Episode 11: First They Came for the Jews

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, Conspiracy (2001), and Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Anti-semitism, Nazis, and the ethics of standing up for an idea. Also: Is Netanyahu the Jack Aubrey of politics?

Foyle's War - High Castle - Episode Review

My review of the season 7/series 8 finale

Foyle's War isn't quite sure of its own purpose anymore. In the beginning, it was clearly a Golden Age whodunit. While Foyle was far too averse to melodrama to gather the suspects in the library, there was an inevitable confrontation. He would listen to the monologue of a self-satisfied killer, and then slice through their moral superiority with the blade of truth. Or something.

The Book Thief - Movie Review

Like Life is Beautiful, this is a movie that succeeds mostly on charm. And despite my bone-deep cynicism about almost everything, The Book Thief crept under my guard. True: it's a story-book vision of a fairy-tale Germany, complete with WWII movie conventions from a different age - hidden Jew, book-burning, over-the-top score, stodgy, sanitized settings - but it turns these things to its advantage, creating not a children-in-wartime film, but a children's film. While the setting is somewhat idealized, I found it beautiful enough to sweep away concerns about realism.

It's based on a book:

Liesel Meminger is a young girl in World War II Germany, who steals her first book from the frozen graveside of her brother. Abandoned, she is taken in by a pair of quirky but affectionate foster parents, with whom she is to endure the war. Her love of words and stories gives her hope in a world where childhood is quickly unraveling.

Valkyrie - Movie Review

World War II is Hollywood’s favorite war. Complete with a plethora of extraordinary makeshift heroes, it also provides our favorite touchstone for absolute evil: the Nazis. We can safely hate the Nazis.

Except we can’t. While there were, unquestionably, truly depraved Nazis (just mention the named Oskar Dirlewanger and I shudder,) there was also a significant German underground resistance. Many Christians broke from the official Reichskirche to form their own free church. This opposition extended into the highest echelons of the government—many military leaders despised and distrusted Hitler.

But Hollywood’s record hasn’t been stellar when it comes to recognizing this. Needless to say, when Valkyrie—an account of the German attempt to assassinate Hitler—was announced there was significant worry from Germany that this production would slip into the same mistake. It wasn’t helped when Tom Cruise was cast as the hero, Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a German aristocrat with a pedigree even longer than his name.

But this worry was misplaced. 

Life is Beautiful - Movie Review

The last three movies I've watched have curiously prepared me for this one, which I finished Monday. To End All Wars was a WWII film, taking place in a camp of sufferers. The Scarlet and the Black was about a resistance movement in Nazi Rome. Kind Hearts and Coronets was a film from the 1940's.

Life is Beautiful takes elements from all of these and improves on them, being a WWII tale set in Italy with a 1940's style of filming. Mark Twain once said "the personages in a tale [should] be alive, except in the case of corpses, and...the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others." In Life is Beautiful, unlike To End All Wars, a vast amount of time is spent in ensuring the life of the characters, before even a shadow of death darkens the horizon.

The Scarlet and the Black strove both for an amusing main character and menacing villains, but both efforts failed. Life is Beautiful excels in both directions, always evoking the correct response.