Enemies, A Love Story and The Eroticism Of Death1

Enemies, A Love Story, based on the book of the same name by Isaac Bashevis Singer, is a tough film on a tough subject: How do people cope with massive trauma? The answer the book and film provide is deceptively simple. People cope, or fail to cope, with massive trauma as themselves. A rose is a rose because it remains a rose. Yet Enemies, A Love Story is far from simple. It is a complex and fascinating story, exploring life, love, faith and fidelity in the shadow of what we have come to call the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's annihilation of Europe's Jews. In Hebrew, the word for this catastrophe is Shoah, meaning annihilation, and that seems apt. In this story we meet four Jewish characters, three women and one man, who have escaped physical annihilation. We also meet a righteous gentile, a Polish woman who has hidden the protagonist, Herman Broder, in a hayloft throughout the war. They have all resettled in postwar New York City, hoping to escape spiritual and emotional annihilation as they attempt to rebuild shattered lives. In retelling this story, the film concerns itself with important psychological issues: the ever-present hostility within love relations, and the capacity and the incapacity to mourn the murder of one's children. The film dissects the intersection of human character with overwhelming loss, as it demonstrates the sequelae of soul murder, the seductiveness of self destruction, and the eroticism of death. At the same time, the film is a darkly comic bedroom farce. Eros and Thanatos wrestle naked before us. Enemies, A Love Story is as complicated as a love quadrangle can be. It is at once wise, ironic, and bittersweet, while simultaneously