July 17, 1998

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK;
A Revolution Made Of Gritty Intimacy

By Stephen Holden

New York Video Festival, 1998

…Jeanne Finley and John H. Muse’s ”O Night Without Objects,” the centerpiece of ”The Good, the Bad and the Converted,” tells the true story of a rabidly anti-Semitic grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Lincoln, Neb., who underwent a spiritual and political transformation, converted to Judaism, and was taken in and cared for until his death by a local cantor and his family. The story, which probes deeply into this family’s complicated dynamics, is framed by abstract essays on family psychology (the opening segment of this triptych shows a psychological test being given to a child who is asked to describe what’s happening in certain ambiguous pictures), society and religious community….