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    Film on Expulsion of Kashmir’s Hindus Is Polarizing and Popular in India

    Called propaganda by critics and essential viewing by fans, “The Kashmir Files,” an unexpected blockbuster, has drawn the support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.SIKAR, India — A group of boys are playing cricket on a snowy field in Kashmir, a war-scarred, Muslim-majority region contested between India and Pakistan.As the boys play, they’re listening in the background to radio commentary about a professional cricket match between the archrivals India and Pakistan. When one of the boys, a Hindu named Shiva, cheers on the famed Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, he is beaten for doing so, and his abusers force him to chant, “Long live Pakistan, down with Hindustan!”This opening scene sets the tone for “The Kashmir Files,” a film that has become an unexpected blockbuster, drawing millions of moviegoers across India and the support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.The film, released in March, is largely set in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when a group of militant Islamists forcibly expelled Kashmiri Pandits, upper-caste Hindus, from the region. It has been seized on by the B.J.P. as a tool to advance its narrative of Hindu persecution in India, at a time of increasing calls for violence against India’s minority Muslims.Bharatiya Janata Party workers are encouraging members and supporters to attend, the cast and crew are doing photo ops with Mr. Modi and some states governed by the party have been offering tax breaks on ticket sales and days off from work to spur attendance.People waiting in line for a showing of “The Kashmir Files“ in Mumbai in March.Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters“Those who have not watched it must watch the movie to learn how atrocities and terror gripped Kashmir during Congress rule,” said Amit Shah, India’s home minister, referring to one of India’s major political parties and a rival of the B.J.P.From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Kashmir was in the grip of an insurgency led by militants seeking independence or union with neighboring Pakistan. About 65,000 families, mostly Pandits, left the region in the early 1990s, according to a government report.The region remained restive in the decades that followed, and in 2019, the Modi government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its long-held semiautonomous status, splitting it into two federal territories administered by New Delhi and deploying a heavy security presence amid a clampdown on free speech.While the Indian government has insisted that its decision to take away Kashmir’s special status was intended to improve governance there, and to cut down on militancy, the region has experienced unrest and violence, sometimes deadly, since then, with the killings by both militants and security forces.The film’s critics, including opposition politicians and left-leaning intellectuals and historians, have called it “divisive” and “propaganda,” an attempt to sensationalize the killing of Kashmiri Pandits while avoiding the depiction of any violence against Muslims. In 1990, the peak year of the Pandits’ exodus, hundreds of both Hindus and Muslims were killed by militants.Critics also say the film has given the B.J.P. ammunition to widen the wedge between Hindus and Muslims.A.S. Dulat, a former head of India’s intelligence agency and the author of a book on Kashmir, said there was no doubt that Pandits were targeted by Islamist radicals. But he refused to watch the movie, finding its message unhelpful and poorly timed.“This movie is made to unnecessarily polarize the nation, and Kashmir can do without it,” he said.Many on the political right say that dismissing the film is tantamount to shooting the messenger.“This movie is special because before now, the actual cruelty suffered by Kashmiri Pandits had never been told in this unadulterated manner,” said Gaurav Tiwari, a Bharatiya Janata Party member who has arranged free tickets for moviegoers.Bharatiya Janata Party leaders pushed in March in New Delhi for a lifting of taxes on tickets to the movie.Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times, via Getty ImagesMohit Bhan, a Pandit whose ancestral home was burned during the expulsion in 1993, said many in his community saw the film as a long-overdue exploration of the period.“Now that the Pandits have come to believe that justice is hard to come by at the hands of successive governments, they think this movie is it,” said Mr. Bhan, whose party, the People’s Democratic Party, led Jammu and Kashmir in an alliance with Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. before the state was changed into a federal territory.While the response to the film has been deeply divided along political and sectarian lines, its commercial success is beyond dispute: Despite having no song-and-dance numbers — a staple feature of Bollywood movies — “The Kashmir Files” was an instant hit, grossing more than $40 million so far, making it one of the top earners this year. It cost about $2 million to make. Sandeep Yadav, a businessman in his early 30s, was waiting to watch the movie on a recent Sunday at a mall in Sikar, a quiet farm town in the Indian state of Rajasthan.Mr. Yadav said that he had previously learned about what happened to the Pandits on television, and that he rarely went to the movies, relying instead on his cellphone for a daily dose of entertainment.But this movie was a special occasion, he said before the screening at a theater which had completely sold out for “The Kashmir Files” in the first few weeks of its release.“I had heard that Pandits were driven out from their homes in the middle of the night,” he said. “I was curious about the topic and wanted to watch this movie, especially for that.”Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, the director, said he made “The Kashmir Files” after taking close to 700 video testimonies from people who had directly suffered during that period. He declined to say how many of those were Hindus or Muslims.Vivek Agnihotri, director of “The Kashmir Files,” at a news conference in New Delhi, in May.Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times, via Getty ImagesIn an interview, Mr. Agnihotri said his goal with the film was to expose what he called the “genocide” inflicted on Pandits and his contention that leftist-leaning academics, intellectuals and writers were complicit in covering up that history.“All I am saying is acknowledge that genocide happened so that nobody repeats it against Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists or Christians,” he said.In both a 2018 book and in interviews, Mr. Agnihotri has railed against left-wing student activists and intellectuals for supporting the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India, calling these so-called urban Naxalites “worse than terrorists.” He has also voiced his support for Yogi Adityanath, the firebrand Hindu monk who recently won re-election as the chief minister of India’s most populous state.Some of Bollywood’s elite have praised the film. Ram Gopal Varma, a director and producer, posted on Twitter that it “will inspire a new breed of revolutionary film makers.”But some of the film’s critics have disparaged the movie for having more violence than nuance.In one scene, an aging teacher, played by the acclaimed Bollywood actor Anupam Kher, is forced to leave his home with his daughter-in-law and two grandchildren after his Muslim student-turned-militant shoots his son. His daughter-in-law is forced to eat rice mixed with her husband’s blood and then, in a later scene, she is sawed to death by militants.In Sikar, the moviegoers sat stunned by the movie’s final scene, which critics say essentially ensures that audiences exit enraged.In it, terrorists storm a Pandit refugee camp camouflaged in Indian Army uniforms, then line up refugees and shoot them dead at point-blank range.In the theater, Mr. Yadav moved to the edge of his seat as bodies slumped over onscreen. He winced when the last refugee, the young boy, Shiva, is fatally shot.“This movie makes me so very angry,” he said after the screening. “This is what will stay with me,” he added, “the pain of the Hindu Pandits and the gruesomeness of the Muslim terrorists.”Critics of the blockbuster denounced it in New Delhi after its opening.Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times, via Getty ImagesWhile the movie has been widely seen across India, it hasn’t been screened in the Kashmir Valley, where theaters have been shuttered since the 1990s, so Kashmiris haven’t been able to assess it themselves. Just this month it was added to a streaming service that will enable some Kashmiris to view it.Mohammad Ayub Chapri, a taxi driver in Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city, said that while he had not been able to see the film, he had gathered through social media that it cast his community in a negative light.“It makes me sad to know this,” Mr. Chapri said. “We Muslims have shared meals with the Pandits, eating from the same plate. Even Muslims were killed by the radicals, but the movie seems to paint all Muslims here with the same brush.” More

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    Zelensky Addresses Cannes Film Festival Opening Ceremony

    President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine gave a virtual address to the Cannes Film Festival opening ceremony on Tuesday, referencing Charlie Chaplin’s celebrated satire of fascism to urge some of the world’s highest-profile stars and filmmakers to similarly rise to the occasion in the face of a war “that can set the whole continent ablaze.”“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish,” Zelensky said, quoting Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”Appearing via satellite in his now signature military green shirt, Zelensky lionized the power of film in his address and received a standing ovation from the crowd gathered on the French Riviera.“Again, then as now, there is a dictator,” Zelensky said. “Again, then as now, there is a war for freedom. Again, then as now, cinema must not be silent.”The address was his latest stop on a persistent and wide-ranging virtual diplomatic tour to keep global attention on his country’s plight. Since Russia’s invasion began in late February, he has delivered addresses via video link to governments of countries as large as the United States and as small as Malta on a regular basis.In April, he made a surprise virtual address at the Grammys, telling the audience that his country’s musicians were wearing “body armor instead of tuxedos.”“They sing to the wounded in hospitals,” he said, “even to those who can’t hear them.”Later that month, he made a live-streamed appearance at the Venice Biennale. Speaking at the opening of the exhibition “This is Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky vividly described the horrors that his people were enduring. With a digital Ukrainian flag fluttering behind him, he said: “There are no tyrannies that would not try to limit art. Because they can see the power of art. Art can tell the world things that cannot be shared otherwise.”Mr. Zelensky’s oratory efforts have been remarkably effective in securing his country the weapons, aid and international support needed to fight Russia. He is a former actor, and starred as an unlikely Ukrainian president in “Servant of the People,” a TV satire that prefaced his own, actual election to the presidency in 2019.Aurelien Breeden More

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    ‘Wish You Were Here’ Review: The Saga of Female Friendship

    Sanaz Toossi’s new play follows a group of five women in Iran as they and their friendships change against the backdrop of marriages and revolution.The five Iranian women of “Wish You Were Here,” which opened on Tuesday night at Playwrights Horizons, joke about sex and their bodies. They file one another’s toenails and lick their cheeks with a disarming degree of comfort. And they show off their psychic connections by playing rounds of “What am I thinking?”Yet these friends can also be vicious, mocking one another with the targeted hits of a loved one who knows where to stick the knife.The playwright Sanaz Toossi drops in on this group in 10 scenes — one for almost every year from 1978 to 1991, a period encompassing the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the country’s steps toward economic stability. Pushing that upheaval somewhat awkwardly to the background, Toossi focuses instead on the women and how their relationships to one another — and to themselves — change with marriages, deaths and sudden departures. Their friendship is its own saga of constantly fluctuating degrees of intimacy and friction.We meet the women at around 20 years old, all preparing for a wedding in a living room in Karaj, Iran: Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) is the bride, wearing a snowy-white dune of lace and tulle, “big in a way that sort of feels humiliating,” according to the neurotic Shideh (Artemis Pebdani). Rana (Nazanin Nour), a rambunctious firecracker still dressed in her red silk pajamas, promises never to get married or have kids. Same goes for the churlish, eye-rolling Nazanin (Marjan Neshat), who’s aiming for an engineering degree. Zari (Nikki Massoud), carelessly reposed over a very 1970s floral couch, gives the impression of a naïve youth. These women taunt and prod one another, their insecurities and fears often colliding like bumper cars at a carnival.Though the pure Salme, who faithfully prays for what she believes is the best for her friends — a husband and children for Nazanin, admission into an American medical school for Shideh — seems like she’ll be our main protagonist in the beginning, that’s quickly shown to not be the case. Nazanin becomes the anchor of every scene, even as the other women enter and exit, though, structurally, the play hadn’t previously indicated that would be the case.Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s direction tries to bring out the color of these women’s personalities but collides with the limits of the script, which, squeezing 13 years into a 100-minute run, struggles to focus its lens and communicate the subtle dynamics among the friends. The characters lack context, beyond the very occasional mention of a fiancé or child, and so their actions — which they always make outside of the isolation of this one living room — lack stakes. The sequence of marriages and the not-so-distant sirens of war turn up as transparent markers of progress, but they never believably penetrate the tiny bubble of time and space where these characters live.Arnulfo Maldonado opts for a kitschy set of a living room with patterned rugs, pink and beige walls and ornate Iranian furniture, though the stage remains oddly static even as the production moves through different living rooms across 13 years of different fashions, as beautifully captured in Sarah Laux’s costume design, from the pastry-pouf wedding dress and flirty bridesmaids dresses of the ’70s to a denim maxi skirt in the ’80s. Reza Behjat’s lighting design gracefully captures the sunrises and sunsets of the passing years.Still, each of the actresses gives an expert performance. Pebdani, who has played one of my favorite recurring characters on the comedy series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” is just as funny here as Shideh, though she has minimal scenes and little to work with. Nour and Radja bring appropriate exuberance and softness, respectively, to their characters, and in Zari, Massoud presents an arc from guilelessness to self-awareness and maturity.Reuniting for Nazanin’s wedding, from left: Shideh (Pebdani), Salme (Radja) and Neshat (Nazanin). Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNeshat, who provided profoundly expansive performances in another recent Playwrights production, “Selling Kabul,” and as the complexly drawn Toefl teacher in “English,” continues her streak of rich, marrow-deep character portrayals. With each of her characters, Nazarin included, Neshat gradually sheds their armors of self-possession and strength, their reserve and resolve, to reveal how fragile, scared and insecure they truly are. In other words, Neshat transforms empathy into a dramatic act we witness, in real time, on the stage.With her last produced work, the Atlantic and Roundabout theater companies’ scintillating production of “English” from February, Toossi accomplished wonders with her language; she offered an examination of national identity, othering and the construction of a private and public self all within the subtle discussions of phonetics, pronunciation and syntax in an English language class in Iran. There are glimmers of that work here, too, as in the exquisite poetry of the final scene. (“She will never know how fast this earth can spin underneath you,” one character, now an American expat, swears in a monologue about her future daughter. “How one day you can have a home, and the next, as you are hurtling through the air, you will have to vanquish home.”)Even as “Wish You Were Here” circles around themes of the female body and national politics, aiming to land somewhere with a statement, it constantly backs away. In a playwright note, Toossi asks: “Doesn’t every play exist within a set of politics? Must a play be political if the events of the play are affected by the politics of the play’s setting? Isn’t every play political? I can’t decide.” Unfortunately, despite the successes of the production, the playwright’s indecision creeps through.It’s exciting to see a portrayal of the complexity of female friendships, including both the niceties and the petty rivalries alike. It’s something I’ve been considering a lot lately in conversations with my female friends — how we have shaped and been shaped by one another, how we’ve grown into or outgrown the roles we’ve been assigned in each other’s lives. There’s so much to appreciate and even more to explore here, within the confidences of rowdy, supportive, spiteful women; I just wish we’d have witnessed it onstage.Wish You Were HereThrough May 29 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    Denouncing War, Ukrainian Musicians Unite for a World Tour

    The newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will perform in Europe and the United States this summer, using music to oppose the Russian invasion.The Russian invasion has devastated cultural life in Ukraine, forcing renowned musical ensembles to disband and leading to an exodus of conductors, composers and players.Now some of Ukraine’s leading artists, with the help of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, are uniting to use music to express opposition to Russia’s continuing attacks. They will form a new ensemble, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, and make an 11-city tour of Europe and the United States in July and August, the orchestra announced on Monday.“This is something we can do for our country and for our people,” Marko Komonko, a Ukrainian violinist who will serve as the orchestra’s concertmaster, said in an interview. “It’s not much, but this is our job.”The 75-member orchestra, which will be made up of Ukrainian refugees as well as musicians still in the country, will appear at several European festivals, including the BBC Proms in London for a televised performance on July 31. It will make stops in Germany, France, Scotland and the Netherlands, before heading to the United States to perform at Lincoln Center and at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Proceeds from the concerts will benefit Ukrainian artists.The orchestra will be led by the Canadian Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who came up with the idea for the ensemble, eager to find a way to help musicians and others in Ukraine.“We want to show the embattled citizens of Ukraine that a free and democratic world supports them,” Wilson said in an interview. “We are fighting as artistic soldiers, soldiers of music. This gives the musicians a voice and the emotional strength to get through this.”Marko Komonko, the orchestra’s concertmaster, said: “This is something we can do for our country and for our people. It’s not much, but this is our job.”via Marko KomonkoWilson pitched the idea to her husband, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who offered the company’s support and persuaded the Polish National Opera to assist as well. The orchestra will assemble in mid-July in Warsaw for rehearsals and hold an opening concert at the Wielki Theater, home to the Polish National Opera.Gelb said it was important that artistic groups spoke out against the Russian invasion. Shortly after the invasion began, the Met announced it would not engage performers or institutions that supported President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Last month, the Met staged a concert in support of Ukraine; banners forming the Ukrainian flag stretched across the exterior of the theater, bathed in blue and yellow floodlights.“This is a world situation that is far beyond politics,” Gelb said in an interview. “It’s about saving humanity. The Met, as the largest performing arts company in the United States and one of the leading companies in the world, clearly has a role to play and we’ve been playing it.”The Freedom Orchestra will perform a variety of works, including the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Seventh Symphony; Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova; Brahms’s Fourth Symphony; and Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

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    When Classical Music Was an Alibi

    The idea that musicians and their work are apolitical flourished after World War II, in part thanks to the process of denazification.On April 16, 1955, the soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to appear at the Vienna State Opera, bowing as Cio-Cio-san in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” Critics hailed it as a landmark and said it illustrated how much Vienna had changed since the end of World War II, a decade earlier.What went undiscussed by the newspapers at Williams’s debut, however, were the colleagues she performed with: among others, Wilhelm Loibner, Erich von Wymetal and Richard Sallaba, all of whom were active musicians in Austria under National Socialism.Sallaba, a tenor, sang in several special performances of Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” for the Nazi leisure organization “Kraft durch Freude” (“Strength Through Joy”) between 1941 and 1943. On July 15, 1942, Loibner conducted a performance of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” for the Wehrmacht, and barely a month after Hitler committed suicide, he was back on the podium at the Vienna State Opera leading Puccini’s “La Bohème.” Von Wymetal, who coached Williams for her debut, assumed his position as the State Opera’s stage director after Lothar Wallerstein, a Jew, fled in 1938.Was Williams’s milestone tainted because she worked with those whose artistic careers directly benefited from the Nazi regime? Faced with such a question, we might be tempted to say that politics has nothing to do with classical music. It is an argument that has been heard again and again when artists come under scrutiny for their involvement in current events — most recently, musicians whose ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have been questioned.When the soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to appear at the Vienna State Opera, it was alongside musicians who had been active when Austria was occupied by Nazi Germany.Archive/AlamyPerforming classical music, or listening to it, has never been an apolitical act. But the idea that it might be flourished in the wake of World War II, thanks in part to the process of denazification, the Allied initiative to purge German-speaking Europe of Nazi political, social and cultural influence.The American and British military demanded that German and Austrian musicians who wanted to resume work fill out “Fragebogen,” comprehensive questionnaires that sought to determine the extent of their political complicity. This resulted in lists of “white,” “black,” “gray acceptable” and “gray unacceptable” artists — categories that were immediately the subject of disagreement. The process also varied widely by region. American officials were initially committed to systematic denazification and decried the “superficial, disorganized and haphazard” efforts in the zones occupied by France, Britain and Soviet Russia.But even in the American zone, strict blacklists were short-lived. By 1947, responsibility for assessing guilt was transferred to German-run trial courts, which were invested in resuming the rhythms of institutionalized music-making, for cultural and economic reasons. The moral aims of denazification quickly conflicted with the realities of music as an industry and a set of labor practices. Austria’s often-claimed position after the war as “Hitler’s first victim” likewise meant that musical affairs there resumed quickly — with even less public conversation about accountability.Musicians slipped through the denazification process with relative ease. Many rank-and-file artists had been required to join Nazi organizations in order to remained employed, and the correlation of such membership to ideological commitment was often ambiguous. Individuals tended to lie on their forms to obtain a more advantageous status. And artists such as the eminent conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler referred to music’s apolitical status as a kind of alibi, even when they had performed on occasions, and as part of institutions, with deep ties to the regime.Allied forces were keen to “clean up” the reputations of musicians whose talents they valued, and even aided some in gliding through the denazification process. On July 4, 1945, the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was asked to fill out a Fragebogen because she was on the Salzburg register of National Socialists in Austria. Had the form been deemed acceptable, the American military would have approved her return to the stage.But when the American intelligence officer overseeing her case, Otto von Pasetti, realized that she had lied on the form, he destroyed it. The following day, she was asked to fill out another one. Although it was not any more accurate, Pasetti accepted it because Schwarzkopf’s status as a celebrity diva had convinced him that “no other suitable singer” was available for major operatic performances. Shortly thereafter, she climbed into a jeep driven by an American officer, Lieutenant Albert van Arden, and was driven 250 kilometers to Graz, Austria, to sing Konstanze in Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail.”After 1945, then, career continuity was more the norm than the exception. Denazification status defined immediate employability but was only one factor in musicians’ prospects. Artists looking to resume their careers readily identified themselves as POWs, refugees, bombing victims, disabled soldiers and widows, many facing housing and food insecurity. Reference letters used postwar hardship as a justification for priority consideration or tried to explain how a person had been pulled into, as one put it, the “vortex” of Nazi politics. One baritone assured administrators that although he had been detained in a prison camp for several years, he still “had the opportunity to practice.”These claims of hardship easily slid into narratives of victimhood. Bombed concert halls and opera houses in formerly Nazi territories were potent symbols of destruction and the necessity of rebuilding, but also enabled the focus to shift from Nazi atrocities to German suffering. At the opening of the rebuilt Vienna State Opera on Nov. 5, 1955, just months after Williams’s debut in “Butterfly,” the conductor Karl Böhm — who had led concerts celebrating Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938 — was on the podium for the celebration. No Jewish survivors were invited to participate.Performances amid the rubble reignited a sense of community and attempted to rehabilitate classical music as inherently humanistic, universal and uplifting after its supposed “corruption” by propagandistic use during the Nazi era. In “The German Catastrophe” (1946), the historian Friedrich Meinecke evoked the power of German music as a restorative force: “What is more individual and German than the great German music from Bach to Brahms?” For Meinecke, the country’s music was redemptive, expressing the national spirit while still possessing a “universal Occidental effect.”Some composers, encouraged by the Allies, promoted the idea that modernist musical techniques were particularly antifascist because they had been banned by the Nazis — an exaggeration both of Nazi officials’ stylistic understanding and of the level of control they exerted over the arts. Winfried Zillig, a German who composed in the 12-tone style, had many career successes from 1933 to 1945, including major opera premieres and a position in occupied Poland, granted as a reward for his operas’ political values.The composer Winfried Zillig’s career flourished under the Nazis, but he later claimed that the regime had repressed his music.Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesBut Zillig later claimed that the Nazis had repressed his music. Around the time of his denazification trial, he expressed outrage at being “one of the few surviving ‘degenerates’” — that is, composers who, as modernists, were targeted by the regime — who was facing the indignity of being labeled a propagandist. Zillig’s self-flattering version of events was enshrined in Adorno’s writing about him and was not debunked until 2002, long after his death. His career as a conductor and radio director flourished in West Germany, and he played an important role in the dissemination of modern music.Despite the black-and-white thinking that too often accompanies these topics, and how easy it is to retrospectively condemn, Zillig’s career is a reminder that all working Austrian and German musicians were implicated in the Third Reich. The fact that classical music was the industry they worked in does not mean they transcended politics.The more uncomfortable truth may be that the ambiguity of classical musicians’ status under Nazism makes them prime examples of “implicated subjects,” to use the theorist Michael Rothberg’s phrase. Rothberg writes that “implicated subjects occupy positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit or benefit from regimes of domination, but do not originate or control such regimes.”Many German and Austrian musicians occupied this liminal place, neither victim nor perpetrator but a participant in the history that produced both those positions. The well-meaning but blunt categories of denazification after 1945 actually blurred our understanding of the complex systems that led to war and genocide and how musicians operated within them.In 1948, seven years before Camilla Williams sang “Butterfly” in Vienna, the Black American soprano Ellabelle Davis gave a recital there, marking the first time a Black concert singer had performed in the Austrian capital since the outbreak of the war. Calling Davis’s performance “the first fully validated representative of the vocal arts from overseas since the war,” one critic heralded her debut as a turning point in Vienna’s musical journey, an opening of borders and an acceptance of voices that only a few years earlier would have been unthinkable.Commentators also pointed out that Davis was the first Black singer to perform in a Viennese classical venue since Marian Anderson in November 1937, a few short months before the Nazi annexation. At last, these critics said, the city was being restored to its previous era of musical openness. Such comments created a timeline that bridged the Nazi era, cordoning it off as an aberration.Yet other competing continuities also defined Vienna. Only a few months before Davis’s recital, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was Jewish, shared a scathing critique of the city’s postwar racial politics. Schoenberg, who had fled Europe in the 1930s, wrote in 1948, “I have the impression that in Vienna racial issues are still more important than artistic merit for judging artwork.”Later, in 1951, he affirmed that judgment: “I would like it best if performances of my music in Vienna were banned completely and forever. I have never been treated as badly as I was there.” Appeals to continuity after World War II could condemn or vindicate. Both classical music’s history of racism and its universalist aspirations persisted.In moments of war and violence, it can be tempting to either downplay classical music’s involvement in global events or emphasize music’s power only when it is used as a force for what a given observer perceives as good. Insisting on a utopian, apolitical status for this art form renders us unable to see how even high culture is implicated in the messy realities of political and social life. We must work to understand the complex politics of music, even when that means embracing discomfort and ambiguity.Emily Richmond Pollock teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of “Opera After the Zero Hour: The Problem of Tradition and the Possibility of Renewal in Postwar West Germany.” More

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    ‘¡Viva Maestro!’ Review: A Documentary in Need of a Conductor

    A wunderkind conductor attempts to keep young Venezuelan musicians working despite political strife at home in this film from Ted Braun.The Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel earned his reputation as a wunderkind by leading prestigious symphonic groups like the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In front of the orchestras he leads, Dudamel is a live wire, his signature curls bouncing with each wave of the wand. And when the music stops, Dudamel turns his passion for his profession toward advocacy, supporting programs that help young Venezuelan musicians develop professionally.The documentary “Viva Maestro” follows Dudamel, combining vérité footage of him in rehearsals with interviews in which Dudamel explains how orchestras can help young people create a more beautiful world.The film begins in 2017, as political and economic strife in Venezuela forces an end to Dudamel’s planned tour with the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, the country’s premiere youth orchestra. Dudamel leaves Venezuela, and the orchestra’s tour is canceled, leaving the young members of the Bolivars to join millions of protesters in the streets of Venezuela. But Dudamel continues to fight for his musicians to be able to perform, organizing international concerts as a way to keep his acolytes focused on a positive vision of the future.Dudamel is a joyfully appealing figure, and the film benefits from following such an amiable subject. But the documentary lacks the rigor it would take to turn this warm portrait into a proper cinematic symphony. The protests in Venezuela represent a major upheaval for Dudamel, even resulting in the death of one of his musicians. But the director Ted Braun does not take the time to show the protests or to explain what has prompted them, and so, much of the film’s conflict feels indistinct. Braun prefers to fondly listen to Dudamel’s musings in interviews. But even the most passionate speakers can come off as rambling with enough repetition.¡Viva Maestro!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Disney Says It Hopes Florida Anti-LGBTQ Law Is ‘Struck Down’

    Moments after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bill into law on Monday, Disney released a statement condemning it and saying that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts.” Disney employs roughly 80,000 people in the Orlando area.Labeled by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay,” the law restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also gives parents an option to sue a school district if they think the policy has been violated.This month, Disney was criticized by many of its employees for refusing to take a public stand against the legislation, leading to a series of moves from the company’s chief executive, Bob Chapek. Mr. Chapek broke the company’s silence and stated Disney’s opposition; apologized repeatedly; paused political giving in Florida pending a review; and created a task force to develop an action plan for Disney to be a more positive force for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, including through its content for families. He is going on a listening tour at Disney workplaces, both domestically and overseas, this week.On March 9, Mr. Chapek told shareholders at Disney’s annual meeting that he had called Mr. DeSantis to “express our disappointment and concern” about the bill. “The governor heard our concerns, and agreed to meet with me and L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of our senior team in Florida as a way to address them,” he said.Mr. DeSantis responded with defiance, promptly deriding the company as “Woke Disney” in a fund-raising email to supporters. On Monday, as he signed the bill, Mr. DeSantis said: “I don’t care what Hollywood says. I don’t care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I’m not backing down.”The hosts of the Academy Awards on Sunday made fun of the legislation during their opening stand-up routine.In its statement on Monday, Disney added that it was committed to the national and state organizations working to overturn the law. “We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of the Disney family,” the company said, “as well as the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community in Florida and across the country.” More

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    Onstage, the French Election Is a Landslide Win for Cynicism

    As the presidential vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are addressing the campaign. Many shows reach a similar conclusion: Don’t trust politicians.PARIS — If elections are spectacles, France’s presidential campaign, caught between voter apathy and war in Europe, has so far struggled to connect with its audience. Yet on French stages, a number of artists are making hay out of the upcoming vote — and the picture is hardly flattering.Across comedy and drama, performers and directors of varied backgrounds seem to agree on one thing: The country’s politicians are uniformly terrible and their performances a little too close to theater to be trusted.Not that the political calendar is headline material in every playhouse. While many prestigious French theaters that receive public funding pride themselves on staging political works, they tend to refer to current events only obliquely. For highbrow theatergoers here, a lack of intellectual distance suggests a lack of taste. Shows actually addressing the presidential campaign are mostly found elsewhere, in smaller venues that rely on box-office revenues.Two of them, the Café de la Gare and the Théâtre des Deux Ânes, are comedy venues. On the nights I attended, they drew large, albeit different, crowds. While visitors to the Café de la Gare skewed younger, the silver-haired audience at the Théâtre des Deux Ânes, in the Pigalle district of Paris, appeared to include many regulars, who cheered for several comedians as soon as they appeared onstage.The jokes were dissimilar, too. At the Deux Ânes, the show “Elect Us” strings together five comic and musical acts, ranging from witty (Florence Brunold’s parody of a history lesson, with “Macron the First” as a Jupiterian king) to downright misogynistic. Every female politician mentioned throughout the performance was described as either an airhead or physically unattractive. Some of their male peers, on the other hand, were more gratifyingly characterized as “too smart” (Macron) or as a Casanova (the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour).Guillaume Meurice in “Meurice 2022” at the Café de la Gare.MagaliThe shows on offer at the Café de la Gare, on the other hand, tried to turn these tropes on their head. “We’ve Reached That Point!,” written by Jérémy Manesse and directed by Odile Huleux, envisions a television debate between two fictional contenders during the next presidential election, in 2027. One of them is a woman, well played by the deadpan Florence Savignat, who maintains a purposely bland persona to avoid personal attacks. In another show at the venue, “Meurice 2022,” the well-known comic Guillaume Meurice — a daily presence on a popular radio station, France Inter — plays a presidential candidate whose patronizing rhetoric is ultimately undermined by the feminist manager in charge of running his events, played by Julie Duquenoy.Still, despite their contrasting values, all these shows portray the French political class as far removed from the audience and its concerns. The historical left-right divide, which has been in flux since Macron won office as a centrist and far-right figures started gaining ground, often gave way onstage to an “us versus them” dynamic, with acts that riffed on the public’s perceived disdain for every presidential candidate.Meurice’s cartoonishly out-of-touch character, for instance, isn’t affiliated with any party. One recurring gag is that every time he mentions another politician, he describes that person as “a personal friend,” from far-left figures to Macron and Zemmour — the implication being that they all belong to the same social group. By way of parody, “Meurice 2022” also offers empty slogans like “The future is already tomorrow” and “Winning now.”From a comedy perspective, it works. Yet “Meurice 2022” speaks to a larger malaise in the country, which “We’ve Reached That Point!” makes even more explicit. The plot revolves around the improbable notion that the two 2027 contenders, unbeknown to them, have been given a newly discovered truth serum before the start of their live debate. When the serum kicks in, suddenly they find themselves blurting out their real feelings about the hot issues of the campaign.Manesse, a shrewd writer, inserts several coups de théâtre along the way, which makes for a genuinely entertaining play. Yet the premise remains that no politician could possibly be telling the truth.From left, Emmanuel Dechartre, Alexandra Ansidei, Christophe Barbier and Adrien Melin in “Elysée” at the Petit Montparnasse theater.Fabienne RappeneauWhen politicians are portrayed as liars, the age-old comparison between politics and theater is never far away — and in Paris, two plays about former French presidents are also leaning into it. “The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French,” directed by Léo Cohen-Paperman, shows Jacques Chirac, the French head of state from 1995 to 2007, as a deeply theatrical figure, as does “Élysée,” a play about the relationship between Chirac and his predecessor, François Mitterrand, who was elected president in 1981.Audience members looking for policy analysis will be disappointed. “Elysée,” directed by Jean-Claude Idée at the Petit Montparnasse theater, is mostly uninterested in Chirac’s and Mitterrand’s politics. The playwright, Hervé Bentégéat, focuses on what they have in common: a wandering eye, for starters, in some cringe-inducing scenes with the only woman in the cast, and the fact that they are “good comedians.” Cue the unlikely bargain they reportedly struck in 1981 to help the left-wing Mitterrand get elected — a cynical long-term calculation for Chirac, a right-wing figure.Julien Campani as Jacques Chirac in “The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French” at the Théâtre de Belleville.Simon Loiseau“The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French,” at the Théâtre de Belleville, is the more compelling show, despite some inconsistencies. It is the first installment in a planned series of presidential portraits, “Eight Kings.” (The president-as-king metaphor has a life of its own in France.) In the opening scene, which manages to be brilliantly funny while recapping Chirac’s life, Julien Campani and Clovis Fouin play overenthusiastic Chirac fans who have created a zany 24-hour theater production about his life. Cohen-Paperman then segues into far more traditional vignettes drawn from Chirac’s youth and career.Campani is impressively convincing in the title role, but “The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French” never really explores what Chirac achieved, or didn’t achieve, as a politician. Instead, it posits politics as a game of chess, with Chirac on the lookout for the next useful move.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More