New film on Holocaust: Amen by Costa Gavras

[Dan W.]

Second, arguing that Schindler's List means a Judeocentric view of the evil in war is simply absurd. It's a kin to arguing that the movie Memphis Bell means all evil in war is in the Luftwaffe.

All movies on topics as large as WWII or the holocaust must deal with segments of the topic.

In Schindler's List, the only German who is really portrayed as personalized "evil" is Goeth, and even he is shown to have a personable side in his love of his Jewish assistant. What's not shown in the movie is that in real life, he tried to call her as a character witness at his trials.

Think about the other germans in the movie, in particular the camp guards. When they heard the Jews praying on the sabbath, did they attack them? No. Despite orders to kill the Jews before leaving, did they? No.

This is not the point.

While Costa Gavras' characters(mainly Gerstein and his chief The Doctor) even in the most absurdly cruel situations retain their human face and emotions, and even when doing the most sleazy things keep their human quasi-normal reactions(one must see the film to understand), the characters from Spielberg's Schindler's List have mostly exaggerated traits of personality, exaggerated/coarse reactions and speeches(like Schindler in the scene with the golden ring and his Party Badge), simplistic figures. Goeth, for example, seems much like a robotic figure, somehow a machine programmed to do evil things

How can this be? Do you really believe this? Did you even see the same movie I did? Fiennes did a brilliant performance of Amon Goeth, and his range of emotion covered the spectrum. How about him not getting up to greet Schindler yet smiling when he met him? How about his affection for Gretta the housemaid but then beating her in the basement? How about him clearly reveling in the irony of the Pole he called "The little clicking Polish soldier!" when this man said he was assigned to cleaning up the luggage from the street? How about looking into the mirror and repeating what Schindler told him about "real power" when he decided against disciplining the boy assigned to cleaning the bathroom, but then reverting to form and shooting him when he was walking away? Fiennes was anything but "robotic" in his performance. I guess when something other than an apologist viewpoint is displayed regarding the Holocaust than ones bias will overide any sensibility and objectivity. What a shame that this can cause one to miss the obvious.
- and by this he doesn't even look like a character played by an actor, but more like a robot built for this role.

Maybe for an American can Spielberg's characters look "normal"(whatever "normal" is supposed to mean in USA ), but from my point of view they are everything but "normal". They lack the subtlety and fineness of human psychology(God, it's so hard to say it clear in English... ). The mere fact that our American friend Xanthro seems so amazed by the fact that the "evil" German guardsmen did not kill the Jews says it. Maybe he expected the guards to jump to the Jews' necks like a pack of wolves? If they were anyway going to leave, why bother anymore with Jews, despite any kind of order? Do you sincerely think they were going to do it by the mere pleasure to kill? If yes, you must have thought the characters in Black and White even worse than Spielberg himself

Anyway, any comparison between Schindler's List and Amen is useless as long as nobody claims to have seen Amen. On the other side, it's pretty useful in understanding the American way of thinking. 8)

~Regards,

Ovidius

[Scott Smith]

..or is that cardboard Nazis cutout of Evil?

Fiennes was anything but "robotic" in his performance.

Fiennes' performance may have been brilliant but the character was that of a stock Nazi. Off-the-shelf, stock, robotic, whatever.

I guess when something other than an apologist viewpoint is displayed regarding the Holocaust than ones bias will overide any sensibility and objectivity. What a shame that this can cause one to miss the obvious.

What does that mean? After making one boxoffice bread-and-butter schlock melodrama after another Spielberg now gives us High Art because it's the Holocaust. I don't think so.

[Ovidius]

Like I said, I probably would have liked Schindler's List if it had not been directed by Spielberg, and I have never liked anything by Spielberg

Neither did I.

What does "Xanthro" mean?

I think it means (in Greek) "yellow" or something like this.

~Regards,

Ovidius

[Ovidius]

I'll agree that most American movies about WWII have a much clearer black and white aspect about them than do foreign movies. However, this is true about all subjects in American movies. We like black and white. We understand that real life isn't this way, but movies are a fantasy, a reflection on how society would like to be, and we Americans would like things to be black and white.

Xanthro

Emphasis is mine.

Comments are useless.

~Best regards,

Ovidius

[Scott Smith]

We like black and white. We understand that real life isn't this way, but movies are a fantasy, a reflection on how society would like to be, and we Americans would like things to be black and white.

Comments are useless.

Melodramatic moral fantasy is probably not one of our more admirable traits. And we possess atomic bombs!

But on the subject of B & W, at least Spielberg made the movie in B & W instead of that awful faded color used in Saving Private Ryan. Okay, it wasn't so bad the first time--but now everybody is doing it, Band of Brothers and so on. It gives modern American WWII movies an especially schlocky feel, IMHO.
:roll:

[Ovidius]

Another good and out-of-the-line film on the Holocaust I've seen in the last months is Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni:

Contrary to most mainstream exponents of Italian comedy, who tend to settle for minor variations on boy-woos-girl scenarios, actor-director Roberto Benigni habitually taps less commonplace sources for his humour. These include demonic possession in The Little Devil, the Mafia in Johnny Stecchino and serial killers in The Monster.


But in tipping his hat to Charlie Chaplin and targeting the Holocaust as a subject for comedy as well as pathos, the irreverent Tuscan comic attempts by far the most ambitious and audacious project of his career in La vita e bella (Life is Beautiful.)

Source: http://www.filmfestivals.com/review/lavita/lavita.htm

How writer/director/star Benigni pulls this off, I have no idea. He somehow finds a way to tastefully show the Holocaust for what it was (in a light-hearted tone) without trivializing it. Unlike Steven Spielberg's equally brilliant Schindler's List, which showed us everything in gory detail, Benigni chooses to hide from us the details, but never the reality. He even shows us the reaction of a female Nazi guard who has just assisted the gassing of 100 camp inmates. Even Nazis have humanity sometimes.

Source: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/dialf/lavita.html

He told BBC World's HARDtalk last week that he "stole" the film's idea from his father.

The Italian black comedy, which was also co-written by Benigni, was inspired by the two years his father spent in a Nazi labour camp and the way he explained the events to his children.

Benigni likes playing the clown
"When he came back he was a skeleton, was a dead man, but I must say it was the need to tell the story."

His father was able to talk about the horrors of the holocaust in a positive way, to make Roberto and his sisters understand that it was good to be alive.

"The attitude to tell the story, wasn't just telling you, it's a nightmare but remember life is good," said Mr Benigni. "I stole from him the attitude, the way to life, to tell the story, his style.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entert ... 298151.stm

The film is available for sale through Amazon:



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 43-3142400

~Best regards,

Ovidius

[Ovidius]

This is certainly no Schindler's List, but it never pretends to be. Occasionally events seem a little contrived, but this does seem to work in the film's favour. However, this film avoids the tendency of Hollywood to go far over the top in emotional and credibility terms.

Source: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0118799

The quote above needs no more comments. I should have repeated it one hundred-thousand-million times, for everyone here to read and acknowledge, but I simply don't have the technical possibility to do so.

~Best regards,

Ovidius

[Scott Smith]

I thought Life is Beautiful was awful. Hollywood certainly has no monopoly on the gaschamber-and-oven liturgy. Yes, every wartime German camp is a Death Camp. I'm surprised that they didn't try to turn the boy into soap.
:roll:

[Roberto]

I thought Life is Beautiful was awful. Hollywood certainly has no monopoly on the gaschamber-and-oven liturgy. Yes, every wartime German camp is a Death Camp. I'm surprised that they didn't try to turn the boy into soap.

Smith's commentary sucks, as usual. But so did the film, though not for the reasons adduced by Smith. Extermination camps with gas chambers in Italy, and father Benigni keeping his son from noticing what's going on there - come on. I prefer more realistic and sober films like Escape from Sobibor:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 21-6128842

[Scott Smith]

I haven't seen this one but if you want the DVD, click on my link to support this very site!


CLICK!

[Victor´s Justice?]

No need to watch it, Mr. Smith...Escape From Sobibor once aired through Brazilian TV some 10 years ago, as a series of episodes...Rutger Hauer is "Sasha", and one of the band leaders...almost moving (especially for children and families), but keeps doing all stereotyping about Nazi horrible men and excessive atrocities...it really doesn´t break new grounds anyway...

[Dan]

Yes, and the acting was wretched.

[Ovidius]

Smith's commentary sucks, as usual. But so did the film, though not for the reasons adduced by Smith. Extermination camps with gas chambers in Italy, and father Benigni keeping his son from noticing what's going on there - come on. I prefer more realistic and sober films like Escape from Sobibor:

1. The scenario doesn't specify that the camp was in Italy;

2. I see that unrealistic scenes are scorned by a certain friend of us only when they "avoid the tendency of Hollywood to go far over the top in emotional" terms. When an Amon Goeth acts like a Sci-Fi killer robot, or when Liam Neeson plays the surreal scene with the ring and the Party Badge, the same friend of us suddenly plays deaf. Am I right!?

~Ovidius

[Roberto]

No need to watch it, Mr. Smith...Escape From Sobibor once aired through Brazilian TV some 10 years ago, as a series of episodes...Rutger Hauer is "Sasha", and one of the band leaders...almost moving (especially for children and families), but keeps doing all stereotyping about Nazi horrible men and excessive atrocities...it really doesn´t break new grounds anyway...

I wonder what “new ground” would be for someone apparently prepared to deny that Sobibor was an extermination camp, a place where people were taken for no other purpose than being killed there. Escape from Sobibor may not be a masterpiece of the art of moviemaking, but it is an accurate portrayal of the procedures at the camp and of the planning and execution of the uprising. The “Nazi horrible men and their excessive atrocities” are portrayed in accordance with the testimonials of eyewitnesses, some of whom made depositions at the trials before West German courts against former members of the Sobibor staff. Some of the trial summaries featured on the Justiz und NS Verbrechen web site of the University of Amsterdam are available in English:

Case Nr.212
Crime Category: Mass Extermination Crimes in Camps
Accused:
Bauer, Erich Hermann Death sentence
Court:
LG Berlin 500508
KG 501111
Country where the crime was committed: Poland
Crime Location: HS KL Sobibor
Crime Date: 42-4311
Victims: Jews
Nationality: unknown (according to judgment: foreign)
Office: Haftstättenpersonal KL Sobibor
Subject of the proceeding: Mass killing of Jews by the defendant, who was called 'Gasmeister' of Sobibor, as well as mishandling and shooting of individual Jewish prisoners

Source of quote:

http://www.jur.uva.nl/junsv/brd/brdengf ... eng212.htm

Case Nr.233
Crime Category: Mass Extermination Crimes in Camps
Accused:
G., Hubert life sentence
K., Johann Acquittal
Court:
LG Frankfurt/M. 500825
Country where the crime was committed: Poland
Crime Location: HS KL Sobibor
Crime Date: 4204-4310
Victims: Jews
Nationality: unknown (according to the judgment: foreign)
Office: Haftstättenpersonal KL Sobibor
Subject of the proceeding: Participation in mass killings through selection at the ramp of the victims arriving with the railway transports, as well as mishandling and mass and individual shootings of Jews

Source of quote:

http://www.jur.uva.nl/junsv/brd/brdengf ... eng233.htm

Case Nr.641
Crime Category: Mass Extermination Crimes in Camps
Accused:
Fuc., Erich Fritz 4 Years
Court:
LG Hagen 661220
Country where the crime was committed: Poland
Crime Location: HS KL Sobibor
Crime Date: 4204-4205
Victims: Jews
Nationality: Polish, unknown
Office: Haftstättenpersonal KL Sobibor
Subject of the proceeding: Installing and tuning of a engine, whose exhaust fumes were led into the gas chamber. 'Trial gassing' of about 30 Jewish women as well as subsequent gassing of Jews arriving in 3-4 transports. Instruction of camp supervisor (Lageraufseher) Bauer - cf. Case Nr.212 - how to operate the engine

Source of quote:

http://www.jur.uva.nl/junsv/brd/brdengf ... eng641.htm

Case Nr.642
Crime Category: Mass Extermination Crimes in Camps, War Crimes
Accused:
Dub., Karl Werner 3 Years
Frenzel, Karl August Wilhelm Life sentence
Itt., Alfred 4 Years
Jüh., Robert Emil Franz Xaver Acquittal
Lac., Erich Gustav Willi Acquittal
Lambert, Erwin Hermann 3 Years
Sch., Hans-Heinz Friedrich Karl Acquittal
Unv., Heinrich Acquittal
Wol., Franz 8 Years
Zie., Ernst Acquittal
Court:
LG Hagen 661220
BGH 710325
Country where the crime was committed: Poland
Crime Location: HS KL Sobibor
Crime Date: 4203-4311
Victims: Jews, Prisoners of War
Nationality: German, French, Dutch, Austrian, Polish, Slovak, Soviet, Czech
Office: Haftstättenpersonal KL Sobibor
Subject of the proceeding: Mass gassing and single killings of altogether at least 150, 000 Jewish civilians as well as of Red Army soldiers

Source of quote:

http://www.jur.uva.nl/junsv/brd/brdengf ... eng642.htm

[Roberto]

1. The scenario doesn't specify that the camp was in Italy;

I inferred that from the mountainous terrain and liberating American troops shown at the end of the film.

2. I see that unrealistic scenes are scorned by a certain friend of us only when they "avoid the tendency of Hollywood to go far over the top in emotional" terms.

Why, do a father’s valiant and successful efforts to keep the horror of an extermination camp from his son "avoid the tendency of Hollywood to go far over the top in emotional"? I’d say they do exactly the opposite.

When an Amon Goeth acts like a Sci-Fi killer robot, or when Liam Neeson plays the surreal scene with the ring and the Party Badge, the same friend of us suddenly plays deaf. Am I right!?

My dear friend Ovi keeps getting me wrong. Goeth, as I see it, was not portrayed like a “Sci-Fi killer robot”, even though the historical Goeth seems to have been very much that. On the contrary, the director went to great lengths to show that there was a man behind the monster. As to Schindler’s hysterical breakdown at the end of the film, it is one of the sentimental scenes that diminished the film’s quality, which in my opinion went down after the remarkable sequences of the evacuation of the Cracow ghetto.