The Ascent
Kathleen Norris on DOES DOING THE RIGHT THING MATTER ?
Larisa Shopitko’s “The Ascent” (1977) and Sergei Loznitsa’s “In the Fog” (2017), two of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen, offer a valuable look at a part of World War II that’s unfamiliar to many Americans but is seared into the memories of Eastern Europeans. During the German occupation of Belarus and other countries in the region the Nazis exploited the anti-Semitism of the population, making it easy for them to destroy small Jewish villages (or shtetls) and murder the residents. The Germans made it clear to civil authorities, including the police, that failure to cooperate was punishable by death. Local police forces thus became agents of the occupation, and as resistance to the Nazis grew into partisan warfare, this pitted friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor. People no longer knew who they could trust; one error in judgement could cost your life.
This sad predicament is at the heart of both films, which makes them especially important today, when people are prone to making quick judgements about the behavior of others. It’s easy to moralize from the safety of a comfortable existence, but these films go uncomfortably deep into the subject of what morality means when lives are at risk. At a time when doing the right thing will bring certain death not only to you, but to innocent people condemned for having had any contact with you, what is a person to do?
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