Aunt Raini Riefenstahl: Play Analysis

The Play 'Aunt Raini' demonstrated a conflict between a hearty sense of morale and the artist's desire to ignore the oppression of the beliefs where modern-day human morale should stand in order of pursuing their passion of creating art. In the play, Leni Riefenstahl, under the pseudonym Aunt Raini, comes out from hiding her identity as a well-known German film director and accused Third Reich collaborator years later during a clash of different perceptions between her and her niece's boyfriend whowhom is another admirer of the arts of film. Many years have passed by since the end of the war, yet Aunt Raini hiding her identity may show evidence of how societies attitude may be towards the events preceding its end. During the climax of Aunt …show more content…
The director had even done research of his own with the play being inspired after him watching a documentary titled “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. I studied portions of the documentary and was surprised to find out how exactly Leni, aka Aunt Raini, had felt about her role while in Germany during the Third Reich. As the play focused on Aunt Raini in today’s modern world, there were not very many historical aspects throughout as related to the outline of the World War II period in which she was involved, but it gave a better sense as to how someone could feel when viewing Aunt Raini’s work during the period. The play had proposed a good question which is capable of being open to the opinions and views of the readers with Aunt Raini’s past and her film work which is a relic of war that has passed years ago. World War II is indeed a war of facts with the years that it had taken place and the horrors that were brought along with it, and although the play may possibly be fictional on how it portrays some of Aunt Raini’s ideas in an artistic construct about how the past events of her life play on years later, the concepts that …show more content…
A contradiction was made at one point when an idea that an actor had proposed had flawlessly been thrown out the window due to a shift in perspective, such as when Joel discovers Aunt Raini’s true identity, her association with the Third Reich, and then using that to justify his change in his original opinion of how great art should create conflict with people upon interpretation. The idea of my thesis and insight on the overall idea of the plot had been conjured from this interaction. The playwright here is making a strong statement without having to dive too deep into explanation. An average person could change the way they feel about an idea very easily if that idea suddenly incorporates elements of a negative nature too it. It makes logical sense, as in the case with Joel. I had felt the emotion of Joel with watching the play and understood the logic of why it would be easy to disagree with Aunt Raini’s opinions based on her past, but I also believe the best artwork is that which creates conflict. This interaction had a strong energy to it and the director had most likely intended it to be that