New Generation

The descendant of Nazi yes-men, Marc
Rothemund directed Oscar-nominated film about
a leader in Germany's resistance.

Munich

was the first
film
Kushner

(Angels In
America),
49, has writ-
ten. Suffice
it to say that
Kushner's
Roth
very dovish
views on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict were bound to attract con-
troversy, and they did. Some critics
saw those views detrimentally
influencing his screenplay and oth-
ers did not.

BENNETT
MILLER

and DAN

Futterman is nominated for
Best Adapted Screenplay. Best
known as an actor, he co-starred
on TV's Judging Amy. Capote,
his first screenplay, took six
years to complete, and
Futterman says he couldn't have
finished without the advice and
support of his wife, writer Anya
Epstein. (Anya's father is Jewish
novelist Leslie Epstein, whose
father
Julius and
uncle Philip
co-shared
Academy
Award hon-
ors for
writing the
screenplay
of

Allen

Casablanca;

her brother,
Theo, is general manager of the
Boston Red Sox.)
(See related story.)

WOODY ALLEN

Miller

Futterman

FUTTERMAN

Bennett ivIiller is nominated for
Best Director for Capote. Miller,
39, grew up in suburban New
York and was high school
friends with Capote screenwriter
Dan Futterman, 38.
When they were 16, Miller and
Futterman went to an arts camp,
and there they met and
befriended a teenaged Phillip
Seymour Hoffman (who isn't
Jewish). All three stayed in touch
in subsequent years, and
Hoffman, who plays the title role
in Capote, is now the favorite for
the Best Actor Oscar.
This is only Miller's second
film, and most critics agreed he
and Futterman did a brilliant
job showing the ethical prob-
lems that faced Truman Capote
as the famous writer penned In
Cold Blood about the murder of
a Kansas farm family.

Allen, 70, is nominated for Best
Original Screenplay for Match

Point.
The comedy/drama represent-
ed some-
thing of a
return to
form for
Allen.
Although
"Jewishness"
isn't part of
this movie,
in many
Baumbach
respects
Match Point
is reminiscent of Crimes and
Misdemeanors, the one Allen film
in which Jewishness is taken very
seriously.

NOAH BAUMBACH

Baumbach, 36, wrote and direct-
ed The Squid and the Whale; he is
nominated for Best Original
Screenplay. Squid is autobio-
graphical, although Baumbach
cautions that it should not be
seen as a straight memoir. The
movie is about the effect of a
nasty divorce on a highly literate
couple's two sons.
Like the father in the movie
(played by Michigander Jeff
Daniels), Baumbach's real-life
father is Jewish and a literature

Hollywood's on page 44

I Curt Scheier
Special to the Jewish News

es, Marc Rothemund
admits, "Germans are still
viewed with suspicion in
many countries. Not me, per-
sonally, but the older Germans,
for sure."
Rothemund, 37, is on the
phone from Los Angeles. The
film director is in the United
States promoting his latest
movie, Sophie Scholl — The
Final Days. The film has already
won several important awards,
including three Lolas (German
Oscars) and two Silver Bears
(Best Director and Best Actress)
at the Berlin International Film
Festival. And it is nominated for
an Oscar in the Best Foreign
Language Film category.
"But I must tell you," he
adds, "the warmest reaction we
got was in Israel. They invited
us to the International Film
Festival in Jerusalem. Many
Jews were crying, because
until now they thought there
was no one, not one German,
who resisted, who gave his life
for the Jews.
"They lived 60 years prejudg-
ing, and that's why they were
crying. They were thanking me
personally for doing this movie,
for keeping the past in the
heads of the young German
generation, so that they don't
forget, that they keep talking
about it, they keep thinking."
Sophie Scholl, a Munich col-
lege student, participated in
what was known as the White
Rose resistance movement. She
and other members of the
group (including her brother)
were caught and questioned by
the Gestapo. Though offered a
chance at a reduced sentence,
Scholl refused to compromise
her ideas and was executed.
Much of the 115-minute film
is based on official transcripts
of her interrogation and trial —
but some of it is imagined,
such as when she is alone in
her cell and first realizes she
won't be going home. "We took
great care to make her
human," Rothemund said.
Scholl may not be well known
outside Germany but became in
the post-war years a symbol of
the small resistance movement
within Germany, in much the

y

way Martin Luther King, Jr. rep-
resents the civil rights move-
ment in the United States.
In fact, Rothemund's is the
third German film to retell the
White Rose resistance story,
following Michael Verhoeven's
The White Rose and Percy
Aldon's The Five Last Days.
"There are 190 schools
named after her and hundreds
more named after other mem-
bers of the White Rose,"
Rothemund said, noting that
the movement is a point of
pride teachers can point to as
well as a counterpoint to the
bad stuff.
"We are taught in a very
detailed way," the history of the
war, Rothemund says, "includ-
ing all the crimes, the concen-
tration camps. And they also
teach us about the few German
resistance fighters who gave
their lives for freedom."
Rothemund grew up in
Munich, where the White Rose
movement was spawned. While
it was the city of the move-
ment, it was also the city of the
Nazis. The Allies occupied virtu-
ally the entire center of town
around Koenigsplatz after the
war, some 80 buildings, includ-
ing one where Hitler lived.
"That means, as a young pupil
who grew up there, I was always
confronted with the past."

Personal Lessons

There were three or four
Jewish students in his school,
he says. "It was not a big topic
for young people. When we
learned about it in school,
there was a great distance
[between myself and the
events]. I couldn't feel any
guilt. I felt ashamed for my
grandparents' generation."
Rothemund didn't have to go.
to school for his history les-
sons. His grandfather fought
for Germany in Finland, where
he was wounded and lost an
eye. He survived the war but
died from complications of the
wounds four decades later,
when he was in his 60s.
The director's grandmother
was a Nazi Party member, a
champion athlete "who was
pampered, took the money and
didn't care where it came from.
She said, 'Heil Hitler.'

"And after the war, she
refused to talk about it. There
were tremendous arguments
between her and her son. This is
typical for a whole generation of
German yes-men and followers,
not talking about it after the war
— not to their children or grand-
children.
"My father always asked his
father about this time. 'Why did

you become
a soldier?
Why did you
go to the
front?' He
didn't get
any answers,
Director Marc
and that's
Rothemund
why he edu-
cated me in a
most liberal manner, far away
from any politics."
It is also part of the reason
Rothemund made this film. "It is
the responsibility of the grand-
children to ask questions. We
are the last generation that will
be able to ask eyewitnes-ses."
Times have changed, for the
better, he says. Sure, there is
still that "stupid 5 percent"
who hate everyone — Jews,
Turks, Muslims. But they are
the minority. Jews can live
comfortably in Germany. And
many have become quite suc-
cessful, he says.
Rothemund notes that he
has a number of good friends
who are Jewish. And, in fact,
the assistant director of Sophie
Scholl lost 80 members of his
own family during the war.
"For my generation," says
Rothemund, "the World War is
far away, and we treat it all like
everyone else."

❑

March 2

9

2006

43

