In general, you know way more about the comics and the Holocaust and its Survivors than I do, and I think you're way subtler in your reading than the movie actually is.
The experiences of Survivors are so diverse, their reactions and responses are so individual, and I find it immensely painful to see any response, even a fictional one, dismissed as improper.
That's a good point, and honestly something I thought about while writing my post--I really don't like the idea that the there should be/is any one way of reacting to the Holocaust as a survivor, because that's the same sort of flattening, on a smaller scale, as the Holocaust itself. And given that in actual history Erik's experiences were literally impossible, it's doubly problematic to adjudicate about his reaction. But on the other hand, for me personally viewing this movie, I just couldn't square the words coming out of Erik's mouth in those scenes with what we'd been shown before or were shown after. And I do think part of that reaction on my part comes from the way Fassbender played Erik, as so very aloof and so very obviously the guy who's figured out everyone's moves on the board ten turns ahead. For me personally, I could have believed those scenes on the submarine given a different lead-in to them, but…I don't know. Part of it is that I don't think what Erik has done is actually all that monstrous, I think; I have no problem with all the Nazis he kills getting theirs, which says unflattering things about me ethically but is not entirely an indefensible position, I don't think. The Nûrnberg Trials sentenced a lot of people to death, after all. And, relatedly, I found the whole "Frankenstein's monster" and "Jekyll & Hyde" citations to be…off-key for reasons I still can't quite pin down.
In my reading of the movie, Erik is the hero.
Oh, yes. Cutting to Charles in Westchester in 1944 was the worst sort of comic relief, and a real failure on the movie's attempt to convince us.
I don't know about Erik having bigger plans as early as the day after the Florida submarine debacle. I can believe him having them at some point, but I don't think the movie or Fassbender shows us that very clearly, if at all. Or possibly I am being influenced by my a priori knowledge that Charles is going to say no, whereas Erik doesn't think that at all. But on the other hand, Charles seemed surprised on the beach at the end too? I'm not sure.
Erik is a character who learned as a child that when you're in a minority you're never safe from the majority. That's what drives him, not race hatred but a fear so crystallized and pure that he can't escape it.
I think you're right here; my limited knowledge of comics canon is clearly limited.
I think it's clear that they think he's not only a Nazi, he's a particular filmic trope of the Nazi, the Nazi official who thinks he isn't a Nazi, he's just made a political deal for the fringe benefits. You know, like we see in Indiana Jones the Nazis who only care about antiquities. Indiana Jones likes to pretend that those people are enemies but not monsters, but this movie spends a lot of time showing that Shaw has bought into Nazi ideology. I think this film overall showed a deep familiarity with media representation of the Holocaust. It was stunning to me how much the Holocaust scenes felt familiar, recognizable, and were constantly being subverted.
That's a good point about the Indiana Jones movies, because here's the other point about Nazis that Hollywood can't get away from: they sure look good on celluloid in their uniforms staging their mass rallies, don't they! Blech. But I don't know, I don't think the one shot of Shaw's vision that we get from Emma is quite enough to balance out what I saw as the movie soft-pedaling him after the camp sequences. And given that what subversion there is comes from the fact that both Erik and Shaw are mutants (yes?), I…don't know. I was not really comfortable with the way the movie appropriated history to tell its story, and these tropes are part of that, but I couldn't quite frame that clearly enough to talk about it in the main post.
But they're both monsters and Erik is saying, "You think this speech is going to work on me because we're both monsters, but you killed my mother, i.e., you were a Nazi, .i.e. the purpose driving your totalistic ideology is not the same as mine and we can never work together."
See, I really think you are giving the movie more credit than it deserves. I don't think the movie quite makes that leap from "you killed my mother" to "i.e. you were a Nazi;" I think the movie inverts them and forgets about the Nazi part by the end. But maybe not; Erik does say "Never again" on the beach after all.
And, in some respects, I think Fassbender playing aloof actually works against the "fighting to protect his adopted family" interpretation (though I think it's totally correct from a comics canon standpoint). Or is it just that Erik is not capable of demonstrating affection in a socially recognized fashion? In any case, I didn't go there while I was watching it.
But, yeah, the parts of this movie that were about Erik the Avenger, those I really liked the best.
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regna
starting from the bottom, working back up
Date: 2011-06-23 15:29 (UTC)The experiences of Survivors are so diverse, their reactions and responses are so individual, and I find it immensely painful to see any response, even a fictional one, dismissed as improper.
That's a good point, and honestly something I thought about while writing my post--I really don't like the idea that the there should be/is any one way of reacting to the Holocaust as a survivor, because that's the same sort of flattening, on a smaller scale, as the Holocaust itself. And given that in actual history Erik's experiences were literally impossible, it's doubly problematic to adjudicate about his reaction. But on the other hand, for me personally viewing this movie, I just couldn't square the words coming out of Erik's mouth in those scenes with what we'd been shown before or were shown after. And I do think part of that reaction on my part comes from the way Fassbender played Erik, as so very aloof and so very obviously the guy who's figured out everyone's moves on the board ten turns ahead. For me personally, I could have believed those scenes on the submarine given a different lead-in to them, but…I don't know. Part of it is that I don't think what Erik has done is actually all that monstrous, I think; I have no problem with all the Nazis he kills getting theirs, which says unflattering things about me ethically but is not entirely an indefensible position, I don't think. The Nûrnberg Trials sentenced a lot of people to death, after all. And, relatedly, I found the whole "Frankenstein's monster" and "Jekyll & Hyde" citations to be…off-key for reasons I still can't quite pin down.
In my reading of the movie, Erik is the hero.
Oh, yes. Cutting to Charles in Westchester in 1944 was the worst sort of comic relief, and a real failure on the movie's attempt to convince us.
I don't know about Erik having bigger plans as early as the day after the Florida submarine debacle. I can believe him having them at some point, but I don't think the movie or Fassbender shows us that very clearly, if at all. Or possibly I am being influenced by my a priori knowledge that Charles is going to say no, whereas Erik doesn't think that at all. But on the other hand, Charles seemed surprised on the beach at the end too? I'm not sure.
Erik is a character who learned as a child that when you're in a minority you're never safe from the majority. That's what drives him, not race hatred but a fear so crystallized and pure that he can't escape it.
I think you're right here; my limited knowledge of comics canon is clearly limited.
I think it's clear that they think he's not only a Nazi, he's a particular filmic trope of the Nazi, the Nazi official who thinks he isn't a Nazi, he's just made a political deal for the fringe benefits. You know, like we see in Indiana Jones the Nazis who only care about antiquities. Indiana Jones likes to pretend that those people are enemies but not monsters, but this movie spends a lot of time showing that Shaw has bought into Nazi ideology. I think this film overall showed a deep familiarity with media representation of the Holocaust. It was stunning to me how much the Holocaust scenes felt familiar, recognizable, and were constantly being subverted.
That's a good point about the Indiana Jones movies, because here's the other point about Nazis that Hollywood can't get away from: they sure look good on celluloid in their uniforms staging their mass rallies, don't they! Blech. But I don't know, I don't think the one shot of Shaw's vision that we get from Emma is quite enough to balance out what I saw as the movie soft-pedaling him after the camp sequences. And given that what subversion there is comes from the fact that both Erik and Shaw are mutants (yes?), I…don't know. I was not really comfortable with the way the movie appropriated history to tell its story, and these tropes are part of that, but I couldn't quite frame that clearly enough to talk about it in the main post.
But they're both monsters and Erik is saying, "You think this speech is going to work on me because we're both monsters, but you killed my mother, i.e., you were a Nazi, .i.e. the purpose driving your totalistic ideology is not the same as mine and we can never work together."
See, I really think you are giving the movie more credit than it deserves. I don't think the movie quite makes that leap from "you killed my mother" to "i.e. you were a Nazi;" I think the movie inverts them and forgets about the Nazi part by the end. But maybe not; Erik does say "Never again" on the beach after all.
And, in some respects, I think Fassbender playing aloof actually works against the "fighting to protect his adopted family" interpretation (though I think it's totally correct from a comics canon standpoint). Or is it just that Erik is not capable of demonstrating affection in a socially recognized fashion? In any case, I didn't go there while I was watching it.
But, yeah, the parts of this movie that were about Erik the Avenger, those I really liked the best.