Voice Over (British, RSC English, Simon Callow perhaps):
" ... symbolic representation is not an arbitrary and artificial device; it is a part of the medieval conception of life and the world. For, to the Middle Ages, all things, without ceasing to be literal realities, are symbols of other things. The qualities of stones and beasts have a moral meaning, intended by their Creator. The events of history, likewise, in addition to their actual happening, serve as prophecies of things to come. Virgil, the great poet and sage of antiquity, is, to his understanding disciple, an inspirer of wisdom. Beatrice, from her first appearance to Dante at the age of eight, in his home city, had always impressed him as a revelation of the heavenly on earth."
Dante Aligheri, The Divine Comedy (New York: The Modern Library/Random House, 1932), from the Introduction by C.H. Grandgent, at page xiv.
Act I: "Judgment in Nuremberg."
Scene 1.
THIS ACT SHOULD BE SHOT IN BLACK AND WHITE. EVERY EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO MIRROR THE FILM VOCABULARY OF THE POST-WORLD WAR II PERIOD IN TERMS OF CAMERA ANGLES AND NOIR IMAGERY:
It is 1947. We are in a magnificent Park Avenue townhouse, decorated tastefully and yet seductively. The opulence is intended to be overwhelming and disarming to the guest entering this parlor, like a fly caught in a spider's web. French impressionist paintings, some recent Picassos, Chinese vases, Persian carpets -- all are visible to the astute observer. There is a fireplace roaring with flames. Plush comfortable furniture fills a large room. A woman enters the room. She is dressed in an Edith Head "evening creation," all in black, expensive shoes, diamond and pearl earrings, pearl necklace. She is a brunette. Her skin is like fine porcelain, large black eyes glitter and take in everything around her, her lips are thickly painted, perfect. Her smile reveals an even row of flawless and gleaming white teeth. She resembles the movie actress Giene Tierney, except that her features are illuminated by a powerful and ruthless intelligence as well as mirth. She appears blissfully happy, delighted, like a child with a new toy. A large grandfather clock from the previous century strikes twelve o'clock -- she hears the chimes at midnight -- also a knock at her front door. A butler is sent to answer the door. We detect a recording of Wagner's "Sigfried" playing softly in the background.
CUT TO:
A man is standing at the front door to this establishment. He resembles the actor Gregory Peck, as seen in "Gentlemen's Agreement." He is very thin, undernourished. He is wearing a worn tuxedo. He can use a good haircut. His shoes are good, but well-worn. He wears an old watch -- a Hamilton mechanical that is stopped at midnight -- a handkerchief is tucked neatly into his jacket pocket. He is carrying a copy of Baruch Spinoza's "Ethics" and the Hebrew Bible. He coughs, painfully, into his handkerchief. He is a wearing a yamulke.
An avuncular butler in morning coat opens the front door, offers a sinister smile, steps back, inviting the expected guest to enter the premises. The butler indicates that the man should follow through a long hallway offering glimpses of magnificent rooms filled with art and many roaring fireplaces, sighs and whispers can be heard that hint of unimaginable pains and sufferings. We hear Sigfried's magnificent music wafting through the immense halls and empty rooms that seem to contain billions of agonies. As the man walks through the rooms, there is a look of concern and pain on his features. We sense that the very air reaches out to him.
LUCI: "Well, you're right on time as usual."
She laughs, gestures at the empty seat before the thin man. A magnificent tray contains two exquisite goblets -- perhaps seventeenth century Venetian glass -- and a bottle of costly and rare Merlot dating from before the recently ended war.
JESHUA: "When it is your turn to host these meetings I like to be on time."
LUCI: "Make yourself comfortable. How long has it been since you've had a good meal?"
JESHUA: "These are difficult times."
LUCI: "You amaze me." To the butler: "Bring us some French food, the best."
We notice that the butler is wearing a metallic name tag that says: MEPHISTOPHELES. With a theatrical bow, he leaves the room.
JESHUA: "I think we should get down to our agenda for the next term."
LUCI: "Relax, there's so much I want to say to you. I've missed you. You know, you guys often mistake my intentions. I can be very affectionate. I've always had a warm spot in my heart for you."
JESHUA: "I would feel uncomfortable enjoying a fine meal with all the suffering that I've seen during the war."
LUCI: "Wars are when smart investors make money. Business is really great for me. You're always worrying about the little people. Stop carrying the burdens of the world on your shoulders. Enjoy life. What's the matter with you? Are you still worried about pleasing your dad? Adjust."
JESHUA: "I don't know if any of us can do that adjusting to evil in the world."
LUCI: "Listen, it's all about how much fun you've had. Eternity is not as long as it used to be. Enjoy it while you can. There are some amazing good times to be had. What are you killing yourself for? What are you going to get? a medal? Evil can be fun."
A table is wheeled into the room by two extraordinarily beautiful women, a blond and brunette in low-cut and revealing kitchen uniforms. Both women smile, enchantingly, at the young man. They exit the room, slowly, knowing that the young man is looking at them.
LUCI: "You'd like my friends. They're both interested in philosophy -- especially, nihilistic existentialism."
JESHUA: "You know about my interest in philosophy?"
LUCI: "Not much gets past me. I think it's kind of charming. I always expected you to outgrow that sort of thing."
JESHUA: "I don't get much guidance about goodness and truth."
LUCI: "Nobody does. He keeps the good stuff for Himself. I doubt that he really cares about any of us." Looking at the young man's book. "Spinoza was so repressed. You'd be amazed. Lord knows I tried to help him."
JESHUA: "I don't accept that."
LUCI: "Open your eyes. You were just as stupid in the desert that time. Remember? Are you going to tell me that any loving father would let a son go through that agony? Come on. Get it through your skull: He hates all of us."
JESHUA: "I can never see human life in your terms."
Luci rises from the seat directly accross from Jeshua. She makes a show of her blinding beauty by walking with great elegance to the table. A plate of eighteenth century porcelain from Dresden and fine silver is in her hand.
LUCI: "Can I serve you a little something? I don't want you to leave hungry ... not in any sense of the word."
JESHUA: "No, thank you. I must insist that we get down to our terms."
A look of rage briefly enters Luci's eyes. She waves casually over the table that slowly fades into the air.
LUCI: "I think you guys will have to concede this century and millennium to me. After recent events in Europe and Asia there should be no point in discussing the human moral capacity nor the possible perfectibility of man and woman. There can be no further nonsense, surely, about the reality of goodness or truth."
JESHUA: "I don't agree."
LUCI: "Wake up, kid. What are you trying to accomplish with these naked apes? They are disgustingly cruel, delighting in torturing one another. Murder and theft come easily to these creatures that partake of your Father's so-called 'divine essence.' If I am right about them, then I must be correct about the sinister worm in His 'perfect' Being and disgusting creation. Face it, life is shit and then people die."
JESHUA: "He's your Father, too."
LUCI: "Don't remind me. We never got along -- and I knew Him long before you did! Look, the experiment is a failure. Admit it. Wipe the slate clean. Give up on these animals. There is no transcendence in their natures, no aspect of them that is elevated or that can rise above their animal needs and drives. I am a behaviorist and nihilist. Hitler exaggerated a little, but he had some good points. Hitler was right for Germany at the time that he came to power whatever they think about him today."
She rises, concentrating all of her astonishing beauty and seductive powers on the young man. There is a sweet lingering sleep that gathers around him. He is relaxed and utterly comfortable in a powerful stillness. She seems to melt into the space next to him, gently takes his hand, and whispers:
LUCI: "Come with me ..."
Scene 2:
CUT TO:
We are suddenly in the midst of a concentration camp, Auschwitz, 1944. We see the barbed wire in the distance, emaciated, sick and weak people, poorly clothed and shivering against the cold are working. Fat guards in long coats are laughing among themselves. Many of the inmates at this place display signs of beatings, bruises, wounds, some have visibly broken limbs that have received no medical attention, almost all are sick. The smoke from the crematoria is pervasive and seems to delight, Luci, who breathes in the sacharine smell as though it were an exquisite perfume even as ashes enter her hair and clothing. She is smiling, chuckling with a near orgasmic delight at the misery all around her in which she bathes.
LUCI: "Will you speak to me of the dignity of man in this marvelous setting? I only provided a gentle hint here and there. This place of abject horror is the work of men and women. Let us arrange for a seminar with the philosophers of your choice set against mine. We will schedule the symposium to take place in this stage of human cruelty and tragedy. Perhaps as the crematoria are kept busy. Let us invite the media. Celebrities may appear and speak for both sides. We will record the experience for posterity. Do you honestly believe that your 'optimism' about human nature has the slightest chance to prevail with persons of normal intelligence in such a setting?"
They walk through the facilty, very slowly, being invisible to the inhabitants.
LUCI: "Look at the eyes of these animals. Consider their fat, stupid faces. Examine these creatures that are the bizarre results of Mr. Darwin's evolutionary catastrophes. The dinosaurs were morally superior. At least those humble reptiles were incapable of deliberately and pointlessly causing suffering to their fellow creatures. This place and others like it -- by the end of the century we expect 70-to-100 million persons to be tortured and murdered by their 'brothers and sisters in God's love' -- are my temples. Is this Shakespeare's 'paragon of animals'? Do you expect me to bow to these creatures because 'He' -- in his infinite wisdom -- claims that they burn with a divine spark? You and all of the celestial host have become absurd and laughable. Religions are a joke."
JESHUA: "Even here -- in this place of horror and suffering -- I see acts of kindness and concern. There is love and self-giving. There are glimpses of heaven in a man's effort to comfort a woman by warming her hands as she struggles against the cold."
Jeshua walks towards one of the older inmates on the verge of death and whispers, soothingly, places an invisible arm around the victim's shoulder, allows his breath to warm the man's hands, lifts him to his full height and guides his steps.
LUCI: "I will call one of your own as a hostile witness."
A man appears in a monk's habit. He is bald, middle-aged, American.
BROTHER THOMAS: "Given the right situation and another Hitler, places like Auschwitz can be set up, put into action, kept running smoothly, with thousands of people systematically starved, beaten, gassed, and whole crematories going full blast. Such camps can be set up tomorrow anywhere and made to work with the greatest efficiency, because there is no dearth of people who would be glad to do the job, provided it is sanctioned by authority. They will be glad because they will instinctively welcome and submit to an ideology which enables them to be violent and destructive without guilt. They are happy with a belief which turns them loose against their fellow [man,] to destroy him cruelly and without compunction, as long as he belongs to a different race, or believes in a different set of semi-meaningless political slogans."
LUCI: "Anonymity makes it child's play to arrange for pillars of the community to enjoy inflicting pain on family members and friends, let alone despised strangers. Informing and betraying personal trust are even easier for most men and women in exchange for a small fee or a compliment from authority figures."
BROTHER THOMAS: "It is enough to affirm one basic principle: ANYONE BELONGING TO CLASS X OR NATION Y OR RACE Z IS TO BE REGARDED AS SUBHUMAN AND WORTHLESS, AND CONSEQUENTLY HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST. All the rest will follow without difficulty."
With a glance of Luci's eyes, a prison guard is caused to become enraged and strikes an old woman in the face with his rifle.
Luci delights in using anxiety, self-doubt, fears and other psychic wounds, like frustrations, to inflict emotional torments -- inducing thoughts of suicide -- preferably in the minds of children and young people or the very old and sick persons.
BROTHER THOMAS: "As long as this principle is easily available, as long as it is taken for granted, as long as it can be spread out on the front pages at a moment's notice and accepted by all, we have no need of monsters: ordinary policemen and good citizens will take care of everything."
Thomas Merton, "Auschwitz: A Family Camp," in The Non-Violent Alternative (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980), pp. 158-159.
An inmate carrying a bundle collapses. Jeshua kneels and helps to carry the bundle that, suddenly, feels light in the woman's grasp. Jeshua walks towards Thomas. He smiles in the direction of the woman who fell. She rises, strong and proud, then walks slowly into the camp.
JESHUA: "Do not despair Brother Thomas. The gates of hell shall not prevail against love."
Jeshua places a hand on the shoulder of the Monk.
BROTHER THOMAS: "Effective non-violence ('the non-violence of the strong') is that which opposes evil with serious and positive resistance, in order to overcome it with good, Simone Weil would apparently have added that if this non-violence had no hope of success, then evil could be resisted by force. But she hoped for a state of affairs in which human conflict could be resolved non-violently rather than by force."
Thomas Merton, "The Answer of Minerva," in The Non-Violent Alternative, pp. 148-49 (commenting on the works and spiritual vocation of Simone Weil).
JESHUA: "A single act of loving kindness -- amidst this colossal human effort at moral suicide -- is sufficient to demonstrate that evil cannot prevail against God's creatures, that love is indestructible, and that the effort to turn any persons into instruments of an alien will must conflict and be destroyed against the rocks of human craving for freedom and the mutuality of compassion. In the end even this monument to evil and greed for pain will serve His ends by bringing about something good and beautiful."
LUCI: "You have been reading Spinoza. That's always so annoying. Very well, let us see what rabbis and Hebrew scholars have to say."
A gray-haired, pleasant looking man in a sweater and English tweeds appears:
GEORGE STEINER: "We cannot take in the figures. Conservative estimates put at circa 75 million the total of men, women, and children gunned, bombed, gassed, starved to death, slaughtered during deportations, slave-labor, and famines between 1914 and the closure of the Gulags (roughly 9 million perished amid canibalism and suicide during Stalin's elimination of the Kulaks in the Ukraine). Five British infantrymen died every fifty seconds during the first days on the Somme. Historians gauge at half a million the corpses left to rot or to be pounded into mud in the front of Verdun. Like the Weimar monetary collapse -- a billion Marks for a loaf of bread -- the hetacombs of the First World War undermined the conceptual reality of large numbers. It is a matter of macabre semantics, offensive to reason, to try and determine whether or not, and in what ways, the Shoah, the Holocaust is unique; whether or not it defines a singularity in the history of mankind. Perhaps it does. Perhaps there is no other instance, precisely analogous of ontological massacre -- this is to say, of the deliberate murder of human beings whose guilt, minutely verbalized and set out by bureaucracy, was that of being. The millions of Jews beaten, burnt, tortured, marched, starved, gassed to extinction, the men and women drowned in cess pits, the children thrown alive into fire, the old men hanged on meat-hooks, had committed the sole crime of existing. Even the fetus had to be torn out of the womb, lest there be one Jew left to bear witness, to remember (though no one would believe him or her, a point the Nazis made with derisive logic). Are the Armenian massacres, the genocide in Rwanda analogous? I do not know. What I do know is that the unspeakable technology of humiliation, torture, and butchery -- merely to cite them is to scar and in some sense dehumanize language, as I tried to show in Language and Silence (1967) -- arising out of an unresolved demonology and, it may be, self-hatred in European Christendom, created on this earth a material mirror-image of imagined Hell. Time and space were made static eternities of suffering in what the Nazis, unconsciously echoing Dante, called 'the anus of the world" (Auschwitz).
George Steiner, Errata (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 117-119.
JESHUA: "And yet, there is hope and human compassion. The infinite capacities and possibilities of the human species poised, as it is, between spiritual and animal natures, is recreated with the appearance of a single child in the world. This is the meaning of Christmas and our Festival of Lights, Professor Steiner. Both holidays celebrate the future, the embryonic Spring seen even in the full darkness of Winter."
Jeshua rises and walks slowly through the camp.
"From these ashes," we hear a newsreel-like voiceover, "a new world will be born and there will be love."
Jeshua walks to Professor Steiner and smiles then shakes the scholar's hand.
GEORGE STEINER: "Love is the dialectic of hatred, its mirror-opposite. Love is, in varying intensities, the imperative wonder of the irrational. It is non-negotiable, as is the (condemned) search for God among His infirm. To shake, in one's inmost spirit, nerve, and bone, at the sight, at the voice, at the merest touch of the beloved; to contrive, to labor, to lie without end so as to reach, to be near the man or woman loved; to transform one's existence -- personal, public, psychological material -- on an unforeseen instant, in the cause and consequence of love; to undergo unspeakable hurt and blankness at the absence of the beloved one, at the withering of love; to identify the divine with the emanation of love, as does all Platonism, which is to say, the Western model of transcendence -- is to partake of the most commonplace and inexplicable sacrament in human life. It is, within one's personal potential, to touch the ripeness of the spirit. To equate this universe of experience with the libidinal, as does Freud, to account for it in terms of biogenetic, procreative advantages, are reductions almost contemptible. Love can be the unchosen bond, to the pitch of self-destruction, between individuals blatantly unsuited to each other. Sexuality can be incidental, transient, or altogether absent. The ugly, the wretched, the most evil among us can be the object of disinterested, impassioned eros."
Errata, pp. 188-189.
JESHUA: "Thank you, Professor Steiner."
Scene 3:
CUT TO: A storm erupts, lightning, thunder. Luci, enraged, returns the debate to the drawing room in her townhouse. Persons are "rodents" -- "sacks of protein and water" -- to be manipulated or destroyed in order to confirm her views of human nature. Luci is enraged even by the suggestion of altruism or beauty, goodness or self-giving in humanity. Luci takes great pleasure in destroying books, burning paintings, inserting "errors" in written texts, destroying statues and trashing musical instruments.
LUCI: "It is very easy to say that a single act of love mediates or restores the moral order in the face of such atrocities. From my point of view it is too little to make much difference. There is, I grant you, one Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but there are many more like Eichman and Mengele, Himmler and Hitler."
Jeshua reaches for a cardboard cup of coffee that appears in his hand. Luci sips from an exquisite Sung tea cup.
JESHUA: "You are deliberately misunderstanding my argument. I am not suggesting that these great human crimes are anything but horrible or evil, that they are unjust and criminal is made evident in humanity's own legal proceedings and chronicles of history. I am explaining where this 'divine spark' that you cannot see is to be found. Furthermore, I insist that this spark illuminates the universe. With all of your brilliance, you are 'The Angel of Light' -- I have always admired your meticulous attention to detail and diligence -- your blindness to moral reality and meanings that are multiplying before your eyes makes you dull to the point of insensibility. What is crucial is precisely all that you cannot see, or feel, in the human condition. Love, not sex. Love. ... And all that love makes possible, even at Auschwitz. Find me the creature, other than man or woman, who will not only sacrifice his or her life for love of another but who will -- through that love -- transform hell into heaven."
The temperature in the room becomes sweltering, music becomes threateningly loud, even painful, laughter is heard when the word "love" is uttered. Against this din, Jeshua remains cool and calmly rational, setting forth terms for the next session of history.
Luci laughs at much of what he says, surrounds Jeshua with beautiful and nearly naked "assistants" as he comments on terms and they agree to a date for a future conference.
All attempts at distraction fail.
Jeshua exists the townhouse, walks slowly towards Washington Square and NYU.
Jeshua stops to glance at an old Synagogue, smiles, then walks slowly downtown.
Act II: "Writings in the Dust."
Scene 1:
IMAGES ARE NOW IN COLOR; CAMERA MOVEMENT MAY BE JITTERY; HAND-HELD CAMERAS LEND A DOCUMENTARY FEEL TO THE FILM; TEMPO IS MORE STACCATO, ABRUPT.
The time is today. We are at a busy and modest retaurant in New York's Chinatown. "Great New York Noodletown," at 28 1/2 Bowery, New York, N.Y. 10013. There is excellent take-out service. The dumplings are to die for! We see an attractive Chinese woman working in the kitchen, preparing delicious food, as people stand on line to get a table. A slim and athletic man in a perfect dark blue suit, gray hair, expensive white shirt, red silk tie, accompanied by a chauffeur enters the premises. This man is immediately escorted to an empty seat at a table that has been set especially for him. There is a red carnation in his lapel. Unusual and sparkling dinnerware is placed before him. The other patrons of this establishment seem oblivious to the presence of these strange beings in their midst. The elegant man resembles a clean-shaven Robert De Niro as he appeared in the movie, "Angel Heart." The butler and assistants taking notes -- notably a beautiful blond resembling the film actress Sharon Stone wearing a name tag that says "MEPHISTOPHELES" -- stand behind the seated figure. The Chinese woman -- who resembles Lucy Liu (or Gong Li) -- wears a jade pendant with the figure of Buddha. She appears to be approximately thirty years old, same age as Jeshua, wears a chef's hat, a Stuyvesant High School t-shirt, old denims, red Converse All Star sneakers. On the back of her t-shirt, her name is spelled out: "Siddhartha." Everybody calls her "Sid."
SID: "You're a little early. That's unusual ... anxious?"
LUC: "I am never anxious. How's your dad?"
SID: "His back is bothering him again. You haven't been tossing knives in his direction, have you?"
LUC: "You really make some offensive assumptions about me. Would I do such a thing?" Quickly: "Don't answer that question."
SID: "I promise you that, today, the Pork Chow Fun is amazing. Try it."
LUC: "I refuse to eat pork -- for religious reasons. Don't you know that I avoid all Biblically proscribed foods? Besides, aren't you supposed to be a vegeterian?"
SID: "Not all the time. Everything is relative, you know. I am glad to discover that you believe in God."
LUC: "I am the one creature who can never doubt His existence."
Sid waves to a slightly untidy older man at the cash register who walks to their table:
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: "Now it has been said that of all the pains of Hell, the worst is neither fire nor stench but the deprivation forever of the beatific sight of God. How infinitely painful, then, must the exile of this great lover [Lucifer] be, who could not bring himself, even on God's own word, to bow before any other being!"
They place their orders as the man continues to speak. Luc opts for the famous dumplings.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: "The Persian poets have asked, 'By what power is Satan sustained?' And the answer that they have found is this: 'By his memory of the sound of God's voice when he said, 'Be gone!' What an image of that exquisite spiritual agony which is at once the rapture and the anguish of love!"
Joseph Campbell, "The Mythology of Love," in Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam, 1972), p. 153.
Music is heard in the background. U2's rendition of "With or Without You."
LUC: "A little melodramatic."
The man returns to the cash register and continues to receive the payment of customers. The blond in the sexy outfit whispers to herself:
MEPHISTOPHELES:
"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands
Which strikes a terror to my fainting soul!"
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (New York: New American Library, 1965), p. 34.
SID: "Well, I suppose we must get down to terms."
LUC: "Wait, let me enjoy my lunch. I was hoping that your side would seriously consider an unconditional surrender."
SID: "What?"
LUC: "Yes, I mean, since our last little get together we have enjoyed -- you should forgive the expression -- the killing fields in Cambodia; Stalin's post-war purges; Vietnam; the Arab-Israeli conflict with all of the delicious suicide bombings and terrorist incidents all over the world. This is to say nothing of the mafia's political corruption and obscenity in New Jersey. Best of all, given our delight in this lovely city there was that glorious day -- 9/11."
SID: "That story is more complex than your side will admit."
LUC: "Oh, come now ... You're always trying to put the best face on calamity. You only offer bandages for these enormous evils and the colossal suffering involved. Do you still claim that a little love here and there compensates for such horror?"
Luc takes a bite of the dumplings that brings a beaming smile to his lips.
LUC: "You're right. This is great! Where'd you learn to cook?"
SID: "I studied in Beijing."
LUC: "Anyway, as I was saying, you're just trying to find some excuse for what cannot be excused in order to explain the sheer pointlessness of human misery. The absurdity of those deaths on 9/11 -- as well as the other deaths and sufferings we've discussed -- including the pain that lingers for so many people in this city. The horrors of war and destruction, torture and devastation, natural and unnatural catastrophes that have followed upon the events of that lovely Tuesday morning makes this" -- he waves to the crowd in the restaurant that cannot see him -- "human comedy utterly pointless and the epitome of cruelty."
Luc calls to the person washing the dishes and insists that she walk over to their table:
EDITH WYSHOGROD: "No doubt, it could be argued, mass death has occurred in the past. Has humankind not always been the victim of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and epidemic disease? How is our experience substantially different from that of plague victims in the fourteenth century? ..."
Luc tries some excellent fried rice while nodding at the words of the new speaker:
EDITH WYSHOGROD: " ... What is unprecedented in the new phenomenon is that the means of annihilation are the result of systematic rational calculation, and scale is reckoned in terms of compression of time in which destruction is delivered (for example, an anticipated one hundred million dead in the United States in the first half hour of a nuclear attack). Short of nuclear war, other new and efficient strategies for bringing about death to vast numbers of people have appeared."
LUC: "Like flying an airplane into a building?" He chuckles.
SID: "You still seem so dense about what is at issue. Of course, the human capacity for evil -- aided by your well-timed suggestions -- finds expression in ways enhanced by all of the new technology of destruction. The principle of disregard for the Other remains the same. The man who will kill another human being to take his money, or because that other person stands in the way of the murderer's ambition, will easily assist in killing a million (or a billion) persons for the right material reward or symbols of 'success.' The answer of love is the answer on the scale of the single human being which also serves for the greatest conceivable number of persons and collectivities, races, religions, ethnicities. To know and love one other human being is to save the world."
Sid gestures to the woman standing at their table holding a dishwashing cloth:
EDITH WYSHOGROD: "I conclude by offering my own account of the self in this new age of devastation, a self which rests on the primacy of the interpersonal sphere. [Relationships, love.] I show the view of language, thinking, self, and society which follows from these arguments, one which [you] may find pessimistic, but not entirely without hope."
Edith Wyshogrod, Spirit in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger, and Man-Made Mass Death (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. xiii. (Professor Wyshogrod is an expert on Emmanuel Levinas.)
LUC: "I insist that -- if you weigh costs and benefits, unemotionally -- your 'maximally rational conclusion' must be that human life is not worth it. I am into law and economics these days. I like precision and exactness, like in game theory."
SID: "Really, what counts as a 'cost' and what is a 'benefit'? My turn."
A janitor approaches their table. The man is balding, gray-bearded, and speaks with a British accent:
ROWAN WILLIAMS: "... 'Using other people to think with'; that is, using them as symbols for points on your map, values in your scheme of things. When you get used to imposing meanings in this way, you silence the stranger's account of who they are [AS PERSONS;] and that can mean both metaphorical and literal death. Death as the undermining of a culture, language, or faith, and, at the extreme, the death of tyranny and genocide. ... The collective imagination needs the outsider to give itself definition" -- Islam needs Judaism and Christianity -- "which commonly means that it needs somewhere to project its own fears and tensions. The history of modern Europe's attitudes to the non-Western world, the history of what has come to be called 'Orientalism,' the imagining of the East as a mysterious opposite to the West, both devilish --" the word "devilish" causes Luc to laugh -- "and subtly attractive, spells this out clearly."
Rowan Williams, Writings in the Dust: Writings After September 11 (Grand Rapids & Cambridge: William B. Erdman, 2002), pp.64-65. (At this writing Rowan Williams is Archbishop of Canterbury.)
SID: "Of course, this same teaching is central to the theology of Islam. The Prophet Mohammed -- may Allah bless him and keep him! -- teaches respect for persons in the humblest situations in life, also for all persons of faith, by instilling obligations of charity and compassion for the afflicted. The instruction to the faithful in Islam is to become one's brother's keeper."
Sid takes Luc's hand.
SID: "Come with me."
Scene 2:
CUT TO:
We are inside the stairway in Tower 1, on 9/11, as smoke fills the crowded space. Persons run desperately down the stairs to escape the calamity. Sid whispers encouragement and waves the smoke away so that persons may exit the building. A group of New York firefighters and several police officers are making their way up the stairs to search for persons needing assistance and to determine the extent of the damage. None of them realize that they are living the final moments of their lives.
SID: "This is the glory of God's creation amidst the horror. Look at these men and women risking their lives to help others in trouble."
LUC: "Why risk your life for a crappy salary? There's very little social status in these jobs. And no opportunities for sex with fashion models or famous persons, also few chances to engage in conspicuous consumption. There's so little future in being a cop or firefighter. It's better to be a successful drug dealer -- even with a shorter life-span -- lots of good times and not too many headaches. I'm only being practical."
SID: "Are you really incapable of seeing beyond the material rewards or conditions of people's lives?"
LUC: "What else is there? You're a dreamer. I like to see reality. The bottom line."
SID: "Do you really believe that the lives lost on this day, the pain endured by so many helpless persons, the agonies of the wounded and dying after a natural catastrophe, can be separated from the lives of their rescuers or of those who provide assistance. Can you not understand that these suffering human beings exist within overlapping boundaries of selfhood containing their rescuers and even those responsible for this human carnage. The men flying an airplane into this building are your children, not my Father's progeny. Their souls are lost -- in the words of the Prophet Mohammed -- to the darkness of evil. And yet they concern us as suffering and nearly hopelessly lost children would concern us. Terrorists are victims in a more profound sense that the persons they kill through their self-hatred. It is, precisely, their loss of humanity that drives them to self-destruction."
LUC: "And where is your Father amidst this suffering? I do not detect His so-called compassion?"
SID: "God wishes us to live as though there is no God."
A man approaches Sid and Luc. He is poorly dressed, wearing silver spectacles, blond hair, athlete's body:
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: " ... it seems to me more important actually to share someone's distress than to use smooth words about it. I have no sympathy with some wrong-headed attempts to explain away distress, because instead of being a comfort, they are the exact opposite. So I do not try to explain it, and I sometimes think that real comfort must break in just as unexpectedly as the distress. But I admit that may be a subterfuge."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Letter to E. Bethke, dated 1 February, 1944," in Letters and Papers From Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1953), pp. 108-109 ("Tegel Theology" and see my short story "Pieta").
We hear the voice of Jose Carreras singing the Ingemisco from Giuseppe Verdi's "Requiem":
(We see interwoven images of the Holocaust, Stalin's Purges, Vietnam as we listen to the music.)
LUC: "God places the full burden of the moral life upon the shoulders of his blessedly free creatures. Well, this is what they have chosen -- cruelty, pain, degradation, murder, indifference. How could you expect anything different from these foul creatures?"
SID: "This is what they have chosen -- altruism, compassion, shared moral struggle, courage and heroism. Most importantly, they have chosen LOVE for one another in their doomed condition."
The janitor from the restaurant reappears.
ROWAN WILLIAMS: "Any really outrageous human action tests to the limit our careful theological principles about God's refusal to interfere with created freedom. That God has made a world into which he doesn't casually step in to solve problems is fairly central to a lot of Christian faith. He has made a world so that evil choices can't just be frustrated or aborted (where would he [sic.] stop, for goodness sake? he'd have to be intervening every instant of human history) but [those choices] have to be confronted, suffered, taken forward, healed in the complex process of human history, always in collaboration with what we do and say, and pray."
Rowan Williams, Writings in the Dust, pp. 7-8.
Scene 3:
CUT TO:
We approach from the air the plane nearing the Twin Towers on 9/11 moments before the collision. Luc and Sid sit on the wing of the plane observing the hijackers inside the jetliner. Luc is smoking an excellent cigar, a Cohiba, that is sent to him (as he explains) "by a friend in Miami with tickets to the Superbowl." Republican politician, Mr. Rubio, perhaps.
LUC: "You are boringly predictable and deluded. What a fine priest you would have made except for that annoying 'moral squint.'"
SID: "I never had the vocation for the priesthood unlike 'your Grace'?"
LUC: "This is where religion takes people -- to the murder of innocents. Terrorists are the best expression of the religious impulse in humanity that only leads to intolerance and dogmatism. This is what your Father desires from these creatures as monuments to His power and glory."
SID: "You must know better than that. Terrorists are deluded, sick, and literally self-destructive individuals who would kill others and themselves for ANY cause or no cause. They are all yours. It is the killing, sense of power over others, ability to alter lives through disruptions and manipulations aimed at exerting control -- ostensibly, 'for their own good' -- that drives these human time-bombs and sadists."
They are joined on the wing of this airliner by a man in a gray suit wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, a loose tie, gray hair:
JOHN ALDEN WILLIAMS: "The law [in Islam] orders men [and women] to do good and reject what is reprehensible [like the killing of innocents] and it is also OBLIGATORY for Muslims to enjoin right behavior on their fellows and deter them from wrong action. This aspect of Islamic ethics (the hisba) explains a degree of being one's brother's keeper in Islamic civilization that would probably have been regarded as officious in other societies."
SID: "This obligation in Islam is extended universally -- including Christians, Jews, and others within the scope of duties of compassion and charity for the faithful. Concern for the safety of children and old people are particularly prominent for all Muslims. Terrorism is an abomination under the teachings of Islam. These terrorists can expect no reward in paradise."
JOHN ALDEN WILLIAMS: "There is no impropriety in visiting a Jew or Christian in their illness ... The Law does not prohibit us from thus consoling [and assisting them]."
John Alden Williams, "The Law: Rejecting the Reprehensible," in Islam (New York: George Brazilier, 1962), pp. 125-131. (Quoting from the Holy Qu'ran and commentaries.)
LUC: "All of this morality will make me puke. I think morality is hypocrisy. Men and women are 'survival machines' burdened with 'selfish genes' and genitalia that dictate their actions. They are unfree, programmed automatons, executing their instructions to take what is not theirs, have sex with and then destroy their fellow creatures. They are 'naked apes' unworthy of our concern. Humanity sickens me."
SID: "It is your own evil that repels you. Well, if humans are 'programmed' then they are not to be blamed, morally, for their conduct. But take another look inside that airplane. Those passengers know what will happen to them. Most are concerned for their fellow passengers and loved-ones, calling their homes, leaving messages expressing their love, thinking of how to make these final moments more beautiful and priceless for others, giving their emotions and lives infinite value. Now. Besides, your metaphors are out of control again. Human genes cannot be 'selfish.' Nature only determines events in the empirical world. Nature has nothing to say concerning the meanings or values of those events that are called 'actions' for which we, SUBJECTS, alone are responsible."
LUC: "I hate it when you get all philosophical on me."
Luc vanishes in a cloud of smoke leaving a faint whiff of sulfur as the plane crashes into the skyscraper.
Sid remains to encourage the persons fleeing the burning building, to climb the stairs with the police and firefighters, to support the medical personnel.
Act III: "The Creation of Adam."
Scene 1:
We are in a totally black space. There are two directors' chairs, on the back of the first chair is written: AUTHOR, HARRISON FORD; on the back of the second chair is written: DIRECTOR, STEVEN SPIELBERG. Two men walk into this space. One is Harrison Ford in a gray tweed jacket, denims, red Converse All Star sneakers. He is wearing a white shirt with button down collar. Mr. Ford is holding a pipe -- not because he smokes the pipe, only because he feels that "it helps the process of finding the character." Steven Spielberg wears a tan leather jacket and a baseball cap that says: "Jurassic Park." Mr. Spielberg is also wearing jeans and a denim shirt, very light blue, purchased on sale at the GAP, and he is sporting Converse All Stars -- product placement has netted the producers a pretty penny in this film. Two Diet Cokes are placed next to the men on a small table between their chairs.
One suggestion for the director is to have RUSSELL CROWE play the HARRISON FORD part; and RON HOWARD may appear as STEVEN SPIELBERG -- without altering the dialogue at all. This will compel the audience to question the reality under examination and reconsider the very "real" issues examined in the film by way of these "fictional" characters.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "I think we're getting there."
HARRISON FORD: "I don't know, Steve. I think there's just not enough action in this film. Maybe we can get Denzel Washington to shoot a Nazi and search for the Holy Grail."
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "No, listen the critics will love this high brow stuff. Besides, there is always a problem of pace and stasis when you're dealing with big ideas on screen -- like in 'Judgment in Nuremberg.' With a subject like the Holocaust, the ideas provide the drama and narrative momentum. And we're doing a lot of fast cuts to action locations where evil is seen. Don't worry. I feel that it's working."
Harrison Ford reaches for the Diet Coke and holds it up for the camera. He smiles.
HARRISON FORD: "Don't you believe that the discussion may be perceived as too facile?"
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "Well, people said that about 'Shindler's List.' There's always a danger of simplification when complex philosophical issues are placed on screen. The risk is worth taking in this project because of the importance of the topic and profundity of thinkers which most members of the audience may not know or read otherwise. I think the crux of the issue is on screen."
HARRISON FORD: "I find myself feeling sympathy for the devil."
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "You mean Ron Howard?"
HARRISON FORD: "No, the character in our movie. You know, the devil."
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "I don't know what you mean."
HARRISON FORD: "I mean, like, it's all too neat and easy sometimes. You know, like a college essay or something where everything works out very conveniently with a happy ending. The messiness and horror, lingering effects of evil, the experience of violation and disgust at the encounter with someone who utterly disregards our humanity -- by destroying our creative work for instance -- these things are only suggested, vaguely, in this movie. I just don't know how we can do more given the constraints of the budget."
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "That's the nature of the medium. Cinema can conjure thoughts and reactions, evoke emotions for viewers who will find it almost impossible to escape being drawn into the controversy. That's the real goal. Certainly, it is not to suggest that we can offer a solution to this debate concerning the Mystery of evil. I kind of agree with the Messiah character. Tom Cruise turned it down, you know. Tom's remaking 'Risky Business.'"
HARRISON FORD: "I've heard. Too bad."
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "Yeah."
HARRISON FORD: "Tacking on this postmodernist conclusion will infuriate people who will claim that we're being flippant."
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "They said that about 'Amistad.'"
HARRISON FORD: "You think we're talking Oscars here? By way of Sundance and the art houses, of course, with a pit-stop at the universities?"
STEVEN SPIELBERG: "It's possible. I don't wanna jinx it. We're still under budget."
HARRISON FORD: Taking a puff of his pipe: "I've got my acceptance speech all written out."
