Blast "fusilar"!
Before last night I hadn't seen a truly mind-blowing movie in a while. Unfortunately the last truly mind-blowing book I read was All Quiet on the Western Front, about a week ago, and quite frankly that gave me enough food for thought that I didn't necessarily need another turn-your-world-upside-down World War story for at least another few weeks. But then we decided to go to the movies last night.
La Caida, or Downfall, was the name of the film. World War II this time, not World War I, and the view was from the top, not from the trenches. I vaguely remembered hearing about it, something to do with Hitler's last hours in the bunker. There's posters for it all over Buenos Aires but we'd really only ever glanced at them, and for some reason fully believed that this would be yet another action film, a Jerry Bruckheimer-type classic - starring Gene Hackman nonetheless.
Needless to say, about two minutes in when we realised the characters were going to be talking in German the entire way through, we understood there was no way Gene Hackman would be starring in this movie. We also realised that meant that the characters would be speaking in German (the only word I recognised was "scheisse!"), and that all the subtitles would be in Spanish. That was fine for me and Rebecca - let's face it, I can read Spanish like a bandit, I just can't understand a word whenever anyone speaks to me. Robyn, on the other hand, was out of luck.
Like a trooper she stayed put, however. And by the time we walked out of the theatre hours later, completely emotionally drained, she actually said she was kind of glad she couldn't understand what the characters had been saying. The movie was powerful enough without the actual words. It left us all traumatised - I actually had one thought process where I thought oh, I feel bad for him, he was such a great leader and now he's a broken old man - Jesus Sarah, Hitler was a great leader? Have you lost it? - Oh Lord, Jesus was a Jew, I bet he hates me now - I'm sorry, Jesus!
But, really. They did show him as paranoid and fanatic, and they did show his ruthless and murdering side. But overall they portrayed him as a once great man with great visions who gave his people something to believe in, and then showed how devastated his greatest believers were when they realised he'd given up, and you really did have to remind yourself that the guy was a psycho who murdered millions of people and quite frankly gives all vegetarians a really bad name.
And the Goebbels. I mean, they seemed way more psychotic than Hitler himself did. Scary, fanatic psychotic. Then, at the end, a clip of his secretary talking in a documentary was shown (the movie was based on her book) and she basically said that she'd kind of felt that she had been innocent of it, that she could be forgiven for buying in to it because she'd been so young (25-ish) - but that one day she'd realised that youth was no excuse. Which immediately made me feel horribly guilty over the tiny twitches of sympathy I'd felt.
Anyway the point is it left us all reeling, so much so that we had to go to a sketch Buckaroo-type restaurant for dinner afterwards - La Vaca que Fuma (the Smoking Cow). Feeling slightly better (though a little greasy) after that, we searched desperately for a comedy on TV but had to settle for ER and Law and Order SVU before finally stumbling across an episode of Joey - sadly not at all funny.
Gene Hackman probably wouldn't have been any good in that movie anyway. But the point is, if you get a chance to see it - see it! It definitely blew our minds.
La Caida, or Downfall, was the name of the film. World War II this time, not World War I, and the view was from the top, not from the trenches. I vaguely remembered hearing about it, something to do with Hitler's last hours in the bunker. There's posters for it all over Buenos Aires but we'd really only ever glanced at them, and for some reason fully believed that this would be yet another action film, a Jerry Bruckheimer-type classic - starring Gene Hackman nonetheless.
Needless to say, about two minutes in when we realised the characters were going to be talking in German the entire way through, we understood there was no way Gene Hackman would be starring in this movie. We also realised that meant that the characters would be speaking in German (the only word I recognised was "scheisse!"), and that all the subtitles would be in Spanish. That was fine for me and Rebecca - let's face it, I can read Spanish like a bandit, I just can't understand a word whenever anyone speaks to me. Robyn, on the other hand, was out of luck.
Like a trooper she stayed put, however. And by the time we walked out of the theatre hours later, completely emotionally drained, she actually said she was kind of glad she couldn't understand what the characters had been saying. The movie was powerful enough without the actual words. It left us all traumatised - I actually had one thought process where I thought oh, I feel bad for him, he was such a great leader and now he's a broken old man - Jesus Sarah, Hitler was a great leader? Have you lost it? - Oh Lord, Jesus was a Jew, I bet he hates me now - I'm sorry, Jesus!
But, really. They did show him as paranoid and fanatic, and they did show his ruthless and murdering side. But overall they portrayed him as a once great man with great visions who gave his people something to believe in, and then showed how devastated his greatest believers were when they realised he'd given up, and you really did have to remind yourself that the guy was a psycho who murdered millions of people and quite frankly gives all vegetarians a really bad name.
And the Goebbels. I mean, they seemed way more psychotic than Hitler himself did. Scary, fanatic psychotic. Then, at the end, a clip of his secretary talking in a documentary was shown (the movie was based on her book) and she basically said that she'd kind of felt that she had been innocent of it, that she could be forgiven for buying in to it because she'd been so young (25-ish) - but that one day she'd realised that youth was no excuse. Which immediately made me feel horribly guilty over the tiny twitches of sympathy I'd felt.
Anyway the point is it left us all reeling, so much so that we had to go to a sketch Buckaroo-type restaurant for dinner afterwards - La Vaca que Fuma (the Smoking Cow). Feeling slightly better (though a little greasy) after that, we searched desperately for a comedy on TV but had to settle for ER and Law and Order SVU before finally stumbling across an episode of Joey - sadly not at all funny.
Gene Hackman probably wouldn't have been any good in that movie anyway. But the point is, if you get a chance to see it - see it! It definitely blew our minds.
posted by SarahT at 11:31 am
1 Comments:
so, i have finally found an event which i am glad i missed. travel certainly puts a perspective on how other people feel about things doesn't it? keep having fun. love to all. tell island girl i am beginning to feel that i know her too! ginny
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