Google Play Hangout w/Steven Spielberg & Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the Lincoln trailer premiere: http://lincolnmoviehangout.com
Google Play Hangout w/Steven Spielberg & Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the Lincoln trailer premiere: http://lincolnmoviehangout.com
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I have a vague memory. Either way, it’s not crucial.
Two weeks ago it was Gone Baby Gone, last week it was Hunger.
Not sure what film I should catch up this week. Perhaps There Will Be Blood.
Sorry, rufus – usually the blocking is the other way around and I can’t see what’s posted. I assume you know which scene I mean.
Thanks, Steve. Sadly that scene is blocked in the US for copyright.
Yeah, after all this, I had to put the disc in my Blu-ray player and watch it again. The Pianist that is.
Well said, rufus.
Tero – you suggested, correctly, that I probably preferred The Pianist to Schindler’s List. Here’s a clip from YouTube of the scene that did it for me. It’s Thomas Kretschmann’s performance, which illustrates what I think rufus is referring to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3p0AaNBHXc&feature=related
I don’t think Dylan Klebold was evil. Not at all. You push me, and I will do the same. That would be my own will, but Nazis were forced to do that – different thing.
When I was about 10 a couple of missionaries came to my church to recount the tale of how they smuggled Bibles into the Iron Curtain. They told of the boxes of Bibles in the their trunk and all they could do was hope that the guards would choose not to search the trunk. This time the guards did check their trunk. They opened looked in, and waved them past much to the shock of the missionaries who expected to get arrested.
They were not arrested and when they told this tale to us they gave credit to God for their luck. They believed that God blinded the guards so they could not see the Bibles. I was partially amazed and partially skeptical. But I was ten. I readily accepted the notion of good and evil and never thought too much about it.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris diligently planned a massacre of hundreds at Columbine High School. But when it came time to actually do the deed, Klebold never fired his gun at anyone. Eric did all of the killing.
I don’t think evil is simple. All of us are part evil and part good, and the parts we show to the world are most often based more on self-preservation than on an altruistic impulse. Now some of us have limits, I don’t think I could kill someone, for example, even if I had a gun pointed at my head. But that’s neither here nor there. Psychopaths are only 1% of the population, which means that 99% of us are capable of empathy in some capacity.
So the Iron Curtain guards, I’m sure, saw the Bibles, but chose not to do anything about them. Perhaps they were religious and sought those posts so they could let them pass. Maybe they just didn’t feel like doing any paperwork. Who knows? But they were not pure evil even though the missionaries assumed they were both before and after they were waved through.
Dylan Klebold thought he had evil in him but it turned out he was unable to tap into that evil. He was so timid, he couldn’t even stop Eric Harris from committing the horriffic actions that would shake a nation. How evil was Dylan Klebold? I don’t have the answer to that question.
Every account I’ve read from a Holocaust survivor always contains at least one instance where the enemy failed to do their job properly in some way. Either it was a soldier who chose not to fire, or a guard that gave advanced warning of incoming danger. We like to think of the enemy as pure evil, but they are not. They are no different than us. They are just in a different situation.
It is unlikely every guard in every concentration camp was evil. I would guess that most did what they were forced to do to survive but struggled with it more we’ll ever know. We see them as evil. We have no compassion for them. But if you had your children to feed what would you be capable of?
When I watch Schindler’s List I don’t see any middle ground. But surely there must have been. The movie version of Schindler spoke of bribing guards and others, but I can’t imagine he could have succeeded without many people looking the other way. And I doubt everyone needed to be paid to do so. Even though there was constant death around them I imagine a large portion of the camp personell sought ways to alleviate their guilt.
I wonder how large of a network of people Schindler needed to save that many people? Surely he wasn’t an island of good in a sea of pure evil. And yet this is the way Spielberg chose to portray him. Spielberg chose to portray every other Nazi as pure evil. I can’t imagine that was the case. It’s easy to see the Iron Guards as evil. It’s easy to see Dylan Klebold as evil. It’s easy to see every Nazi guard as evil. It’s easy to see yourself as a good person. No one wants to know what they would do in desperate times.
Thank you, Niles. I am drunk now. I love you.
Rufus is my favourite person still.
Yes but he wanted to show that type of realism to world. His point in fact was to show to people that it existed and that it should never be forgotten. He never took one dime of that money when he directed the film. It’s a different situation with Munich because he did it on the basis of empathy. I don’t think Schindler’s List will ever be forgotten, 10 years ago I watched Schindler’s List in high school for World History and yes no body in my class knew about it. They knew the name Steven Spielberg but all they can think of is Raiders and E.T. and maybe Jaws. The blockbuster films. So Schindler’s List gave them an idea of what the holocaust was like, it was terrible. So I am glad he made it and I am glad he had the courage to make that type of story during sensitive time in history.