THE CONFESSION
This is the history: The Confession (1970, Costa-Gavras) is the true story of Artur London, a loyal Communist who served with the International Brigade in Spain and with the Communist anti-Nazi underground in France, and who suffered a long term in a Nazi concentration camp. In 1949, Mr. London returned to his native Czechoslovakia from France to become Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Communist Government of President Klement Gottwald. Two years later, along with thirteen other leading Czech Communists (eleven of whom were Jewish), Mr. London was arrested for treason and espionage and found guilty in what became known as the Slansky trial. This trial, named for the secretary general of the Czech Communist Party, who was also a defendant, was one of the last major wheezes of the Stalinist purges that began with the Moscow trials in the 1930s. All of the Slansky defendants were found guilty and all but three, including Mr. London, were executed. Mr. London lived not only to see the defendants rehabilitated and to write his book but also to return to Czechoslovakia on the day in August, 1968, when Soviet troops invaded his country to end the short Czech spring.
Yep, that is the history. Yet as we see in this beautiful and horrifying film, truth is a lie. Only a lie can set you free. Or so it was in the post-Stalinist trials and purges that swept through the Soviet bloc throughout the years of Khrushchev and his reign of impotence. London, played with such dignity by Yves Montand, is broken down one layer at a time, forced to admit to objective facts while insisting that subjective truths also matter.
Q. You associated with the traitor Smith in 1949?
A. Yes, but I did not know he was a traitor until 1952.
Q. Are you denying that Smith was a traitor?
A. No. I am--
Q. We will deal with the subjective elements later. First, you must memorize your confession. Doctor, bring in the sunlamps. We must prepare this man for trial.
What happened in Czechoslovakia is one of the reasons that some people have abandoned politics altogether. Economics is dependent upon politics for its implementation. Politics is religion and religion is madness. Faith guarantees the freedom of the bull whip.You may go to sleep. What is your number? Louder! Assume the position. Guards! Only your confession can save you. Do you believe what your wife says in this letter? Has this man been bathed in twenty-one months?
The Confession is not Costa-Gavras' most popular film. That would probably be Amen, Missing, or Z, any of which are powerful testaments against authoritarian forces. However, The Confessionremains vital in the way it makes no compromise to an uninformed, uninvolved public. One needn't be a student of post-WWII Soviet or Eastern European history in order to get this. One need not have memorized every word of Orwell's novel to find a similarity in the absurd processes used to extract falsehoods that everyone from the interrogators to the members of the tribunal to the general public understood to be falsehoods.
The goal here is not to lead people to a rejection of politics based in apathy. It is rather to tell Artur London's story with some degree of accuracy and to convey the permeating sense of dread that flooded those awful times just as they did, it must be admitted, at other times in our collective history, whether in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001, or in the days following the revelations of Abu Ghraib. Costa-Gavras does not flinch. The psychologically overlapping flashbacks that let us in on London's "rehabilitation" spoils nothing. On the contrary, the more we learn of his ultimate fate, the more horrified we are at what happens to him in the process of getting there. The colors are bleak, the staging stark, and the acting unbearable in its verisimilitude, or at least its relation to what we are unable to dispute as true. A rose dipped in liquid nitrogen remains a rose, at least right up until it shatters like glass. This film is the liquid nitrogen. Our sensibilities are the rose.
Yep, that is the history. Yet as we see in this beautiful and horrifying film, truth is a lie. Only a lie can set you free. Or so it was in the post-Stalinist trials and purges that swept through the Soviet bloc throughout the years of Khrushchev and his reign of impotence. London, played with such dignity by Yves Montand, is broken down one layer at a time, forced to admit to objective facts while insisting that subjective truths also matter.
Q. You associated with the traitor Smith in 1949?
A. Yes, but I did not know he was a traitor until 1952.
Q. Are you denying that Smith was a traitor?
A. No. I am--
Q. We will deal with the subjective elements later. First, you must memorize your confession. Doctor, bring in the sunlamps. We must prepare this man for trial.
What happened in Czechoslovakia is one of the reasons that some people have abandoned politics altogether. Economics is dependent upon politics for its implementation. Politics is religion and religion is madness. Faith guarantees the freedom of the bull whip.You may go to sleep. What is your number? Louder! Assume the position. Guards! Only your confession can save you. Do you believe what your wife says in this letter? Has this man been bathed in twenty-one months?
The Confession is not Costa-Gavras' most popular film. That would probably be Amen, Missing, or Z, any of which are powerful testaments against authoritarian forces. However, The Confessionremains vital in the way it makes no compromise to an uninformed, uninvolved public. One needn't be a student of post-WWII Soviet or Eastern European history in order to get this. One need not have memorized every word of Orwell's novel to find a similarity in the absurd processes used to extract falsehoods that everyone from the interrogators to the members of the tribunal to the general public understood to be falsehoods.
The goal here is not to lead people to a rejection of politics based in apathy. It is rather to tell Artur London's story with some degree of accuracy and to convey the permeating sense of dread that flooded those awful times just as they did, it must be admitted, at other times in our collective history, whether in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001, or in the days following the revelations of Abu Ghraib. Costa-Gavras does not flinch. The psychologically overlapping flashbacks that let us in on London's "rehabilitation" spoils nothing. On the contrary, the more we learn of his ultimate fate, the more horrified we are at what happens to him in the process of getting there. The colors are bleak, the staging stark, and the acting unbearable in its verisimilitude, or at least its relation to what we are unable to dispute as true. A rose dipped in liquid nitrogen remains a rose, at least right up until it shatters like glass. This film is the liquid nitrogen. Our sensibilities are the rose.
