THE RELUCTANT WITNESS
Alan Berliner
goes home again
to document
his father,
who says his life is
"Nobody's Business."
Alan Berliner has devoted a significant part of his career to the interconnectedness
of family, self, and world. Watching The Family Album (1986), viewers
may have felt their own histories evoked by the snippets of old, anonymous
home movies that Berliner randomly salvaged from estate sales. In Intimate
Stranger (1991), Berliner narrows the focus to his own maternal grandfather.
With Nobody's Business (1996) he scrutinizes his father, Oscar Berlinerãand
Oscar returns the gaze, often harshly.
With this latest documentary, the filmmaker says he is personally "raising
the stakes." In his previous film, Berliner's subject was a man already
deceased, and one whose biography would be of interest to almost anyone.
An intense Italian Jew who worked in Egypt and Japan as a cotton trader,
he became an unofficial diplomat whose life story is tied in with world
events. (To his family, however, he remained a virtual stranger.)
In Nobody's Business, Berliner attempts to get a bead on quite another
man, one who's very much alive and is loudly protesting the intrusion.
What's more, the son's relationship with the father is fraught with
tense personal issues. He wants to unlock not only his father's store
of secrets, but also to reclaim his family history through this oldest
remaining relative.
Oscar, at 79, is a tough sell. His crinkled, basset-hound features become
most animated when contradicting, insulting, insinuating, refusing,
negating, or denouncing something in response to his son's ceaseless
inquiries. A good part of this obstinacy stems from the reclusive man's
sincere belief that a film about his ordinary life is an utterly useless
projectãin addition to being nobody's business. He complies at least
somewhat with his son's efforts to document him, as a father indulging
a foolish child, but never for a moment buys the premise that every
soul is deserving of enumeration, that no life is devoid of significance.
This belief meshes with the worldview of the Mormons, who have assembled
the largest genealogical archive in existence. In Nobody's Business,
Berliner (who is Jewish) documents his journey to the great vault at
Granite Mountain, Utah, where he tries to unearth the family history
his father is unwilling or unable to supply. The film integrates this
material with family interviews, ironically employed stock footage (classic
boxing footage, for example, is used as recurring punctuation when father
and son square off), and artifacts from his father's life: photographs,
home movies, and footage from his father's daily routine.
The unasked question facing the viewer is: Who's being more unreasonable?
The filmmaker, pressuring his father to open up? Or the father, pressuring
his son to let the matter drop? Oscar remains unyielding, but Berliner
is fully aware that this intransigence makes for dramatic tension and
therefore a crackling good film. At the same time, as this man's son
he struggles to penetrate his steely negativity and resolve a relationship
even as he documents it.
As personal as Nobody's Business is, the film seems to have spoken to
quite a few people. This project, funded by the Independent Television
Service (ITVS), has received impressive acclaim worldwide, beginning
with its premiere at the New York Film Festival last fall. The film
went on to win a Golden Spire Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco
International Film Festival and a threefold honor at the 1997 Berlin
Fest: the FIPRESCI Award from the International Association of Film
Critics; the Caligari Film Prize; and the Churches of the Ecumenical
Jury Prize. It has also been picked up by Japanese, French, and Australian
television networks. And on June 3, Nobody's Business will lead off
the 10th anniversary season of P.O.V. on PBS.
Why was it important to you to make this film?
So much of my father's life has been a mystery to me. I've always needed
to know why he's chosen to live the way he livesãreclusive, pessimistic,
cynical about life. Over the years, no matter how hard I tried, I could
never change him, could never affect him, or even infect him with my
own enthusiasm.
Whether they are alive or dead, our parents send us messages about life;
consciously or unconsciously those messages become a part of who we
are. The kinds of messages I was getting from my father were becoming
very difficult for me to accept.
What were those messages?
That the misfortunes of his life had overtaken him. That he had somehow
become a victim of circumstances. My father has so often said to me
that he's "in the autumn of his life," "that his future is behind him,"
that he doesn't have long to live. It's as if he's been in God's waiting
room ever since I can remember. In the film I challenge him about his
negativity, about the fact that he's alone all the time and doesn't
have any friends. These are difficult subjects to talk about, but they
have been troubling me for a very long time.
My father is also quite adamant about his own insignificance, taking
almost a perverse pride in having lived an ordinary, average, unremarkable
life. Once again, unacceptable! Oscar Berliner cannot live for 79 years
and tell me his life is nothing, was nothing. I'm much too alive as
a human being to accept that attitude from him. So the more he articulated
his own ordinariness, the more motivated I became to prove him wrong.
To attempt to give his life a new meaning, if not for him, then at least
for me.
What was the genesis of this film?
In 1986 I made a film called The Family Album, using 16mm home movies
from more than 70 different anonymous American families and a soundtrack
composed from oral histories, audio letters, recordings of birthday
parties, weddings, holidays, music lessons, etc., most of which were
also anonymous. The film dealt with the conflicts and contradictions
of family life and the falsely idealized nature of home movies as representations
of socialization and the aging process. At the same time, because most
of the raw materials I was working with were impersonal, I was left
with a gnawing desire to raise the stakes, to make something that derived
more from my own life, my own personal relationship to family.
In 1991 I completed Intimate Stranger, a biography of Joseph Cassuto,
my maternal grandfather, who died suddenly in 1974, before completing
his autobiography. The film, which ultimately became a journey through
my maternal family heritage, was only temporarily satisfying. Over time,
the emotional distance between dead grandparent and filmmaker/grandson
seemed to widen as I began to take measure of what I wanted to do next.
Once again I felt an inner urging, a need to again raise the bar, the
level of challenge. To go even closer to the edge of personal revelation.
In a way I see Nobody's Business as the last in a trilogy of films,
moving closer and closer to a kind of human truth, zooming in on the
emotional power of family relationships, each one revealing more of
me but also demanding more of me. Actually I didn't really have to look
very far. My father, who I am happy to say is still very much alive,
has always loomed as an incredibly compelling character to me.
Did you ever guess that your father might not want to participate?
Remember, his history is also a part of my history. There are things
that only he knows and only he can tell me about both of our lives.
He had no idea what kind of film I was going to make and was incredulous
of the idea that a film about someone like him could even be made at
all. But he respected me and trusted me, and decided that if I was so
committed to doing this, he would help me. I suppose, in some way, by
agreeing to cooperate, he was once again after all these years helping
me with my homework. Maybe that made him feel good, feel needed.
In many respects we became partners in making Nobody's Business. One
review refers to the film as a "verbal slapstick duet," as if our conversations
were a kind of comedy routine. I think there's a strong element of that,
but at the same time we were in absolutely serious emotional territory.
He told me when I was out of bounds, when there were things he did not
want to discuss, and at several points during the interviews he threatened
to take the microphone off and walk away. But he never did.
I think also, that behind this cranky-old-man persona there's still
a bit of a vanity in him. Regardless of how insignificant he thinks
his life is, at a certain point he's got to be thrilled someone is asking
questions about it. It's only human, I suppose.
Have you had that discussion with him?
He denies it, although late in the film, when I'm talking about human
genealogy and genetics he interrupts me and says, "What's this got to
do with my biography?!" It's as if he really wants the conversation
directed back to him.
What topics didn't he want to discuss?
Mostly questions surrounding his marriage to my mother, the reasons
for their divorce, and the effects of the divorce on the rest of his
life. In general, though, his disinclination to talk reflected his own
modest sense of himself. As he says in the film, "I got married, I raised
a family, worked hard, had my own business, that's all. That's nothing
to make a picture about." The integrity and consistency of his indifference
was remarkable to me; that in itself was a kind of exuberanceãsomething
I wanted to capture in the film. And mid-way through the film he expresses
what I always felt was the key to his participation: "I'm not fooled.
In your own tenacious way you're making me talk and talk, and eventually
you're getting what you want." It was then that I knew that he had things
to say, and somehow, was allowing me to get him to say them .
Did you have in mind to portray him in any specific ways?
No. I never work like that. I always let the subject come to me. I wanted
to let him generate the pieces that would form the puzzle, to let him
be exactly who he is. I knew that none of the family history issues
interested him, but I hoped that our agreement to disagree could form
the basis of a quintessential parent/child dialogue. It also made me
realize that the film would be as much a portrait of our relationship
as it would be a biography of his life. After I tell him, "The more
you say you're not interested, the more it makes me want to change your
mind," he responds, "You have one bad habit. You think if something's
important to you, it's got to be important to somebody else," and warns
me that the film will be a flop if I don't heed his advice. That establishes
the polemic of the film: my romanticism versus his stoicism.
You perform quite a balancing act: never too much outside nor inside.
There's a part of me that always wanted to protect him, yet I knew that
if the film was going to be meaningful, I had to place our relationship
outside of the safe harbor of sentimentality and throw us out onto the
high seas, where, if you will, fictional characters live. There's no
protection out there. For either of us. People project all sorts of
things upon you. That's one of the risks of personal filmmaking.
Were there any painful instances about which you had doubts?
In what I consider the emotional core of the film, my father pleads,
"When your head hurts you, when you can't walk, when making conversation
is a problem...it's not that I choose to be alone, I have to be alone!
I can't cope!" Not just his words but the desperate tone of their delivery
was profoundly etched in my mind. I was amazed that he was finally articulating
his pain, something I'd never really heard before.
On the other hand, there's another point in the film when I ask him
about two of his brothers who died in infancy, and he abruptly announces,
"I don't want to talk about it!" I can only respond with "Why don't
you want to talk about it?" He refuses to even answer that question.
Back and forth we go. Finally he threatens to end the interview if I
don't change the subject. Our uneasy standoff actually went on for almost
four minutes, becoming a kind of meta-argument about the very boundaries
of our relationship. Originally, I left about two minutes of it in the
film, because it was so extraordinary; father and son in a profound
battle of wills.
Why did you cut it down?
My friend Spencer Seidman, who became a story consultant, saw a rough
cut and told me this scene made him want to stop watching. That he felt
incredibly claustrophobic listening to such protracted raw emotion,
what my cousin later describes in the film as a battle between "the
irresistible force versus the immovable object." It was also too soon
in the film to introduce such an emotional crescendo. So I decided to
shorten it substantially. To this day I still don't know about those
two dead childrenãwho would have been my uncles had they livedãor why
he wouldn't discuss them. I asked. I persisted. But in the end, I had
to drop the subject.
Did you think some people might get turned off by your unrelenting persistence
with an unwilling subject?
My parents' divorce felt like an atomic bomb had been dropped on our
family. Each one of us was wounded in a different way. My quest to understand,
my need to confront my father, is, I believe, an attempt at healing.
For both of us. And I think deep down he knows that, too. For better
or worse, the relationships we have with our parents are amongst the
most intense and powerful we will ever have. I'd like to think some
of our tense exchanges are just another way of expressing love, if only
because it breaks down boundaries; boundaries that usually keep us at
a distance from one another .
I also believe that regardless of class, nationality, ethnicity, race,
or religion, everyone who sees Nobody's Business already has experience
in this area. They understand the struggle, the dance of negotiations
between me and my father. The fact that we do it in public only deepens
its resonance. In the end, whether the viewer is either a parent or
someone's childãand that pretty much encompasses everybody, doesn't
it?ãI hope they will be recognize something familiar in our relationship.
How did you negotiate the alternating humor and pain that pervades the
film?
Initially my father's protests are funny. Here's a man who refuses even
to pretend interest in virtually anything I throw at him, especially
anything to do with his own family history. It's humorous also because
he's so at ease with his disinterest; he's a natural. At some point
though, the levity takes on a darker shading when you realize that his
attitude is grounded in his sad predicament; that he is a man who has
been wounded by life. To this day I remain especially haunted by an
exchange of dialogue in the film: When I told my father that he could
have remarried after the divorce (and thereby perhaps have a more comfortable
old age), he responds, "Once burned, twice shy." To which I reply, "People
say that time heals." His matter of fact response was simply ,"Not always."
That resonated with me for a very long time. Still does. Even though
I tend to agree with himãalthough thank God I'm still young enough to
hold out some hopeãno one had ever said that to me before. And of course,
when a parent says it, it takes on an even deeper significance.
That disclosure of private pain boosts our empathy with him.
Yes. Then you understand where all of his resistance comes from, that
he's not intending to be funny, which, ironically, frees you up to laugh
again. Having articulated his emotional and physical pain, he begins
to grow as a character. It provides him with a certain dignity and courage.
Why did you choose the boxing match as a recurring motif?
I wanted the prize fighting scenes to acknowledge the Oedipal drama
of our relationship and at the same time place it in a recognizable
context as a kind of "verbal sparring." You'll notice that there are
no knockouts in the boxing footage, just a lot of punching, scuffling,
exchanging jabs. And so it is on the soundtrack. I was careful to include
several of my father's verbal put-downs and admonishments of me. For
instance, when I ask him about his divorce, he declares that I have
"a lack of understanding...a lack of sympathy...a lack of empathy...for
what this means" to him. Those words hurt me. And later, at the end
of the film when I tell him that he's never more alert, never more alive
than when we have these conversations, and that the film is an expression
of love to him, he replies, "Bullshit!" It also hurt me to hear him
say that. But again, it's all part of the back-and-forth, punch/counterpunch
of our relationship. To continue the metaphor, my father is "the champion."
I am very much "the challenger."
How did you devise the scenes depicting a typical day in his life?
For a long period of time, I had asked him repeatedly to share the details
of how he spends a typical day. He continually refused. Then suddenly,
one day he said yes. Maybe he'd forgotten that he'd said no, maybe he
changed his mind. I was dumbstruck at finally getting him to open a
window that had been closed to me for so long. I still find it one of
the most moving parts of the film and the one that I had the most difficulty
editing. He actually went on for 10 minutes, describing the minutiae
of shaving, preparing his breakfast, making his bed...He's most vulnerable
at that point in the film. I see that section as a meditation on growing
old, on loneliness, on the importance of routine when one reaches a
certain stage in life, and of my father's struggle with all of it.
Toward the end of the film, you connect Oscar quite ingeniously to the
human family he shuns.
My father is always quick to say that he's "one of billions of people."
Even when we began talking about his army years, he snapped, "Big deal,
there were eleven million men in the army." He likes to hide in these
large rhetorical crowds. Now, when you go someplace like the Family
History Library in Salt Lake City, as I do in the film, and you're surrounded
by the records of more than two billion people who've lived and died
over the past 500 years, you begin to realize that people are far more
closely related to one another than is generally recognized. In fact,
many professional genealogists speculate that most people in the world,
of whatever race, nationality, ethnicity, or religion, are no further
related than 50th cousin. And that most of us are a lot closer than
that! It's an idea that has always fascinated me, and I wanted to use
my fatherãas a single, "unremarkable" human being, a face in the crowd,
so to speakãas the key that opens the door to thinking about a "human
family tree." Of course, he wants no part of it.
When did you map out this strategy of connecting your father's story
to the broader genealogical theme?
I didn't have it fully figured out at first. It was a wisp of intuition,
of potential. My initial investigations took me to various libraries,
archives, museums, Jewish Genealogical Society meetings, even a trip
to Polandãall in search of my Berliner family history. My father's heritage.
My heritage. Our heritage! Then I'd come home and attempt to share some
of my excitement, some of my discoveries, and it was like hitting a
stone wall.
My father refuses to be related to anyone he does not or did not know,
living or dead, whether they are related to him or not. And he is especially
not interested in being related to any of the billions of "ordinary"
peopleãhis "50th cousins"ãwith whom he claims to blend in with so well.
He's not interested in the social or political implications of a broad
human family tree nor will he ever be convinced. He also claims that
more people will agree with him than with me.
He refuses relation to everyone except his children and grandchild.
My sister Lynn and I are his main links to the world. Early in the film
I show him a picture of his own grandparents, neither of whom he has
ever seen before, and he responds by saying, "I don't give a shit about
them." But later on in the film, he is seen doting on and playing with
his granddaughter, Jade. It's the only time in the film that you see
him smile. His explanation for these "expressions of love" is that "you
have to be a grandfather to understand...."
But he doesn't see any connection.
No. I remind him that he stands in the same relationship to Jade that
his own grandparents once stood to him. He reminds me that he knows
Jade, that Jade knows him, but that he never knew his grandparents,
that they could be characters taken out of a storybook. Fair enough.
But then I tell him that someone far into the future might say the same
thing about him one day, might casually shrug off any connection to
a photograph of him, to his memory, to his existence. His response?
"Big deal. Who cares?" His indifference has a certain power and logic.
But at the same time, I got tremendous personal satisfaction trying
to learn as much as I could about the lives of my great-grandparents.
I'm not implying that I'm right and he's wrong, because I think there's
room for both perspectives.
How has your father reacted to seeing the film?
He saw it for the first time at the world premiere at the New York Film
Festival, and because of his hearing problem, he had trouble understanding
much of the soundtrack. My sense is that it was all very abstract for
him, very exciting, and probably very frightening. But he knows that
something very special happened that night, especially when 1100 people
gave him a standing ovation!
What did making Nobody's Business teach you?
In many ways the film has been profoundly liberating for me. Cathartic.
I can honestly say we're much closer now than ever before. It's almost
as if the process of making the film has dissipated the tensions between
us. I've come to realize that if I can't change him, at least I can
try to understand him better. And part of understanding is letting go;
letting go means accepting.
How do you think he's been affected by the film?
Perhaps he's had little epiphanies, too. I don't think you can partake
in this kind of experience and walk away untouched. Ironically, it took
making a film about him to finally show him what it is that I do. He
probably still wishes I was an accountant or a lawyer, but at least
I've earned his respect. A family friend told me that my father had
said the New York Film Festival premiere was "the happiest day of his
life." About three weeks after the screening, I went to his apartment
and noticed that he had framed the postcard announcement for the film
and put it on his bookshelf. He's never done anything like that before!
My sister Lynn remarked that if there's such a thing as a personal growth
meter, then that gesture certainly went way off the scale.
It certainly seems significant.
He knows that we shared a journey. That it took mutual courage to undertake
this project. He understands that all the questions I asked about his
life, even the troubling ones, were all part of something truly authentic
and important. For both of us. Throughout the process of making the
film, during both shooting and editing, there was always the danger
that I might lose my relationship with my father, that things could
fly out of control at any time. That fear somehow gave me energy, became
the fuel that made Nobody's Business the most intense project I've ever
attempted.
Fortunately, we can now look back and smile. He sees the reviews of
the film, he watches as I go off to film festivals to show it. He's
aware that it's going to be broadcast on public television in June.
It's both shocking and amusing to him. And as a parent, as a father,
I detect him taking a vicarious pride in the film, as if we've both
done well on our homework assignment. But at the same time I can't fool
myself. I'm still quite sure that he's never going to ask to see those
photographs of his grandparents again.
Mitch Albert is a shapeshifter who morphs from documentarian to journalist
to screenwriter to student of Oriental medicine and the Alexander Technique and back again, all
in London, England.
