At this date so far from the event, if some young person asked me what movie they could watch which would give them the essence of the Holocaust, this is the movie I would recommend.
I watched it because Jeanne Moreau was listed in the credits and she is worth the price of admission on any movie. She didn't disappoint.
The Holocaust theme was played perfectly. It starts off with the lecturer sketching out the event for those never exposed to it, having her field a mix of serious and stupid questions, and introducing the sole Jewish girl in the class, Daisy, obviously assimilated.
Her emotional attachment is with her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor Nana, played by Moreau, and the parents are never introduced; they would have just been clutter. Nana told her stories which conveyed the feeling of one having lived through the Holocaust and they affected Daisy psychologically to the point where she had nightmares. Why would she tell the girl such stories? Don't look for a rational explanation. She is a Holocaust survivor. If you think Nana should have had better sense relate this to The Pawnbroker starring Rod Steiger.
Perhaps 50 per cent of Jews in the fourth and fifth generations in America, certainly of the upper classes, have no feeling of being different from anyone else, which is a healthy and normal state of affairs, but anti-Semitism is still out there, and Daisy was touched by it in the locker scene. This was the result of these students having had the Holocaust shoved down their throat by that lecture and that's what some got out of it.
Her boyfriend Ethan did not dump her because she was Jewish, that is never stated explicitly, but she was too strange for him. It looked like this would be a case of opposites attract, but he was too shallow for her, and too immature. She was a prolific reader, an introvert, and possessed of a developing Jewish consciousness, which she got not from her parents, but it sprung on her from the relationship with her grandmother and the grandmother's tragic life. Daisy knew this influence had something to do with her losing Ethan and that's why she blurted out that she hated her grandmother at one point.
The utter evil of the Holocaust is conveyed in the scene where the Nazi takes the two little girls. For what purpose, we need not even guess. Two among 1,500,000 million children who met horrible endings.
Cinema has never really solved the problem of how to show life in the camps. The people were much too thin and too sick with a multitude of ailments and injuries, walking corpses, the milieu a babel of languages, and none of this can be portrayed by mere actors and actresses. We are left with the written word if you are looking for realism. Given the extreme restrictions anyone attempting a Holocaust theme faces who wishes to tell this story in a movie, this was a tour-de-force.
I watched it because Jeanne Moreau was listed in the credits and she is worth the price of admission on any movie. She didn't disappoint.
The Holocaust theme was played perfectly. It starts off with the lecturer sketching out the event for those never exposed to it, having her field a mix of serious and stupid questions, and introducing the sole Jewish girl in the class, Daisy, obviously assimilated.
Her emotional attachment is with her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor Nana, played by Moreau, and the parents are never introduced; they would have just been clutter. Nana told her stories which conveyed the feeling of one having lived through the Holocaust and they affected Daisy psychologically to the point where she had nightmares. Why would she tell the girl such stories? Don't look for a rational explanation. She is a Holocaust survivor. If you think Nana should have had better sense relate this to The Pawnbroker starring Rod Steiger.
Perhaps 50 per cent of Jews in the fourth and fifth generations in America, certainly of the upper classes, have no feeling of being different from anyone else, which is a healthy and normal state of affairs, but anti-Semitism is still out there, and Daisy was touched by it in the locker scene. This was the result of these students having had the Holocaust shoved down their throat by that lecture and that's what some got out of it.
Her boyfriend Ethan did not dump her because she was Jewish, that is never stated explicitly, but she was too strange for him. It looked like this would be a case of opposites attract, but he was too shallow for her, and too immature. She was a prolific reader, an introvert, and possessed of a developing Jewish consciousness, which she got not from her parents, but it sprung on her from the relationship with her grandmother and the grandmother's tragic life. Daisy knew this influence had something to do with her losing Ethan and that's why she blurted out that she hated her grandmother at one point.
The utter evil of the Holocaust is conveyed in the scene where the Nazi takes the two little girls. For what purpose, we need not even guess. Two among 1,500,000 million children who met horrible endings.
Cinema has never really solved the problem of how to show life in the camps. The people were much too thin and too sick with a multitude of ailments and injuries, walking corpses, the milieu a babel of languages, and none of this can be portrayed by mere actors and actresses. We are left with the written word if you are looking for realism. Given the extreme restrictions anyone attempting a Holocaust theme faces who wishes to tell this story in a movie, this was a tour-de-force.