For
David, a Holocaust survivor studying philosophy, Nietzsche is bound to be a
difficult figure to approach.
Particularly vexing are the passages his study group is chewing on: “He
who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a
monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” Maybe so, but sometimes the abyss really has
it coming. Nietzsche’s questions
cease being philosophical when David confronts the old National Socialist who
killed his family in Joshua Caldwell’s short film Dig (trailer
here), which
screens during this year’s Dances with Films.
It
is 1962. Having survived concentration
camps, David is now a reasonably well liked American college student. Yet, when he observes Heinrich Berger walking
into the diner, he is shaken to the core.
The next time viewers see Berger, he is trussed up in the back seat of
David’s car, headed out to the desert.
The student has brought a gun and a shovel, which he intends for Berger
to use. However, being intimately acquainted
with death, Berger is more comfortable than David in its company, launching
into a verbal cat-and-mouse game with the understandably emotional young man.
Aaron
Himelstein is actually quite compelling as the deeply conflicted David. Indeed, it is an impossible situation to
imagine one’s self in. Nonetheless, one
cannot help wondering if the character’s agitated state is right for the story
or whether a sense of resignation, recognizing the inadequacies of his planned
actions yet proceeding just the same, would have better made its points about
the limits of justice. It certainly
would have produced a more existential film.
