Viewing the great movie "The White Ribbon" is a disturbing experience

"The White Ribbon" directed by Michael Haneke. In German, with subtitles.

This is an imperfect but very powerful film about a particular Protestant German village, in a particular time, 1913. The movie does not boil down to simplistic maxims about paternalism or repression, as some reviewers have suggested. It does show a drama of how people commit and respond to evil, and there's no single maxim you can put on that.

It is a well crafted film. The details of the characters' lives, their clothes, their hair, their manners, the flies in summer -- it all made me think that this was how it had to have been. There's a lot of Bergman-like cinematography here.

Is it possible that the village children committed the crimes depicted in the film? We don't know for certain. The schoolteacher who narrates the story has his suspicions. There are several scenes in which a window's curtains are drawn, the window opened suddenly, and there they are -- the group of them, blond children, presumably innocently inquiring about the health of a stricken classmate. I found myself gripping the arm rests. It's like a Hitchcock horror film in those moments.

It may be that the film's story dramatizes one of the deep currents that led to the rise of Nazism twenty years later -- that intimate, brutal repression results in the repressed himself committing small and large acts of evil. Of course, Nazism had many other roots (the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the economic and social chaos after WW I, the German longing to recover and avenge their lost territories, and on and on), but those are themes for other movies and stories.

Arthur Miller's play "All My Sons", at the Huntington Theater

We saw the Arthur Miller play "All My Sons" this past weekend at the Huntington Theater. The word "intense" was used often by local reviewers, and that's obvious enough as you watch the play, but I thought the words "improbable" and "overwrought" were better adjectives. I appreciate the clear moral drama, the nicely formed characters, and the actors were quite good (especially Will Lyman as the father, Joe Keller), but there was something way overheated about this play. The anguished yelling from every direction went on for a long time.

Woody Allen's humorous story, "Udder Madness" in the New Yorker Magazine

Udder Madness, a short story by Woody Allen, in the January 18, 2010 New Yorker Magazine. A first person narrative from the point of view of a cow who decides to murder a guest at the farm.

I read it aloud to Marilyn. We laughed so hard, we were gasping and nearly crying. "Imagine my surprise when I lamped the triple threat I speak of and registered neither a brooding cult genious nor a matinee idol but a wormy little cypher, myopic behind balck-framed glasses and groomed loutishly in his idea of rural chic: all tweedy and woodsy, with cap and muffler, ready for the leprechauns...lunch was served on the lawn, and our friend, made bolder by a certain Mr. Glenfiddich, proceeded to hold forth on subjects he hadn't a clue about...misquoting La Rouchefoucauld, he confused Schubert with Schumann...midway, the insufferable little nudnick beat his glass for attention and then attempted yanking the tablecloth from the table without upsetting the china...I needn't tell you that this proved to be a major holocaust...catapulting a baked potato into the cleavage of a tony brunette...."

It was like the younger Woody Allen, but even funnier.

Eric Jay Dolin's readable "Leviathan: the History of Whaling in America"

Leviathan: the History of American Whaling, by Eric Jay Dolin (Norton, 2007)

Full of detail and scenery, I found this an earnest, very readable history of whaling in America, with much of the book describing the destinies and fortunes of whalers in the ports of Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts during whaling's heyday (about 1830 to 1860).

I was surprised to learn how important whale oil was to American industry, and to the history of American industry in general. It was the best lighting fuel in the world, and made life at night possible in cities all over America and Europe. There were other important products that came from whales -- ladies' corsets get mentioned a lot. But it was chiefly whale oil that industrialists and financiers made big money on.

Dolin navigates away from the moral issues that moves modern Americans, whether it's right to kill these wild, large, warm blooded mammals, and kill them nearly to extinction. He reports without contradicting the prevailing philosophy of people of the seventeenth and nineteenth century -- that these animals were meant to be hunted and harvested. I think that's fair, despite how I feel about whale hunting.

It's well researched, sometimes reading a little like an academic work. Dolin includes 75 pages of often interesting footnotes.

More about Native Son: Max's appeal for Bigger's life

More thoughts on Richard Wright's novel, Native Son (which I listened to on a Harper Audio recording).

Max, the white-haired, Jewish, Communist lawyer, defends Bigger Thomas in the court room and attempts to save him from execution. Bigger is the most despised man in America at the moment of his trial, a black man who has murdered two women, the white Mary Dalton, and his black girl friend, Bessie, though everyone knows that it is for Mary's death that he is to be executed. He is surrounded by people who hate him, except for Max and Jan (the young Communist white man who was Mary's boyfriend).

In his jail cell, Bigger wonders, "What was Mr. Max in it for?" (or thoughts to that effect). He thinks Max is "all right". But he doesn't see why Max has put himself forward to defend him. I wondered that too.

It's confusing. Max must want to clear the party of blame for involvement in Bigger's crimes. The police initially thought Bigger was inspired in some way by Communists (Bigger did, after all, sign his blackmail note as "Red" and drew a hammer and sickle in an attempt to mislead the police). But as Wright presents him in the novel, it's apparent that Max has larger motives for defending Bigger.

Near the end of the novel, during his lengthy appeal to the judge for Bigger to be spared the electric chair, Max accuses and indicts American society. This must be Richard Wright speaking through Max. His argument is the basic Marxian analysis -- we live in a system in which the labor of the poor, the oppressed, generates wealth for the upper classes. And in the process, the debasement of the poor leads to the creation of Bigger Thomases, and will continue doing so.

What an argument for saving a confessed murderer's life! Max depicts Bigger as a kind of soul-less agent of historic forces, without much of a will. Bigger's personality and character are hardly visible. There's no attempt to use the only possible argument for clemency -- sympathy for Bigger's impoverished background, for his mother, brother and sister. Max even insults the Dalton's (calling Mrs. Dalton's outlook and sensibilities "...as tragically blind" as her eyesight). The Daltons (who have lost their daughter to Bigger) are the only ones in the courtroom who could make a meaningful appeal for Bigger's life, but Max ignores that. Instead, Max gives out a lengthy ideological spiel. Max comes close to challenging the judge: send Bigger to the chair, and you contribute to the time when they (the blacks and poor whites of the country) will eventually rise up and get us.

This is an appeal guaranteed to fail. Richard Wright may have found a good stage, through Max, for presenting his ideology, but he did it at Bigger's expense.

And yet, this doesn't sink this novel. Despite its flaws, there is truth and power in this book, in its depiction of its characters and events. I can't get the scenes and words out of my head.

The novel's moving last scene, of Max talking with Bigger in his cell, just hours before Bigger is to be executed, are unforgettable, and probably make one of the best arguments for ending the death penalty I've ever read -- because it is an act of vengeance that forever ends the potential for redemption.