FictionThatMatters.org

Look Into My Eyes
A Film by Naftaly Gliksberg
2008, 80 minutes.
Click here for screening times.

To deny something is to admit to its existence; at least that’s what the word has come to mean in the media. When an official ‘denies’ the allegations, the cards are already stacked against her; far better to ‘vehemently disagree’ than to ‘deny’. For if she has denied the allegations then we all know (us, the listeners) that she probably damn well did it. Denial implies that we are ignoring a truth beneath, and we use the word all the time. It is a loaded term.

Naftaly Gliksberg’s film Look into My Eyes shows us how much anti-Semitism is denied today. And that, seething beneath this denial, the truth is more terrifying and insidious than we may have imagined.

Gliksberg, a former Rabbi from Israel, travels through Europe and the U.S. to speak with people about anti-Semitism. But he doesn’t want to find it. There is an optimism and kindness in his demeanor that suggests he would rather not discover anti-Semitism at all. Sadly, he not only identifies it, but unearths prejudice against Jews in everyone from altar boys to comedians.

Gliksberg’s first port-of-call is a small city in Poland called Kelc. His family was once taken from the town to the gas chambers, but he is not visiting to explore his roots. He interviews locals about The Passion, a play that depicts the crucifixion of Christ which has been staged for 350 years in the city. One such man had been attending the performance for decades:

Jews are not evil, I don’t think like that at all. They are interested in business, not in work. A Jew drinks to the deal, then he washes his hands, and that’s it. The Jews are the richest people in the world. The world is full of them and they are rich.

Less than ten years after the end of World War II, over forty Jews were killed in a pogrom in Kelc. Today, children disguise their Jewish identity because other kids taunt, ‘Get out of here, Jew, to the gas chamber with you.’

What is remarkable is that in this age of political correctness, so many people speak their true minds in the film. A preacher rails on about how Israel could not exist without the Christian right; a young child weeps at not being able to listen to her skinhead music any more after a court order; even a black man in Brooklyn, who is married to a Jewish woman, expresses his disdain at the ‘chosen people’.

The fervent anti-Semites, the leaders of neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. and Germany, share their opinions rather willingly. But this is to be expected, as any media outlet will serve their agenda of hate, and they have the astounding ability to twist well-documented facts such as the gas chambers at Auschwitz in order to support their conspiracy theories. There is no denying these hate leaders are intelligent; but what is disturbing is the extent to which they turn simple explanations — a Holocaust, for example — on their head in order to further castigate Jews.

This is the terrifying revelation of Look into My Eyes, the utter flexibility of the mind to see what it wants to see. The mind is the servant of a deeper, inner core, it seems, and when that core is metastasized with hate, the mind acts as a horrific weapon. Here is a German far right politician at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, one of the most moving public works that I personally have ever experienced:

Here you can see the foreign domination over our people. These are the foreign blocks of power. This is the humiliation of the German people.

People have their reasons to hate or dislike, I think, and this film shows us one of the easiest ways to perpetuate enmity — start with the kids.

If the purpose of Look into my Eyes is to ascertain whether anti-Semitism still exists in the world, then Gliksberg has sadly succeeded. It is present and writhing in even the most exemplary democracies. And he discovers sharp differences between America and Europe, namely that neo-Nazi paraphernalia is tolerated in the U.S. but banned outright in many countries. This is a discussion that could fill another film altogether.

But much of the film is spent documenting the extremes, hate groups and especially communities impoverished by ignorance or isolation. I would have liked to see Gliksberg probe deeper into a few more questions. For example, even Noam Chomsky, a Jewish professor, is accused of anti-Semitism for vehemently criticizing Israel’s policies. It would have been compelling to flush out the distinction between being an Israeli and being Jewish, and how the Palestinian conflict has led to a confluence of anti-Semitism with foreign policy, which is used both by and against Israel. Gliksberg also did not deeply explore the ability of communities to repel anti-Semitism. Namely, what causes an individual or a community not to hate? How can the myths of Jewish conspiracies be debunked in a sustained fashion? The truly frightening anti-Semitics, to me, are not the hate mongerers but the ordinary folks who subscribe to the myths of Jewish domination without articulating them.

Then there is the problem of labels. The people in this film readily deny that they are ‘anti-Semites’ while eagerly disparaging Jews. What does the label of anti-Semitism really mean if it can be so easily parried? Another point — and I recognize that this is surely too much to pack into one film — is that I might have enjoyed a discussion of culture and religion. How much is Israeli culture Mediterranean, and how much is Jewish? And how does this contribute to anti-Semitism?

But that is not the filmmaker’s aim. Look into My Eyes unearths anti-Semitism in poverty, Christianity, comedy, Islam, right wing churches, families, and children. This thing exists, and Gliksberg shows admirable courage in exposing it first-hand.

If you leave this film feeling uncomfortable, that is normal, but be wary of keeping it to yourself. So much of anti-Semitism writhes in silence, what is unsaid.

–Deji Olukotun