atomic bomb

Jewish take on bomb

Philippe Tlokinski stars in Adventures of a Mathematician. (photo from Samuel Goldwyn Films)

Forgotten your calculus? Simple geometry is more than sufficient to follow the triangular saga of Polish-Jewish brainiac Stanislaw Ulam from the cloistered classrooms of Harvard to Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic-bomb “startup” in dusty New Mexico.

The third point on Ulam’s map is Lvov, Poland, where his parents, sister and niece live in tenuous safety. Until the Nazis blast across the border and blow down the doors of every Jewish home.

Adventures of a Mathematician opens in Cambridge on the eve of the Second World War, where Stan (Philippe Tlokinski) lives with his younger brother Adam. The news trickling out of Poland gets objectively worse, but going back to Europe is out of the question. So Stan Ulam embraces another way of combating the Nazis, proffered by his best friend and fellow emigré scientist, Johnny von Neumann (Fabian Kocieki) – join a bunch of other geniuses on the top-secret Manhattan Project.

Writer-director Thor Klein’s intelligent, efficient script relies on our knowledge of the war and the Holocaust (and countless movies on those subjects) to concisely convey the gravity of the situation and, importantly, avoid the familiar clichés. At the same time, Klein skilfully involves us in Ulam’s personal life – he’s a witty man with an appreciation for gambling odds, who knows a smart woman when he meets her at a party – without trivializing the larger historical events.

Klein’s other great achievement, because of its U.S.-centred subject matter, is making Adventures of a Mathematician, which he shot in Germany and Poland with local crew, European actors and German, Polish and British financing, totally look and feel like an American film. It’s a masterful trick, which requires dedication and skill at every level of the production.

Klein makes his job easier, admittedly, by depicting Ulam as an acclimated, assimilated American rather than a European fish out of water.

Where Adventures of a Mathematician (which takes its title from Ulam’s memoir) veers from traditional Hollywood filmmaking is in the dramatic conflict. It’s not the war, which is always off-screen. Tension enters Ulam’s marriage later in the film, and we care about that relationship, but that’s not the movie’s motor, either.

Instead, Klein has made a film about philosophical and existential dilemmas, internalized in the person of Ulam – a cerebral, introverted man who largely keeps his emotions to himself, even when he is debating technical solutions with his equally stubborn boss, Edward Teller (Joel Basman).

Not many Hollywood executives would back a film whose protagonist is pitched on the horns of another triangle, namely the conflicting pulls of intellectual satisfaction, personal morality and professional ambition. Stanislaw Ulam, action hero, isn’t the easiest sell to North American audiences.

But, once you get hooked by this utterly accessible film and its remarkable central character, you’re in for a rewarding and thought-provoking experience.

A likable character for much of the film, Ulam becomes more solitary as his doubts grow about devising and building a weapon of mass destruction – especially after the Nazis are defeated.

Tlokinski’s performance, which does incorporate a ridiculous (by modern measures) amount of cigarette smoking, is never less than compelling.

Adventures of a Mathematician trusts the audience enough to omit most of the melodramatic conversations and passages endemic to a Second World War-era scenario. I’m thinking specifically of Ulam’s survivor’s guilt, which is palpable without him needing a speech or a scene to convey it.

A 2020 film whose release was delayed by the pandemic and limited to a handful of festival appearances (including the Toronto and New York Jewish film festivals), Adventures of a Mathematician solves for x with nary a misstep. It can be rented via Apple TV, and possibly other platforms.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

The dangers of drones

An image of drones filling the sky from Reva Stone’s Falling. (photo from Reva Stone)

Multi-awarding-winning Winnipeg artist Reva Stone researched drones for three years and then began creating art to share some of what she had learned about how the technology affects our lives. The exhibit erasure, which comes from that research, features three works – Falling, Atomic Bomb and Erase. It is on display at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery until April 26.

“I’m very much an observer of what’s going on with new technologies, so when I saw the impact that UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were starting to have – especially with war and changing the nature of war – I applied for and got a Canada Council [for the Arts] grant to do a lot of research and reading about what actually is happening,” Stone told the Independent.

She went so far as to get two quadcopters, to understand what they really sounded like, and hoping to use them in her art, which she has.

“I was working on this, and then I started thinking about our skies filling up with these commercial and militarized drones and how they were basically machines … that could fall out of the sky … that could crash into each other, that could bring down an aircraft. We were filling up our skies,” she said. “And then, about two years ago, I was reading and realized that we were now targeting not other countries, but targeting humans.”

photo - Artist Reva Stone’s exhibit erasure warns about the use of drones in our society — Artist Reva Stone’s exhibit erasure warns about the use of drones in our society. *(photo from Reva Stone)*

Stone ended up making five or six individual pieces that deal with different aspects of the use of drones, but relate to one another. Depending on the exhibition venue, she decides which ones will work best together in a particular space.

Originally, drones were developed for spying purposes for the military. Later versions were outfitted with weapons for protection and assault. More recently, commercial drones have been developed. Now, anyone can buy a drone for as little as $20. This easy accessibility is challenging our society, contends Stone, causing hazards to planes in airports, affecting people at parks and disrupting the peace.

“Drones are becoming these things that fly in the air that have no human controllers … that are almost autonomous,” she said.

Stone often uses computers, movies, motors and speakers to help fully immerse visitors in her art pieces.

The work Falling, she said, “is an animated video that I made that has to do with what I see as a very new future, wherein UAVs are ubiquitous, because of civilian, military, commercial and private use.

“It’s almost slow motion or balletic on a massive screen,” she said. “There’s constant falling out of the skies, sometimes flipping as they fall. Sometimes, there’s a drone that has exploded in the sky … sometimes, small and far away and, sometimes, they’re so big when they fall through the sky that they look almost life-size and you’ll have to back away from the screen … that will be the feeling you get. Then, sometimes, there are these little windows that open up and you look through, into another world, and that world is more about what we’re fighting about – the fact that we are actually using these to make war. Other than that, some of them are commercial, some are cute, some are scary looking … and it’s like a continuous rain coming down.”

Atomic Bomb is also a film.

“I started with an early atomic bomb explosion,” said Stone. “It was a 30-second film and I made it into an almost 20-minute video. I really slowed it down and altered the time to give the impression that the person in the exhibition space is looking at a still image caught in time. I show this video together with texts that I found speak to the history of the use of radio-controlled airplanes and UAVs, and to longheld ideas about collateral damage – the relationship between … the use of atomic bombs and the use of drones and collateral damage, which, to me, is a huge issue with the use of drones as military.”

photo - A single frame from Reva Stone’s Atomic Bomb video piece — A single frame from Reva Stone’s Atomic Bomb video piece. *(photo from Reva Stone)*

The first text is from Harry Truman, the American president who made the decision in the Second World War to use the bomb, and it reads: “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished, in this first attack, to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.”

The next one is from John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency director from 2013 to 2017: “There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.”

According to Stone, “This is just bullshit. But this is part of the cleaning up of the media presentation of all these ideas and all these things I’ve been researching, that I’ve been noticing going on over time. And, it has actually made me change the name of the work. I was going to call all three of them a totally different name. Recently, maybe a month ago, I changed it to erasure because of the erasure of people, the erasure of a lot of critical dialogue that’s been happening since I started researching in 2015 … how we are mediated, what we are presented with as a culture. The info is so mediated by how it’s reported, and if it’s reported.”

Stone wants “her audience to consider how the capabilities of such technology may be turned against citizens and how governments might, and do, get away with employing them in the name of patriotism in ways that ultimately test the ethical and moral values of its citizenry,” notes the exhibit description. “With news cycles moving so rapidly, the reports of deadly events quickly fall from memory, seemingly erased from public consciousness.”

The third piece, Erase, is interactive. Stone said it is based on what, in her view, the Obama administration practised – the targeting of individuals based on algorithms, mostly guilt by association.

“With this one, I’m actually replicating the procedure,” she said. “I have my two quadcopters that are doing the surveillance and capturing people in the exhibition space, unbeknownst to them. Then, they get captured and saved.

“Then, it’s a process that goes on, that they get played back. And you begin to realize that you’re under surveillance, the people in the space. And, every so often, a target comes up over one of them, one of the captured images. It’s really intense and an explosion occurs, and that person actually comes out of my captured list. That person will never show again. They’ve been erased.”

The exhibit erasure opened Feb. 7. For more information about Stone and her work, visit revastone.ca.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Nuclear comedy to be a hit?

Atomic Falafel poster. (photo from Atomic Falafel PR via israel21c.org)

While world headlines focused on the landmark Iranian nuclear deal, an enormous billboard outside a Tel Aviv building announcing the upcoming opening of an Iranian embassy in Israel in August had the local social media community wondering whether it was an art installation, an anonymous peace group’s campaign or someone’s idea of a joke.

photo - The billboard announcement that had Tel Avivians talking — The billboard announcement that had Tel Avivians talking. *(photo from* Atomic Falafel PR via israel21c.org)

The Hebrew billboard included pictures of the two countries’ flags, a local phone number and the text: “Opening here soon – embassy of Iran in Israel.” It was erected at Rabin Square, the favored site for political peace rallies.

The mystery was solved in the last days of August by the people behind the sign. It was a public-relations stunt to drum up publicity for the new Israeli comedy Atomic Falafel, a madcap film about a nuclear conflict between Israel and Iran.

“A satirical comedy mocking ultra-militarism” is how producer Avraham Pirchi explained the film, which was scheduled to open in Israel on Sept. 10.

Atomic Falafel is the latest from director Dror Shaul, winner of the 2007 Sundance World Cinema Jury Prize for his semi-autobiographical film Sweet Mud. It tells the story of two girls – one in Israel, one in Iran – who spill their countries’ most valuable secrets on Facebook to prevent a nuclear crisis. The movie pits a wifi-connected younger generation against old-school warmongers in an effort to stop a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Teenagers around the world today are much more similar than different to each other. They dress the same, listen to the same music and are not really interested in wars. I hope that the sane, logical side of Israel and the world will overcome the irresponsible one, and that my little boy born just two weeks after the end of shooting will be rewarded with a safe future,” said Shaul.

“When we started to make Atomic Falafel, we didn’t know we would be releasing the film when Iran’s nuclear power would be so relevant. But that’s what’s happened,” Pirchi told variety.com, adding that the film is “pro-peace and optimistic.”

The film is co-produced by New Zealand’s General Film Corp. and Germany’s Arden Film, Getaway Pictures and Jooyaa Film. It stars Israeli actors including Shai Avivi, Mali Levy, Yossi Marshak and Zohar Strauss, as well as Germany’s Alexander Fehling (Inglourious Basterds).

screenshot - Tara Melter, a German actress of Iranian descent who plays a supporting role in the film, raps the soundtrack’s title track, “Hitchki.” — Tara Melter, a German actress of Iranian descent who plays a supporting role in the film, raps the soundtrack’s title track, “Hitchki.” *(screenshot)*

Tara Melter, a German actress of Iranian descent who plays a supporting role in Atomic Falafel, raps the soundtrack’s title track, “Hitchki.” The song, composed by Bahar Henschel, is addictive.

Production company United Channel Movies (UCM) announced on Facebook that Atomic Falafel has all the makings of a hit, citing that the movie’s trailer (in Hebrew only) racked up more than 100,000 views in its first two hours online. UCM says it is in talks with international agents to secure wide distribution of the movie following its Israel release.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.