Sunday, August 14, 2016

Anthropoid 2016 Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan


My mother was born in Slovakia and I grew up on stories. How beautiful her village was, of course. But stories of overwhelming ugliness, too. Munich, like Yalta, was an obscene word in our household. In 1938, long after Hitler had revealed that he was a rabid dog needing to be put down, the West surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hitler without firing one bullet. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the man with an umbrella, called the Munich agreement "peace for our time." One of the many reasons so few Eastern Europeans are Anglophiles.

My mother taught me about Lidice, a Czech village that, with its inhabitants, had been wiped off the face of the earth by the Nazis. The men shot, the women and children murdered more slowly, the houses razed to the ground. In fact the Nazis wiped out hundreds of villages in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

"Anthropoid" is a Hollywood movie that, at long last, tells some of the war from the point of view of desperate Czechs and Slovaks fighting the Nazis. Fanboys gripe, "How many World War II movies can you make?" One answer: chronicling of World War II will not be complete as long as major stories like Operation Anthropoid remain untold. Reinhard Heydrich was one of the worst human beings who ever lived. He chaired the Wannsee Conference that formalized the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder all Jews. He was also in charge of the Czech Republic. He brutalized the population and wiped out the resistance in short order.

Heydrich was the only top Nazi to be assassinated, although there were assassination plots against others, significantly Hitler himself. People need to know that non-Jews, as well as Jews, suffered under the Nazis. People need to know of the incredible courage and heroism of forgotten heroes who fought the Nazis. The questions of an operation like Anthropoid remain open. Is it ethical, and is it militarily strategic, to assassinate one of history's worst humans if you know that thousands of innocent people will be murdered in retaliation?

"Anthropoid" opens with two resistance fighers, Jan Kubis a Czech (Jamie Dornan) and Jozef Gabcik, a Slovak (Cillian Murphy), being parachuted into Czechoslovakia after their training in England. They must find the tiny remnants of the surviving underground and announce their assassination plan. Resistance members Ladislav Vanek (Marcin Dorocinski) and Uncle Hajsky (Toby Jones) are not immediately enthusiastic. They recognize the risks of retaliatory mass killings. They understand that this assassination may be more of a means of bringing respect to the Czechoslovak government in exile in London under Edvard Benes.

"Anthropoid" is a tense, gripping, film noir-ish film. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and I cried at the end. For hours afterward I was haunted by the film.

It's not for nothing that Steven Spielberg chose to make a glamorous, powerful, heroic, high-living member of the Nazi party the subject of his "Schindler's List." It's hard for a storyteller to tell the audience a story that has no triumphant moments, lots of death, and an ending that most filmgoers will already know.

"Anthropoid" consists largely of very tight shots on the faces of its two assassins as they live in Nazi-occupied Prague, trying to figure out a way to fulfill their mission. Scenes are dimly lit. Everyone is tense. There is little laughter or smiling. There is zero swaggering. There is a very brief moment toward the end that offers a hint of redemption. If you see the film, you will know what I'm talking about. The scene involves water, light, and a beautiful woman reaching out her hand.

The film does not take in the grand sweep of history. There are no shots of London headquarters, no fetishizing of squeaky Nazi boots or Hugo Boss uniforms. Lidice is mentioned in such an understated manner that filmgoers unfamiliar with it won't know what has been said.

"Anthropoid" offers an almost documentary look at what it is to be an assassin in a totalitarian regime. It's not fun. I was at first dubious when I heard that Cillian Murphy would be playing Jozef Gabcik. I wished for a Slovak actor. Murphy's performance is the emotional and aesthetic heart of the film. Murphy rarely allows any emotion to register on his face. He has turned himself into a killing machine. When, at a certain moment, a tear falls from his eye, that tear carries great weight. The audience knows what a courageous professional this man is.

My mother told me about Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik. When I have gone through tough times in my own life, I have used men like them to inspire me. How can I complain, when they went through so much worse? How can I give up, when they never did, through a six-hour shootout with Nazis who massively outgunned and outmanned them? How can I fail to take risks to fight evil, when a Slovak just like me managed to send to hell a man who seems to have emerged from its most fetid depths? "Anthropoid" is not a fun movie, but I'm glad I saw it. It brings me closer to the heroes it honors.



13 comments:

  1. Powerful review. There was actually a 1975 film on the same subject:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075019/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michal is there any way you would like to write a review of Operation Daybreak for the blog? And maybe you'd compare it to the Czech film which, oddly, begins and ends with German music?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lk0aIUtPM

      Delete
  2. Thank you for the invitation. It may not be for a while because of other commitments, but I'll do my best.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps it seems strange for a Czech film to use German music, on the other hand, this was the famous Beethoven's Fifth, which was used as a signal for victory by the Allies:

      http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/french-resistance/beethovens-5th-symphony/

      Delete
    2. M thank you very much for that link! Very informative!

      Delete
    3. Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the massacre at Lidice, was not in vain called "the Naziest of the Nazis". For more on this, please click on my name in this specific information.

      Delete
    4. Hello,

      Heydrich's death was the cause of Lidice massacre, so the word "architect" seems inapplicable.

      A litle off topic, a movie about Jan and Antonina Żabiński is in the making. It's titled "The Zookeeper's Wife". It is scheduled to be released on March 31, 2017.

      It's a pity that there's no movie about Operation Heads. Such a good story.

      Delete
    5. More info about 'Operation Heads':

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Heads

      Possibly the most high-profile target was Kutschera. There was also a little known plot by the Polish Resistance to assassinate Hitler in Warsaw in October 1939.

      Delete
  3. Very sorry to say that I’m not able to write a full review of the two films after all. Have been otherwise engaged and a bit pushed for time.

    What I will say, having watched both the 1975 ‘Operation Daybreak’ and the 1964 Czech film is that the Czech ‘Atentat’ features a subplot highlighting the rivalry between Canaris and Heydrich.

    The assassination of Heydrich was quite clearly sensational at the time. There were three films on the subject made in 1943. I haven’t seen any of the three but here’s some info: ‘Hangmen Also Die’ was scripted by Bertolt Brecht and, according to Wikipedia, was his only work for Hollywood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Brecht’s political leanings, the Czech resistance hero is a communist.

    ‘Hitler’s Madman’ was directed by Douglas Sirk (of ‘Magnificent Obsession’ fame) and the ‘The Silent Village’ was a short British propaganda film.

    It seems there is another film about Operation Anthropoid out soon: ‘HHhH’ (2016) is based on the French novel of the same name.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michal, hi, how nice to hear from you. I have not been on this blog in a while. I have been posting a fair amount at the Save Send Delete blog.

      It's wild that there have been so many films about the Heydrich assassination but that none have broken through to a higher level. I am a big film fan and I'm interested in WW II and i'd not heard of any of these films.

      Anthropoid, alas,didn't do much at the box office. I think it's just too downbeat of a narrative.

      I would like to see at least a clip of the Sirk film. Will peck around.

      BTW hearing from you pushed me to post. New post today.

      Delete
    2. Well here is a hideous, lurid scene from the sirk film

      http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/357458/Hitler-s-Madman-Movie-Clip-No-Way-To-Treat-Ladies.html

      Delete
  4. You're right about the 'downbeat' narrative of the Anthropoid story. So many WWII stories and experiences ended tragically. Probably the reason that 'Schindler's List' was so popular is that it ended on a relatively uplifting note, which is what most cinema audiences seem to prefer.

    I'm afraid I just didn't have enough background information about Czechoslovakia to attempt an essay. I know that Polish-Czech relations have sometimes been strained (Zaolzie, etc), but on the other hand, there was an idea floated during the war by the Polish Government-in-Exile about some kind of Polish-Czech Confederation or close alliance at any rate.

    Hope to be contributing something in the future on subjects I'm a bit more familiar with.

    ReplyDelete

Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
These themes include the false and damaging stereotype of Poles as brutes who are uniquely hateful and responsible for atrocity, and this stereotype's use in distorting WW II history and all accounts of atrocity.
This blog welcomes comments from readers that address those themes. Off-topic and anti-Semitic posts are likely to be deleted.
Your comment is more likely to be posted if:
Your comment includes a real first and last name.
Your comment uses Standard English spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Your comment uses I-statements rather than You-statements.
Your comment states a position based on facts, rather than on ad hominem material.
Your comment includes readily verifiable factual material, rather than speculation that veers wildly away from established facts.
T'he full meaning of your comment is clear to the comment moderator the first time he or she glances over it.
You comment is less likely to be posted if:
You do not include a first and last name.
Your comment is not in Standard English, with enough errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar to make the comment's meaning difficult to discern.
Your comment includes ad hominem statements, or You-statements.
You have previously posted, or attempted to post, in an inappropriate manner.
You keep repeating the same things over and over and over again.