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Burnt offerings.
Dec. 11th, 2008 20:50I saw the TV trailer for "Valkyrie" a few times the other night, and aside from the eyepatch, I can already tell I'm going to have issues with that movie, because the first sentence in the trailer goes on about how Hitler was "the world's greatest evil."
Well, yes.
The problem with Hitler, though, is that it took a damned lot of people who should have known better WAY TOO DAMNED LONG to figure out that Hitler was evil. (Caveat before continuing: I'm uncomfortable with othering Hitler too much, because he came out of humanity, and if we say he wasn't human then we lower our vigilance against others like him.) The dude Tom Cruise plays and his fellow officers were incredibly brave, and courageous, yes. But they didn't put their plan in motion until 1943! 1943! Hitler's been in power for ten years at this point, it's been six years since they started purging social undesirables, the final solution has been in place for four years (or was it five by then?). The rebel officers were tragically late to the party. They only got in on the action when it became clear that Hitler was going to run Germany quite literally into the ground. Their patriotism and courage are undeniable. But Hollywood is going to put them up on the screen as big damn heroes anyway. And maybe just to spite people who dislike Tom Cruise (not that I'm for him, really) and are annoying about the eyepatch, I'll probably go. Interesting failures are interesting.
But there may indeed be too many Holocaust movies, I've got to admit. I'm not going to go see "The Reader" because it inexcusably seeks to whitewash what "ordinary Germans" did under Hitler's regime. They did a hell of a lot, and most if wasn't anti-HItler, that's what. The fact that Kate Winslet's character can't read is actually a mark on the positive side of the ledger, I'd say.
I'm not particularly receptive to the idea that the Holocaust fades the more it's discussed. There are still a damned lot of Holocaust deniers out there, as well as racists and anti-Semites, and I think that these facts alone would make the venture worthwhile. I think the real danger lies in ignoring the violence, as I'd say most of the Holocaust movies of 2008 do. For that reason I'm looking forward to "Defiance" with Daniel Craig. Defiance is a miracle when so many people went unknowing and unresisting to the trains. Survival is a miracle when seven million were murdered (to say nothing of the millions more who died on the frontlines, or behind them). Of course, I'd predict that "Defiance" will run the risk of making its story's exceptionalism implicitly say that those who didn't escape somehow didn't take an opportunity they had. There were no opportunities.
Oh, okay, I forgot the Postscript: Russia! Keith Gessen's got an excellent piece on living through Russia's current economic collapse. It's funny, too. Based on this I might give All the Sad Young LIterary Men a try at some point. Or maybe not--that last word in the title's a real deal-breaker for me. But Russia! It's bad (though not as bad as Zimbabwe, where inflation is now unofficially estimated at eight quintillion percent. That's 18 zeros). TNR talks about the new cold war that only the Russians know we're fighting. But all their favorite brands are American!
P.P.S. On re-read, Gessen's debt to DeLillo is obvious.
Well, yes.
The problem with Hitler, though, is that it took a damned lot of people who should have known better WAY TOO DAMNED LONG to figure out that Hitler was evil. (Caveat before continuing: I'm uncomfortable with othering Hitler too much, because he came out of humanity, and if we say he wasn't human then we lower our vigilance against others like him.) The dude Tom Cruise plays and his fellow officers were incredibly brave, and courageous, yes. But they didn't put their plan in motion until 1943! 1943! Hitler's been in power for ten years at this point, it's been six years since they started purging social undesirables, the final solution has been in place for four years (or was it five by then?). The rebel officers were tragically late to the party. They only got in on the action when it became clear that Hitler was going to run Germany quite literally into the ground. Their patriotism and courage are undeniable. But Hollywood is going to put them up on the screen as big damn heroes anyway. And maybe just to spite people who dislike Tom Cruise (not that I'm for him, really) and are annoying about the eyepatch, I'll probably go. Interesting failures are interesting.
But there may indeed be too many Holocaust movies, I've got to admit. I'm not going to go see "The Reader" because it inexcusably seeks to whitewash what "ordinary Germans" did under Hitler's regime. They did a hell of a lot, and most if wasn't anti-HItler, that's what. The fact that Kate Winslet's character can't read is actually a mark on the positive side of the ledger, I'd say.
I'm not particularly receptive to the idea that the Holocaust fades the more it's discussed. There are still a damned lot of Holocaust deniers out there, as well as racists and anti-Semites, and I think that these facts alone would make the venture worthwhile. I think the real danger lies in ignoring the violence, as I'd say most of the Holocaust movies of 2008 do. For that reason I'm looking forward to "Defiance" with Daniel Craig. Defiance is a miracle when so many people went unknowing and unresisting to the trains. Survival is a miracle when seven million were murdered (to say nothing of the millions more who died on the frontlines, or behind them). Of course, I'd predict that "Defiance" will run the risk of making its story's exceptionalism implicitly say that those who didn't escape somehow didn't take an opportunity they had. There were no opportunities.
Oh, okay, I forgot the Postscript: Russia! Keith Gessen's got an excellent piece on living through Russia's current economic collapse. It's funny, too. Based on this I might give All the Sad Young LIterary Men a try at some point. Or maybe not--that last word in the title's a real deal-breaker for me. But Russia! It's bad (though not as bad as Zimbabwe, where inflation is now unofficially estimated at eight quintillion percent. That's 18 zeros). TNR talks about the new cold war that only the Russians know we're fighting. But all their favorite brands are American!
P.P.S. On re-read, Gessen's debt to DeLillo is obvious.