Past, Present, and Pretense

The American author F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: ‘Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy’. Rachel Brener (played by Neta Garty), the protagonist in Assaf Bernstein’s debut feature Ha-Hov (2007), a Mossad agent, became a hero—to the Israeli Secret Service, in particular; and the people of Israel in general—way back in 1964, the moment she and her two fellow agents Zvi (Itay Tiran) and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) emerged from an aircraft waving and smiling.  For the trio had brought to culmination a manhunt that had lasted fifteen long years by killing Maximilian Reiner (Edgar Selge) , alias ‘The Surgeon of Birkenau’, the biggest Nazi criminal apprehended by the state of Israel.

Thirty-three years later, the elderly Rachel (portrayed by veteran actress Gila Almagor, who played Eric Bana’s mother in Spielberg’s Munich [2005]), still very much a national hero, who has recently published her biography titled My Mission, receives the first minor jolt to her conscience when a member of a military troop to whom she is recounting her famous exploit asks her ‘How do you know you’re doing the right thing?’ 

This is because for over three decades now, Rachel has been harbouring a secret from the eyes of the world, much the same way she has been concealing a scar on her left cheek—a memento from the dreaded surgeon—with makeup. That deeply guarded secret now threatens to disrupt the veneer that she has so meticulously maintained since the moment she landed on Israeli soil alongside her two co-agents. Rachel suffers the second—more significant—jolt on the night of a party to celebrate the launch of her biography, when Zvi (Alex Peleg), now bound to a wheelchair, pays her a visit and hands her a newspaper clipping. The news report is about an octogenarian named Nikolai Bazorov, who is bedridden at a nursing home in a town not far from Kiev. Bazorov claims to be Maximilian Reiner.

It is quite apparent from the conversation between Rachel and Zvi that what is perceived by all and sundry to be their most famous accomplishment is nothing but a big, fat lie. To continue this charade, the truth about the claim made by Bazorov has to be found out. 

As the film effortlessly alternates between the 1960s and the 1990s, we find the younger versions of Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud in Berlin, preparing to set in motion the plan that has been entrusted on them. We find the ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ is now an obstetrician. The same individual who had conducted unspeakable atrocities in the name of science on countless Jews and had sent them to their death is ironically running a clinic with his wife, where he aids in awakening lives growing inside wombs. 

While most Hollywood directors would have found it difficult not to give in to the temptation of showcasing at least some spying techniques and gadgetry, Bernstein eschews such gimmicks (except in one instance, involving a hidden camera) and builds up the tension, instead, through interactions and conversations, especially between Rachel and the ‘doctor’. In scenes reminiscent of Lewis Gilbert’s Operation Daybreak (1975), we find Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud getting acquainted with the former Nazi’s daily routine in order to determine where, when, and how they could bring their plan to fruition.

Even though the kidnapping takes place smoothly, unforeseen hitches arise in deporting Reiner back to Israel; and the trio is assigned the job to feed, shave, and keep constant vigil on their bound and gagged captive. But, soon enough they find out that even though years have passed since he committed his last ‘experiment’ on hapless Jews, Reiner still possesses a seething disdain towards the race. Moreover, the skilled surgeon has an uncanny knack of finding the raw nerve in each of the three Mossad agents; and is equally adept at manipulative mind games as he is with a speculum. As days pass by, and reasons beyond the control of Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud keep stalling Reiner’s deportation, their frustration begins to grow. Seizing this opportunity, the shrewd surgeon plays on his captors’ weaknesses, until the unthinkable happens.

Rachel has always held herself responsible for what happened on that fateful night. So, even though age is no longer by her side, she takes it upon herself to finish what she should have over three decades ago. But as she embarks on her journey to Ukraine, little does she know that life will yet again pull a surprise or two on her.

Winner of four Ophir Awards (the Israeli version of the Academy Awards), Ha-Hov’s basic storyline—that of a dreaded Nazi living amongst us—has already been touched upon by films like The Odessa File (1974), Marathon Man (1976), Tras el Cristal (1987), and Apt Pupil (1998), to name just a few. But Bernstein’s endeavour differentiates itself from these aforementioned films simply by offering a much broader perspective to the ‘identity’ factor. While other movies dealing with the same subject have focused primarily on unmasking a German war criminal, Bernstein has not only weaved in the dual identity element in each of his film’s primary characters, but has also depicted how horrific events during World War II continues to forge the identity of Israel as a nation. Being an Israeli himself adds that extra bit of authenticity in what he has depicted on celluloid. It also helps that none of his three chief characters exhibit even a semblance of ‘heroics’ that we are so accustomed to when watching a film involving ‘secret agents’. In fact, they are as human as they come—replete with all the usual frailties, faults, and failings.

Although the  history of cinema does present more than a few evidences to the contrary, it remains a fact that second-hand knowledge is often second-best to what has actually been experienced either at the personal level or as part of collective consciousness. And that is precisely why, the Hollywood remake of Ha-Hov, titled The Debt (2010) starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciarán Hinds might not only feel like an infructuous exercise, but one that will, in all probability, fail to touch a chord, because it runs the risk of also being labeled as ‘pretentious’.  

Camera, Creatures, and Conflict

Every culture has its own mystical, mythical creatures. The English have their grindylow; the Irish their leprechaun; the Americans have bigfoot; the German their doppelgänger; the Greeks have their cyclops and gorgon; the Scandinavians their kraken; the Arabs have djinns; the Slavs have vampires; the Scots have the Loch Ness monster; the Jewish have their leviathan; the Japanese have oni; while we, the Hindus have our danavas, rakshasas, and icchadhaari nags.

In his second directorial venture, Trolljegeren a.k.a. TrollHunter (2010) the Norwegian director André Øvredal has brought to life a similar legendary creature from Nordic folklore—the troll, which is typically a hideous cave-dwelling being that is as old as the mountains and forests in which it dwells. 

Narrated in a found-footage format—a genre pioneered by Ruggero Deodato in his notorious Cannibal Holocaust (1980); that includes The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity (2007), REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008), and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)—we are informed via a disclaimer at the beginning of the film that what we are about to see is an uncut version of almost five hours of footage found in two hard drives. Unlike most other examples of this particular genre, which jar the senses and leave behind a feeling of motion sickness due to the epileptic seizures that seem to grasp the camera in a stranglehold every now and then, the found-footage style actually works for Trolljegeren. This is simply because it treats the narrative style not as a gimmick, but as a visual representation of its basic premise—fairy tales.

After all, in our childhood, those stories were brought to life by someone else—our parents or even our grandparents—who read them to us. We saw in our mind’s eye what they described while narrating the awe-inducing worlds hidden within those pages. In Trolljegeren, we see what three college students: Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterus), Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) encountered while they accompanied Hans (Otto Jespersen), an unsung hero of Norway—a hunter whose identity and profession are both a national secret—in his perilous missions aboard his UV-floodlight equipped, armoured with iron spikes Land Rover.

It is a classic fairytale set up. Three characters, who depict our mind (Thomas, the reporter), eyes (Kalle, the cameraman), and our ears (Johanna, the sound recordist) befriend an intrepid hunter of mythical creatures and embark on the adventure of their lifetime. As the trio gradually eases their way into Hans’ life and livelihood, we, too, find ourselves warming up to this gruff, physically scarred man, and beginning to buy into his eccentricities.

We learn how Hans, an ex-Navy man, is the sole troll hunter in the whole of Norway—a job he has been silently carrying out for over three decades. We realise how officials from the country’s wildlife advisory board are involved in creating a smokescreen about trolls’ existence, by hoodwinking the general public in believing that it is bears or tornadoes that are uprooting trees and shifting boulders. Most importantly, we get an insight into these centuries-old creatures. While tracking trolls with remarkable names such as raglefant, tusseladd, and dovregubben, Thomas, Johanna and Kalle find out that some trolls have three heads, while others are giants; the best way to avoid being sniffed out by a troll is to rub one’s body with troll stink; they love to chew on old tyres, though their normal diet is rocks; they are nocturnal creatures, who can detect Christian blood from afar; and that ultraviolet rays are fatal to trolls—a burst of it and they are likely to turn to stone or simply explode. 

But such pedantic knowledge pale in comparison to the first-hand experience of coming face-to-face with a three-headed tusseladd. The initial fear of having a giant creature stomping towards the camera while uttering a blood-curdling roar soon makes way to the glee that follows the realisation that the bedtime stories one had listened in rapt attention to during our childhood were in fact true! We find this emotion writ large on Johanna’s face once Hans calcifies the monstrous creature using UV ray floodlights. Øvredal had, in fact, portended that the character who would be the first to embrace the fact that trolls could be around us had to be Johanna when he had focused on her playing with a stuffed tiger that looked like Hobbes. Surely, a girl who believes in a talking tiger would be more susceptible to a towering troll!

Like a seasoned storyteller, the two-film-old Øvredal, and his co-writer Håvard S Johansen are both aware that the spine of any story, fairy tale or otherwise, is conflict. While the clash between man and beast is evident in the title of the film itself—with a reference to the adverse effect of global warming on flora, fauna, and wildlife thrown in for good measure—there are other, more subtle, allusions, as well. Hans reveals he hates his job, not so much because the pay is meagre and he has to work nights, but because he regrets having to massacre pregnant, and even young trolls, who can barely walk. At a more broad level, the perpetual discord between fantasy and reality—and our preponderance to find a ‘natural solution’ to everything—is brought to the fore when Øvredal offers a faux-scientific explanation to why trolls cannot stand sunlight and any other source of ultraviolet radiation. It is as if sunlight is a metaphor for the light of knowledge and rationality that turns these walking mythical creatures into immobile rubbles of stone. And therein lies a similarity with us. While for humans it is ashes to ashes and dust to dust, these concrete-eating creatures return to stone.

In keeping with the fairy tale flavour, Øvredal has also peppered his film with humour. It is impossible to keep a straight face when a ghillie suit attired Hans burst out of the jungle screaming ‘Trolls!’ or when a Polish guy expresses in broken English his desire not to ask questions because it might lead to problems he would love to avoid by uttering, ‘Why problem make when you know problem have you don’t want to make?’ Perhaps, the best example of humour occurs at the fag end of the film. In sync with the essence of Trolljegeren, which mixes fantasy with reality, Øvredal takes an actual footage of a press conference by the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, where he had mentioned the word ‘troll’. Though the context was different—the politician was actually referring to an oilfield beyond the Norwegian coast, which has the same name as the mythical creature—the innovative editing does elicit smiles. 

As a filmmaking fraternity, the Nordic industry has been experiencing a second coming of late. In 2009, Norway burst into the limelight with the Nazi zombie flick Død Snø, or Dead Snow. A year later, the Finns turned the concept of Santa Claus on its head with the superlative Rare Exports. Now, with Trolljegeren, Øvredal has succeeded in something that has for a long time been the realm of directors like Spielberg—reliving our childhood, revisiting our infantile fantasies, and reaffirming our belief in them. 

Vérité, Viewer, and Violence

Even though the option of shooting in colour was available as far back as 1908, throughout the history of cinema, filmmakers have reverted to black-and-white for myriad reasons. Hitchcock opted for it in Psycho (1960) because he believed the graphic violence depicted in the film would be too gory in colour. However, some critics believe the reasons were more practical than aesthetic—for instance, the difference between chocolate syrup (which was used in the much-celebrated shower scene) and blood is easily discernible in colour footage. There are still others, who are of the opinion the real reason behind shooting Psycho in monochrome was a tight budget. Ironically, it is colour that played a part in Scorsese deciding to film the gritty Raging Bull (1980) in black-and-white. It is said that when the British film director Michael Powell pointed out an anachronism—the boxing gloves being used was of the wrong tint—Scorsese chose to forsake hues altogether. Spielberg, on the other hand, followed the same logic as Hitchcock, while filming his Holocaust saga Schindler’s List (1993) in black-and-white. Evoking a sense of nostalgia might have contributed, too. 

Aestheticity and authenticity aside, if there ever was a movie that needed to be made in monochrome, it, arguably, is the Belgian cult favourite Man Bites Dog (originally Cest arrivé près de chezvous, or It Happened in your Neighbourhood). Directed by three rookie filmmakers—Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde; who co-wrote the screenplay and also co-starred in the production, while working on a shoestring budget—it brings to the fore the darkest side of human nature and makes an incisive statement on our obsession with televised tragedy, all the while lacing the bitter message with a generous dollop of black humour.

Shot in cinema vérité style— Rémy, André, Benoît, and quite a few secondary characters retain their original first names in the film, to add to the authenticity—there is however, a subtle falsehood in the opening credit sequence. From the perspective of a train rushing through a tunnel, we are given a glimpse of light at the end. Unfortunately, those who will be able to withstand the audacious affront and stinging satire interwoven in almost every frame of this 93-minute-long exploration of voyeurism, there will be no metaphorical light once the film is over.

For, as Man Bites Dog—the title is derived from a journalistic aphorism of what constitutes news—progresses along its runtime, we, the viewer, are slowly but steadily pushed deeper and deeper into the murky world of Benoît, a serial killer, who is the subject of a documentary being produced by Rémy and his crew. No matter how improbable it might seem, in Benoît, we find a character who steals the thunder from the immensely infamous Hannibal Lecter, who had made his first appearance on celluloid just a year earlier. While Lecter was really terrifying, Benoît and his atrocities are terrifyingly real. 

To be frank, if our introduction to Benoît had been under different circumstances—within moments of appearing on screen, he drags a woman from the passageway of a moving train into his coupe and kills her with childish glee—we would have loved to hang around with him. After all, he does give the impression of a friendly guy with a goofy grin, who seems to know his F sharp from F natural; is equally at ease with topics that range from pioneering architects like Antoni Gaudi, Victor Horta, and Frank Lloyd Wright to expressionist painters such as Bernard Buffet and musicians like Charles Trenet; recites poetry impromptu; has an in-depth idea about the mating rituals of pigeons; can regale us by making any part of his body move on its own; and has an informed opinion on almost everything under the sun: from construction materials, man-woman relations, to movies starring the French actor Philippe Noiret.

Unlike most other serial-killer films that use the ploy of a mental malady like multiple personality disorder or at least offers a back story to explain the murderous trait being exhibited on screen, Man Bites Dog eschews any such ploys and makes it quite apparent that what we see in Benoît is what we get. Moreover, in contrast to others of his ilk, Benoît, a homophobic, xenophobic, racist individual who can ooze class in one moment and be utterly crass the other, is a compulsive exhibitionist, who grabs every opportunity that comes his way to reveal the tricks of his trade (for instance, the varied methods of ballasting a corpse to ensure that the body sinks and does not float when dumped into a stream) and basks in the warm glow of a sense of pride he feels in showing off as he smothers, shoots, and suffocates his ever-growing list of unfortunate victims.

One would be tempted to brand such an individual as a lunatic. But the manner in which he improvises his modus operandi (scaring an elderly woman to death by screaming at her, and thereby ‘saving one bullet’); the keen sense of observation he displays (realising that the aforementioned victim was a cardiac patient because he had immediately noticed a box of Sedocar: a drug for heart patients, in the room); the logic he provides behind going for the small fry (‘I work small and reap big’); and the unambiguous clarity he shows by asking the sound operator to bring the microphone closer so that the crunch of a neck being broken can be recorded on tape reveal that he clearly enjoys what he does and does not deny any sense of responsibility for his actions. 

While the portrayal of dastardly dealers of death on film are a dime a dozen, what elevates Man Bites Dog above the usual fare of serial killer flicks is that it makes the media—via the film crew following Benoît wherever he goes—and, as a corollary, us, the viewer, complicit in his actions. While we identify with the reluctance and trepidation that Rémy (the director of the documentary), André (the cameraman), and Patrick (the sound recordist) show when Benoît invites them for a seaside dinner after having mercilessly snuffed out another life, we also find us scurrying in our minds for the answer to a quiz question that Benoît poses to Rémy later on in the film.

As the participation of the director and his crew members gradually increases from shining the spotlight in a dark alley and changing over to the zoom lens to help Benoît locate another victim, to getting actively involved in the gangrape of a woman in front of her naked and terrified husband; to our utter horror, we discover that we, too, have been stripped of our sense of morality as we keep staring at the screen.

Winner of the International Critics’ Award at Cannes in 1992, Man Bites Dog asked several significant questions almost two decades ago that are all the more pertinent in today’s day and age of round-the-clock news channels and reality TV: What exactly is the definition of news? In their misplaced enthusiasm in getting the next ‘scoop’, is the media acting as a partner in crime? And, most importantly, are we, the viewer, influencing media or is it the other way round?