nagging questions

In While writing his book Bad Elements, Ian Buruma had the opportunity to visit with many of China’s exiled dissidents. Buruma explains why he was drawn to these fierce men, who had endured years of incomprehensible torture only to emerge more determined than ever to fight back.

Like most [Europeans] of my generation, born just after the war in a country that had been under Nazi occupation, I have always been haunted by the moral dilemmas we never had to face. How would we have behaved? Would I have risked everything? Would I have broken under torture? There is no answer to such questions, but still I look for hints [in those fierce men], not so much to understand my own morbid preoccupations as to gain some larger insight into human nature.

(p. 103)

Like Buruma, I too have been haunted by these questions, and it’s true that there is no answer to them. But I saw a movie last week that plumbed the depths of these mysteries: Fighter, a documentary about two Czech survivors of Nazism and Stalinism—one lamb (so to speak) and one lion:

“I tell you: there was never a trip like this before- the motives are terribly sad, but we are going to have a lot of fun. This is another dimension of history.”

With these words two unconventional 70-year olds, Arnost Lustig and Jan Wiener, set out to revisit the Europe of their childhoods. But the two friends are only partially right: the trip will take take them on an original and unorthodox exploration of the Holocaust, revealing moments of joie de vivre, fighting spirit, romance and humor. It is, however, not nearly as pleasant a journey as they had expected.

Beginning as an historical biography, Fighter becomes a psychological drama as the trip becomes a contentious clash of ideologies, personalities, and life paths.

This film is another casualty of 9/11. It opened that week.

Netflix it. You won’t regret it.