Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss

Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss

99 Minutes

Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss is a standard-issue talking-head documentary whose fascinating and important subject matter is dealt with in a regrettably bland and uninspired way. It is concerned with the working life and legacy of Veit Harlan, a German filmmaker who during his prime was considered to be a national treasure and yet is today largely forgotten. He would probably be (justly) relegated to the dusty back corners of cinematic history if it weren’t for one film – 1940′s Jew Süss, a nasty bit of anti-Semitic trash made under the aegis of Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda wing of the Nazi party. Once required viewing for all S.S. officers, the film is a notorious example of the fact that, far from being benign, art is a powerful and capricious dynamo, a slippery expression of the human soul that can either lead one along the path to sublimity or directly to the gas chamber. Jew Süss is a shameful part of Germany’s past, and after the war, Veit Harlan was the only filmmaker to be tried as a war criminal.

On a more personal level, Jew Süss is also a shameful and troubling aspect of the lives of Veit’s descendents, whose onscreen interviews make up the bulk of Moeller’s film. Each member of the Harlan clan (and it is a rather large clan, necessitating the inclusion at one point of a family tree) deals with the ignominious legacy of their ancestor in different ways. Some are more inclined to forgiveness than others, noting that he had some Jewish friends (and so couldn’t have been an anti-Semite), and besides, he was just following orders. Others are not so forgiving, including son Thomas and granddaughter Jessica, whose internalized anger and unrelenting shame are clearly visible in their faces and demeanors. Christiane Kubrick, Harlan’s niece and widow to director Stanley Kubrick, is articulate in her disdain for her uncle’s film, but her inclusion in the documentary seems to be solely so that she can tell an anecdote about the time her husband met her family. As is understandable, the youngest members of the family, including three twentysomething granddaughters, are less troubled than confused about the entire situation, not fully understanding what all the fuss is about. Having first encountered the film at university, they seem puzzled that such a corny and tame film (by today’s standards) could have inspired such vehement hatred and subsequent reprisals.

And it is here that Moeller missed a great opportunity. Instead of the expected and rather pro-forma choice of dealing with the effects that Jew Süss had on this particular family, I feel that a closer examination of the film itself would have been in order. I understand that this amounts to my wishing that Moeller had made a different movie altogether, but the question of why this film was so powerful, of how its formal aspects and historical context were able to arouse its audience member’s emotions to such a genocidal pitch; these seem to me to be questions of infinite import and concern. At the end of the day, Moeller’s Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss is a rather safe film about a dangerous subject.

by Shannon Gramas