hustler, or illegal. But the lines are not always clearly delineated. Even the seemingly legitimate side of the business can be built on a foundation of indentured servitude or be a smokescreen for money laundering. And this is just the part of the industry that has been uncovered. Not only is sex trafficking prevalent in the U.S. (by some estimates up to 300,000 American children are at risk of sexual exploitation), but the murder of sex workers are often left unsolved.

This is not to say that the problem is completely ignored. There are very capable groups, such as the Polaris Project, that are working to end such horrendous practices. But it will be impossible to end sex trafficking if we can keep finding ways to justify our inaction.

Eden is currently streaming on Netflix (where it is referred to as The Abduction of Eden, perhaps to avoid confusion with the Dan Aykroyd/Rose O’Donnell BDSM detective comedy Exit to Eden) and Vudu. It is also available for rental.

White Material (2009)

At roughly the midpoint of Claire Denis’ White Material, Maria (Isabelle Huppert) is driving a truck of newly hired laborers to her coffee plantation. One of the laborers asks Maria if she is the boss. “Yes,” she replies and after a moment of hesitation adds “I mean, I am in charge, but I don’t own anything.” The laborer responds “If you don’t own anything…it’s all hot air.” Maria remains silent. She appears momentarily stunned by the casual remark of her employee, perhaps realizing that the comment applies not only to her situation, but to the legacy of colonialism she is a part of.

That brief exchange is the most political moment of White Material.  By placing her characters in an African country during a civil war, writer/director Denis had plenty of opportunities to weave a melodrama about a white woman in the dark heart of Africa. Instead we are treated to an intimate character study about French citizen Maria, who is trying to hold together her family, her coffee plantation, and her life as war inches closer. A greedy ex-husband (Christopher Lambert); an arrogant and idle son (Nicolas Duvauchelle); and a sickly ex-father-in-law (Michel Subor) only multiply Maria’s burdens. 

Even though writer/director Denis places her characters in the middle of armed conflict, she has no interest in examining the political environment. We know we are in Africa, but the name of the country is never mentioned. We are aware a war is happening, but there is never a mention of specific agendas. If not for a brief shot of a flat screen TV it would have been difficult to even place the events of the film within a specific decade.

It is quite easy to view White Material as a commentary on colonialism. The audience’s only guide through all of this is Maria, a white French woman whose only concern apparently is to harvest her coffee crop on time, despite all those violent, nameless Africans trying to get in her way. Maria ignores the events around her, much to her peril. Eventually the violence that has been threatening her isolated existence encroaches on those closest to her. Her son Manuel is humiliated by two child soldiers and snaps. He shaves his head, assaults his family’s housekeeper, and runs off in the bush. He later joins up with another group of child soldiers, gleefully leading them in ransacking the plantation and setting it on fire.

If the film ended there it would be easy to frame it as a tale of reaping what you sow. But Denis brings us to a very dark place. When Maria returns to her plantation to see in aflame something in her gives. As When Maria walks through the inferno and she spies her father-in-law she shockingly hacks him to death with a machete. It is a perplexing and provocative finale. It is also a fairly definitive answer to the question of whether White Material is about colonialism. (The answer is no in case you weren’t paying attention.)

As mentioned previously, it is a curious task to talk about a film about war in which no actual battles are shown onscreen. But that statement is not entirely true. The entire film is about Maria’s battle, with the environment, the economy, her family. The most fundamental battle Maria fights though is for her identity. She is constantly reminding people that while yes, she is white, she is also African. This is her adopted home and she refuses to give up on it.

There is a scene towards the end of the film where the mayor of the village is talking to Maria about her son. He comments on Manuel’s blue eyes and blonde hair, saying “This is his country. He was born here. But it doesn’t like him.” It is this comment that is the source of Maria’s rage against her father-in-law.  She feels wrong that her identity has been stripped from her, that because of her skin color she’ll never be truly accepted in the country she loves. It is a chilling and striking inversion of the typical tales of identity politics.

White Material is currently available on Netflix Streaming.

Germany, Pale Mother (1980)

The story of Germany, Pale Mother is simple enough and instantly recognizable: Lene and Hans meet, fall in love, get married, have a child, are separated by circumstances, and reunited years later when both are changed people. What makes this story atypical is that the lovers are living in Nazi Germany and Hans is shipped off to fight on the Eastern front while Lene and her daughter Anna must survive the physical and psychological consequences of war.

Germany, Pale Mother was written and directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms, partially based on her own experience as a child during World War II. The film was released in 1980, during a period broadly referred to as New German Cinema. This was a time when many young German filmmakers were using the medium to confront and document Germany’s past, evidenced by the release of such films of The Marriage of Maria Braun, Heimat,  Hitler: A Film from Germany, and The Tin Drum.

Sanders-Brahms’ film draws a number of comparisons to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun, a film that was released around the same time and also tells the story of a woman’s life during wartime. While the conceits are similar, The Marriage of Maria Braun received more critical and commercial success. Yet decades later, Germany, Pale Mother stands out among the two.  

There is a healthy body of critical analysis of Germany, Pale Mother and being neither an expert in German cinema nor German history, I won’t be addressing these texts directly, but rather adding my own interpretations and impressions of the film. If you are interested in reading some much smarter takes I’ve included suggestions for further readings at the end of this post.

Taken at face value, Germany, Pale Mother is a well-crafted study on the gendered nature of war. Hans is sent off to defend the fatherland, while Lene remains on the homefront with Anna.  In the end both characters are forever transformed by their wartime experiences in subtle but unmistakable ways.

Hans begins the film as a man who refuses to join the Nazi Party. Early in the film he is distraught by his friend’s declaration that the German people deserve either victory or destruction. Once at he is drafted Hans is hardly a hardened solider. At the front he is unable to shoot a woman because she resembles his wife and is mocked by his fellow soldiers when he refuses to patronize prostitutes.  Over time Hans experiences a shift in his outlook and demeanor. As the war begins to wind down he has no trouble executing civilians and he mocks his wife when she sings to their daughter. 

When the war finally ends Hans returns home no longer the man he once was. He beats Anna when she dares to disrespect him and allows a dentist to remove all of Lene’s teeth in hopes of curing her facial paralysis. As those of you who have never been to dental school may have guessed, this doesn’t work. It is also one of most gut-wrenching scenes I have ever sat through and I voluntarily saw Battlefield Earth in a movie theater.

Some scholars have suggested these scenes illustrate how war has brought Hans’ brutality to the surface. I disagree with his assessment. It is not brutality that has been brought out in Hans, but rather an unquestioning loyalty to authority. He disciplines Anna when she does not give him the respect he believes his deserves and he acquiesces to a ludicrous medical procedure because the person suggesting it is in a position of authority. When the dentist recommends the treatment Hans merely responds with “Whatever you think is correct.” Sanders-Brahms is not indicting the authoritarian mindset of former Nazis, but rather how military service can strip away one’s individuality and empathy.

In contrast, Lene’s expected role is alluded to in the opening scene of the film. As Hans and his friend row down a river they happen upon Lene being harassed by a cadre of SS soldiers. She does not scream or cry for help, rather electing to ignore the harassment. Hans comments on how he finds her silence attractive. In the world of men, women are supposed to be kept silent. Lene dutifully abides by this expectation throughout the film. In a particularly disturbing scene, two drunk Allied soldiers stumble upon Lene and proceed to rape her off screen. After the act is complete Lene explains to her daughter that the act was the right of the victor.

The major difference between Lene and the titular character of The Marriage of Maria Braun is that Lene is largely on her own. Her attempts to rely on others for help, such as her distant relatives, tend to be met with failure. For much of the film Lene is left to fend for herself and Anna without any outside assistance. Maria Braun, unlike Lene, initiates relationships with a handful of men, relaying on them to define and protect her. Lene and Anna’s shared burdens and solitude solidify their bond, which only serves to create a tense environment when Hans returns after the war and attempts to resume domestic life.

The most interesting feature of the film is the extended fairy tale sequence in which Lene and Anna travel around war-time Germany, scavenging for food and shelter. They are nomads waiting out normalcy. During this time Lene tells Anna a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm about a young woman and some robbers. It is worth reproducing the tale in its entirety here.

A miller betroths his daughter to a suitor who lives in the depths of the forest. Whenever the miller's daughter sees her husband-to-be, she is filled with dread. He insists that she visit him, and so that she can find her way to his house, he scatters the path with ashes. The miller's daughter sets out on her journey with unease, sprinkling her path with peas and lentils. She travels into the depths of the forest where she sees the bridegroom's house and is warned by a talking bird that she is about to enter the house of murderers. The girl enters the seemingly deserted house to find an old woman who repeats the warning already given to her. The old woman predicts that the girl will marry death and that her husband-to-be wants to kill her, cut her body up into pieces and eat her. 

The two conspire to escape from the house of murderers by giving the bridegroom and his band of robbers a sleeping potion. The old woman hides the girl behind a vat, from where she witnesses the return of the bridegroom and his accomplices who have in their midst a maiden [virgin]. The troop give the girl three glasses of wine, one red, one yellow and one white, and her heart bursts in two. They rip off her clothes and hack the maiden into pieces. One of the robbers notices that she wears a golden ring.  

They chop off her finger to seize the ring, but the finger springs into the lap of the hiding miller's daughter. The men sprinkle the virgin's dismembered body with salt and eat her, after which they drink the sleeping draft. The old woman and the miller's daughter leave the house to find that the ashes which marked the path have blown away. The peas and the lentils, however, have sprouted, and the pair make their way in the moonlight back to the miller and tell him of the events.

The wedding festivities, already planned, take place. Each of the wedding guests is asked to tell those assembled a story. The miller's daughter tells the story of her trip into the forest, of the house of murderers and the robber bridegroom, prefacing the tale with, "It was just a dream, my love". But when she reaches the end of the tale, and tells of the golden ring and of dismemberment, she turns to the bridegroom to announce, "Here is the finger and here is the ring". The bridegroom turns as pale as ash. He is detained by the guests at the wedding party and is brought to trial and punished for his crimes.

The most remarkable aspect of the fairy tale is that it was not produced for the film. It is an authentic fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm nearly 150 years before the rise of Nazi Germany. Many authors have commented on the parallels to Nazi Germany (particularly the murder house) and the structural similarities between the tale and Lene’s narrative arc. It is difficult to argue against these interpretations, particularly as visual companion to tale is Lene and Anna visiting bombed out building and at one point a smokestack is visible in the background.

What struck me though is that the miller’s daughter watches a crime being committed. Not just any crime, but the brutal murder of another woman. She and the old woman allow this heinous crime to occur in order to make their escape. Yes, she eventually does turn the robber in, but only after her silence allowed let a woman die. Is Lene recounting her own crimes? Is Sanders-Brahms stressing how many Germans preserved their lives by staying silent throughout the war? Earlier in the film Lene and her sister watch a Jewish family being taken away by the SS, they debate whether to intervene, but ultimately decide to return to bed.

As already mentioned, the fairy tale sequence takes up a rather large portion of the film. Sanders-Brahms incorporates the telling of the tale into a montage sequence, so we see Lene and her daughter traveling through the country side, hearing the story multiple times. It has been told so many times and in so many different places that it has become a refrain Lene uses to comfort not only her daughter, but also herself.

After the war ends Hans returns home a changed man and the family’s attempts to begin a domestic life are not particularly successful. Not only have Lene and Anna formed a bond that Hans will never be able to replicate, but Lene has succumbed to facial paralysis making life for her quite difficult. Finally, depression compels Lene to lock herself in the bathroom and attempt to commit suicide with gas. (The protagonist of The Marriage of Maria Braun attempts to take her life in the same way, drawing obvious parallels to the gas chambers used during World War II.) Anna pleads with to open the door, desperately asking her mother not to leave her alone. The door does eventually swing open, but we are left with these lines from an adult Anna: “It was a long time before Lene opened the door. Sometimes I think she’s still behind it. And I’m still standing outside…and she’ll never come out to me.” For Lene, Anna, and Hans, for Sanders-Brahms and her mother, for millions of Germans and Jews, and for millions more around the world today, the war has never ended.

Germany, Pale Mother is a fascinating, harrowing, and devastating portrait on the micro impacts of war. It is more than anything a reminder that our lives are the products of decisions made by strangers and those decisions can live on for years and years to come, eventually hobbling us. It is a film that deserves a wider audience beyond the small circle of film critics who see it as an essential text.

Germany, Pale Mother is available for rental through Netflix. Some cinephile has even uploaded the film on YouTube if you prefer to view it that way.

For further reading I recommend:

• Leonie Naughton, Germany, Pale Mother: screen memories of Nazism (probably the best article written about the film)
• Anne Lynne Blume, Absent mothers, absent fathers: Aspects of German Fascism as seen through the contemporary camera
• Judith Keene, Mothering Daughters: Subjectivity and History in the Work of Helma Sanders-Brahms’ Germany Pale Mother
• Germany, Pale Mother: The Ever-Present Anguish of National Trauma

Origin Story

The Wizard of Oz changed John Waters’ life forever. He first saw the movie as a child at the Senator Theater in Baltimore and was immediately obsessed. Waters credits the line "Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?” as the single piece of dialogue that inspired his life’s work. He says he still whispers it to himself sometimes before he goes to sleep. It’s hard to believe that the man who was once crowned the Prince of Puke and introduced the world to Divine could have his life changed by a movie featuring the Lollipop Guild. But he, like so many of us, was transformed by the power of film.

Movies are one of the strongest threads in the tapestry of our lives. I realize the cheesiness of that statement should come with its own cracker; but it doesn’t make the statement any less true. We all have cherished memories of being transported to exciting new worlds through a celluloid portal. These experiences are so strong they have been converted into cultural currency. How many friendships have been established by the timely delivery of a line from Caddyshack?

When films are evaluated they are done so primarily on the merits of their entertainment value. We want to know if a particular film is going to be worth our money or time. Very rarely do we go to a theater saying “Well gee, I hope this film challenges my entire world view and makes me end up feeling like a horrible person.” If we did then Requiem for a Dream would be on cable a lot more.

Cinema at its very worst is a distraction, but at its very best it can be revelatory (or any number of clichés you see on movie posters). Great movies succeed in shaking us to our core; they force us to confront uncomfortable questions and situations. My intention with this blog is to create a place to examine films that ask those difficult questions, particularly as they relate to human rights.

I do not intend this to be a place for film reviews. I won’t be judging the films on their artistic merits, but rather examining films through a human rights lens. I am of course a film nerd, so some judgment might seep through. That being said, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, and Life is Beautiful are all shit films. You will never find any discussion about these or any films that treat genocide as melodrama.

Of course not everything here will be a discussion of high-brow, pretentious, foreign art films. Yes, there will be those. But The Cabin in the Woods, besides eviscerating horror tropes and featuring probably the world’s first murderous unicorn, has something interesting things to say about the banality of evil. The grand-daddy of the found footage genre, Cannibal Holocaust, is unintentionally a fascinating glimpse into how the Western world views indigenous cultures. I’m sure Road House has something to say about property rights. Or the right for a man to wear only tank tops. No discussion of human rights or cinema is really complete without Patrick Swayze.

I can still remember walking out of a crowded theater in the winter of 1999, having just left a screening of P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia. My mind was still trying to process the images on the screen, attempting to make sense of the last 188 minutes. I never thought that a film could pose so many questions, deny so many answers, and induce such a raw emotional response.  It was confusing and enthralling all at once. It was the moment I feel in love with movies and I never looked back.