Posted on January 2, 2015 at 8:00 am
It is one of the most famous paintings of the 20th Century, a masterwork by Gustav Klimt, a portrait of his friend Adele Bloch-Bauer. It was confiscated by the Nazis during WWII. And then, 60 years later, it became the subject of an international lawsuit as Bloch-Bauer’s niece sued the Austrian government for its return. That case was the subject of three documentaries, Adele’s Wish
Posted on April 24, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Why do we keep making movies about the Holocaust?
Because we are still trying to understand one of the most shocking, inhumane tragedies in history. Because it is the essence of heightened, dramatic storylines, with the most depraved real-life villains, the bravest heroes, and the direst moral dilemmas, the most devastating sacrifices. Because we have to ask ourselves, “What would I do?”
And because there are still stories left to tell. “Walking With the Enemy” is inspired by the true story of Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum, a Hungarian student who escaped from a labor camp to help the “Glass House” workers forging Swiss citizenship papers to get Jews out of the country. He impersonated an SS officer to rescue Jews they were about to execute.
This first movie from the brand new Liberty Studios and first-time director Mark Schmidt is a tense and exciting story of a part of the Holocaust not widely known. Because Hungary’s Regent (played by Sir Ben Kingsley) made an alliance with Germany, the Nazis did not interfere with the country or its Jewish citizens for the first years of World War II. “I aligned Hungary with what I thought was the lesser of two evils.” 
But then, as Germany started to be hemmed in by the Allied forces, it took over Hungary and began to send Jews to labor camps and concentration camps. A heroic Swiss diplomat named Carl Lutz (played by William Hope) was given permission to issue 8000 passes to Hungarian Jews with family in Switzerland. He managed to get those passes to tens of thousands, who were able to escape the Nazis.
Handsome and likeable Jonas Armstrong (television’s “Robin Hood”) plays Elek Cohen, a character based on Rosenbaum. While his uncle worked with Lutz in the “Glass House” (called that because it had been a glass factory), helping to hide Jews, Elek wore a Nazi uniform to infiltrate Nazi offices and operations to free Jews about to be sent away or killed. Over and over, he takes terrible risks, knowing that even if he survives, he will fail more than he succeeds. “Why does it have to be you?” someone asks. “Because I have one thing left.”
The first-time director wisely worked with experienced filmmakers, especially cinematographer Dean Cundey (“Apollo 13,” “Jurassic Park”) and a capable cast of top British actors. The film is ably scripted, shot, and edited. The sound effects are exceptional; I don’t remember ever hearing gunshot sounds so sharp and directed. The story is very affecting. One oddly sterile note is that for a story about Jews, there is very little Jewish activity other than a blessing over a family dinner. Reminiscences of the Holocaust include many stories of Jews praying together and doing their best to observe rituals and worship, reciting the Shema as they were led to the gas chambers. Here, even those about to be shot by a firing squad do not say a prayer, an odd oversight in a story that is about those who were trying to preserve their right to maintain their religion and their community.
Parents should know that this is a WWII movie depicting events of the Holocaust. There are many scenes of wartime and anti-Semitic violence and many characters are injured and killed.
Family discussion: What was Elek’s toughest decision? Is it hard to help, knowing how much more cannot be fixed? What can we learn from Elek and Lutz? Who is most like them today?
If you like this, try: “Schindler’s List” and “Conspiracy”
Posted on February 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for some images of war violence and historical smoking |
| Profanity: | Some mild language ("SOB," etc.) |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, references to drinking problem |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Wartime violence, peril, guns, explosions, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | February 7, 2014 |
| Date Released to DVD: | May 19, 2014 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00DL48CN4 |
Many years ago, my husband and I attended an art auction at which one item was a pencil drawing of a peaceful river setting, made by an Austrian art student in the early 20th century: Adolf Hitler. The bidding opened at $10. There were no takers. Hitler retained his appreciation for art as he became a dictator and the man responsible for the most devastating war in world history and the Holocaust that killed six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Slavs, Romany, gays, and disabled people. A part of his plan to take over the world and remake according to his dream of a Thousand Year Reich was to own the greatest art masterworks of all time, many to be displayed in a “Furher Museum” in his own honor. He ordered his army to take art from Jewish collectors, from churches, and from museums, and he hid them until they could be retrieved at the end of the war. When it appeared that he was going to lose the war, he ordered many of them to be destroyed.
In a little-known part of the Allied war effort, an international group of 345 art historians, scholars, curators, and architects served in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, to seek out the missing art treasures and, where possible, to prevent the battles going on in Europe from collateral damage of historic buildings and artworks. Writer-director-star George Clooney has turned this story into an exciting and entertaining film, but by no means a great one. At times it feels like “Oceans 11 Goes to War.” In fact, Clooney not only gave himself the same line he has in “Oceans 11,” he gives it the same line reading. It is one thing to make a heist film set in Las Vegas cuddly, with a bunch of pretend adorable crooks. It is another to try to make that work in the midst of a devastating real war, especially when every one of the clearly fictionalized and composite characters is always the essence of dignity, courage, honor, dedication, and dashing gallantry, quips included.
In this Hollywood-ized version, there are six primary operatives: Clooney plays the leader, Frank Stokes, who rounds up his non-dirty half-dozen, including recovering alcoholic Brit Donald Jeffries (“Downton Abbey’s” Hugh Bonneville), dashing Frenchman Jean Claude Clement (“The Artist’s” Jean Dujardin), MMoA curator James Granger (Damon), sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman), architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), and Preston Savitz (Christopher Guest regular Bob Balaban). Cate Blanchett is sincere but misused as a French woman working for the Germans who are taking paintings from Paris so she can give information to the Resistance.
Clooney can do better (“Goodnight and Good Luck”) than this script, which feels like a Robert McKee formula special, all the beats and plot points laid out according to the formula. As a result, it works. The sad casualties are balanced with the sentimental pauses (a nice moment when a character gets a recorded message from home is clumsily juxtaposed with a soldier dying on a table in the medical tent) and the bro-banter. But the breadth and brutality of the crimes and the humility and devotion of the heroes cannot help but move us and, I hope, inspire us to treasure the masterworks they saved and the heroes who saved them.
Parents should know that this film includes wartime peril and violence, with characters injured and killed, some graphic and disturbing images, sad deaths, explosions, shooting, land mine, constant smoking, some drinking and references to a drinking problem, and mild references to adultery.
Family discussion: Should people risk their lives to save art? Who should decide?
If you like this, try: “Is Paris Burning?” and The Train
Posted on February 6, 2014 at 4:16 pm
George Clooney wrote, directed, and stars in “The Monuments Men,” the story of six men who helped save five million masterpieces of art and architecture and other cultural treasures from the Nazis. In reality, there were about 345 men and women from 13 countries who worked for the MFAA (Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section) of the Allied forces during World War II. They were not soldiers, as shown in the film. Many were museum directors, curators, art historians, artists, architects, and educators.
In 1943, a Committee on the Protection of Cultural Treasures in War Areas of The American Council of Learned Societies was established, funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation and headquartered at the Frick Art Reference Library. They put together a catalogue of art in occupied countries that was used for tracking the stolen works.
The characters in the movie are fictionalized, but this article tells the real stories of the men and women who inspired them. One of the most important is the woman who inspired the French character played by Cate Blanchett. Her real name was Rose Valland, and she did keep a meticulous notebook with information about every piece of art shipped out through the museum where she worked in occupied Paris. There is a book about her called Rose Valland: Resistance at the Museum
The history of the Monuments Men is still being assembled. Anyone with any documents or photographs should get in touch with ehudson@monumentsmen.com. And anyone who wants to support efforts to recognize the heroism of the Monuments Men can join this group in requesting that they be awarded Congressional Medals of Honor.
The filmmakers have assembled an outstanding collection of teaching materials based on the film, and ministry resources for pastors who want to use the movie’s themes to inspire their congregations as well. for more information, try the documentary called The Rape of Europa
Posted on November 14, 2013 at 6:00 pm
The title character in “The Book Thief” is Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), a little girl in pre-WWII Germany. We first see her on a train with her mother and dying younger brother. The children were both going to be delivered to foster parents but Liesel and her mother stop along the way to bury her brother. As the gravedigger leans over, a book falls out of his pocket. Liesel picks it up.
Her new parents are the frosty Rosa (Emily Watson) and the gentle Hans (Geoffrey Rush). At first, Liesel is so traumatized she cannot speak. But Hans hears her softly singing Brahms’ lullabye to herself at night and coaxes her into talking to him by playing the song on his accordion. When he finds that she cannot read, he uses her book to teach her. She tells him it is hers, but “it didn’t used to be.” That was not hard to guess; it is a book about digging graves.
Liesel is befriended by a friendly classmate named Rudy (Nico Liersch), an athletic kid who wants to race like Olympic champion Jesse Owens. Around them, the rise of the Nazi party is evident in omnipresent banners and badges. A school choir sweetly sings an anti-Semitic song. Hans’ skills as a house and sign painter prove useful when someone has to remove the insults painted on his Jewish neighbor’s store. Liesel becomes a book thief again when Hitler’s birthday is celebrated with a huge book burning. It is less a theft than a rescue, the book smouldering under her coat as she hides it from Hans. The book is The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells.
The impact of the Nazi regime literally hits home when Max (Ben Schnetzer) arrives. Max’s father sacrificed himself to save Hans’ life in the first World War. It is his accordion that Hans cherishes so dearly. Hans and Rosa talk about whether they are prepared to take the risk of hiding Max, but they know they have no choice. Max becomes very ill and as Liesel helps to nurse him back to health, they become very devoted to one another. She “borrows” books (without asking) from the home of the wealthiest man in town to read to him.
The young Australian author Markus Zusak was inspired to write The Book Thief
Addressing the Holocaust through fiction is a daunting challenge and this film does not always master it. An uncertain sense of its audience makes it feel off at times, too simplistic for adults and too disturbing for young audiences. An episodic structure seems meandering and unfocused. Most problematically, the choice of Death as a narrator works better on paper than on film. But Rush’s performance and some touching moments make this what is perhaps the best we can hope for in grappling with the incomprehensible — a part of a conversation, even a conversation about what does not work, that keeps us striving to honor the memory of those who suffered and to strengthen our resolve once again to conquor the fear and ignorance that caused it.
Parents should know that this film is set during the Nazi atrocities of WWII Germany. There are many sad deaths and references to the Holocaust, racist and anti-Semitic comments, fighting, and some war-time violence.
Family discussion: Is Liesel a thief? Why did she read to Max when he was ill?
If you like this, try: the book, “The Story of Anne Frank,” and “The Devil’s Arithmetic”
