SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2010 MOVIES MUSEUMS Revamped Nuremberg courtroom opens
Case of Milosevic, other war crimes suspects stirred interest in Nazis
BY RAYMONDM. LANE
Special to The Washington Post IN NUREMBERG
JOJO WHILDEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
FALLING APART: In “RabbitHole,” Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play a couple devastated after their son is killed.
At the intersection of sorrow and rage
The problem is, Becca is try-
‘RabbitHole’ explores an evolving grief and
its effect on amarriage BY MATTHURWITZ
There’s no way around it.We
alleventuallylosesomebody.We are going to grieve. And some of us are better at it thanothers. In “Rabbit Hole,” opening on
Christmas Day, Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart)Corbetthave suffereda tragedy. Eight months earlier, their 4-year-old son, Danny, dashed into the street after the family dog and was killed by a car drivenby a teenager. Mostmovies about grief start
with the tragedy and go from there. “Rabbit Hole” picks up months down the road, when friends have stopped coming by. Grief goes on nonetheless. “They’re both in very different places,” Kidman said in a recent telephone interview. “Every per- sonhas a different path.” Kidman, who also produced
the film through her own Blos- somFilms,hadstumbledupona review of the Pulitzer Prize-win- ning play by David Lindsay- Abaire four yearsago,whilehav- ing coffee with her husband, Keith Urban, one morning at a Nashville Starbucks. “It sounded so poignant,” she
said. “They just said it was so real and authentic. And they’re the sortof stories that I’mdrawn to.”
She immediately inquired
about it,andfounditsfilmrights had not been acquired. The ac- tress had done one film, “Birth,” whichdealtwithlossandgrief,a few years prior. “I still felt there was a lot of uncharted territory for me, in terms of grief,” she said. “There’s so few films that deal with this subject matter withsuchferocious delicacy.” The subject also appealed to
director John Cameron Mitch- ell. “I lostmy 4-year-old brother when I was 14,” Mitchell said. “He had a heart problem from birth, but it was still a surprise. It’s colored all of our lives forev- er. So I think I had some unfin- ished business about that.” The director cried when he
readthescript. “It’snot that I felt I wanted to do this movie, but that Ihad to do it,”he said. Shootingthe filminNewYork
City on a budget of only $5mil- lion, the production staff found a house in Douglaston, a subur- ban neighborhood on the edge of Queens, to be the home base for the actors and crew for six weeks. “Johnactuallylivedthere the whole time,” Kidman said. BothsheandEckhart spent time together therewithMitchelland the other actors (including Di- anne Wiest, who plays Becca’s mother, Nat), exploring their characters. “When you’re playing a mar-
ried couple, you’ve got to spend time together,” Kidman said. “It was a lot of talking, eatingmeals together.With this kind ofmov- ie, that’s reallythe rehearsalpro- cess—to create a comfort.” “NicoleandIwerenevermore
than 10 feet away from each other,” Eckhart added. The crew also became part of the family, always aware ofwhatwas going on with the actors. “They knew when therewas going to be a lot ofyellingandcryingthatday,”he said. Howie attends a grief recov-
ery group with other couples; Becca begrudgingly goes, but eventually bows out, preferring, to her husband’s chagrin, to make vain attempts at moving on with life without Danny — which her psyche, unfortunate- ly, isn’t quite ready to permit. “She’s taking Danny’s paint-
ings down off the fridge, she’s trying to give his clothes to her pregnant sister,” Kidman ex- plained. “She’s constantly trying to move forward and choose life.”
ing to move the grief process forward faster than it wants to go. And Howie finds himself deeply resentful at his wife’s at- tempts to “move on.” “That’s where the divergence
comes,” Eckhart explained. “Be- causeHowie ismuchmorewill- ing to explore,withgroup thera- py, etc., and she is unwilling to. He’s turning the corner, where he’s starting to say, ‘Becca, you gottaspeedup,becauseI’mpass- ing youup.’Andthat’snot good.” The twowind up at oddswith
eachother, sporadicallyblasting out the stress that builds be- tween them in highly charged scenes. Those sequences,Mitch- ell said, are carefully spread through the film. “Otherwise, you’llwear the audience out,”he said. “Real life is a lotmessier.” On set, Kidman and Eckhart
found the charge building natu- rally, leadingupto the filming of those scenes. “You have actual feelings in the character,” Eck- hart said, “andyousay, ‘Iwant to yell at her right now.’ I’msitting there having to restrain myself, as an actor, and asking John, ‘Howcome I can’t yell ather?’ ” Butwhen the time comes, it’s
the natural release he andHow- ie — and the audience — need. “All those days of not being able to yell at her, not being able to release this monster that is in- side ofme—on those days that you get to release the monster, he’s ready to come out. And it feels reallygood.Youwant tosay it — and you want to see her listen to it. And I want to hear her response to it. And, as an actor, having Nicole there, who knowswhat she’sdoing,haspre- pared, and just gives it right back—it’s very exciting.” Kidman agrees: “The emo-
tions are epic.” Despite her at- tempts to be “normal,” Becca’s own emotional outbursts come whether she likes them or not, with blasts at everyone fromher husbandandmother toastrang- er at the supermarket. “Shecensorsherself,andthen
she’s uncensored,” Kidman said. “Thenshe’s trying to pullherself in line again, then exploding, because the turmoil insideher is enormous. And eight months downthe road,patience iswear- ing thin with people. Even though they still feel for you, other people have allmoved on. So it’s an incredibly lonely place.” The oneplaceBeccadoes find
solace is in a friendship she strikes up with the oddest of people: Jason (newcomer Miles Teller), the young driver of the car that killedher son. “She can’t bear to be in the
presence of anyone but the per- son who caused all of this,” Mitchell said. “Andit’sbeautiful. They don’t knowwhere they are or what they’re doing together. They just know they need to be together. He’s got to get absolu- tion, and she’s gotta give it. She becomeshealedbyhealinghim.” Adds Kidman: “She’s in such
confusionandchaosinherhead, but there’s somebody there that somehow links her to Danny. She’s trying to replicate her son in this teenage boy, and some- howtrying tounderstand every- thing throughhim.” Howie, meanwhile, has tired
ofwaiting forhiswife tofindher way through the muck back to him, longing for someone who can understand his own path through the process. “I talked to a lot of people about this in prep for the film,” Eckhart said. “A large percentage of marriages don’t survive a tragedy like this.” AddsMitchell, “The audience
will understand that they are both absolutely right, and they are both completely wrong, in their approachto the situation.” Ultimately, it is up to Becca
andHowie tofigureoutwhether theywill continue onas a couple and beginlife anew.
style@washpost.com
Photo of Lauren Molina by Liz Lauren. Hurwitz is a freelancewriter.
“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ig- nored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
With those words on Nov. 21,
1945, Supreme Court Justice and chief U.S. prosecutor Robert H. Jackson laid out humanity’s case against the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler had committed
suicide April 30 in his Berlin bunker, but top Nazis survived, starting with deputies Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess. They and high-ranking Nazi diplo- mats, military, industrialandpar- ty leaders faced the first interna- tional war crimes trial in history. It lasted seven months and
ended with 12 death sentences, three life sentences and four long prison terms. Three of the ac- cused were acquitted. The con- demned were hung Oct. 16, 1946, in the gymnasium behind the courtroom where they were tried. Sixty-five years to the day after
Jackson’s remarks, the $5.3 mil- lion Memorium Nuremberg Tri- als Museum opened in the attic and crawl space above wood-pan- eled CourtroomNo.600at the old Palace of Justice. Foreign minis- ters Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Guido Westerwelle of Germany spoke at the dedication. “German history reminds us how thin the lacquer of our civilization is,” Westerwelle said. “People started knocking on
our door about 10 years ago, after the arrest of SlobodanMilosevic,” museum directorHans-Christian Taeubrich said in an interview later on how the museum came into being. Referring to the former presi-
dent of Serbia, Taeubrich said press coverage of trials in the Hague, Netherlands, before the U.N.-sponsored International Criminal Court, spawned re- newed interest inNuremberg.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES, COLLEGE PARK
BEARING WITNESS: The courtroom was returned toGermany in 1961 and refurbished, and is now used for capital criminal trials.
“Until the Nuremberg trials
established the principle that in- dividualshadto answer personal- ly for their wartime conduct, the world had no moral institution to adjudicate crime or set punish- ment for wartime atrocities,” said Taeubrich, a historian who also oversees theNaziDocumentation Center, a nearby museum sitting at the edge of a vast park, or rally grounds, used for huge Nazi out- door parades and rallies. For decades the old courtroom
was largely ignored. What inter- est there was came largely from film buffs wanting to see where parts of the 1961 movie “Judg- ment atNuremberg” were made. But with the Milosevic trial,
and ongoing prosecutions of ac- cused war criminals such as Con- golese politician Jean-Pierre Be- mba, Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, and former Bosnian strongman Radovan Karadzic, the Nuremberg trials became relevant again and peo- ple wanted to see where it unfold- ed, Taeubrich said. When the courtroom, which is
still used for capital prosecutions, first was opened for weekend walk-throughs in May 2000, he said, “it was just an empty room . . . [there was] no way really to make accessible and relevant what this place is about.” Still, demand was so strong
that guided tours were instituted in 2005, with 3,500 visitors annu- ally, and by 2008, the number had risen to 35,000. In summer 2007,
January 1 at 2:00 pm
NEW YEAR’S CONCERT 2011
The Strauss Symphony of America Guido Mancusi conductor (Vienna)
Anita Lukács soprano (Budapest)
Dancers from THE NATIONAL
MORAVIAN-SILESIAN BALLET International Champion Ballroom Dancers
301-581-5100
strathmore.org
INFO: 1-800-545-7807
salutetovienna.com
“ Metro Weekly Candide Leonard Bernstein’s
directed and newly adapted from the Voltaire by Mary Zimmerman
“Thoughtfully conjured, eye-pleasing
entertainment...” The Washington Post
“More tuneful than six
ordinary Broadway scores
...Candide is joy
in a bottle.” Washington City Paper
NOWPLAYING! Call 202.547.1122 or visit
ShakespeareTheatre.org
Presented by The HRH Foundation
Production Support: Maxine Isaacs and James A. Johnson
Media Partners:
NOWTHRUJAN.16 OPERAHOUSE
TICKETSFROM$39ATTHEBOXOFFICEOR CHARGEBYPHONE(202)467-4600
ONLINEATKENNEDY-CENTER.ORG •GROUPS(202)416-8400 • TTY(202)416-8524 South Pacific ismadepossiblethroughthegenerosityofTheAdrienneArshtMusicalTheaterFund.
”
Zsolt Vadász tenor (Budapest)
“THEBESTREVIVALOFRODGERS&HAMMERSTEIN INAGENERATION!” –The Washington Post
the German parliament provided $3.9 million to refurbish the courtroom and create the new museum. Today a $6.50 admission ticket
offers visitors a completely differ- ent experience. The new 9,160-square-foot
space — an average American home is 2,135 square feet—forms a boxy L-shape around the court- room below, which can be viewed through windows when trials are in session. The first and largest room sets
the stage by explaining the Nazi takeover of Germany and roles played by the Nazis tried here. Still photos, videos and audios of testimony give a vivid sense of what these men looked and sounded like, and the crimes for which they were punished. English is used throughout on
signage, brochures and portable audio devices pegged to every item on display. One-hour guided tours end in the courtroom itself. Artifacts from the trial are on
display, big U.S. Army evidence boxes, bulky headsetswornby the accused and their accusers – the trial was simultaneously translat- ed into English, Russian, French and German — and even the electrical wall panel through which all the movie cameras and spotlights were wired for record- ing of the trial.
There are old newspaper cam-
erasandtypewriters used by jour- nalists covering the trial — in- cluding a young Walter Cronkite — who were stuck in a press gallery carved into the same attic space at the back of the room. The large room leads to a
40-seat theater space, and a smaller room where text and video archives of the trial are available online. Particularly riveting is the ar-
guing back and forth between Goering and Jackson, who late in the trial spent a day and a half parsing critical points over who had authority to hold individuals responsible for their actions when they act on behalf of the state. “It’s the same arguing we’re
hearing today at war crimes tri- als,” offered Taeubrich. “Think of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Dar- fur, Palestine.” Tucked between is the smallest
room of the museum, labeled “From Nuemberg to the Hague.” It covers the founding of the 114-nation International Crimi- nal Court, and claims that as many as 100 million people since World War II died as a result of crimes against humanity. While there are war crimes museums around the globe, in- cluding the “killing fields” muse- um in Tuol Sleng, Cambodia, the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and War Crimes Museum in Faizabad, Afghani- stan, the Nuremburg museum stands alone in leading the world to a judicial process to prosecute war crimes, Taeubrich said. For visitors, though, the lofty
ideals meet reality when they see the bench on which top Nazis sat during the trial. A large-screen video loop behind it repeats their snarling “not guilty” to prosecu- tors at the start of the trial. “You can see how uncomfort-
able the bench is,” offered Taeu- brich, pointing to the slabs of wood fastened to ungainly steel frames. “The GIs who made it didn’t want the Nazis to be com- fortable, either.”
For more information on the Nuremberg museum, go to
www.memorium-nuremberg.de
KLMNO
EZ EE
E3
directed by BARTLETT SHER
David Pittsinger and Carmen Cusack. Photo by Craig Schwartz.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160