A lot of us are wondering lately: "What would I do under the right oppressive conditions?" Two works of cinema address that timely question.

"Number 24" is a powerful, if erratic, work of film, streaming on Netflix. Via RogerEbert.com:

Based on the real-life story of World War II resistance fighter Gunnar Sønsteby, Norwegian director John Andreas Andersen’s “Number 24” is a sturdy, handsomely mounted period piece depicting the emotional toll required for freedom. It begins with an elderly Sønsteby (Erik Hivju) preparing to speak to a group of young students in Rjukan. Andersen’s observational camera takes a documentary approach, leaning on evocative zooms to capture a nervous Sønsteby anxiously biting down on a stick before appearing on stage. He has given this speech many times, but it’s clear the accessing of these difficult memories — “the fifth drawer in his mind” as he calls it — still causes him immeasurable distress.

We see a lot of tense moments and explosions. But the real heart of the movie is the dialogue with one student who is determined to find out about a relative murdered by the resistance.

In other parts of the film, Anderson does balance the methodical nature of this historical figure (the unhurried Trulsen is indispensable) with the charged subject matter. There are grim moments of torture and betrayals and some surprising humor. When one student asks Sønsteby why he and his comrades didn’t follow Gandhi’s non-violent teachings rather than resorting to murder, Sønsteby frankly replies: “Gandhi didn’t face the Nazis.” That’s the closest Anderson comes to interrogating Sønsteby’s actions or his personality. Instead, the director crafts a mostly patriotic picture of a man solely dedicated to duty. It’s an uncompromising approach that often makes for a stirring watch even through a narrow lens.

***

Growing up in Philadelphia, home to one of the largest Irish diasporas, the IRA always seemed to me like a righteous and moral movement. But I was a kid, and not good with shades of gray. Most young people aren't. You can't watch "Say Nothing" and ever look at the Troubles as black and white again. Via the New Yorker:

In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour. Dolours and Marian Price (Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe, respectively), two teen-age sisters born and raised in Belfast, are confronted almost immediately with the clash of expectations versus reality. The pair are still novice militants when they decide to devise their own mission, entering a local bank sporting nuns’ habits and guns and announcing their intent to “liberate” funds on behalf of the Irish Republican Army. The heist doesn’t go smoothly. A stern-faced woman refuses to cooperate, calling the sisters’ disguises “sacrilege”; a visibly panicked Marian implores her to lie down, sweetening the request with a “pretty please.” In the end, the stunt nets the I.R.A. just thirty-eight quid, but the sisters are giddy. “We’re all anyone’s talking about right now,” Dolours declares. That, she believes, is “fucking priceless.”

For such a scrappy operation, image is everything. It’s difficult to deny the worthiness, even the romance, of the Republican cause: the Irish have been resisting English invasion, colonization, and exploitation for eight centuries. The Price siblings see themselves as part of that grand tradition, as did their parents before them. (In the pilot, the sisters’ father, Albert, regales his young daughters at the dinner table with tales of bomb-making and prison beatings.) By the early nineteen-seventies, when the series begins, the movement had splintered, with some taking up arms to secure Northern Ireland’s independence from British rule. “Say Nothing” understands—and often captures—the excitement and allure of this fight. But the show is ultimately preoccupied with the way violence comes to weigh on its perpetrators, however noble their aims, and with the gulf between what the I.R.A. should’ve been and what it actually was.

[...] As the decades pass, the silence that kept so many members safe from British retribution turns oppressive, and the I.R.A.’s victims and volunteers alike find themselves unable to move on. Gerry is, as ever, aloof to the casualties, having long since internalized the message that “Peace doesn’t come without cost.” But “Say Nothing” allies itself more closely with those who are forced to bear that burden and digs into the disquiet that it creates. Early on, Dolours is ashamed at having “choked” during a mission, failing to fire quickly enough to insure a clean escape for her crew. Brendan reassures her. “I trust the ones that hesitate,” he says simply, noting that their enemies are “all some mother’s son.” Then he explains, with equal calm, the conviction that will come to haunt him: “Sometimes people get in the way.”

I seethed as I watched the character of Gerry "I never belonged to the IRA" Adams hold himself blameless. (I met people who fundraised for the Cause -- it was almost impossible to go into a bar in that era and not meet one -- and they all certainly seemed to believe they were collecting money for Gerry.)

Well, the IRA did manage to get the British out of Ireland. But the Good Friday accords did nothing to further Irish unification, so there's that. And the bombing campaigns mostly stopped.

Anyway, these two shows demonstrate the inner struggle for personal morality in a time of systemic oppression. Not a bad thing to wrestle with these days.

Open thread below...