c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Sometimes movies can be a source of disappointment and dismay. But two new and highly acclaimed films with historical themes have given filmgoers much to think about.

Both”The English Patient”and”Shine”reflect our continuing fascination with the past, particularly the tumultuous decade of World War II and the Holocaust. Both movies continue the trend of earlier motion pictures like”Schindler’s List,””Enemies: A Love Story,”and”Sophie’s Choice.” The reason for this fixation on the 1940s is obvious. Indeed, the many implications of Nazism’s radical evil both repel us and fascinate us.”The English Patient”and”Shine”shed new light on the era.

While we know that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the celebrated”Desert Fox,”was ultimately thwarted in his attempt to capture Cairo, the World War II battle for North Africa, the central motif of”The English Patient,”still haunts us with its sand, sun, and savagery.

And as if the murder of 6 million Jewish victims is not enough to confront, the dominant theme of”Shine”is that the genocidal crimes committed by Hitler and his followers continue to traumatize even those who survived the Holocaust.

Much of”The English Patient”takes place in North Africa during World War II. And while many who have expressed admiration for this motion picture focus on its poignant love stories, replete with adultery and intense love-making, the darker aspects of the film caught my attention.

For me, the most powerful moment of”The English Patient”comes when David Caravaggio, a Canadian engaged in spying for the Allies, is captured and brutally interrogated after the Libyan city of Tobruk falls to Rommel in 1942. The scene of his sadistic interrogation is a metaphor for one of the less acknowledged atrocities of war: the way the Nazis used others to perpetrate their crimes.

The tortured prisoner, brilliantly played by Willem Dafoe, asks his Nazi captors for medical attention, and an Arab nurse is summoned. But the Nazi major in charge threatens to cut off Caravaggio’s thumbs unless he reveals the names of his fellow spies. The Canadian divulges nothing, and the threat to cut intensifies.

The frightened prisoner begs for mercy. Despite being cautioned by a colleague that dismemberment of prisoners of war is against the Geneva Convention, the German officer is not deterred from his grotesque goal. In revulsion at what is about to happen, the soldier taking notes of the interrogation shuts down his stenographic gear. And in a bizarre twist, it is the Arab nurse, not the major, who actually severs the prisoner’s thumbs.

It is a fiendish tactic because the Nazi officer can conveniently claim that he didn’t cut off the thumbs. It was done by someone else. Years later, when Adolf Eichmann was brought to trial in Israel for his crimes against humanity, Eichmann always claimed the actual killing of Jews during the Holocaust was done by”someone else.”Eichmann only provided the transportation, as the interrogator in the film merely provided the knife.”Shine”is based on a true story, and much of the film takes place in Australia during the 1940s. The Helfgotts, a Jewish couple, survive the Holocaust and begin a new life in a new land. One of their children, David, is a piano prodigy, who seeks to further his musical talents and education in Britain.

David’s father, searingly depicted by Armin Mueller-Stahl, is a classic example of the Holocaust survivor bedeviled by the murder of his childhood family. He is at once proud and abusive; he both loves and beats his talented son.

Because the father’s own family was literally destroyed, the thought of his son departing for the far-off London music academy represents the breakup of the post-Holocaust Helfgott family. The father will not permit David to leave.

The young musician does leave his father, but at a terrible psychological price.

While some admirers of”Shine”focus on David and his quest for emotional health, I found the senior Helfgott the most compelling figure in the film. Because of the Holocaust’s bitter legacy, David’s father literally cannot help himself as he vacillates between loving his son and abusing him.

The father wants his son to succeed as a concert pianist, but senses David’s independence as another tragic family loss. Like many other Holocaust survivors who managed to endure in a world of terror without rules or norms, the elder Helfgott desperately seeks to control everything in his postwar life, especially his wife and children.

Although physically alive, David’s father is emotionally dead, and his attempt to control his son is bound to fail. It is only when the father actually dies that David, his psychological health somewhat restored, achieves a modicum of reconciliation.

So these two films, one about how the Nazis used others to do their dirty work and another that explores the lifelong pain of those who survived this dark chapter in history, have shed new light on one of the defining moments of our century.

MJP END RUDIN