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Posted: |
Apr 12, 2018 - 3:51 PM
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By: |
davefg
(Member)
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Really an ignorant movie, with a maudlin, manipulative ending. Score was OK, but not great.
I agree totally with your view here, John. Film went nowhere, really disliked it. I don't recall a note of the music, so it must have been forgettable as well.
The presumably small budget for the score should have challenged Horner to think outside of the box. Alas while there are some lovely moments in the score via piano, it is marred by the use of synths, giving the score a cheap feel to it. It's a pity that Horner did not opt for a more organic sound,a small ensemble with 3 or 4 instruments with the piano acting as the foundation of the score for example. Or drop that danger motif, which is produced by synths for the film.
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I have the download and am fine with it. I don't need a physical release.
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If I bought these CDs, it would only be out of some strange desire to own them in plastic, and I don't have that strange desire.
Strange indeed, because on the other hand, I'm freaking out to have them in plastic...
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I have the download and am fine with it. I don't need a physical release.
And you have to share this with us who love and support precisely Intrada's physical output because...?
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Really an ignorant movie, with a maudlin, manipulative ending. Score was OK, but not great.
I'm not entirely sure why you call it an ignorant film. I was a history major, focusing on WWII and Germany. I studied this era for a long time, and was thoroughly impressed with the accuracy of this film. It demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the subtleties of everyday life in Nazi Germany - family/home life, education, youth groups, rivalries within the SS, what drove certain people to become Nazis (not everyone was one, remember). I think it's one of the more skillfully made mainstream films about German society in that era that I've ever seen.
I found the dinner scene, about halfway through, to be especially brilliant. The young Nazi officer is exposed for having a father who was anti-Nazi and fled the country. We instantly understand his psychology, he's desperately compensating for his father's "disloyalty" to the Nazi cause by being especially brutal, which he is to the Jewish slave at the end of the scene. Meanwhile, the young daughter becomes obsessed with Nazi ideology largely because she has a crush on the officer, and the mother is disgusted by her husband now that she has figured out what he does. Everyone at the dinner table has a conflict with each other person there over a different aspect of the impact of Nazism on German society. Truly gifted writing.
The core conceit - that there are children still alive in a death camp - is not completely outlandish, as many people wrongly suggested, there were numerous cases where children weren't immediately killed, even at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the film is sort of vaguely set.
As for the ending being manipulative, I guess that's a difference in taste. I go to movies precisely because I do want to be manipulated into feeling something I didn't feel before I entered the theater. I found the ending of this film to be one of the most wrenching and poetically effective I've ever seen dealing with WWII.
The film is a fable by design, and I think it's a brilliant one. Seeing the Holocaust through a naive child's eyes, as he comes to understand what's happening around him only too late, is a stroke of genius. The film does a great job of showing how Germans managed to will themselves into ignorance.
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So glad this will finally be on CD!!!
I've come close to buying the FYC CD a few times, cannot wait for this! One of my favorite Horner scores, darkly gorgeous.
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Little off topic, but has anyone read the book? I'm tempted to read it. I recently read Alone in Berlin - one of the best books I've read in a long time.
Regarding the score, I also love the piano writing, and I although I don't listen to it often, I always considered it a fine addition to his body of work.
I read the book, it's exceptional, and quite similar to the movie, with one huge exception. The book is cleverly constructed in a way only a novel can be, without any proper nouns to name anything, or any description to give away the fact that it's a period piece, so for the first half, we only know that Father works somewhere and is in the military, and Mother is at home with the boy. Then Father is reassigned to a new job, and we and the boy very gradually come to realize the book is set during WWII and the boy is living adjacent to Auschwitz. Obviously this twist is impossible on film, where we see physical reality from the first moment and instantly know we're in 1940s Germany.
The book Every Man Dies Alone (known as Alone in Berlin in the UK) is one of my favorites, it's a masterpiece. It was turned into a film a year or two ago, but the book is a sprawling epic, it's a doorstop, hundreds and hundreds of pages long. It should have been an epic miniseries, like the exquisite 16-hour Babylon Berlin. Instead, they hacked away all the subplots and all the details, and turned Alone in Berlin into an abysmal 90 minute film. Such a waste.
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Posted: |
Apr 13, 2018 - 12:27 AM
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By: |
BrenKel
(Member)
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Really an ignorant movie, with a maudlin, manipulative ending. Score was OK, but not great.
I'm not entirely sure why you call it an ignorant film. I was a history major, focusing on WWII and Germany. I studied this era for a long time, and was thoroughly impressed with the accuracy of this film. It demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the subtleties of everyday life in Nazi Germany - family/home life, education, youth groups, rivalries within the SS, what drove certain people to become Nazis (not everyone was one, remember). I think it's one of the more skillfully made mainstream films about German society in that era that I've ever seen.
I found the dinner scene, about halfway through, to be especially brilliant. The young Nazi officer is exposed for having a father who was anti-Nazi and fled the country. We instantly understand his psychology, he's desperately compensating for his father's "disloyalty" to the Nazi cause by being especially brutal, which he is to the Jewish slave at the end of the scene. Meanwhile, the young daughter becomes obsessed with Nazi ideology largely because she has a crush on the officer, and the mother is disgusted by her husband now that she has figured out what he does. Everyone at the dinner table has a conflict with each other person there over a different aspect of the impact of Nazism on German society. Truly gifted writing.
The core conceit - that there are children still alive in a death camp - is not completely outlandish, as many people wrongly suggested, there were numerous cases where children weren't immediately killed, even at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the film is sort of vaguely set.
As for the ending being manipulative, I guess that's a difference in taste. I go to movies precisely because I do want to be manipulated into feeling something I didn't feel before I entered the theater. I found the ending of this film to be one of the most wrenching and poetically effective I've ever seen dealing with WWII.
The film is a fable by design, and I think it's a brilliant one. Seeing the Holocaust through a naive child's eyes, as he comes to understand what's happening around him only too late, is a stroke of genius. The film does a great job of showing how Germans managed to will themselves into ignorance.
Brilliantly said!
As for the score great to finally be able to get this on cd!
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I have the download and am fine with it. I don't need a physical release.
And you have to share this with us who love and support precisely Intrada's physical output because...?
..................................
.....because I thought this was a discussion group where we can express our opinions about film music issues including releases.
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