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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