Archive for the ‘Culture Forum Blog’ Category
December 20th, 2008
By: Justin Ferguson
As we complete this finals period it became apparent to me that there was one thing missing in all my proctored exams. You write for three hours (four if you are unlucky) find issues, identify forks, apply facts but at some level one has to ask, what is the point. This is not, or is not only, a student a bit exhausted, a lot tired after taking these exams. The thing is that issue spotting exams are supposedly how we are trained to be lawyers. Yet, in this training, there is a missing element, a prong not examined, not tested, in these exams. That missing element in these exams is any sense of morality. In the hypos we analyze we never analyze an issue and confront the fork of whether or not the issue is right or wrong, if it is moral. Remarkably, this is even the case in Professional Responsibly, the course that purports to teach us how to be ethical lawyers (at least it’s not called, Legal Ethics, an arguable oxymoron in itself). Here, we are expected to analyze facts as to whether there is a conflict of interest, whether there is an issue of confidentiality? However, we are not asked to inquire as to whether the matter is moral, is the conflict actually evidence that what the lawyer does is morally questionable, whether keeping information secret is actually a disservice to justice.
The problem here is not just that these issue spotting exams miss any notion of what is moral, of incorporating what would be spiritual. The real problem is that this is how we are trained as lawyers, taught to only look at a certain kind of issue ignoring the effect on our souls. Further, this is not only our training but it is how we are ultimately evaluated. Those who can best spot the issue in these exams which are nothing more than three hours of tip, tap, type, type regardless of whether what we write makes sense and definitely regardless of it is moral receive the “ideal” jobs. Naturally, these jobs are equally lacking in spiritual wealth despite the 160K in monetary wealth. It is no wonder that lawyers often become miserable people with nice things. It is no wonder that they tend to be hated by “normal” people. Happy finals!!!
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December 20th, 2008
By: Darren Ishmael
Eli Stone is a TV show on ABC that stars Jonny Lee Miller (the guy from Hackers) as the title character, an attorney who discovers that he has an inoperable brain aneurysm which gives him vivid hallucinations. At the beginning of the second season, we discover that the visions are, in fact, divine. Often these heavenly hallucinations provide Eli with information about the future (e.g. when an earthquake will occur) or about a case on which he is working or point Eli to a client in need of his, often legal, help.
And so, we have a representation of the morally complete lawyer. Similarly to the rabbi in the children’s story In the Month of Kislev: A Story for Hanukkah, Eli thus relies on both the faith and law. He has both scrolls and books on his desk. The difference here is that Eli’s divine information, the religious/spiritual side, is hidden. The rabbi clearly relies on both, but Eli puts on the façade of a lawyer and uses the tools of the law (e.g. court, settlements, discovery) while secretly receiving special information from God. Because of that, he is actually dissimilar to the rabbi in Kislev or Ascher, the Isaacson’s lawyer in the book of Daniel, who don’t split their moral conscious from legal responsibilities and who doesn’t see a split in his public and private life. Eli’s spiritual life is completely secret. He is not portrayed as a religious man. His only spiritual/private life, while it informs his legal practice, is a complete secret.
Additionally, Eli utilizes these books and scrolls differently than the examples of morally complete lawyers we have seen in Professor Rosenbaum’s Law&Lit Class. Instead of using the lessons from spiritual or religious realms, Eli has actual divine information.
In a recent episode, Eli is shown a vision that informs him that a co-worker’s fiancé is having an affair with Eli’s opposing counsel. Eli has agreed to represent a woman who has been arrested by Homeland Security. The woman moved to the U.S. from Pakistan and married her gay friend to receive a green card. Now, Homeland Security knows the marriage is a sham and want to send her back. The court finds that she would be in danger if she were to return to Pakistan and stays her removal, but the spiteful prosecutor decides to go after her (gay) husband for the green card marriage fraud. That’s when God steps in. Eli is shown a vision of his co-worker’s finance in a romantic situation with an unknown woman. What is Eli supposed to do with this? That’s when he meets with the prosecutor’s boss, who just so happens to be the woman from the vision.
So, Eli, the supposedly complete lawyer (books and scrolls) uses the secret information against the woman to get her to drop the charges. He sees a photo of the woman’s husband and son on her desk, and brings up her extra-marital affair. He strongly suggests she review the case again and she agrees to give Eli’s client community service instead of prison time.
So, what are we supposed to think of Eli? Is he the complete Law and Literature lawyer? Is this an ethical move for a lawyer to make? Is this a moral outcome?
While Eli might be an example of a morally complete lawyer who is driven by the spiritual/religious side, he is not one who has fully developed. He is in the process of accepting his divine. Along the way, he will likely stumble. To be fully developed, he will need to find a way to meld his private life (the visions) and the Public (the legal).
Additionally, the show is often less concerned with the actual spiritual and more often than not uses the divine as a deus ex machina, as the episode above did. The show is more concerned with creating a happy, satisfying ending to the hour long show than with portraying a morally complete lawyer.
However, the point remains, the artist sees the ideal lawyer (the lawyer Eli is struggling to become) as the complete moral lawyer, who keeps on his desk both books and scrolls.
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December 20th, 2008
By: Erich Carey
If Charles Dickinson’s Bleak House were set in the modern era, it’s dimensions might not be all that different from the protracted legal struggle of Mr. Orenthal James (“O.J.”) Simpson over the last decade and a half. Dickinson’s Victorian masterpiece tells the tale of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a legal estate dispute that grinds on for years on end in the Chancery Court of 19th century London. The suit itself becomes so much more than a docket number, consuming in different sums those who have even the slightest association with the case. At the novel’s end we are led to believe that the suit will be resolved when a copy of a will is found that post dates all others known. Ironically, however, the will is introduced for naught; it is discovered that the estate is bankrupt, having been consumed entirely by legal fees spent in the dispute concerning its own administration. Tragic.
Much the same, O.J. Simpson’s freedom from conviction in the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman turned out to be his undoing. To review: television in the mid ’90s had more Juice than Tropicana. O.J. was epic. The case was on the local news, the national news, the front page of the paper and the back sports page, all simultaneously. The New York Times recently re-published a Scott Turow op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06opclassic.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=scott%20turrow%20O.J.%20simpson&st=cse ) detailing the blunders the prosecution made in failing to convict O.J., which reminds us of that the trial did indeed occur in a courtroom, and that Ito, Shapiro, Cochran and Clark didn’t just play lawyers on TV. Nonetheless, the O.J. trial was the subject of comedy, ever ripe for parody on Saturday Night Live and perhaps in more tender moments a chance for a parent to tell a child not to forget about the murdered victim, in many ways the overlooked center of gravity of the three ring circus. And after what seemed like forever, and much to the dismay of many (but not all) O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of the murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
Nonetheless, O.J.’s freedom was not without cost. As Dickinson observed at the unsavory resolution of the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce with perhaps eerie foreshadowing “[i]f the public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of this great Grasp, it must be paid for, in money or money’s worth.”
In early December O.J. Simpson was sentenced to up to 33 years in prison on a conviction of armed robbery, 13 years to the day of his acquittal in his famed murder trial. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-07-simpsoncase_N.htm . In spite of the judge’s insistence that O.J.’s conviction had nothing to do with retribution for his acquittal in the murder trial, as a society, our judgments need not be so reserved. In fact, I might venture to say that O.J.’s conviction has everything to do with his prior acquittal. As a point of fact, how many news stories did you see reporting O.J. Simpson’s conviction in the armed robbery case that didn’t mention his acquittal in the criminal trial for murder?
Irrespective of O.J.’s legal guilt or innocence in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, society indeed cast judgment on him. As Thane Rosenbaum has observed, where people felt that the legal system failed, a system of moral justice perhaps picked up the slack: not only O.J. but members of his famed lawyering team were shunned and ostracized from society after his acquittal, a form of punishment served by people who felt that their legal system had delivered an unjust result. This then poses the question: given that society by and large has cast judgment on O.J., has its legal system likewise picked up the slack for what was perhaps seen as its own shortcoming in the first trial? Have we traded justice in one court for justice in another?
Whatever the case may be, O.J. Simpson is indeed going to jail, and even if we can disambiguate the two crimes, there certainly seems to be little doubt as to his guilt in the case of his conviction for armed robbery. Nonetheless, it isn’t too far a stretch to imagine that when O.J. was found guilty in his recent trial for armed robbery, the deranged epic of his criminal murder trial was never far from his mind either.
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December 20th, 2008
By Ilana Ofgang
During our Human Rights, the Holocaust and the Law class, a recurring theme has been that ‘atrocity is different’. This difference has been illustrated throughout these past weeks through Professor Rosenbaum’s lectures on the inadequacy of language, law and art during times of atrocity. In the context of art, we discussed the composer Wilhelm Furtwangler and explored the artist’s moral obligations during Hitler’s reign. Furtwangler did not rise to the occasion but sank down into the depths of passive complicity.
As a musician, I was very taken with our discussions about art, atrocity and moral justice, and the artists’ role in times of chaos. At first I rejected the idea that an artist has a moral duty beyond that of serving his art. I thought about the image in the film Titanic -of the musicians playing on deck while others are drowning and scrambling for life boats. At the time I saw this movie, I thought that was a beautiful scene and a beautiful testament to the heart of musicians. But in a moral justice context, those musicians were able bodied individuals who had a duty to rescue those who were trapped and struggling to get aboard the lifeboats. In the process of sacrificing their own lives for their art, they may have also unwittingly sacrificed other’s lives, by not acting affirmatively when they had the chance.
I became curious about Furtwangler and wanted to explore the man behind the music. Is there some redemption for him in the artistic offerings he has left behind? I found many websites devoted to Furtwangler, and even a Furtwangler Society. He is recognized as one of the pre-eminent conductors of this century, if not of all time. He was a man madly in love with the most beautiful things German culture had to offer and devoted his life to serving the goal of perpetuating German high culture through mastery of his art. Furtwangler was also willfully ignorant, and there is evidence that he was anti-semitic and was only accepting of professional Jews who had something to offer to society (though he did help many Jewish musicians get out of Germany).
Some websites deduce from his tumultuous treatment of the pieces he conducted that this was a man whose soul was tortured and conflicted. Some believe that there was a part of him that recognized and was repulsed by the insanity that was going on around him. Yet, he was a star. His ego played a large role in the tragedy of his life and many of the decisions he made were largely self-serving.
From our vestige, we are able to see Furtwangler as a character inherently flawed. He failed to act, failed to do the right thing during a time in which the line drawn between good and evil was clear and the gap between the two great. But I wonder what it was like for Furtwangler to open his eyes every morning trapped in an addictive love affair with German classical music which kept him glued to Berlin. Did he know that by conducting such brilliant concerts every evening that what he was doing was wrong? Did his heart break as he watched his precious German high culture crumble into evil decay in front of his very eyes? He existed in a time and place where everything he worked so hard to keep alive was dying with every minute that past. His music was simply keeping the beat –it was an elegie to a Germany that was never to exist again: a death knell to the Germany that had given the world Bach and Beethoven. Did he recognize that it was the complicity of his nation and all the passive people like him that led to the perpetration of unspeakable evil and Germany’s eventual demise? Or did Furtwangler see his moral duty more to the ghosts of composers long past then to those for whom graves were being newly dug with the dawn of every passing day?
Furtwangler is a startingly tragic example of how different atrocity really is. Were he born in a different time, history would remember him only for his contribution to the world of classical music and his name would not be stained with shame, complicity and moral failure. But were it not for the chaos around him, maybe his conducting would not have been so emotive. Were not music his only retreat from the insanity of nazism, maybe he would not have put so much of his soul into it. His success was as much a product of his surroundings as anything else. In the end, maybe for Furtwangler –in his own mind -he had no other choice. The only world he loved existed in sound, notes on a staff, and the blinding light of a stage. Maybe Bach and Beethoven were more real to him then the living, breathing individuals perishing all around him. Yet even the opaque lens through which he may have viewed the real world allowed him to see the horror –and it was for willfully ignoring this horror that history must condemn him.
Maybe the composition that was Furtwangler’s life had no other way of playing itself out. He loyally served his art and for this the ghosts of baroque music will forever be thankful -as will all of us who listen to his performances from the safety of the present. But in the name of our ancestors who were being denied the right to life and dignity at the very same moments in which his baton was waving deliberate patterns in the air at the expense of his own morality, we as society must always remember and recognize his moral failure. Furtwangler’s story is sad. His tragedy was one of human failure and artistic achievement. Atrocity is different. And it changes the world forever.
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December 20th, 2008
By: Owen Reidy
On December 12, 2008, Cardinal Avery Dulles died at the age of 90. Cardinal Dulles, who for the past 20 years had been a professor of religion at Fordham University, was one of the senior statesmen of the Catholic church in America and a respected theologian. The passing of Cardinal Dulles caught my attention because though I have heard his name many times I knew very little about him. I read his obituary and was fascinated to learn that he was not even a Catholic when he began studies at Harvard Law, studies which he would never complete because of World War Two.
While reading Cardinal Dulles’ obituary in the NY Times I was struck by the following passage which referenced the Cardinal’s conversion to Catholicism: “…on a gray February day in 1939, strolling along the Charles River in Cambridge, he saw a tree in bud and experienced a profound moment. ‘The thought came to me suddenly, with all the strength and novelty of a revelation, that these little buds in their innocence and meekness followed a rule, a law of which I as yet knew nothing,’ he wrote. ’That night, for the first time in years, I prayed.’”
What struck me about that passage was the Cardinal’s use of the word “law” to describe the buds on the trees. A prolific author and speaker, with a doctorate in theology and some training in the law makes it clear that the Cardinal’s choice of words was no accident. To me, his description of nature and the law of the earth was a sign that this was a man who understood that there are more laws in our society than the black letters of our statute books.
The Cardinal recognized the need for a moral element of our secular laws. In the second portion of the Cardinal’s obituary, we read his reaction to the Church’s decision to adopt a national policy barring from ministerial duties any priest who had ever sexually abused a minor. In response to this decision, Cardinal Dulles said the policy ignored priests’ rights of due process. The Cardinal cites due process, a tenet of our secular law. The Cardinal recognized that even the guilty are entitled to their procedural rights and the church should not use its institutional power to ignore those rights.
The Cardinal’s analysis did not stop there. The Cardinal further went on to say that this decision reflected an attitude of vindictiveness which the church should not yield. The Cardinal said that the church should not use the fear of retribution as a motivating factor to impose a “one-size-fits-all” punishment. The Cardinal realized that the church’s duty to recognize the secular laws of our society is not their only obligation. There is a need for the church to act in line with the beliefs and principles which they teach. The church should not act out of spite and vindictiveness, and the church should not act out of fear and the desire to avoid liability suits, but instead the church needs to recognize the importance of moral justice. The Cardinal does not offer a solution to the problem of the sexual abuse, but his assessment of the problem makes it clear that the justice which is sought and the resolution which is reached will be incomplete unless it is both a moral and a legal justice. These brief words from the Cardinal about the responsibility of the church, his church, to act legally and morally reflected the wisdom of a man who understood that we cannot separate the moral from the legal, and we should not try. His analysis of even the most difficult situation makes it clear that the world has lost a man of great wisdom and perspective. Rest in Peace, Cardinal Dulles.
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December 20th, 2008
By: Jason Dunietz
I put O.J. Simpson’s name in the title because his highly publicized
sentencing hearing on Friday got me thinking once again about society’s
obsession with certain crimes, and how it’s manifested by the media’s
coverage. Rodney King, OJ Simpson’s murder trial, JonBenet Ramsey,
Scott Peterson, Martha Stewart…and now Plaxico Burress and OJ part two.
These well-known names and stories were interesting to me to some extent
or another when they were first publicized. Yet they all had one thing
in common: after a while I couldn’t even watch the news any more because
I was so sick of hearing about all the details and legal minutiae
involved in these stories. How could anyone repeatedly tune in to new
coverage night after night after night, when there was so little new
information of note? However, many people did just that, and so I have
recently thought about why these crimes and cases have such popular
appeal.
I tried to find a common thread running through all of these stories, in
the hope that I could figure out why they captured our collective
interest, and found that it helped to differentiate between them by
placing them into two separate categories: cases involving celebrities,
and those cases involving “everyday” people.
Cases involving crimes allegedly committed by celebrities should
logically capture the public’s interest, as seemingly every single
detail of their personal love lives seems to do the same. However,
while the audience that pays attention on a daily basis to who Britney
is rumored to be sleeping with might not represent the broadest
cross-section of society, a far greater number of people tuned in to
allegations of crimes allegedly committed by Martha Stewart, OJ Simpson
etc. The attention that we pay to celebrities in general seemingly
elevates them to a level of importance that we no longer see them as
regular people. Living in a materialistic country, we often see
celebrities as being some of the most successful and enviable people.
When they are faced with potential legal trouble, it reminds us that
they are still regular people at the core, and that their celebrity
status doesn’t always make them omnipotent. Or at least that’s what
many people are hoping when they follow celebrity’s legal proceedings
with an attention to detail that even litigators would find excessive.
When they are found guilty, we feel happy that the judicial system has
ignored the advantages in life that celebrities have, and reminded us
that celebrities are subject to the same rules and limitations that we
are. When they are acquitted or simply given a slap on the wrist, we
get frustrated about the obstacles that we face on a daily basis, and
think about how much easier life would be if we could become wealthy and
powerful, thereby reinforcing notions of materialism.
On the other hand, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and the Scott Peterson
trial, both captured the public’s interest for a different reason. The
media picks up on stories such as these because they deal with horrific
and shocking stories that happen to “everyday” people. Many of us can
identify with the people involved, because they seem like normal people
like our family, friends and neighbors. However, behind closed doors,
there are terrible secrets, and the crimes perpetrated both stun us, and
appeal to us on some primal level. Society has a thirst and fascination
with violence, which is fed by the media’s coverage of these stories in
a manner reminiscent of Robert Downey Jr.’s show and its coverage of
Mickey and Mallory Knox in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.
Whatever the case is, certain crimes, and the legal proceedings that
follow, will continue to capture our interest, especially when there
aren’t more important national and global issues taking up the airwaves.
In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, there is no reason to expect that
this pattern will diminish any time in the near future.
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December 20th, 2008
By: Corina Bogaciu
One of the major themes in our Law and Literature class has been the divergence of moral justice and legal justice. That is to say that our legal system can and often does produce outcomes that are legally correct but not morally just or satisfying. A prime example and one that is familiar to law students everywhere is the Osterlind v. Hill case. The case is a negligence suit brought by the family of a man who drowned when he rented a canoe and he fell into the water. When Osterlind fell in the water he was able to hang on to the canoe for half an hour during which he cried out for help. The defendant in the case, the owner of the canoe renting business, heard Osterlind’s cries for help but did nothing to help him. As a result, Osterlind drowned. In American law there is no duty to rescue, therefore, Osterlind’s family could not sue Hill for failing to help the drowning Osterlind. They were able to bring a negligence suit claiming that Hill was negligent in renting the canoe out to Osterlind who was intoxicated at the time. The court held that Hill did have a duty to be vigilant about renting to people that were so intoxicated they would be helpless. However, the court found there was no breach of that duty here because the fact that Osterlind was able to hold on to the canoe for 30 minutes and cry for help was evidence that he was not in a helpless condition. Ironically, the very cries for help that should have condemned the defendant only served to condemn the Osterlinds’ suit.
If you think this case is morally revolting you are not the only one, however, you are also probably not a lawyer. I remember during first year of law school we had a Family Day where family members were invited to visit the school and sit in on mock classes. My father came to visit and we sat in on a first year torts class. The Osterlind case was discussed and I remember distinctly that this case more than any other drew perplexed questions from visiting family members. The visitors just could not understand how the defendant was not culpable in some way. The professor teaching the class had several students planted in the room upon whom he called to discuss the case and they rattled off the legal theory without missing a beat. The rest of the law students present, myself included, nodded in agreement and felt proud that we could follow this logic. We had learned a lot during that first year. We were thinking like lawyers - something that our families could not do.
We hear that expression a lot- think like a lawyer. That’s our goal in law school. However, cases like Osterlind demonstrate that thinking like a lawyer means thinking the polar opposite of what we were raised to think and what the rest of society thinks. It means disregarding the moral compass that guides all of society. If that’s the case- then why should we want to think like lawyers?
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December 20th, 2008
By Lindsay Einhorn
The movie Changeling incorporates many of the themes developed in Professor Rosenbaum’s Law & Literature class. Angelina Jolie is a mother who becomes a victim of the political environment. Her son was kidnapped and another young boy returned to her under the false pretense that he was her son. At this time in history, women were not treated equally to men. There were strong stereotypes that woman were emotional, non-objective and weak. All of these stereotypes were used as excuses for Angelina’s behavior. The political environment governed the situation. The police department refused to listen to her. The police were easily able to manipulate the situation and silence her. Unlike in the stories we’ve read in class, it is in the courtroom that these myths were finally dispelled and where Angelina’s story is finally told. Through truth and story-telling she finds the only redemption she can. She was able to have her story told and now there is a living record. This did not lead to her ultimate goal of her finding her son but it allowed her a day in court to be heard.
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December 20th, 2008
By Nadjia Bailey
Throughout the semester, we’ve discussed the importance of the victim’s voice. One of the largest flaws in our traditional criminal justice system is that the victim is marginalized throughout the process. Since crime is viewed as an offense against the State, the impact on the victim- her sense of loss, grief, humiliation or anger- is not the central legal concern.
This unfortunate reality is well portrayed in an early scene from the film, Adam’s Rib. The film begins with a jealous wife stalking her estranged husband and ultimately shooting him in his lover’s apartment. In this particular scene, Assistant D.A., Adam Bonner, visits the injured husband in his hospital room. The husband is enraged by his wife’s actions, yet Bonner entirely ignores his distress. Bonner proceeds in a calm, detached manner. With a business-like efficiency, he demands “just the facts.” Noting Bonner’s seeming disinterest in his personal pain, the husband anxiously asks how the case will be handled. Bonner replies, “However the office wishes to proceed.” With this comment, Bonner dismisses the husband as a participant in the prosecution. The victim visibly shrinks into himself, is effectively quieted and his role as a marginal player, a non-essential body, is set. As usual, the victim would have no voice.
In the real world, the traditional legal system offers the victim little personal autonomy, participation, or decision-making in addressing the crime. Recently, I became involved with Victim-Offender Mediation (VOM), a process that attempts to remedy this short-coming by shifting the balance of power from the State to the victim. When a crime is committed, so often the victim feels a loss of personal security and dignity. Confronting the offender in a controlled face-to-face mediation session can be highly therapeutic and empowering as it allows the victim to re-assert control over the situation.
I first learned of VOM through an Alternative Dispute Resolution course a couple years back and have since observed several mediation sessions. The first step of the process is usually story-telling. As we’ve discussed in class, allowing the victim to speak of her experience is perhaps the most important step in addressing a crime. Also, by hearing directly from the victim, the offender is often able to understand and internalize the effects of his actions. And in that way, the mediation can introduce elements of understanding and emotional accountability- things that just are not addressed in traditional criminal justice system. This type of personal accountability in turn opens the door to the development of empathy and remorse. One goal of VOM is that at some point in the session, the offender will hopefully be able to offer a reflective, meaningful apology to his victim. Also, the mediations often end with restitution agreements that both memorialize the session and provide a continuing path toward rebuilding relationships.
The more I learned about VOM, the more curious I was to know what services are available locally. After speaking with several administrators from the New York State Office of ADR, I learned that every borough of New York City currently has VOM programs in effect. This immediately struck me. Although I’ve been a New Yorker my entire life, I had never before heard of the availability of these local resources. From my conversations, I did get the impression that efforts are being made to increase awareness. Yet, personally, I feel that too little is being done to extend these resources to the general population. Victims continue to enter the legal system without knowing of options like VOM or understanding its potential for personalized healing. It seems that the public could only benefit from knowing more about this alternative path to seeking resolution and serving justice.
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December 20th, 2008
By: David Arnstein
There are six new Holocaust movies that have either already been released this fall or are coming out soon: The Reader, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Adam Resurrected, Defiance, Good and Valkyrie.
In class we have spent many days discussing the relationship between art and atrocity. Odorno said that one should not create beauty out of atrocity (the holocaust). Therefore, if you are telling an authentic story about mass murder – the holocaust – it should not have a happy ending. I read an interview in New York magazine with Jason Isaacs (a Jewish actor) who plays the role of Viggo Mortensen’s Jewish best friend in the movie Good. It was interesting to read his comments about holocaust movies because it was as if he had attended our class. Below are a few of the questions and answers:
“How did your Jewish background influence the role?
I’m particularly sensitive about this area. It’s long been a bugbear of mine that people should not be allowed to piggyback on the high stakes of the Holocaust and tell stories. Unless there’s a very, very good reason to revisit it in drama, no one should be doing it. So when I knew it was a story about this time, immediately my antenna went up. But Maurice was the very opposite of every victim that I’d ever seen. He’s an unapologetic womanizer, a drinker, and lover of life.”
This is a year when there’s a lot of Holocaust movies out. How is Good distinct from them?
Apart from one scene at the end, this is set in the thirties. The thirties were a time when Germany was absolutely coming to life, it was blooming — it just so happened that a small sect of society was having their civil rights curtailed. The ability of most normal Germans to compartmentalize what they really vehemently disagreed with parallels my own daily life. We live in a society where people are detained without trial, when my government’s torturing in my name. I don’t think we need to imagine. It’s what’s happening now.
The truth is I still have qualms about whether it was right to be doing it. Somewhere inside I had this niggle about what I was doing and whether it was right and whether this is a story to tell from that time. I remember seeing Life Is Beautiful and being very upset. The story to tell of the Holocaust is not that love will save you all. Love didn’t save anybody.”
Jason Isaac’s view of Life Is Beautiful is exactly the view expressed in class. Holocaust movies should not be about love and beauty and happy endings. The holocaust was about atrocity and mass murder. The Pawn Broker is about death and atrocity – there is no happy ending; but it is a real depiction of what the holocaust can do to a person and his soul. I have not seen Good, nor have I read any other reviews of the movie. I don’t know how it will depict the holocaust. Hopefully, if a Jewish actor has such strong opinions about holocaust movies, then his movie will not have a happy ending or try to humanize the Nazi’s.
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