Never mind The Chevalier, here's Bernard-Henri Levy...

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• Tom Russell Recommends That Bugliosi Book says:

  March 25, 2010 at 11:54 pm

  “Oliver Stone’s genu­inely prob­lem­at­ic J.F.K.”
  It’s nice to read those five words com­ing from a film crit­ic. Maybe I just hang around in the wrong corners of the inter­net, but pretty much every cinephile I’ve ever met seems to buy into Stone’s bogus and para­noid fantas­ies. “JFK”, to my mind, as immor­al a film as BIRTH OF A NATION, the false­hoods it dis­sem­in­ates as insi­di­ous and ridiculous-on-their-face as those propag­ated by 9/11 truth­ers and birthers.

• lazarus says:

  March 26, 2010 at 3:05 am

  I’m pretty sure the point of J.F.K. was­n’t WHAT happened, but what DIDN’T hap­pen: namely, Oswald act­ing alone. Stone’s kitchen-sink approach only high­lighted the many groups and indi­vidu­als with a motive, means, and oppor­tun­ity for want­ing Kennedy out of the picture.
  I know many people who love the film, but not a single one who takes Stone’s wild the­or­iz­ing to be either fact, or even ser­i­ous supposition.
  Regardless, on a tech­nic­al level the film is bril­liant, and should at least be respec­ted for that, even if one can­’t roll with the extreme ver­sion of the same meth­ods on Natural Born Killers.

• wilson hl says:

  March 26, 2010 at 3:44 am

  Your friend is right, for BHL is pos­sibly the greatest joke brought to us by French TV. He appears reg­u­larly on talk shows to pro­mote a book he just wrote, or simply to remind the world that he still exists. It’s not like he has any­thing even remotely illu­min­at­ing to say, and no one actu­ally takes him ser­i­ously (being the reg­u­lar tar­get of comedi­an Noël Godin, who likes to hurl cream-pies at self-important buf­foons, did­n’t help). Yet he’s still invited to speak his mind whenev­er there’s an Important Arts-related News Item (Polanski’s arrest, whoddya think was inter­viewed to comment?)
  [As for movies BHL, you see, is also the proud dir­ect­or of “Le Jour et la Nuit”, star­ring his wife Arielle Dombasle (Marion in ‘Pauline à la plage’), and which had quite a calam­it­ous recep­tion when it was released a while back.]

• Dave says:

  March 26, 2010 at 7:42 am

  BHL as joke: of course, just as Zizek is a joke – not without ser­i­ous­ness. Philosophical Andy Kaufmans who believe their own schtick as both joke *and* philosophy.
  “…even less all that is mor­al, which needs a new “new wave” to remind us now, more than ever, of the true busi­ness of cinema.” – hon­estly? This could only come from a man whose aware­ness of con­tem­por­ary cinema stops at the multiplex.
  One thing I did learn, though: BHL claims that Pontecorvo was haunted by Rivette’s attack until his dying day. While I have always taken Rivette’s side on this, I’ve also always felt that Pontecorvo’s attempt to do some­thing ‘hero­ic’ with an image, though it failed fully in its con­cep­tion and exe­cu­tion, was still worthy of a kind of respect. I’m glad to know that Pontecorvo felt Rivette’s attack deeply.

• S. Porath says:

  March 26, 2010 at 8:00 am

  I’ve got a ques­tion. I agree that to a cer­tain extent, he missed the point of the film. However I think he raises an import­ant ques­tion. He says “What can one think of the mass graves where the col­our­ised dead gaze at us with the eyes of wax of plastic dolls, haunt­ing the her­o’s mind like a dread­ful leit­mot­iv?”. This is a prob­lem in imagery, not just in the concept of the imagery (Like mix­ing up Dachau with Auschwitz). It is taste­less in con­cep­tion, and taste­less in present­a­tion. Does the even­tu­al rev­el­a­tion in the film excuse crass use of the Holocaust? When put on film, it’s not just Daniels doing it, it is also Scorsese. There is a mor­al respons­ib­il­ity in put­ting some­thing on film- I do not think it is enough for one to say “It’s not me, it’s the char­ac­ter”. I’m not say­ing there’s an easy way around it- but I think it is an extremely val­id point to make. Mixing up the con­cen­tra­tion camps is not as taste­less in its present­a­tion, but, again, I think there’s a good dis­cus­sion to be had over wheth­er it’s val­id to mess around with these things in the name of the main char­ac­ter of ‘Shutter Island’.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 26, 2010 at 8:42 am

  @ S. Porath: I guess it speaks well of cer­tain read­ers that they’re will­ing to do the work that a giv­en writer can­’t, or won’t. Just as a com­menter on a dif­fer­ent ARTicles post defen­ded Steve Almond’s anti-music cri­ti­cism argu­ment based on a dis­tinc­tion Almond him­self failed to make, you’re defend­ing Levy in the con­text of a con­text that he either ignored or failed to grasp. I’m a guy who feels that the more spe­cif­ics are in an argu­ment, the bet­ter, and the fact that Levy failed to take into account a par­tic­u­larly import­ant spe­cif­ic pretty much inval­id­ates his per­spect­ive. At least as far as I’m concerned.
  Your ques­tion is dif­fer­ent: should it be per­miss­ible to use the Holocaust as “mater­i­al,” as it were, with­in a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter­’s psychot­ic hal­lu­cin­a­tions? You clearly believe that it is not only not per­miss­ible, but that to do so is fraudulent—that it gives the cre­at­or some kind of con­veni­ent “out.” I rather dis­agree with you on this for the same reas­on I dis­agreed with Roger Sale when he accused the writer John Hawkes of hav­ing a con­tempt­ible ima­gin­a­tion. But this is a dif­fer­ent argu­ment, and it’s not the one that Levy makes.

• The Siren says:

  March 26, 2010 at 8:50 am

  My all-time favor­ite BHL head­line, over an inter­view with the preen­ing old wind­bag: “God Is Dead, But My Hair Looks Great.”
  He does­n’t really make any point in the art­icle that he can stick to and defend–such as, as Glenn points out, that Holocaust imagery should be alto­geth­er off-limits. He just keeps point­ing to things he does­n’t like and push­ing them to the side of his plate, like watch­ing my kids have din­ner. “An evoc­a­tion of Guantanamo? Oooh, yuck, I’m not eat­ing that.”

• Michael Adams says:

  March 26, 2010 at 8:58 am

  Since JFK has been brought up, I’ll weigh in with an innoc­u­ous anec­dote. I was in New Orleans dur­ing the film­ing and shared a hotel elev­at­or with Jay O. Sanders and a short, rotund gen­tle­man I took to be a crew mem­ber. This gen­tle­man asked Sanders if the act­or knew that the base­ball cap he was wear­ing ori­gin­ally belonged to Jack Ruby. Sanders gave me and my wife a “Can you believe this guy?” look. One of the off­shoots of con­spir­acy fever.

• joel_gordon says:

  March 26, 2010 at 11:18 am

  The Holocaust is part of the pulp American ima­gin­a­tion of the post­war years. I thought that the script (and nov­el) really under-thought this aspect of the char­ac­ter, since there are some bril­liantly demen­ted ways that the Holocaust, mad doc­tors, HUAC, and maybe H‑bomb test­ing could fit togeth­er in a PTSD‑d brain with para­noid delu­sions, but I still don’t think it’s inap­pro­pri­ate that Daniels’ per­son­al trauma got mixed in with nation­al and world-historical trau­mas. Also, as a staunch Oswald-acted-alone anti-conspiracist, I still love JFK, per­haps because para­noid people fas­cin­ate me. The movie does­n’t make a good case for con­spir­acy, but it does make you empath­ize with what it’s like to be in the mind of someone who can­’t stop believ­ing every bull­shit con­spir­acy the­ory that comes his way.

• Tom Russell says:

  March 26, 2010 at 12:02 pm

  “I’m pretty sure the point of J.F.K. was­n’t WHAT happened, but what DIDN’T hap­pen: namely, Oswald act­ing alone.”
  But that’s the prob­lem– he DID act alone. It’s not a mat­ter of, well, no one knows for sure, this or that is ambigu­ous. No. Bullshit. He acted alone, and the enorm­ous phys­ic­al evid­ence alone sup­ports that one hun­dred per­cent. To state oth­er­wise is to be either com­pletely ignor­ant or unhinged from reality.
  And I’m not try­ing to be mean here or insult­ing, but at the same time JFK con­spir­acy the­or­ists and the people who believe said con­spir­acies deserve the same deri­sion we reserve for truth­ers, birth­ers, and holo­caust deniers.

• The Chevalier says:

  March 26, 2010 at 12:15 pm

  I’m not sure wheth­er I should be honored…
  Anyhow. I was just think­ing that it’s kind of funny that in most movies when film­makers por­tray dreams or hal­lu­cin­a­tions, they always go for some­thing really ima­gin­at­ive and visu­ally sump­tu­ous. But in real­ity, I’m sure most people who have hal­lu­cin­a­tions aren’t that ima­gin­at­ive. It’s sort of like when char­ac­ters speak dia­logue that’s too witty for that per­son to have ever actu­ally thought up.

• The Siren says:

  March 26, 2010 at 12:45 pm

  “It’s sort of like when char­ac­ters speak dia­logue that’s too witty for that per­son to have ever actu­ally thought up.”
  Well, that is one reas­on why I like movies, right there.

• Michael Worrall says:

  March 26, 2010 at 2:21 pm

  S. Porath wrote: “There is a mor­al respons­ib­il­ity in put­ting some­thing on film..”
  Says who? I was not aware there was such a rule in art. What if the artist’s “mor­als” or world view are dif­fer­ent then yours?

• lazarus says:

  March 26, 2010 at 2:24 pm

  Tom, surely you’re aware that there are large num­ber of schol­ars and experts on both sides of the argu­ment, and not every­one who thinks there was some type of con­spir­acy (or mul­tiple assas­sins) is some kind of UFO abductee-type wack job. I was inter­ested in talk­ing more about Stone’s film­mak­ing (or at least his intent), but I can tell from your con­des­cend­ing tone that you’re someone who is a fan­at­ic about the assas­sin­a­tion so lets drop it.

• JC says:

  March 26, 2010 at 2:25 pm

  Yeah, I tend to roll my eyes when folks trot out that com­plaint about cer­tain movies or TV shows. Now, if it sounds just plain awk­ward (assum­ing that was­n’t the actu­al intent of the film­maker) com­ing out of the char­ac­ter­’s mouth, that’s anoth­er issue alto­geth­er. But cri­ti­ciz­ing some­thing for being too (verbally) witty to be “real­ist­ic”? Heck, that’s one of the reas­ons I go to the movies, or watch cer­tain TV shows. The key is for that to be part of the design of the character(s) from the ground up, so it does­n’t seem too jarring.
  Wit is a com­mod­ity that’s miss­ing in the vast major­ity of main­stream mul­ti­plex fare, and should­n’t be taken for gran­ted when it makes an appear­ance. I adore cre­at­ive use of language.

• JC says:

  March 26, 2010 at 2:27 pm

  (My post was in response to Siren’s comment.)

• Jean-Baptiste Botul says:

  March 26, 2010 at 3:29 pm

  I can­’t let the passing asso­ci­ation of Zizek and BHL stand with some com­ment. Whatever you think of Zizek, he is at least pro­fes­sion­ally com­pet­ent and takes his work ser­i­ously. BHL is a dif­fer­ent sort of thing alto­geth­er. Consider:
  http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee276

• Tom Russell says:

  March 26, 2010 at 3:30 pm

  Lazarus, I’m pre­pared to drop it, but I’ve yet to see an pro-conspiracy expert who has­n’t been thor­oughly debunked and/or caught mak­ing up bogus evid­ence, much like the experts for, say, cre­ation­ism. If you could name a few, I’d be very much obliged.
  As for Stone’s film­mak­ing and intent– I think, like Joel Gordon said, that Stone really does get you into that par­tic­u­lar head­space. Roger Ebert once said that the film is about how the time FELT, or some­thing to that effect, and I think the way Stone mixes vari­ous formats/styles goes a long way towards dis­or­i­ent­ing the view­er (this is a con­fus­ing, bewil­der­ing, emo­tion­al time), thus invest­ing the view­er in Garrison’s quest to make sense of it all and restore order. JFK, in fact, is the only Stone film that I enjoy, the one sub­ject that suits his style beau­ti­fully– no mat­ter how immor­al I might find its premises.
  If his intent really was to provide a “counter-myth”– some­thing Stone said only after his typ­ic­ally shoddy research was called into ques­tion– well, yes, I still have a prob­lem with that, for reas­ons you can prob­ably guess.

• James Keepnews says:

  March 26, 2010 at 3:55 pm

  Tom – Not to get all truth­er with it, but even the Church Committee in the 70’s main­tained that JFK’s assas­sin­a­tion was “prob­ably a con­spir­acy”. And towards the end of his life, Jack Newfield did a Frontline report on a Mob asso­ci­ate (also at the end of his life, thus unlikely to need much less want to make a name for him­self) who claimed to have the inside dope on the Mob’s role in JFK’s shoot­ing. Suffice it to say that Jack Newfield was fif­teen times the “invest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ist” most con­spir­acy the­or­ists are or that you and I com­bined would be. Questions remain, is largely all I’m saying.
  At the end of the day, of course, we’ll nev­er know exactly what went down, and that is the main flaw for me with Stone’s deli­ri­ous (and deli­ri­ously struc­tured) JFK – viz., his attempt to craft a single mas­ter nar­rat­ive and place the “smoking gun”, as it were, at the feet of LBJ and the mil­it­ary, which I expect we’d both agree was some­thing of a reach at best. Had Stone been more inter­ested in examin­ing the deli­ri­um rather than simply assign­ing black hats (or, for that mat­ter, assign­ing white hats to the, ahem, genu­inely prob­lem­at­ic Jim Garrison and Fletcher Prouty), it would have been much closer to the “counter-myth” he sought to create.
  BHL is end­ing film cri­ti­cism as we know it. There. Someone had to say it…

• Fuzzy Bastarrd says:

  March 26, 2010 at 4:28 pm

  Personally, I find it sad that JFK’s assas­sin­a­tion has provided fod­der for a thou­sand the­or­ies, while Martin Luther King’s assas­sin­a­tion, which really was the product of an unsolved con­spir­acy (how the hell did James Earl Ray afford to stay in all those hotels?) nev­er gets this kind of pop-cultural examination.
  But to get back on top­ic… I don’t think BHL is 100% off-base here. Yes, the “Dachau was­n’t Auschwitz” stuff is carp­ing, or wrong. But I don’t regard the debates over the aethet­i­ciz­a­tion of the Holocaust as over. There was some­thing ugly, or at least pro­foundly taste­less, about SI’s art-directed corpse-piles.
  I under­stand that these are a 50s American’s fantas­ies of the Holocaust, but it’s hard to bring the Holocaust into a movie and not make all the fic­tion­al ele­ments around it seem trivi­al. It’s not as night­mar­ishly vul­gar as Schindler’s List or Hotel Rwanda, which turned sense­less tragedy into feel-good nar­rat­ive. But it does invoke dilem­mas of rep­res­ent­a­tion that the movie just did­n’t feel up to handling.

• Brandon says:

  March 26, 2010 at 5:21 pm

  The mor­al­ity of depict­ing (Holocaust) images is an inter­est­ing philo­soph­ic­al argu­ment, but to take the pos­i­tion that cer­tain parts of his­tory are simply off-limits dra­mat­ic­ally is a bit insane (espe­cially without spe­cific­ally artic­u­lat­ing why).
  Drama is not real­ity. History isn’t even real­ity, as any self-respecting his­tor­i­an should admit. If (anti-)postmodernists want to argue that drama is mud­dling our past, go tell it to Plato.
  Now, I might hypo­crit­ic­ally enter­tain the argu­ment that some­thing like FORREST GUMP is mor­ally ques­tion­able (them­at­ic­ally or tech­no­lo­gic­ally), or maybe even ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER.…

• Sheila King says:

  March 26, 2010 at 10:38 pm

  I’m with the “there is noth­ing totally off lim­its in art crowd”. I can even appre­ci­ate see­ing an upside down cru­ci­fix bathed in urine in the DeMenil Art Museum in Houston, Texas, because it has some­thing to say if only to some of us. The holo­caust should always be with us, and it’s good to be reminded that it happened and that it had hor­rif­ic effects on those who wit­nessed, lived it or had the awful task of deal­ing with the rem­nants of the camps includ­ing the sur­viv­ors or the sol­diers respons­ible for this crime against human­ity. Even in a hol­ly­wood film in which a per­son con­flates his exper­i­ences there with his own per­son­al loss and guilt, not to men­tion his own tend­en­cies towards viol­ence and deni­al. I nev­er felt Shutter Island was try­ing to use the holo­caust for some taste­less pur­pose at all. It’s only if we for­get to men­tion that this ever happened or try to hide it beneath a rug of sanc­tity that we are truly in danger of hav­ing it hap­pen again.

• Zach says:

  March 27, 2010 at 12:35 pm

  I don’t think any­one is say­ing, even BHL, that the Holocaust is “off lim­its, peri­od” when it comes to dra­mat­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion. The ques­tion is wheth­er or not Scorsese’s use of those images, and that por­tion of our col­lect­ive memory, is appro­pri­ate, and this seems to lead to two sub-questions, namely A) wheth­er it is appro­pri­ate to use Holocaust imagery in dra­mat­ic­ally tan­gen­tial way, which Scorsese does, B) how far cre­at­ive license extends when deal­ing with said sub­ject mat­ter; if there are cer­tain aes­thet­ic and his­tor­ic­al stand­ards that must be met when deal­ing with the Holocaust. Thus we get to the prob­lem of Dachau vs. Auschwitz, and the “col­or­ized” frozen corpses. (Also, as has been poin­ted out else­where, the ques­tion of wheth­er or not the SS Warden would have/could have been listen­ing to Mahler in his office.)
  Whether or not Scorsese can be val­idly cri­tiqued on these counts depends on how an indi­vidu­al view­er feels these ques­tions should be answered. For my part, I think Scorsese, in his treat­ment of the story’s theme and sub­text, was act­ing appro­pri­ately. In the con­text of Daniels’ fever-flashbacks, and the gen­er­al atten­tion to post­war anxi­ety and trauma, the inac­curacies and styl­ist­ic flour­ishes work, dra­mat­ic­ally. In my view, the sub­text got short shrift in Shutter Island, and could have been more elab­or­ated. But what we do get, as an audi­ence, per­mits those images.

• The Siren says:

  March 27, 2010 at 4:11 pm

  Well put Zach, as always. But I add that one of my (many, oh how very many) prob­lems with BHL here and else­where is pre­cisely that he *isn’t* will­ing to just come out and say one should­n’t appro­pri­ate the Holocaust for enter­tain­ment. He wants to fur­row his brow and express a great num­ber of reser­va­tions and still be hip enough to sit with the cafet­er­ia cinephiles because he pays trib­ute to the “stun­ning vir­tu­os­ity” of Scorsese and Tarantino. Weaselly. As you and Glenn out, BHL bases his fur­row­ing on things that are per­fectly con­son­ant with the world of SI. Plus, he owes Scorsese an apo­logy for say­ing the guy does­n’t know the dif­fer­ence between Dachau and Auschwitz. One Google search brings up a pic­ture of “Arbeit Macht Frei” right over the Dachau gate.

• Fuzzy Bastarrd says:

  March 27, 2010 at 4:59 pm

  @ Siren: But I think it would be much, much more wrong to say “come out and say one should­n’t appro­pri­ate the Holocaust for enter­tain­ment”! These are vexed ques­tions, with no right answers—making a flat decel­er­a­tion is much more fool­ish than brow-furrowing “there’s this, then there’s that”, which at least has the vir­tue of acknow­ledging the ulti­mate unde­cid­ab­il­ity of the ques­tion. You could call that weaselly, or you could call it thought­ful, or you could just call it an accur­ate rep­res­ent­a­tion of the pro­cess of think­ing through a com­plic­ated top­ic. Personally I’m much more offen­ded when people try to lay down blanket state­ments of truth on aes­thet­ic and mor­al mat­ters, or worse yet, when they try to present the former and the lat­ter as identic­al. I know that’s sup­posed to be what makes fun-to-write-and-read cri­ti­cism, but it’s… well gosh, it’s *wrong*!
  (as wrong as BHL’s Dachau-Auschwitz mis­take, which would be irrel­ev­ant even if BHL were right. But if I can handle the com­pletely ana­chron­ist­ic punks of “Summer of Sam”, I can handle a little death-camp confusion)
  It is inter­est­ing to won­der how this fits with movies like The Night Porter, Jakob the Liar, Life Is Beautiful, The Day The Clown Cried, and oth­er Hollywood depic­tions of the Holocaust. What makes one val­id, and anoth­er obscene? And can any of them do a quarter as much as Shadows & Fog did with its far more abstract nar­rat­ive strategies? There remains some­thing total­iz­ing about the Holocaust that wipes out any fic­tion you place around it (why the Holocaust should carry a res­on­ance that the many oth­er holo­causts don’t is anoth­er ques­tion too), so whenev­er a movie tries to step over it, there’s an inev­it­able mor­al queasiness.

• S. Porath says:

  March 27, 2010 at 7:41 pm

  @“there is noth­ing totally off lim­its in art crowd”:
  I agree…I was react­ing to what was put there. Just because some­thing is not off lim­its does­n’t mean it’s not irre­spons­ible or taste­less. Someone decided it was cor­rect to use that imagery. I think that ‘Shutter Island’s’ reas­ons were insuf­fi­cient to use the imagery. The artist can do what he will- I don’t see how me find­ing it irre­spons­ible or taste­less denies that.
  (@Michael Worrall: If an artist’s mor­als are dif­fer­ent than mine, than I will object to his present­a­tion of mor­al­ity. There must be some line between dis­agree­ing with an artist and inval­id­at­ing him- no?)

• Tom Carson says:

  March 27, 2010 at 8:16 pm

  Just for the record, the image in the movie is unmis­tak­ably of the infam­ous Auschwitz gate – not Dachau’s, which was very dif­fer­ent in appear­ance, with “Arbeit Macht Frei” unpho­to­gen­tic­ally embed­ded in the gate instead of sur­mount­ing it. As a Shutter Island non­fan, I don’t put much stock in the ration­al­iz­a­tion that this sub­sti­tu­tion reflects the DiCaprio char­ac­ter­’s dis­tor­ted memor­ies. It looked to me like either sloppy research or some bone­head’s idea of artist­ic license, either of which is offens­ive in this context.

• Zach says:

  March 27, 2010 at 8:18 pm

  Siren – I agree that BHL is being a weasel. As Glenn ini­tially poin­ted out, he refuses to actu­ally grapple with a com­plex ques­tion, and instead makes a series of glib non-points. It’s intel­lec­tu­al pos­tur­ing, and it’s incred­ibly lame.
  To Fuzzy’s point about the Holocaust’s hav­ing a “total­iz­ing” qual­ity – well, cer­tainly that’s one strain of thought. However, as you your­self point out, there is, in Western cul­ture, an equal and oppos­ite strain, in which the Holocaust has nearly end­less rel­ev­ance and util­ity as con­text for a story (in movies as well as books – and books gen­er­ally tend to get away with much less scru­tiny). I don’t really know what to make of this. Is it oppor­tun­ist­ic and shal­low? Is it debas­ing the memory of the Holocaust, or keep­ing it alive, and testi­fy­ing to the very human pro­cess of griev­ing, of mak­ing sense of the utterly sense­less and hor­rif­ic? I tend to lean towards the lat­ter point of view on this. Night and Fog is incred­ibly power­ful, and feels very appro­pri­ate in its grav­itas. But I also think that most of the bash­ing Life is Beautiful received was unwar­ran­ted, and amoun­ted to a lot of self-righteous pos­tur­ing. I’d like to think that both films are, in their indi­vidu­al ways, valid.

• Tom Carson says:

  March 27, 2010 at 8:51 pm

  Ah, that’s “unpho­to­gen­ic­ally embed­ded,” etc., etc.

• Sheila King says:

  March 27, 2010 at 11:22 pm

  Yes, there is a cer­tain lofty sense that the holo­caust is “off-limits” in the cri­ti­cism, or at least any depic­tion that does­n’t meet cer­tain stand­ards. Question is – what and whose stand­ards are we talk­ing about? Certainly an argu­ment could be made against some­thing that makes fun of the holo­caust, belittles it or tries to play down the hor­ror – which to me Shutter Island really does­n’t. As for Mahler being played as the com­mand­ant is dying – it seems an odd choice, not only because it is Mahler, a Jew who con­ver­ted to Catholicism, but because as Richard Brody of the New Yorker poin­ted out via one of his read­ers, it would have been impossible since this par­tic­u­lar piece of music was­n’t actu­ally in cir­cu­la­tion or even known as a record­ing until well after the movie takes place. Nonetheless, he makes an argu­ment that maybe in the con­text of the film, it some­how seems fit­ting. Beyond that, it’s a beau­ti­ful, evoc­at­ive piece of music that does­n’t seem out of place in the film, even if his­tor­ic­ally speak­ing it’s vir­tu­ally impossible for it to have been play­ing. What’s inter­est­ing about depict­ing the holo­caust in any film is that how do you make the vic­tims look real, wheth­er dead or alive? Where do you find act­ors that ema­ci­ated and hollowed-out to play the liv­ing sur­viv­ors? It’s really nearly impossible to get any­thing but a faint impres­sion of the hor­ror, no mat­ter the film, unless it’s a doc­u­ment­ary with real and truly dev­ast­at­ing foot­age. Shadows and Fog, of course, benefited greatly from this foot­age. Fact is that most people aren’t going to seek out the real thing, but it can be used, even tan­gen­tially, in a film to make an impres­sion, although that impres­sion may always be some­what less than the real­ity. Is it still worth men­tion­ing if this is the case? And, yes, why this holo­caust car­ries more res­on­ance than oth­ers is cer­tainly worth visiting.

• bill says:

  March 30, 2010 at 12:19 pm

  I’m very glad this con­ver­sa­tion took place while I was in no real pos­i­tion to take part. Thankfully, Tom Russell was here.

• Tom Russell says:

  March 30, 2010 at 7:15 pm

  Bill, if I had a dime for every time someone said that…
  … then I would have a dime.