In July of 1938, the writer E.M. Forster published an essay in The Nation called “What I Believe.” That was a very important year for people to know the answer to the question that title invites; readers had a little more than a year to formulate their own response. Forster’s response was clear: the only way to save humanity was to love one another, not in a general or non-specific sense but in a one-to-one personal way. His belief in human connection was an absolute one. In the essay he wrote, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” Forster was deeply suspicious of causes, of institutions that carried such weight that it swept people away from their ideals and into a sameness of thought that deadened the intellect. The advent of Nazism only served to confirm all his worst fears.
Books, films, and TV shows about the three great wars of the 20th century are legion; many of these are enduring classics. I am never one to say that a genre or topic area has been exhausted, but this is surely one ripe for innovation. Every actor, it seems, must play Churchill at some point in his later years, and many of the same stories have been told and told again. We’ve seen the bravery, the bloodshed, the stratagems, the doomed charges and rescue missions and battleships and the mud in the trenches. Just when the end is declared, if feels like, literarily speaking, we slide right into the Cold War with all its attendant tropes. These stories have a visual vocabulary that we’ve seen so often that I sometimes feel when I see a new one, I already know exactly what I’m going to get. But it turns out, I can still be surprised. The following series both focus on humans working together under untenable conditions, trying to save each other, trying to love each other.
Transatlantic (Netflix): Based on the novel The Flight Portfolio, this limited series is about the true story of the American Emergency Rescue Committee, which attempted to get visas for European artists, scholars, philosophers, and composers running from the Nazis. The committee did manage to rescue a slew of famous persons, including Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, and Andre Breton. The series mixes comedy and sorrow, as a few underfunded Americans tried to rescue a few recognizable names while millions died around them. The series takes place before the American government had committed to the war with their whole chest, meaning the funding was scant and the remit was extremely limited. Individual museums lobbied for the saving of individual artist’s lives; in one heartbreaking scene a line of people come in to be interviewed for asylum in Marseilles. When asked if they are a skilled artist or have published any significant work, one man sits down to sketch his interviewer then and there. The likeness is good, but not good enough for a visa. Our heroes know that most of the people who beg them for visas will be sent back to occupied France, and thus to a certain fate. The tragedy of that could make the series unwatchably sad, but the writing is informed by the same humanism and humor I admire in Forster. Even when millions are slipping through your fingers and your country is telling you not to save lives, the series believes you must do everything in your power to save even one and you must love the people around you with your whole heart. That’s the only response to a world teetering on the brink of total darkness.
A Spy Among Friends (MGM+): Set during the Cold War, A Spy Among Friends is based on the true story (and book) of U.S./Soviet double agent Kim Philby. The series begins with Philby’s escape to Moscow and the suspicion that falls upon his old friend and SIS colleague Nicholas Elliott, who many believe helped him to escape. The frame of the show is a series of interviews wherein Elliott recounts the story of his friendship with Philby, who was one of the most successful and damaging Soviet spies of the Cold War. Philby’s betrayal changed the SIS forever, influencing writers like John le Carré, who included a Philby-like character in his breakthrough novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The series is nominally about espionage during the Cold War but the structure makes it more about the story of two close friends living under the extraordinary conditions of that period who took two different paths and lost each other in the process.