Thumbed tax

Praise for An Act of Conscience

Do you remember that stirring American lit-class anecdote concerning Ralph Waldo Emerson? It seems the Concord-based poet peered into the local clink one day and found his pal Thoreau newly jailed for refusing to pay taxes to support the Mexican War.

"Hey, Henry David," the Self-Reliance author queried, "what are you doing in there?"

"The question is, Ralph Waldo," retorted the incarcerated Walden scrivener, "what are you doing out there?"

I had a friend, a bit of a cad, who would tell that story on a second date to prove that he had integrity. Well, telling and having are quite different things. For genuine principles, check out Robbie Leppzer's An Act of Conscience (at the MFA January 21 through February 6), a moving, years-in-the-making documentary witness to the valorous lives of resistance of a Western Massachusetts couple.

Beginning in 1977, Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner stopped paying federal taxes because they objected that much of their money was going to the American military. Each April since, Kehler and Corner have taken the dough expected by Uncle Sam and dispersed it to local and international charities.

This Robin Hood-like civil disobedience proved too much for the IRS, which, in 1991, seized Kehler and Corner's idyllic country house and put it up at auction as a way to collect back taxes. The $120,000 home sold for $5100 to a working-class couple, Danny Franklin and Terry Chamesky. Although sheepish about the circumstances of their purchase, the hard-up young marrieds rationalized that they'd never have such an opportunity again: a spot in the country to raise their newborn baby.

At this point in the film, An Act of Conscience really gets fascinating, because the two couples -- one leftist, one conservative -- seem almost doppelgängers.

It takes real fortitude for Kehler and Corner to stand up for so long to the federal government (Kehler, a lifetime pacifist, already had spent two years in jail for refusing to go to Vietnam); and their actions bring incredible stress upon their friends and family, all of whom are pledged to their cause. When Kehler and Corner are actually locked out of their home by the feds, neighbors picket and sit in, and many are arrested.

At the same time, Franklin and Chamesky occupy the house, fill it up with their friends, and bolt the door. They do this before a court order allows them to take over. Outside, Kehler shakes his head at the irony, noting that his adversaries also have committed an act of civil disobedience! And no matter how heinous is their assuming ownership of the house, Franklin and Chamesky have been undeniably gutsy in standing up to the hostile crowds awaiting them.

Besides, Franklin and Chamesky have followed their consciences also, believing that the American thing to do is to pay your taxes. If you don't pay them, you must accept the penalty of the law. That's what happened, they believe, and rightly, to the now-homeless Kehler and Corner.

It's to videomaker Leppzer's credit that, though championing Kehler and Corner, he gives Franklin and Chamesky their time before the camera. We understand their justifications even if we can't quite approve. (Scabs!) But don't worry: there's a fairly upbeat ending for An Act of Conscience, plus guest visits from activists Father Daniel Berrigan and Pete Seeger. What's nicest: Kehler and Corner never compromise, and they maintain their humanity and humility, coming up roses for the five years covered by the movie. (And beyond: it's 1999, and the US government still hasn't seen a cent from them.)

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There's a far more self-conscious film about doubles, Mr. Klein, the 1977 French-language feature by the fine British-based director Joseph Losey, which is playing January 21 and 22 at the French Library. Alain Delon stars as Robert Klein, an amoral art dealer in France 1942 who buys out the collections of about-to-be-deported Jews at cut-rate prices. Then up pops up a second Mr. Klein, a Jewish one, and Delon scurries off to the police to insist that there's been a mix-up involving the two Kleins. He immediately becomes the object of suspicion and is followed by two detectives as if he were Josef K.

Losey films Occupied Paris as a meeting point of Vichy gendarmes and native anti-Semites: there's not a charming, twinkle-eyed Resistance fighter in sight. As for Delon's Klein, he never learns, even as he's rounded up and stuffed on a boxcar train for the East. One unsentimental movie!

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As Boston goes, so goeth the nation. That's the lesson from the National Society of Film Critics, which gathered at the Algonquin Hotel in New York on January 4 to pick the best films of 1998. The four Boston critics who attended (James Verniere from the Herald, Jay Carr from the Globe, Peter Keough and yours truly from the Phoenix) certainly influenced the balloting. Taste of Cherry and Out of Sight, voted Best Foreign Film and Best Picture by the Boston Society of Film Critics in December, repeated those victories in New York. Out of Sight's NSFC victory was a particular surprise: it nipped the mightily favored Saving Private Ryan.