Filmwell: Movie Nazis and After the Truth
My comrade over at Filmwell, Mike Hertenstein, has recently posted a fascinating review/essay on the questions raised by After The Truth, a German film that wonders what would’ve happened if Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death”, had returned to Germany to stand trial for his crimes.
If the film teases with a reassuring moral closure, it whips it away to reveal the gaping Abyss, waiting to suck us all in. Auschwitz remains the great debunker of Grand Narratives, and little ones, too. And this is where the film has always haunted me the most: watching Mengele scribbling incessantly on his memoirs, his side of the story, his truth — like so many other Nazis did, Eichmann, Albert Speer — like all of us do. One way or another, we’re all perfecting our narrative, our version of history — exonerating, explaining, excusing, blaming, polishing: even as we watch this film. We may be stunned to find that the onscreen narrative-making falls into precise sync with our own. Perhaps it will be the moment we’re telling ourselves that, no matter what we’ve done, we’re not as bad as Nazis (one of the chief pleasures of Nazi movies!) If we catch our reflection in Josef Mengele, God grant our response will be the most honest one: there but for the Grace of God, go I.
Of course, those of us who still believe in God, after Auschwitz, carry the additional burden of reconciling another pair of competing narratives: this weighty historical record, and the story of a loving, just and powerful God. Whether or not any of us want to go there depends on how far we’re willing to let this film take us into the — into “the truth.” Can any of us really handle The Truth? Certainly the dogged quest for the truth was the undoing of Oedipus.
Most people, even in the face of cracks in any of their well-crafted narratives, would probably rather live in one sort of denial or another. But whatever lies beneath the surface generally always finds a way to get out and wreak havoc — characteristically, in projections of them onto the nearest available Evil Other. The Jews. The Witches. The Satanists. The Terrorists. The Evangelicals. The Guest Speaker. Even the Nazis, ironically — not to let the Nazis off the hook. Just to suggest there may be room for more of us on that hook than we might prefer to think.