I can summarize the movie in the following bullets. There are minor spoilers.
- The Nazis take Warsaw.
- Horrible things happen to Warsaw Jews.
- More horrible things happen to Warsaw Jews.
- Majority of Warsaw Jews are killed.
- Horrible things happen to those remaining Warsaw Jews.
- The main character escapes to a hideout where horrible things happen.
- One Nazi shows mercy.
- The merciful Nazi goes to a concentration camp along with the scumbuckets that did horrible things to Warsaw Jews.
I certainly do not mean to belittle the Holocaust or those who went through it, but I do have a difficulty with the movie. My complaint is that there only seem to be three relatively simple points that were made.
- All Nazis were horrible people who arbitrarily and happily killed or tortured any Jew that happened to be within eyesight.
- Warsaw Jews endured horrible hardships.
- Did I mention the Nazis were horrible?
These are not necessarily ignoble points, but they were fully made within 15 minutes of the start of the movie. I didn't need the full two hours to understand them. When I am watching a movie like this I feel like I am either the dunce of the class who is bored because everything is over his head or the genius who is bored because he is not learning anything new.
I think part of the point of the movie was the experience. I don't fully understand that, though, because the experience completely consists in either hating the Nazis or feeling empathy for the Jews. Again, fine for the film, but two hours of nothing but hate and empathy is draining.
Is there something more to this movie (or movies like this in general) that I am not getting? Is there some emotional or artistic intricacy that I am unable to comprehend? If so, I certainly need to be enlightened because I must be missing out. If not, does the movie need to be quite so long?
Note: For fear that this comes across as all negative, the cinematography, storytelling, acting, and entire atmosphere of the movie is spectacular.
6 comments:
I know what you mean. I did enjoy that movie, but it had a consistent thread of emotion that never varied from a certain tone.
If I can compare movies to music, many movies conduct a person's emotions through highs and lows. Some movies try to maintain a single chord and then give relief, although the relief was not there with your experience - probably because people are not the same.
I have trouble with any Quentin Tarantino or David Lynch movie because they are discordant and brash, with a hefty emphasis of manipulating shock into the emotions. Quentin Tarantino does it even more so by making the shocking seem like it is normal. Any movie about the holocaust is one HUGE minor chord that keeps ringing out like a pipe organ. I don't think anyone can give any relief with that topic, no matter how hard they try to introduce a resolution.
My big beef is with rockstar movies like The Doors. These always start out with wild rock chords and then spiral down into nothing as the star becomes a drug addict. Usually (other than "RAY Charles") the rockstar was famous for making good music and then dying young. One big ploppy dischord right before the credits roll - no fun for me.
(is that a forrest fire on the horizon?)
burn baby burn ....
I remember seeing Schindler's list at the mall theater in Springfield. Aside from being a really long movie, it was just so oppressive. The sheer weight of all the killings piled up on you throughout the movie. That to me was the point ... not the badly acted Liam Neesom speech at the end where he bemoans not "buying more" while he still had cuff links etc.
When we left the movie we were all visibly worn out. Seeing all the bustling mall shoppers darting around the brightly lit food court was shocking and reminiscent of the little girl in the red coat.
Then again, Nazi movies aren't all bad; without them, we wouldn't know that the officer's on the Death Star were the bag guys.
Rule # 26: If they dress like Nazis they must act like Nazis .. and will therefore be defeated like Nazis.
Odd bit of web trivia see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Dar,
That's hilarious! I had heard of the principle before, but I didn't remember that it was called Godwin's Law.
On the other hand, in my opinion a very good holocaust movie is "Life is Beautiful". Instead of a depressing tone throughout, there were many moments spotlighting the beauty of life that I felt were quite uplifting. I came away from that movie feeling good despite its somewhat tragic storyline. It remains one of my favorites.
I'll have to check that movie out. I am usually drawn away from Holocaust movies due to what I have already said, but if the movie has some variety beyond the horrible conditions that people had to survive that could make for a good movie.
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