© Global Look Press / ZUMAPRESS / Reiner Bajo
A Hidden Life, Dir: Terrence Malick, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2019
by Terrence Malick celebrates an Austrian farmer's Christian principled opposition to Hitler, and any attempts to draw a parallel between the movie and anti-Trump resistance are myopic at best.
The new film is the true story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic farmer in Austria who is conscripted into the German Army during WWII and must choose between his conscience, and pledging allegiance to Hitler and the Third Reich.
Jagerstatter's conscientious objections to Nazism come with dire legal consequences that put his life in peril and leave his mother, wife, and three young daughters pariahs in their small village community.
The movie, which stars a who's who of European actors, including August Diehl, Bruno Ganz, Michael Nyqvist, Franz Rogowski, and Mathias Shoenaerts, may be difficult for non-cinephiles to absorb as Malick, who has made such classics as
Badlands,
The Thin Red Line, and
The Tree of Life, has a storytelling style that is more meditative and impressionistic than general audiences may be conditioned to accept. That said, the film is as dramatically profound and insightful as anything I have seen all year.
Although
A Hidden Life was in development before Trump became president,
some out here in Hollywood have interpreted the film as a metaphor for the moral imperative to resist Trump. I think that interpretation is myopic at best, and believe that
the movie is unintentionally a scathing indictment of the moral vacuity and hypocrisy at the heart of the anti-Trump resistance.
The main point I took away from the film is that moral authority is essential if opposition to evil is to endure. Franz Jagerstatter had an abundance of moral authority because
his loyalty was not to country, village, leader, party, policy or even church, but to the truth.
Comment: As usual with mass shootings of this sort, reports of multiple shooters are in conflict with the official narrative of a "lone shooter." This case is no different, so far. Despite initial official reports of a single gunman, Russian media sources quoted eyewitnesses reporting up to 3 gunmen. But RT is reporting that officials are now denying reports of multiple shooters. So the situation is still confused. But live Russian-language coverage claimed that the FSB confirmed that there WERE 3 shooters, one of whom was highly trained, another who was holed up in the FSB HQ parking lot. Two of the shooters are reported dead, and special forces are reportedly planning to attack the third in the parking lot.
The identity of the shooter who was killed by the FSB has yet to be established.
RT reports: UPDATE (Dec. 20)
Reporting has been all over the place on this one. It seems the Russian authorities have settled on a single shooter. Footage emerged of his final moments:
The shooter had a Kalashnikov, and ended up injuring a total of 5 and killing 2 (one who was described as a police officer in some reports, but was apparently an FSB employee/guard, and another FSB employee who later died from his wounds). A witness says he was constantly reloading his rifle and shooting indiscriminately at the wall of nearby houses. The shooter has been identified as Evgeny Manyurov, a 39-year-old ex-security guard described as a loner and firearms enthusiast: A loner, a poor shooter, the FSB's HQ targeted despite no apparent motive, and mystery calls from English-speaking 'Arabs'.
Hmmm, it sounds like this could be yet another 'wet-op'. But the Russian authorities, like the US authorities lately with the 'random mass shootings' in Pensacola and New Jersey, have elected to 'eat them' by playing them down rather than hyping them in the media.