Holocaust Day 2

I first saw footage from concentration camps when I was nine. It was at PATS, this rather cultish gathering a group of us went to twice a week because we could add better than the rest of the class. The footage was part of this series called "Great Events of the Twentieth Century." I remember the whole class was pretty crazy about the series, we got to learn about fascinating things, like the death of Queen Victoria, the Boer War, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the defeat of Nazi Germany. That last segment included original videos taken when the Americans first liberated the death camps. Probably not the best thing for nine year olds to be seeing, but it happened. I remember we watched it right before lunch, I also remember not eating that day.

At the moment, I feel nine years old again.

Don't watch this movie. I'm not saying it's a bad film. No, it's a really well made, well written film. But don't watch it unless you're prepared for seven and half hours of pain and awful and death and general inhumanity. The whole theme of this movie is "this isn't going to go well."

And there are other options these days to get equal amounts of horror in an experience that's slightly shorter, like "Life is Beautiful" or something.

So I think it's important that people see movies like this, and I'm glad people are making these kinds of movies. I subscribe to the theory that if we don't remember history we are doomed to repeat it. But if you are going to watch it, at least be prepared for what it will do to you. And if it doesn't leave you emotionally ravaged, something might be wrong with you. It made me cry. I do not cry. Before this, I had only cried in five movies ever. And this movie made me cry.

One thing I did think was interesting, that I haven't seen much before, is how much time they spend with the Nazi officials and how they deal with what they're doing. There was a little in the new "Sophie Scholl" film that came out a few years ago but not as much as this. Seeing them discuss it amongst themselves and the power plays within the party is really interesting. What it does to the Dorf character is like watching a drug addict rationalize his addiction. The propaganda eats him alive.

Cast-y bits: A young Ian Holm (aka Bilbo Baggins) shows up as Himmler.

Overall cool movie scale: 9. Shows an important piece of history that we shouldn't forget, but god is it hard to watch. It's like getting a hepatitis shot. Really important, really painful.

Action scale: 6. Lots of fighting in this, not really very pleasant. At times pretty gory. Still no car chases or martial arts battles.

Script scale: 8. The parts with the Nazi officers remained the most interesting (and horrifying) and it wasn't overly wordy.

Other creative-y stuff scale: 7. Still too clean. And the part where the German guy (played by a British guy, speaking English) meets the American guy (played by an American guy, also speaking English) and they can communicate just fine, when the Germans and the Russians couldn't communicate, requires heavy suspension of disbelief.

Nerdy Bits Scale: 8. I now need to look up Jewish resistance in the ghettos. This movie shows a lot of that and it's not a topic I know much about. I think the creators also used original pictures and videos from the camps, which is hard to watch but important to see.

Streep Scale: 8. She's still awesome and heartbreaking. And, this is kind of a spoiler, but she's lucky too.

Now "The Deer Hunter," which will hopefully be a little less painful to watch. And Christopher Walken is in it. I'm a proud member of the Christopher Walken can beat the shit out of Chuck Norris facebook group. Looking forward to it.