God on Trial
| God on Trial | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Andy de Emmony |
| Produced by |
Mark Redhead Jemma Rodgers Anne Mensah |
| Written by | Frank Cottrell Boyce |
| Starring |
Antony Sher Rupert Graves Jack Shepherd |
| Music by | Nick Green Tristin Norwell |
| Distributed by | Hat Trick Productions |
|
Release date
|
2008 |
|
Running time
|
90 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
God on Trial is a 2008 BBC/WGBH Boston television play written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, starring Antony Sher, Rupert Graves and Jack Shepherd. The play takes place in Auschwitz during World War II. The Jewish prisoners put God on trial in absentia for abandoning the Jewish people. The question is if God has broken His covenant with the Jewish people by allowing the Nazis to commit genocide.
The play is based on an event described by Elie Wiesel in his book The Trial of God, though Boyce describes this tale as "apocryphal". According to Boyce, producer Mark Redhead "had been trying to turn the story into a film for almost 20 years by the time he called me in 2005 to write the screenplay." However, Wiesel later confirmed that the story was true, and that he was personally witness to it.
The music for the film was especially commissioned and composed by Nick Green and Tristin Norwell.
Reviews were overwhelmingly positive. Sam Wollaston in The Guardian found it "powerful and thoughtful stuff, with some fine performances by some fine actors - Antony Sher, Rupert Graves, Dominic Cooper." Remarking that Boyce wrote the piece from a position of personal faith, James Walton in The Telegraph observed, "Yet, as each of the characters put forward a different view on the question of God and suffering, it was clear that he was willing to interrogate his beliefs with real ferocity." This was a complex piece, and "as the fierceness of the intellectual and emotional grip tightened, it was impossible to imagine any halfway-thoughtful viewers, of whatever prior convictions, not having a disturbing sense of their own ideas coming under sustained and convincing attack." In a long review for The Times, Tim Teeman had great praise for the cast: "The performances were so strong it felt a privilege to watch the actors, among them Antony Sher, Rupert Graves, Stephen Dillane and Jack Shepherd." He also praises director Andy de Emmony's "brilliant, arresting sleight of hand... [mixing] the prisoners, naked and shorn, together with the present-day touring party in the gas chamber." For The Independent, Thomas Sutcliffe remarked on Sher's role as the play's smouldering fuse: "Every now and then you saw Antony Sher, davening silently in a corner of the barracks. Like a loaded gun in a Chekhov play, you knew he was going to go off eventually and that it would be significant when he did, and indeed it was his explosive inventory of God's biblically attested crimes that finally swung the judges in favour of a guilty verdict."
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