As the excesses of WW II pass from memory into history, are we any closer to understand why, or even how, they happened? The same can be asked about any one of the conflicts mentioned above. The layer of civilization covering the call of blood remains paper thin. The continuity of violence connects all ages and cultures: Germany, Yugoslavia, Africa - most recently Syria, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Our goal is not to justify or forgive Herold’s actions by contextualizing them, or worse: by introducing a moral relativism - but to understand the frame of reference which made these actions possible and so arrive at the general through the specific: Herold’s highly particularised perspective of a specific historical event allows us to glimpse a universal truth about the human condition in wartimes - past and present. We will fully immerse the audience in Herold’s state of mind. This story won’t be told from the outside in, but from the inside out. Our audience needs to experience Herold’s historical, psychological and social reality directly, viscerally, emotionally.
THE CAPTAIN LICENSE
Getting an era’s license plates right just isn’t enough. “This is how it was!” is the mantra intoned, ignoring the fundamental fact that authenticity in cinema is always an illusion created by a team of filmmakers.
Aesthetically this does not mean the fetishizing of authenticity so common in historical films. Non-morally, so to speak, see what he saw, feel what he felt. We need to go beyond mere moral responses and experience the world from his point of view. In order to explain Willi Herold’s actions we have to understand the world he lived in and not just our own world. But horror is a moral, not an analytical concept. By present-day standards, the violent acts committed seem abnormal, psychopathic, horrific. Almost 70 years after the fact, the harsh brutalities of World War II still elicit incomprehension and dismay.
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