In his new documentary “Slava Ukraini”, Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s most famous public intellectual, dodges Russian sniper fire in the Ukraine, nonchalantly donning a bulletproof vest over a smartly tailored suit.
He boards a Ukrainian warship that is sweeping the Black Sea for Russian mines. He inspects bomb-stricken apartment buildings in kyiv and descends into trenches with Ukrainian soldiers in Sloviansk.
It can be easy to dismiss Lévy—and many do—as a reckless 74-year-old war tourist, heir to a logging fortune playing action hero as Russian missiles rain down. But instead of staying in his art-filled home in Paris or his palace in Morocco, Lévy spent a year braving Russian military attacks, vertigo and what he calls his natural tendency to melancholy to make his film about Ukraine.
It was, he said, a necessary cry of anguish to support Ukraine in a conflict he sees as a battle for the future of Europe, global liberalism and Western civilization.
“In Ukraine I had the feeling for the first time that the world I knew, the world I grew up in, the world I want to leave to my children and grandchildren, could collapse,” he said.
Philosopher, writer, television personality and filmmaker, Lévy is so ubiquitous in France that he is known simply as BHL. He is also deeply polarizing, with some detractors calling him a dilettante.
But Lévy seems oblivious to criticism: “The moral call is never silent for me.”
“Slava Ukraini” — “Glory to Ukraine” — opened in France in February. It was filmed during more than 10 trips that Lévy made to the Ukraine. The film (Lévy’s second about the conflict there) has won acclaim for its unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war.
As to why he wears designer suits in a war zone, Lévy said: “Dressing is not important, but it is one of the small signs of respect” for the Ukrainian people. Lévy has spent the last 50 years pleading with the West to intervene in seemingly intractable conflicts, dabbling in battlefields in Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda, Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Libya.
Born in French Algeria in 1948 to a Sephardic Jewish family, Lévy burst onto the French national stage in the 1970s as a long-haired young philosopher criticizing the dangers of Marxism on the French left. He has written dozens of books and was a co-founder of an influential anti-racist group.
Although Lévy has his detractors, his supporters dismiss the attacks as little more than jealousy of his wealth, power and success. (He is married to the actress and singer Arielle Dombasle). He is, they say, a man who seeks to make and shape history, not just write it.
“These people who criticize him are armchair intellectuals who never leave their Parisian salons,” said Marc Roussel, co-director of “Slava Ukraini”.
During the Bosnian war in the 1990s, Lévy went to Sarajevo and made a film that helped shed light on Serb atrocities against Muslims.
“Bosnia showed me that ideas matter, words can make a difference, decision makers can be convinced and that people can be a grain of sand that blocks the machinery,” Lévy said.
By: Dan Bilefsky
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6667122, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-04-18 20:10:06
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