STAGE REVIEW: TRAIN TO ZAKOPANE

Semyon (Mike Falkow) and Katia (Tanna Frederick) in Train to Zakopane.

Nursing the hatred

By Ed Rampell

Before the world premiere of Train To Zakopane, playwright Henry Jaglom briefly introduced the drama. The noted indie filmmaker of such films as Eating and Festival in Cannes stated that the play was based on a true story his father had told him. South African surfer-turned-thespian Mike Falkow portrays the protagonist based on Jaglom`s dad, here named Semyon Sapir, in this tale set in 1928 Poland.

Act I is set on the titular train, as Semyon beats the crowd and joins a sleeper inhabited by three other passengers. Among them is the priest Father Alexandrov (Stephen Howard) and the young blonde virginal Polish beauty, Katia Wampusyk (Tanna Frederick, a regular in Jaglom's recent films). Katia is a delightful traveling companion -- excellent for one, shall we say, personality quirk and flaw: Wampusyk is a vicious anti-Semite.

Like most Jew haters her bigotry is based on a sheer ignorance Wampusyk believes is the gospel truth, which Father Alexandrov basically seconds the motion. Among other things, the Polish nurse proclaims she can spot a Jew from a mile away. Semyon debate the points, with no success. So, to teach her a lesson, Semyon -- who is reluctantly smitten by his fellow commuter -- hides the fact that he is himself Jewish and romantically pursues Wampusyk.

In Act II the two youthful lovebirds disembark at the eponymous Zakopane, a resort town in southern Poland where Wampusyk had previously worked as a nurse at an important clinic for typhoid victims. Romance ensues at an upscale hotel, as Semyon continues to hide his Jewish background from his lovely, if prejudiced, lover.

Train To Zakopane makes the powerful point that prior to the Nazis coming to power in Germany, the Poles were Europe`s – no, the world`s -- worst anti-Semites. Is this true? I don`t know, but it`s food for thought.

In any case, Train To Zakopane is probably one of the most hard hitting plays about bigotry to appear onstage in ages. Among other things, the drama ponders the notion of hiding one`s identity as a survival mechanism. In addition to Semyon`s deception, fellow passenger Nadia Selmeczy (Cathy Arden), and actress, and her brother, Nahum Gruenbaum (Jeff Elam), a doctor, are self-denying Jews who conceal their heritage. As the old saying goes, “To get along you have to go along.”

Train To Zakopane is a bit talky like, well, a Jaglom film, but it`s well-directed by Gary Imhoff, who has previously directed other Jaglom works for the theater. The drama is also well-acted; Falkow has that 1930s/1940s matinee idol appeal, with the looks and mannerisms of the suave, continental Paul Henreid and Franchot Tone, which is ideal for this period piece. Frederick manages to conjure up a character who is, at the same time, paradoxically hateful and yet so loving. Set designer Chris Stone effectively and literally sets the scene with his train and then resort hotel scenery.

This tale of strangers on a train is a thought provoking, poignant plea for tolerance. The plight of Jews in 1928 Poland, with the rise of the Nazis lurking and looming in the background, is strong stuff.(Once Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, it was out of the frying pan and literally into the fire for Poland and Europe`s Jews.) Jaglom`s play also made this Jewish reviewer reflect that that old bromide “Misery ennobles those who suffer” is a lie. If anything, misery loves company. Instead of learning from our tragic past, full of man`s inhumanity to man, just consider the ongoing pain of cosmic proportions that ultra-extremist, militaristic Zionists continue to inflict upon today`s wretched of the Earth: The Palestinians.

Will they ever learn?

 

Train To Zakopane runs through March 29  at Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica, CA, 90405. Reservations: 310-392-7327; www.edgemarcenter.org.

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FILM REVIEW: HANNAH ARENDT

Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) in Hannah Arendt.

Paying for the privilege of owning herself

By Don Simpson

Hannah Arendt begins as Adolf Eichmann is captured during a covert action by the Israeli police. Eichmann is whisked away to Jerusalem to be tried and punished for the war crimes committed against Jewish people by the Nazi government during World War II. Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) immediately submits a pitch to the New Yorker to travel to Israel to cover the trial. The New Yorker editor William Shawn (Nicolas Woodeson) jumps at the opportunity to have the highly regarded New School political theory professor -- and author of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and The Human Condition (1958) -- covering such a landmark story for them.

A German Jew, Arendt was interned during WWII in a concentration camp in France but escaped, eventually emigrating to the United States with her husband, Heinrich Blücher (Axel Milberg). Despite her firsthand experience with the Nazis, Arendt's approach to the Eichmann trial is nothing short of humanist. Arendt sees Eichmann as a government employee who took an oath in which he promised to blindly abide by the Nazi agenda. Even as a high-ranking SS officer, Eichmann merely played a small-yet-integral part of a much larger bureaucratic machine. Eichmann coordinated the transportation of Jews during WWII to various concentration camps, but it could not be proven that he ever participated firsthand in the gruesome mass murders. He was just a paper-pusher, rendered unable to think for himself by the Nazi system. Eichmann's thoughtlessness is precisely what attracted Arendt to his case.

Witnessing Eichmann's trial led Arendt to conclude that evil grew from the thoughtlessness of ordinary people who obeyed orders without consideration of the consequences of their actions. The problem was that a hyper-intellectualized lecture about "the banality of evil" was not exactly the type of coverage of Eichmann's trial that people -- especially Jews -- wanted to read in the New Yorker. They wanted journalistic reporting on the trial, not a philosophy lesson on the nature of evil. Arendt was also quite critical of the actions of some Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, thus igniting tremendous controversy and animosity toward her. Arendt was considered to be snobbish, cold and unsympathetic towards Jews. But, in her own defense, Arendt explained that anyone who writes about the Nazis and the Holocaust should attempt to understand what turns seemingly ordinary people such as Eichmann into tools of totalitarianism.

Writer-director Margarethe von Trotta's approach to Arendt is as calculated and pragmatic as the philosophies of the subject it so minutely contemplates. Rather than functioning as a frothy bio-pic, Hannah Arendt focuses on the shaping of Arendt's concept of the "the banality of evil." Practically every line of dialogue serves as a building block for Arendt's ideologies and philosophies. By way of the fiery debates that Arendt enjoys with her colleagues and friends, we witness as Arendt forms her hypotheses; and as we observe Arendt slowly digesting the transcripts from Eichmann's trial, we practically see the proverbial wheels turning inside her brain. 

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