HOLLYWOOD
JN: Why did you choose this bitter-
sweet form of humor to deal with
the Holocaust?
RM: With my nature, I don't want
to give the pleasure to the Nazis who
are still alive to show them that we
are still crying, even if we are crying.
My message is: We are alive, you did-
n't kill us, you didn't kill our joy of
life. You didn't kill our humor, our
deep identity and roots. My way to
Fight against the tragedy and the hor-
ror is not with tragedy and horror [as
in films like Schindler's List]. I can-
not fight with that.
To a gun, you can not respond
with a gun. To a gun and a bullet,
you can respond with a smile. If not,
we do the same thing that they did.
So for me, humor is a real weapon.
And they hate that. I know in
Romania, each time they tried to kill
us, to put us in prison, the only way
to resist was to be more intelligent,
spiritual and funny than they were.
That's my way.
JN: In Train of Life, you had an
encounter between the Jewish evac-
uees and a group of Gypsies.
Having grown up exposed to Gypsy
life, were you interested in showing
the similarities between the cul-
tures?
RM: It's not just the similarity.
Gypsies were killed in the Holocaust,
and in terms of percentage of sur-
vivors, Gypsies survived less than
Jewish people. I'm very sad that the
Jewish people don't try to highlight
the Gypsy history. We always talk
just about our tragedy, we don't talk
about their tragedy, and the homo-
sexuals, and the communists, and the
people who were killed just because
they were mentally ill, and I'm quite
angry with that. The Gypsy people
shared our destiny.
JN: Now that you're no longer in
Romania, have you thought of going
back to your original family name?
RM: A lot, of course. But my father (a
noted journalist) is my best friend in
the world. So I said, "OK, I'm a
Mihaileanu, and I will never deny my
father's life." I know inside I'm a
Buchman, so I don't need to show
everybody who I am. I know who I
am. I I
Twin of Life opens Wednesday,
Nov. 24, at Royal Oak's Main
Art Theatre, 118 N. Main.
(248) 542-0180.
on from page 78
some of the villagers disguised as
German guards.
Romanian writer-director Radu
Mihaileanu has created an imaginary
shtetl, a la Fiddler on the Roof with its
foolish wise men and wise fools, and
frequently pushes his bickering charac-
ters over the top.
This did not prevent him from dis-
missing Life Is Beautiful as "Shoah-
Lite," using the Hebrew term for the
Holocaust.
Professional competition aside, the
directors of the three films shared the
knowledge that they were treading on
dangerous ground. The mere use of
humor or the absurd, or even worse a
tasteless misstep, invites charges of
demeaning or trivializing the great
Jewish tragedy of the century
The protests were already leveled in
the Vilna Ghetto, where opponents of
offering plays and entertainment put up
Yiddish leaflets demanding, "Oyf a
besoylem shpilt men nit keyn teater" ("You
don't perform theater in a graveyard").
Ephraim Kishon, Israel's best-
known satirist, asked why he never
wrote about the Holocaust, answered,
"My sense of humor was consumed in
the flames of Auschwitz."
The sensitivity to Holocaust trivializa-
tion is especially acute among American
Jews, who experienced the mass slaugh-
ter secondhand, mainly through books
and films. Those who were closer, partic-
ularly survivors, are often more ready to
take a generous view of the foibles of
their fellow sufferers.
At the same time, the memory of
the Holocaust has evolved into a semi-
religion among many American Jews,
expressed through a growing prolifera-
tion of memorials, museums and
observances.
For them and others, the release of
Train ofLifi will surely re-ignite the
question of the appropriate artistic cri-
teria in representing the Holocaust,
and the danger that some works will
cross the line and fall into the abyss of
Holo-kitsch.
The memory of the Holocaust will
endure, but artistic standards and per-
spectives in interpreting it will change
over the years. Each generation must
find its own language, says Train of
Life director Mihaileanu, and he
would not be surprised if his young
son one day dealt with the subject
through the medium of a rock opera.
Holocaust scholar Michael
Berenbaum also advances a flexible
criterion, saying, "'What we ask now
of any artistic creation is, 'Is it wor-
thy? Do we learn something? Is it ulti-
mately respectful?'"
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