Keith Gordon's Mother Night: Losing Your Identity For Your Country~

I’ve now watched two Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novels made into movies, that of Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night, and the latter one may just be a better transfer. Vonnegut is well-known for his forays into clever satire, which makes for a cinematic challenge as well as a challenge for critical fans. In 1996’s Mother Night, however, Vonnegut blesses the movie with a cameo towards its end and talks, along with star Nick Nolte, to a reporter about the book and movie that is included in the DVD special features. I think you’ll find director Keith Gordon and screenwriter Robert B. Weide have stayed quite faithful to the book and that the movie should be just about as enjoyable as Vonnegut’s short novel.

Many things have contributed to a successful joining of the two mediums. Vonnegut’s novel seems more cinematic-friendly, more understandable, than his others. More viewers will be able to relate to the hero, Howard W. Campbell Jr., especially those who have gone to war as they still are today. World War II. catches our American hero living happily in Germany with his German actress wife and they don’t want to leave. He’s a very popular writer, poet and playwright and they love each other so much that they consider themselves a nation of two. But he can’t stay uninvolved and not help his native country. When an American agent offers him a chance to play a Nazi as an American spy, he understands the risks and still jumps at the challenge, thinking it would relieve him of guilt. Little did he know.

Campbell becomes the most popular voice on the airwaves. He spews anti-Semitic filth with the best of them and his wife has no idea he’s just acting, that he’s a spy. His broadcasts send out coded messages to the Americans that are not understood by him, not even when he informs them that his wife has been murdered, which he learns later. Skipping ahead some years we see what has happened to our hero who essentially has no place to call home. He’s living in a cheap area of New York City by himself, a tragic figure who has been forgotten by his country even though he took up his real name again. He’s listening to army surplus records of Bing Crosby’s "White Christmas", unable to write anymore or to love anyone but his dead wife, but one day he learns to carve, which leads him to make chess pieces and friends with a neighbor who loves chess. Unfortunately, Campbell bares his soul to this man who is a Russian spy and our hero’s life suddenly is not forgotten anymore as his wife’s sister shows up pretending to be his wife, white supremacists embrace him and an American official leaves his boring life to capture the Nazi lover (as he sees Campbell).

We know from the beginning of Mother Night that Campbell ends up in an Israeli prison writing his memoirs before his trial, but we don’t know how he ends up there. Is he really guilty of war crimes against humanity even though he was a spy? Or did he sacrifice his life for nothing? If one pretends to be something they’re not, does that mean their identity has become what they pretend to be? It would seem that their soul doesn’t know the difference and Vonnegut’s story warns us to be careful of pretending to be someone we’re not.

Mother Night explores these philosophical questions as well as the idea that nobody is who they say they are. It also has a tender love story that reveals the complexities of love and how our need for it, even if it’s based on lies, sustains us. Every character, in fact, is struggling with their idea of morality, or are confident they know the truth, and this makes for a fascinating, satirical story. Besides Nolte as Campbell, we have the gifts of Alan Arkin as that chess-loving neighbor, Sheryl Lee as Campbell’s wife and wife’s sister, John Goodman as the American agent (his blue fairy godmother) and Bernard Behrens as the leader of the white supremacists. Kirsten Dunst has a very small role and many others who played their parts wonderfully. They all brought out the depth and humor of Vonnegut’s novel as if they weren’t acting.

I must mention finally that the use of black and white as well as bright color fit in perfectly and gave it a believable quality. It was filmed in Canada, is R-rated and a comfortable 114 minutes long. I did notice that a few scenes were deleted and included in the special features. Having read the novel, I would’ve preferred that they had been in the movie because they revealed more of Campbell’s struggles, but we still get that from the movie pretty well. I’ll recommend both highly, but the book a little more.