And for that alone, this movie does not deserve to be named one of the top 100 movies of all time.
Show me the holes!
What was trivialized? People were killed in horrible ways, including main characters. They were starved and worked hard. The guards were monsters.
We had a hero who used his abilities to protect his child and fight back as best he could. How does that trivialize the concentration camps?
It is true, when referring to films which feature the Holocaust historians only refer to this film as a bad example.
The reasons for this are many, but include; the Holocaust is about the destruction of life, liberty and a whole people, it is not about hope and games. There were no camps where what happened would have been allowed to happen; they were not set up this way.
If you really think that this movie trivialized the horror of concentration camps, then try asking yourself if you think that with all of those millions of people who were imprisoned and killed in Nazi concentration camps, nobody ever entertained each other with fart and penis jokes. I'll bet that plenty of them did.
They were just ordinary people, suffering together. To use an analogy, "a fish doesn't know that it's in the water." They probably wouldn't have been very concerned about carrying on with an appropriate level of gravitas just because fifty or sixty years later, some rich Hollywood guy was going to make a transparent Oscar grab by making a movie about a bunch of solemn, suffering martyrs in a Nazi concentration camp. It would simply have been their reality, which they would have experienced not as something 'better' than humans, but as typical humans, like the ones we see every day.
As disenfranchised minorities who had lived with many years of discriminatory policies well before the concentration camps even appeared, it would have just been the latest unjust thing that happened to them in a life that largely consisted of getting unpredictably pushed one way and then another by fickle, ignorance-fueled populist tides, and stood upon by powerful, indifferent people who were far beyond their own feeble ability to reach. Mentally, they probably dealt with things however they could.
Real people cope with their miserable circumstances in an amazing number of ways, to include humor. Humor goes hand-in-hand with hope, and people have a way of maintaining hope almost to the point of utter irrationality. These people decided to wake up in the morning and carry on for some reason, after all. That's what I have always thought this movie was more-or-less about.
No. Please just read one first hand account from anyone in one of the camps and you'll see how far from the mark you are. If you don't believe the first and yo still think as you do; read another.
shareHave you lived in a similar situation? Because if you had you would realize that what J_P_Standish said "Real people cope with their miserable circumstances in an amazing number of ways." is very close to the mark. There is no way people, no matter how oppressed and downtrodden, wouldn't try to deal with their reality by stealing a slight moment of mirth occasionally. It is part of the human condition. That you won't read those descriptions in accounts by survivors doesn't mean they didn't occur, it just means that it isn't the focal point of those accounts.
If you consider Anne Frank's diary to be a valid account of a family's suffering during that time, you'll notice that despite what her living conditions were, she is still concerned with the things of an everyday 14 year ie: boys and relationships, issues with her mother etc. She didn't spend all her time focused on her condition; that would have driven her and everyone else in the house insane. They all looked for little things to keep them distracted from their reality. Granted that it would have been harder in a concentration camp but it would be in human nature to look for something, anything to distract you from your reality if only for a split second.
This whole war could have been avoided. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.Tony Soprano
Thank you! You are right and your comment is very wise
shareMaybe if you have a young son you would probably understand what this movie is really about.
shareI had never heard of this film before until it was mentioned in the documentary 'The Last Laugh.' Most people interviewed hated it
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