God on Trial Airs Tonight

"You will weep, but you will also think. And although the weeping will stop fairly soon after the credits role, with any luck, the thinking will not."

The reviews are in and God on Trial is a critical hit. The San Francisco Chronicle calls the film challenging to watch:

"Frank Cottrell Boyce has crafted a brilliant script, which doesn't only look at why God would inflict such horrible things on the Jews while allowing Hitler and his henchmen to live. Although specifically about Jewish prisoners during World War II, the film has universal appeal in the fundamental questions of existence that every human being has to ask, even minimally, at one point or other in his or her life."

Comments from The Los Angeles Times:

"That [the actors] are wonderful, riveting and at times difficult to watch is no surprise, and if their utter Britishness -- no attempts at other European accents here -- is a bit jarring at first, it is soon forgotten. For although the various arguments made during "God on Trial" never deviate from the specific concerns of the Chosen People, larger questions crowd the drama's edges like the silent, rapt men who follow the trial from their bunks.

The nature and existence of God, the nature and necessity of faith, the role humans occupy in the universe and, most important, how to reconcile the idea of a loving deity with the ongoing tragedy of war and genocide.

They are big topics addressed with a striking lack of sentimentality, quite a feat considering the setting. You will weep, but you will also think. And although the weeping will stop fairly soon after the credits role, with any luck, the thinking will not."

The Edge from The Boston Herald declares that this brilliant movie feels like a play.

"“The reason why you do something about the Holocaust is to find out if you can do something about evil,” [Executive Producer] Redhead said. “The civilizing acts of conducting a trial in the face of evil can give shape and meaning to life.”

Life loses its meaning when children are snatched from parents’ arms and sons are forced to dig their mothers’ graves. As the prisoners relay their stories, viewers learn of a world that is no more, a world gone mad."

On First Things, Anthony Sacramone describes the film as compelling:

"And if you think this tale is intended for Jews alone, don’t tell that to Frank Cottrell Boyce, from whose pen the intelligent and provocative script flowed. Boyce, whose previous scripts include Welcome to Sarajevo and Hillary and Jackie, is not even Jewish but a believing Catholic. He drew inspiration for his drama from an event depicted by Elie Wiesel in his play The Trial of God. Wiesel contends he had witnessed such a trial as a child in the death camps."

Telegraph UK: Interview with Anthony Sher, who played Akiba, a Polish Rabbi.

The film airs tonight on PBS Masterpiece Contemporary at 9 pm EST. If you missed seeing it the first time, or would like to view it again, you can view the video from November 10 until November 16 on PBS. Click here.

God on Trial, November 9th on PBS

When I invited a group of friends to view the PBS screener of God on Trial, no one expressed interest. The holocaust was just too depressing they said. Having lost three male relatives in a Japanese concentration camp, including my grandfather, I felt I HAD to view this film to honor their memory. While it was not an easy drama to watch, I was riveted. I have already seen the screener twice and intend to view it again. There are too few occasions in one's life when a television drama this intelligent and important comes along, and I urge every parent to watch it with their children and every teacher to show it to their class. The lessons of the holocaust and the evils perpetrated by the Nazis must not be lost, and I am afraid that this cataclysmic event is already becoming a dim memory. As importantly, this script is an exploration of man's faith and relationship with God in a way that make one reexamine one's own faith or reaffirm it. We hear many viewpoints and I found myself debating along with the men, and wondering if I would be as emotionally involved in such a discussion hours before my death. Before I knew it, this tense, tightly directed drama was over.

The film is based on the unconfirmed story that a group of Auschwitz concentration camp prisoners consisting of mostly educators, lawyers, and scientists, convened a rabbinical court to put God on trial for abandoning his chosen people. Half the prisoners are spending their last night on earth, but due to the Nazi's cruel methods of choosing their victims, none of them knows who will die in the gas chambers the next day.

The acting is superb. Familiar actors like Rupert Graves (above), Jack Shepherd, (above), Stellan Skarsgård, Stephen Dillane (left), Blake Ritson, and Dominic Cooper (right) are barely recognizable with their shaved heads and wearing prison garb. I imagine all of them must have jumped on the chance to act in such a meaty and riveting story. I was particularly struck by Stephen Dillane's portrayal of Schmidt, a well-educated rabbi. He exuded the same quiet intelligence in this role as he did as Thomas Jefferson in John Adams.

This important film airs on Sunday, November 9th, on the 70th anniversary of Kristellnacht. The video will also stream online the full week after the broadcast.

• PBS Masterpiece Contemporary: The Actors and Characters

• BBC Press Office - find a full synopsis of the story, a behind the scenes video, and full description of the characters and the actors who played them.

• Purchase the DVD at the PBS shop

• Yes, We Really Did Put God on Trial: Wiesel
  

Palin vs. Fruit Flies: Fruit Flies Win

I don't think that Todd Palmer or Rob Pringle will mind me downloading their post verbatim. After all, their point about Palin's complete lack of scientific knowledge must be made. So here is their column featured on Huffington Post:

"Today, we are blogging from Durham, North Carolina, where we are trying to do our humble bit to help elect Barack Obama. On Friday, Sarah Palin gave us yet another reason to feel good about what we're doing here.

We are far from the first people to comment on this subject -- even within the Huffington Post -- so we'll keep it brief. But Palin's mockery of "fruit fly research" during her October 24th speech on special-needs children was so misconceived, so offensive, so aggressively stupid, and so dangerous that we felt we had to comment.

Here's the excerpt from the speech:

"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up, anyway? [...] You've heard about, um, these -- some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes these dollars they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!"

It's hard to know where to begin deconstructing this statement. This was a speech on autism, and Palin's critics have pounced on the fact that a recent study of Drosophila fruit flies showed that a protein called neurexin is essential for proper neurological function -- a discovery with clear implications for autism research.

Awkward! But this critique merely scrapes icing off the cake.

Fruit flies are more than just the occasional vehicles for research relevant to human disabilities. They are literally the foundation of modern genetics, the original model organism that has enabled us to discover so much of what we know about heredity, genome structure, congenital disorders, and (yes) evolution. So for Palin to state that "fruit fly research" has "little or nothing to do with the public good" is not just wrong -- it's mind-boggling.

What else does this blunder say about Palin and her candidacy? Many people have used it as just another opportunity to call her a dummy, since anyone who has stayed awake through even a portion of a high-school-level biology class knows what fruit flies are good for. But leave that aside for a second. Watch the clip. Listen to the tone of her voice as she sneers the words "fruit fly research." Check out the disdain and incredulity on her face. How would science, basic or applied, fare under President Palin?

We have other questions. Who wrote this speech? Was he or she as ignorant as Palin about the central role that fruit flies have played in the last century of biomedical research? Or was this a calculated slight to science and scientists -- a coded way of saying, "We don't care what you know or what you think"? We find it odd that, of all the examples of dubious expenditures of public funds, the speechwriters alighted on this one.

Whatever the explanation, it scares us. Everyone who has suffered, either personally or indirectly, from an inherited illness, and anyone whose life has been lengthened or enriched by modern medicine, should channel Palin's flip comment when they stand in the voting booth on November 4th."

• New York Times Article on Fruit Fly Sex