Truth and Treason, part 3 INCLUDING SPOILERS

My husband and I saw “Truth and Treason” for the third time last week. I paid special attention to the subtle acting of Rupert Evans, who plays Erwin Müssener–a devoted family man who can charm his little daughter on the same day he has beaten someone to death.

The acting is masterful, as is Matt Whitaker’s script. In fact, I recommend an independent studies course in screenwriting for any of my readers. You may begin now. The text is the one Matt uses: Story by Robert McGee. Read the book, and then watch “Truth and Treason.” See if you can identify the scenes and the character arcs. What motivation does each character have in the successive scenes? What do they want? What matters most to them? From the film itself, can you write a description of each character and their motivations? Do you recognize when a scene begins and when it ends? Which transitions are the most effective? Do you ever feel like you’re reading a character’s thoughts?

I portrayed Emma Hubener, Helmut’s mother, in Tom Rogers’ play which premiered at BYU in 1976. Now, in 2025, I do not feel like the mother. I feel like the grandmother.

On August 20th, 2008, my grandson, Oliver, was born. I was there. During much of the labor, I was holding my daughter’s hand or rubbing her temples. The midwife invited me to watch the actual birth. “It’s pretty cool,” she said.

It was, indeed. My daughter bore down, and lo! Oliver made his way into mortality, giving a mighty cry. My daughter did what mothers tend to do after delivery. She held her little boy, and checked his fingers and toes. All there,. Fingernails and toenails, too. You are here, and I will take care of you.

In the most awful of the film’s scenes, Müssener begins to bond with Hübener through jokes and then through logic. Finally, he unbinds Hübner’s hands and strokes his right hand. He then pulls out a knife and inserts it into the forefinger’s nail. We do not see the torture, but we hear Hübner’s scream.

Fingernails are fascinating. Why do we have them? So we can scratch ourselves? So we can claw at something? How about this: We have fingernails as an opening to pain’s possibility. In fact, every part of our mortal body is full of nerves which will react to whatever contacts it. Your head will gove you terrific pain, because you will probably fall or run into something from the time you can walk. Your beautifully evolved nerves will react to the pain, and you will cry. If you’re in a normal household, someone will offer comfort and maybe a bandaid. Or stitches. They will try to make you feel better.

Could it be that the real reason we experience pain is to learn that we must not inflict it on others? When a child (or anyone) learns to enjoy someone else’s pain, he will become a monster unless empathy intervenes.  The end of that particular road is an all-consuming quest for vengeance, which can morph into genocide if the sadist can articulate a crowd’s anguish and come to represent a solution through revenge. I doubt that anyone is born a psychopath, but there are psychopaths in the world. Something has gone desperately wrong in their lives or in their brain wiring. They have unravelled the most natural reaction: If it hurts you, it will hurt someone else, so don’t do it to someone else. (Granted, there will be some babyish experimentation with pain, but we tend to grow out of that phase.)

My grandson, Oliver, is now seventeen years old–the age Hübener was when he died by guillotine. He is bright, funny, full of promise. I have noted his various talents throughout his life, as well as his clever acts of mischief. Also, he is adorable. Now even more than when he was a newborn.

One of the prosecutor’s main points in Hübener’s trial was that this teenager had the mind of a university professor, and therefore could be treated as a man, not a child. Otherwise, the law prohibited execution.

It was 1942, and the judges and attorneys were bound not only by law but by an unholy agenda to start the 3rd Reich with the “Aryan” race. Hitler and his henchmen expected an execution, and so it had to be delivered and justified–even if the law itself could not justify it. The judges and attorneys knew that lying would have to stretch the space for the law to meet the agenda.

I believe that empathy is the core lesson we must learn in mortality, and that is essential to our evolution. Not only must we learn and feel empathy, we must move wholesale into the lives of those around us, feeling what they feel, mourning with them, rejoicing with them. This happens best within a family, but can happen anywhere.

Truth and Treason is a film for “such a time as this”–when we are seeing the seeds of sadism sprouting again. Boats are blown up without any proof of the crimes the passengers are accused of. Men, women, and children are kidnapped and sent to camps in distant countries–El Salvador and maybe Ghana. Families are recklessly, cruelly separated. We are asked to trust someone who lies, and we know he lies. Excuses like, “I know he’s not perfect” or “I don’t agree with everything he’s doing, but…” These just won’t work. They are as hollow as Germans’ claims to “know nothin” during the Holocaust.

So, where are we on the empathy scale? If you found yourself saying that the boats and their passengers in the waters of Venezuela or Colombia got “what they deserved,” why do you think that? Who told you that? If you have seen ICE agents mistreating anyone on the streets and you have found youself citing rules about legal entry into the USA, why is that your reaction? Do you have other possible reactions in your litany of possibilities?

If you don’t, look harder. Go deeper.