So my friend Flagg Taylor & I did another podcast on Totalitarianism on screen—Oscar-nominated Divided We Fall, a somewhat comic drama about a Czech family with a German friend, who are also hiding a Jewish escapee from a concentration camp. Bohemia during World War II, the shocking problem of a civilized country caught between Nazis & Soviets, the beginning of totalitarianism & the effort of one family to survive with its conscience in reasonably good shape.—Beyond that, the artists want us to ask ourselves, will anything of the character of the people survive tyranny? Can art offer any insight when it can hardly point to examples of justice triumphing to bolster hope?
The writer-director couple, Petr Jarchovsky-Jan Hrebejk, should be famous—Flagg & I did another podcast on their work, another comic drama, The Teacher, again a reflection on civilization, but this time through education, through children rather than adults, showing us what came of the Slovaks after two generations of Communist debasement… More podcasts on their work in the future!
I'm sure Flagg mentioned it in your discussion, but he and I published in our Totalitarianism on Screen book an essay by Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz that compares this excellent film to The Lives of Others.
Yes, that's where he starts the conversation--that's how we got to the film!