Daily Bruin

Director Jeff Lipsky said his film would be provocative.

Throughout its two-hour runtime, “The Last” portrays a Jewish family shattered by their beloved nana Claire, the family matriarch’s confession to being a Nazi.

The film was screened Thursday evening at the James Bridges Theater at an event hosted by the Graduate Students Association and Melnitz Movies, followed by a live Q&A with Lipsky and the actress who plays Claire, Rebecca Schull. Paul Kurek, a graduate student in the Department of Germanic Languages, and director of Melnitz Movies, said they wanted to screen a socially relevant film because of the rising hate speech in today’s political climate. And as Kurek himself is German, he said he felt it was important to highlight this aspect of history.

“One might think that an event such as the Holocaust will forever be present in our memory, but the reality is that we forget very fast. And since the world is now taking a kind of radical turn … (toward right-wing thought), it’s even more important than maybe 20 or 40 years ago to keep this memory alive and to grapple with it,” he said.

The film considers the horrors of the Holocaust and concentration camps, as Claire reveals to her grandson and his wife that she is not Jewish, but was instead a nurse at Auschwitz, complicit in the death of many Jewish individuals. As the family’s Jewish lineage is exposed as a lie, her story is met with doubt. But she provides pictures and diary entries – kept in a safe for decades – that confirm she was a part of the Third Reich.

In revealing the truth, Claire recounts the tragic backstory of how she became indebted to a Nazi doctor and eventually emigrated to America disguised as a Jewish refugee. But rather than repent for the actions of the Nazi party, she bares her anti-Semitism. The character, who is first shown as a loving and innocent grandmother, becomes irrational and a proud supporter of the Nazi party, which Schull said came as a surprise to her when she first read the script.

“The fact that she was a Nazi when she was a girl, you can sort of understand how circumstances might have led her to become one because of the predicament that she was in,” Schull said. “But then, after she’s lived all these years as a Jewish woman, as a matriarch of a Jewish family, to still consider herself a Nazi and so virulently, openly anti-Semitic is the shocking part.”

Schull said she first had doubts about playing Claire – as a Jewish actress, the character’s motivations go against her religious and cultural beliefs. But she later learned to accept the character by understanding how the events of Claire’s life shaped her perspective. Particularly, by losing her mother at a young age, Claire became attached to a Nazi doctor who became her sole provider.

During the panel, audience members said they were conflicted on how to feel about Claire. Schull also said her friends were disturbed by how empathetic the character is shown to be. In response to this notion, Lipsky said he did not intend for Claire to be sympathized with, and viewers should ask themselves what they would’ve done given the situation she was in, as an orphan girl who had so few options.

During Claire’s last week of life, her family struggles to deal with their shattered heritage. The finale of the movie features a second twist, when Claire is killed by Olivia, her granddaughter by marriage, and seemingly her most ardent supporter. This left attendees conflicted. One student said that Claire, being a Nazi, got what she deserved. Other viewers argued that despite her past, she should not have been murdered in cold blood. Lipsky said this type of controversy is what he intended to spark and thanked an audience member who said they plan to watch the movie multiple times to fully grasp its nuance.

The director revealed at the event the characters were partly based off members of his own Jewish family. Specifically, the characters Josh and Olivia mirror his agnostic nephew and his new bride, who also converted to Judaism before the wedding. Because of her conversion to a modern Orthodox Jew, his niece became the most religious person in the family. The dynamic between the couple and their conflicting religious views is what sparked the idea for the film, which is meant to express the multilayered dimensions of what it means to be a family, Lipsky said.

“This is very much a movie about family in crisis. It’s about multiple generations of the family, … how this information is going to affect each of them and their lives together,” he said. “All four of the family members act in completely different ways, which to me is the most interesting aspect of it.”

One gunshot forever changed the lives of three families in “The Red Line.”

Connected by a crosstown train, the families form the subject of the drama series. The first two episodes of “The Red Line” are set to premiere Sunday on CBS, and UCLA’s African American Studies department offered a free screening of them Thursday at the Fowler Museum’s Lenart Auditorium.

The series, produced by UCLA alumna Ava DuVernay, follows the lives of three families impacted by the police shooting of an unarmed black man, commenting on the race relations present in a socially segregated Chicago.

Following the screening, Marcus Hunter, the chair of the African American Studies department, led a panel comprising leading members of the cast and crew to discuss the challenges that black creatives face in Hollywood.

“One of the major things that we want to do in the department is to provide an experience that is not just about classroom curriculum, but real life,” Hunter said. “(DuVernay) is a black alum of UCLA … and so we were a conduit to bring back a black Bruin and demonstrate what they can do when they’re out in the world.”

In the limited series, 17-year-old Jira Calder-Brennan, played by Aliyah Royale, finds it difficult to be comforted by her surviving, white father Daniel Calder, played by Noah Wyle, after her black father is gunned down. Hoping to find a parent who could relate to her fears as a black woman, Jira searches for her birth mother-turned-politician, Tia Young, played by Emayatzy Corinealdi. Due to its reputation for more conservative programming, director Victoria Mahoney said the CBS network will allow “The Red Line” to share a diverse depiction of marginalized communities with viewers that are typically not exposed to such programming.

“The idea of getting this content in Idaho and Poughkeepsie and Virginia … that was interesting to me because we’re never going to move the needle if we don’t center the story (from all points of view),” Mahoney said.

The Chicago setting, known for its high degree of segregation, plays just as much of a role in the show as the characters do, Mahoney said. The red line is a train connecting the mostly white-populated North side of Chicago to the mostly black-populated South side of Chicago, and Hunter said it serves as a metaphor for the stark divide between the two racial communities. Jessica Jackson, a first-year African American Studies student and attendee, said the show’s portrayal of her hometown is more holistic than the trope-ridden depictions found in many other films.

“I feel like Chicago is immediately corrupt (in media); it’s never in a dual light of (the) real people who live here,” Jackson said. “So for me, this is a really refreshing take.”

Although Chicago’s racialized politics were the show’s focus, a panel including Royale, Wyle, Corinealdi and Mahoney shifted the discourse toward the sparse representation of black filmmakers in Hollywood. As a newcomer to the world of studio television, Royale said being surrounded by a diverse cast allowed her to reach a deeper level of vulnerability needed for her character. Corinealdi said it is rare for black women to hold both a director position and major role in a network television program, and “The Red Line” uses this to add authenticity to the minority characters.

“We get to see what it’s like for a lot of our peers who have that experience more often,” Corinealdi said. “The gist should be more, so then when you do have it, it doesn’t have to feel so special.”

As one of the show’s few leading white characters, Wyle said the script both terrified and moved him. Although he spent more than a decade on the Emmy-winning drama “ER,” Wyle said “The Red Line” has been one of his most emotionally taxing roles due to its controversial and socially relevant subject matter. Wyle said the story’s racialized nature required him to form a sense of trust with his cast and crew, and allowed him to recognize the prejudices faced by minority communities in Hollywood.

“I was on the set just quiet, for the first time in 25 years … (and) I got to sit and watch how a woman director is disrespected,” Wyle said. “What I have wanted to pretend does not exist … exists whether I’m choosing to look at it or not, and I just chose to start looking at it.”

Although a string of recent movies, such as “The Hate U Give,” have delved into the same topic, Mahoney said a season of television offers a deeper analysis of individual arcs and opposing viewpoints than can be found in a two-hour film. “The Red Line” has reworked the narrative of the mistaken shooting for its eight-episode format through special attention to the nuance of racial tension and a balance of seemingly opposing characters, Mahoney said.

“People say things to me like (‘Every story has been told’), but I think that it hasn’t (been told) because (they) never told it from my eyes,” Mahoney said.