In recent columns, I have suggested three novels and a poem to read during Lent. Each of the recommendations takes the reader into a world of spiritual and moral struggle that may resonate to some degree with all of us. Within their specific plots and characters, these pieces of literature carry universal meaning related to sin, suffering, disorientation and penance. In this column, I recommend three films that carry similar messages and, thus, may similarly ring true to viewers.
One of the purposes of Lenten spiritual practices is to imagine the despair and desperation of a world without Christ. In Lent, we enter into a metaphorical parched desert in which we contemplate lives for which the wages of sin have not been paid. We deprive ourselves not only of some material pleasures, but even of the hope of salvation — that is, if salvation is dependent upon our own goodness or ability to overcome our sin. In other words, we simulate a world without a savior, a world in which we are doomed to our own faux attempts at salvation, for the purpose of a glimpse into the abyss of loneliness and despair. In some sense, Lent is time spent with the evil one who desires our souls, but for the purpose of rejecting his false promises (see Lk 4:1-13).
‘Pelle the Conqueror’
“Pelle the Conqueror,” a 1987 Swedish film written and directed by Bille August and starring Max von Sydow, is the perfect embodiment of this world without hope that we glimpse during Lent. The story, based on the 1910 Martin Anderson Nexø novel of the same title, follows elderly widower Lasse Karlsson and his young son, Pelle, as they migrate from the crushing poverty of 1850s Sweden, searching for work and sustenance.
Lasse is too old and Pelle is too young for manual labor, and neither is suited for anything else. Eventually they find “work” on a large farm on a Danish island, overseen by a sadistic and lecherous manager who viciously mistreats father and son. As the story unfolds, Lasse becomes more despondent while Pelle lives in an imaginary world in which he is rescued from the despair of the farm. Wherever salvation lies, Pelle “the conqueror” knows it’s not on the Danish farm.
‘The Zone of Interest’
In her 1963 book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil,” which is the subtitle of the book. Broadly speaking, Arendt’s work explores the ordinariness and shallowness of Adolph Eichmann, who, with Reinhard Heydrich, facilitated and managed Nazi extermination camps during World War II. Ordered by Hitler (through Heydrich) to “physically exterminate the Jews,” Eichmann oversaw the deportation of more than 1 million Jewish people to the camps, including the most notorious, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The 2023 film “The Zone of Interest,” based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, is a meditation on the banality of evil set against the backdrop of Auschwitz. It is a fictionalized account of the actual commandant of the camp, Rudolf Höss, and his young family, whose home is literally in the shadow of Auschwitz. The Höss family live in a large mansion with a lovely, well-tended herb and flower garden in which they entertain friends and other Nazi officials. The Hösses’ backyard shares a fence with the extermination camp; the screams and cries of Jewish murder victims form a soundtrack to their picnic lunches and swimming parties.
A central pivot in the plot is Höss’ transfer to another camp, and his wife’s refusal to leave Auschwitz. With shocking disregard for the Jews being murdered literally feet from where she stands, she complains to her husband that they have built a good life there, and she will not move with him to the new assignment. With one possible exception, “The Zone of Interest” is a film without repentance, remorse or redemption. It is a world of banal evil, even as the credits close. Because — not despite — this, it is rich Lenten viewing.
‘Ida’
While the Western allies in World War II were busy liberating Nazi-occupied Europe, the Soviet Union was busy positioning itself for imperial expansion and reoccupation of some of those very countries. Central to Soviet doctrine are the erasure of personal identity and absorption of everyone into the all-powerful Communist Party. In many ways, the Soviet Union and its vassal states were a large and complex network of fictions about everything: history, personality, economics, political theory and even morality. And if one did not toe the party line, one was a nonperson, to be deported or killed.
The 2013 film “Ida,” directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and set in 1963 Poland, is a meditation both on the banality of Nazi evil and the aggressiveness of Soviet erasure. The title character is a postulant in a Polish convent who was orphaned as an infant during World War II, when her parents were executed by the Nazis. Ida is ignorant of the fate of her parents and, thus, her own patronage. As such, she is instructed by her prioress to visit an aunt in Warsaw and research her family background before taking her final vows.
During that fateful visit, Ida’s eyes are opened to the pain and guilt of those who stood silent in the face of Nazi atrocities and Soviet crimes. Like “The Zone of Interest,” it is a story of the banality of evil, whether of the Nazi or Bolshevist variety. Unlike the former film, however, “Ida” offers a glimmer of hope.
The season of Lent is a time of repentance and reflection, and that reflection can be enriched by consideration of the universal human propensity toward sin and evil. Lent is a time of despair; these three films lead us into and through that despair by their bracing accounts of the evil one, who is never satiated in his own harvest of souls.
