oh hey

Two posts in one day! I feel myself getting burned-out already.

I saw the movie Everything is Illuminated tonight, thanks to Netflix. I give it 3.5 out of 5 tired stares.

It started so well.. it was amusing, yet a little touching. You were drawn in fairly quickly by the various neurosis of the main characters. From “Alex”, the wig– uh, Ukranian Hip-Hop aficionado / translator and his physically abusive dysfunctional family to the obsessive-compulsive collector “Jonathan” played by the fabulously-gay hobbit Elijah Wood.

Half way through, however, it falls flat. Alex’s translations to and from Jonathan to various other characters no longer amuse and, in fact, hurt the movie. While sometimes he repeats verbatim what a character says — hearing lines twice is always a blast — often in the last quarter of the movie he completely fails to translate anything of meaning at all. Several paragraphs are reduced to three word sentence fragments. And yet, somehow, Jonathan intuits what is said. Magical.

And now, the part which will make people hate me.

I grow tired of the holocaust movies. I cannot name all of the ones I have seen, and though they all attempt to shamelessly tug at the sadness-strings to cheaply wring some tears out of you, every one of them evokes the same response from me. Anger. What the hell was ANYONE involved thinking? 1) Hey, herding people into train cars and making them drink urine sounds like fun. Oh wait, no, that NEVER sounds like fun. That sounds like twisted sadistic shit. 2) Hey, being herded into train cars and being forced to drink urine sounds like fun. Oh wait, no, there is no fucking way I should be forced to do this and perhaps I should fight back. 3) Hey, sitting back and watching people being herde– NO IT REALLY ISN’T FUN, DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT.

Passive resistance be damned — if you are herded into train cars and forced to drink urine you and the dozens, hundreds, thousands around you need to jump the nearest guard, take his weapon, and right the horrible wrongs occurring around you. Yes, the jews (and others) were victimized by the Nazis. Yes, that’s awful. No, it should never happen again. No, we should not herd every non-jew into a traincar of guilt and force them to drink their own pride. Pride is what we all need to avoid this ever happening again — not guilt or shame or sadness. I cannot fathom how much of ones own humanity the have to lose in order to allow themselves to be turned into sacrificial animals. I just don’t get it. How utterly oppressed by society, by government, by government, by government, even by friends and family must you be in order to lose that tiny part of you that whispers in your head.. “hey, being herded like an animal and forced to drink my own urine is wrong, I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore?” I guess that movie came out after WWII, but I imagine that at least some people still thought it. That level of oppression and mind-manipulation scares the hell out of me.

For once I want to see a holocaust-related movie where there is a hero, not just victims and escapees. I don’t know if that is possible while still remaining true to history.