While our gentile ancestors were
gorging on salt pork and flaunting the tops of their heads, the Chosen People
were reportedly very busy. In a speech dating from 2003, the now former Prime
Minister of Malaysia claims that our Jewish forebears “invented socialism,
communism, human rights, and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to
be wrong and they may enjoy equal rights with others.” So the Jews unleashed
both human rights and democracy on
the world? What monsters!
As ridiculous as sentiments like that
might sound to you or me, filmmaker Marc Levin’s absorbing documentary The Protocols of Zion illustrates how
disturbingly widespread this harmful propaganda is. Levin adopts a Michael
Moore-lite approach as he goes toe to toe with
anti-Semites from all around the country and challenges the dubious logic
behind their beliefs that Jewish people are to blame for the world’s ills.
The title of the film is lifted from
a notorious 19th-century tract called The
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, allegedly the minutes of a meeting
among influential Jewish men intent on world domination. The Protocols were debunked as a sham in the 1920s, having actually
been penned by aides to the Russian Czar. It’s no surprise that Hitler found The Protocols enlightening (and for a
time Henry Ford included a copy with every car he sold) but it’s still taken as
gospel in modern times and continues, shockingly, to
be published today.
In making Protocols, Levin sets out to address the pervasive claim that
Jewish people were responsible for 9/11 and that no Jews died because they were
all warned to stay home that fateful September morning. But he often gets
sidetracked by his bigoted interviewees, who don’t share a race or face: we
hear from angry young Arab-Americans seemingly in love with the sounds of their
own voices, the good Christian man editing the ultra-helpful Jew Watch website,
African-Americans decrying NYC’s Mayor “Jew-liani,”
and a well-mannered if ill-informed Nazi… I mean Aryan-American (that’s more
PC, no?) from West Virginia who
says that Hitler didn’t really strike him as suicidal.
Some of this rhetoric actually
elicits a laugh or two until you remember that it’s actually pure hate and
shameful ignorance. The Jewish leaders that Levin talks to are positively
mystified — and justifiably frustrated — that The Protocols remain influential, and though Levin engages his
subjects in some passionate dialogue, it’s sadly obvious that it ain’t making a lick of difference.
His
flawless small-screen turns in HBO’s Band
of Brothers and Masterpiece Theatre’s The
Forsyte Saga served notice of some formidable
talent, but after slumming in big-budget dumbathons
like Dreamcatcher and An Unfinished Life, British actor
Damian Lewis has finally found a director who knows what to do with him. Lewis
stars as the troubled title character in Keane,
the latest character study from Lodge Kerrigan, the little-known but immensely
respected filmmaker behind critically acclaimed films like Clean, Shaven and Claire
Dolan.
Dizzying handheld
camerawork guides us through Keane’s days as he unsuccessfully tries to adjust
to life after the kidnapping of his young daughter. He pesters people at the
Port Authority Bus Terminal where his little girl went missing, drinks too
much, talks to himself, and indulges in illicit drugs and anonymous sex. Lately
he’s been flopping at a dodgy hotel where he has befriended Lynn (Amy Ryan,
Season 2 of The Wire) and her
daughter Kira (the gifted Abigail Breslin,
Signs), and though Keane seems
harmless to his new pals, the unhinged behavior we’ve witnessed thus far leaves
us with a tremendous feeling of unease.
Truthfully, as the
film progresses, Keane’s apparent mental state renders it entirely plausible
that there never was a daughter.
Keane tries to keep his demons at bay by buying clothes for his absent child
and maniacally smoothing the curls out of his hair, but it isn’t until he
begins spending more and more time with Kira and her
mother that we see a relatively lucid side of Keane. Then Lynn
grows increasingly reliant on Keane for child care, a move that we cross our
fingers she won’t regret.
Lewis is in nearly
every frame of film and the story’s impact rests on his capable shoulders. He
commands sympathy even when he’s making us squirm, a testament to an actor and
his director. Six years separate 1998’s Claire
Dolan and Keane, leading one to
believe that Kerrigan certainly takes his sweet time crafting movies. But in
2002 Kerrigan made a film called In God’s
Hands with Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal. And you will never, ever see it, the negatives
having been damaged beyond repair.
The Protocols of Zion (NR), directed
by Marc Levin, is opening Friday, January 20, at the Little Theatres | Keane (R), directed by Lodge Kerrigan, is showing Friday, January 20, at the George
Eastman House’s Dryden Theatre, 8 p.m.
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2006.
