PASSCHENDAELE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cineplex Entertainment's - ahem - Continuing Commitment to Canadian Cinema: Cheap Cineplex Store Rentals on one of the WORST Canadian movies ever made! (Actually one of the worst movies - EVER!)

Cineplex Entertainment, the "proudly" Canadian movie theatre chain has always displayed a solid commitment to Canadian Cinema by not playing most Canadian Films, by providing no information on the few independent Canadian films they've pathetically played (referring to directors on their app as "Names Not Available"), charging small distributors exorbitant "virtual print fees" to play Canadian films in their theatres and, of course, playing Canadian films by the most acclaimed and beloved auteurs like Paul Gross. Now, in honour of Canada Day, Cineplex Entertainment's Cineplex Store is offering Canadian movies (they especially like) for rent in digital formats at cut-rate prices. Let us review one of these Canadian films which broke box-office records in Cineplex Entertainment cinemas with bought and paid-for grosses thanks to marketing assistance from the Canadian Government's Telefilm Canada.

NOTE: "PASSCHENDAELE" is pronounced as "pashin-dale". In honour of this fine film, herewith is a lovely witticism: A cabbie picked up a drunk lassie and she told him she needed to get to the Beer Vendor, but she didn't have enough money to take the cab there, so she would, in fact, provide him with a blow-job if he'd waive the fees. He happily agreed. As he drove to the Beer Vendor and the lassie worked upon his member prodigiously, the cabbie began to moan aloud. The young lassie looked up at him and said, "Oh, hey buddy, yer passionate." He replied, "Why thank you, indeed I am." She responded in her drunken slurring twixt slurps: "No buddy! Yer pashin it. Yer pashin the fuckin Beer Vendor."

Passchendaele (2008)
dir. Paul Gross
Starring: Paul Gross, Caroline Dhaverna

Review By Greg Klymkiw

How anyone could suggest with a straight face that Passchendaele is any good at all, renders me agog. I originally had no right to even comment on the movie a few years ago when I staggered out after the first miserable hour at its World Premiere in 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival, but rest assured, I eventually suffered through the entire sewage bath when it opened theatrically to confirm my initial feelings.

The full dosage of Paul Gross's directorial followup to his risible curling (Yes, Curling!) "comedy" Men With Brooms (and preceding his monumentally sickening Western "comedy" Gunless) forced me to nail my feet to the floor. I have the scars to prove it.

This $20,000,000.00 war film (a bit of an oxymoron in this day and age, anyway - even before going in you know you're in for some bargain basement carnage) is one of the most embarrassing, poorly written, miserably directed excuses for something purporting to be a motion picture that I have ever had the utter displeasure to waste precious hours of my life on. The first few minutes of this Dollar-rama Saving Private Ryan had a few visceral shocks to be sure (thanks, no doubt to a decent second unit team), but once the stiff-jawed leading man (Gross, 'natch) settled his sorry shell-shocked ass back on the homefront, I pretty much had to nail my kneecaps to the seat to stay for entirety of this jaw-droppingly wretched picture.

The paper thin characters/caricatures all deliver mind-numbingly awful dialogue as the contrived story plods interminably along its dreary way - treading heavily into the territory of melodrama of the worst sort. Don't get me wrong - I love war pictures and I especially love war pictures that have both melodrama and sentimentality. That said, there is good melodrama and bad melodrama and there is sentimentality that resonates with the emotional heartache that someone like John Ford was able to master with his eyes sewn shut.

Alas, Paul Gross is most certainly not John Ford - Garry Marshall with a severe migraine, perhaps, but not much more than that. Gross directs with the grace of a faulty jackhammer that keeps missing its mark. Perhaps he might have made a good picture if he'd produced and starred in it and let a real writer and director do their respective jobs.

Gross is definitely a good actor and the camera loves him, but in this movie he lopes about like some pretty boy Gary Cooper over-dosed on Maple Syrup, uttering dialogue that not even Ed Wood would have been capable of writing. In fact, let it be said now that as a writer, Ed Wood was pretty much Clifford Odets compared to Gross.

The movie, for all its utter stupidity, reached some kind of nadir when Gross chose to crosscut between graphic descriptions of what shrapnel can do to the human body whilst a loving couple bang each other with youthful abandon. Spielberg did a similar thing in Munich. I applauded Spielberg for the audacity, but couldn't really forgive the stupidity - especially since he had his lead character boinking wifey whilst having flashbacks to violent killings he was not even present to have experienced. I was even convinced nobody could have topped such idiocy, but Paul Gross managed to do it. Alas, bereft of Spielberg's panache, which made Munich barely watchable, Gross has little to offer as a director save for complete incompetence.

If only Gross had been able to rise to the level of M.O.W. competence, I might have been able to avoid putting holes in my feet and kneecaps (in addition to not having the taste of bile in my mouth, which comes up on me even when I think about the picture). Alas, my desires fell upon deaf ears. Between those deaf ears, however, I can only assume plenty of air resides happily and fetidly within.

Happy Fucking Canada Day!

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL & DINING LOUNGE

This is a rating The Film Corner delivers to films too bad to garner one-star (*). Said films would normally then receive the "One Pubic Hair" rating, however, not to besmirch the fine pubic hair recipient Sharknado by lumping it in (so to speak) with genuine turds, I was forced to create a critical rating even lower.

The Rating is, quite simply and evocatively:

"TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL & DINING LOUNGE".

As pictured, this an actual turd found by myself and Project Grizzly filmmaker Peter Lynch in the illustrious Parkdale parking lot behind Harry's wherein the two of us had just dined with writer Geoff Pevere.

Now, please feel free to acknowledge, as I do, pictures displaying the most appalling ineptitude, exceeding that of even Sharknado. It is a critical rating which will, one hopes, seal the selected work's fate in some manner of infamy.

FILMS WHICH HAVE RECEIVED THIS RATING

CLICK ON TITLE FOR REVIEW

THE VATICAN EXORCISMS

MUCK

CORNER GAS - THE MOVIE

OCTOBER GALE

DEAD BEFORE DAWN 3-D

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

GODZILLA 2014

VERONICA MARS

ENDLESS LOVE 2014

SEX AND THE CITY 2

THE COUNSELLOR

It's TEA TIME with THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES, The Film Corner's All New Columnist: Draw up thine comfy chairs for some High Tea at Oxford University, as Rhodes Scholar, young Master Thomas Zachary Toles gives BREAKING BAD a jolly good thrashing.

If you require a better view of Thomas and his illustrious credentials, please click on the friendly masthead just above.

Walter White Privilege: Facile Empathy in Breaking Bad

By Film Corner Tea Time Columnist THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES

Given that Better Call Saul, the spin-off of Vince Gilligan’s universally acclaimed Breaking Bad has placed its first record-breaking season six-feet-under (in slavering anticipation of the second season, ordered by AMC before Season One even aired), it’s high time for a critical reexamination of the series that started it all, a show that pretends to test the limits of our empathy while rewarding its viewers for lazily aligning with a singular, dominant perspective.

Let us examine what is broken and bad with Breaking Bad.

"Let's just blow EVERYBODY the fuck away!"

Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an overqualified chemistry teacher with an ego, is driven to meth dealing and murder by the onset of lung cancer. He hopes to earn enough to cover his exorbitant treatment costs and posthumously bequeath a large sum for his family. The apparent premise of the show is: to what extent can this ordinary man justify his increasingly immoral behaviour with ostensibly compassionate motives? How long will the viewer’s allegiance to Walt last before siding with him becomes impossible?

Breaking Bad’s great fault, however, is that it creates a warped world in which there is effectively no human alternative to Walt. He is the cleverest, coolest, most compelling person in the show, unquestionably a better meth cook than any Hispanic cartel member who preceded him. The genius middle-class white man with crazed ambition (the American dream!) is glorified in his corruption while the devastating effects of meth addiction on impoverished communities are only shown once or twice in the entire series. Walter White is “Whiteman,” America’s presiding figure--a superhero of narcissistic greed.

The emotional consequences of Walt’s actions on his family and other major characters are deceptively insubstantial. The wronged family includes his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a character so unsympathetic to most fans that desperately cheating on her lying drug-dealer husband was widely deemed unforgivable. Then there are his children: Walt Jr. (RJ MItte), whose primary arc consists of driving lessons and breakfast consumption, and Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich), a baby forgotten as frequently by the show’s writers as Maggie is by Homer Simpson.

Skyler is a controversial case because, as Erin Gloria Ryan (writer and managing editor of JEZEBEL) argued, fan hatred for her was due to misogyny, despite the show’s loud assertions of her blamelessness. I counter that her blamelessness reflects Gilligan’s inability to imagine a rich inner life for the character. Skyler’s existence separate from Walt’s endeavours, and her pain, become increasingly vague as the show takes Walt’s continuing survival as its central concern. Walt also causes anguish for Jesse (Aaron Paul), his partner-in-crime, but Walt’s final sacrifice for Jesse allows the older man’s manipulations to be overshadowed by the real villains of the show.

Breaking Bad ends by establishing a ludicrous dichotomy between Walt (a human with flaws--like us) and the fantasy of truly evil people (neo-Nazis) who, unlike Walt, don’t have their reasons. Walt confesses his selfishness (self-awareness achieved!) and redeems himself by vanquishing actual, uncomplicated evil and rescuing Jesse.

Walter White and Edward Hyde: Happy Bedfellows!

For the show’s legions of viewers, Walt has been a surrogate Mr. Hyde, allowing us to tacitly revel in his immorality from the safety of our couches. Breaking Bad relies on the seductive illusion that our dark sides can be outsourced to Walt, vicariously embraced, and then neutralized with Walt’s death and his accompanying self-awareness (that we are invited to share).

Gilligan expresses his desire to redeem Walt and provide a satisfying, palatable ending in his comments on a possible alternate ending in which Walt shoots up a jail to free Jesse:

“[W]e kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?’”

Gilligan wants closure and gratification for his audience; he does not want to leave them frustrated or confused. Walt’s redemption purges the viewer’s guilt for fetishizing him, tying up the show’s loose ends on a chilling note of admiration.

Fiction has the power to vividly portray disorder and ambiguity, in ways that may help us reach a wider, more empathetic outlook. Yet Breaking Bad rewards its viewers for lionizing its slick, troubled protagonist, not challenging us to peer at the peripheral figures beyond him.

Countless Americans are indifferent to the commonplace killings of unarmed people of colour by police officers—proclaiming that Mike Brown, Miriam Carey, Eric Garner, and many others just shouldn’t have broken the law. Undoubtedly, many of these same Americans readily accepted Walt’s violent criminality.

Breaking Bad dangerously inhibits empathy for real-life abuses of power because it predominantly asks its viewers to identify with the one character with both authority and explicit motives. Walt is a complex figure surrounded by stereotypes like Tuco’s homicidal cousins, whose non-existent personalities are only justified by their brutish foreignness.

Breaking Bad encourages empathy for yet another white authority figure (who kills, like Darren Wilson or George Zimmerman, when he “fears for his life”), while disregarding the humanity of those less powerful than he.

A narrow vision, indeed.

Breaking Bad is available in Canada by clicking HEREand in the United States of America by clicking HEREand in the Jolly Old United Kingdom by clicking HERE The first 10 episodes of Season One of Better Call Saul premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015.

All photo collages by GJK

NIM'S ISLAND - More drab contemporary kid-lit makes for unexceptional, but watchable family viewing. Special FREE screening as part of the Spring Break Family Matinees on March 16, 2014 at the Toronto International Film Festival's TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Nim’s Island (2008) **1/2
dir. Jennifer Flacket and Mark Levin
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Family fantasy adventures based upon bestselling books continue to be cranked out as entertainment-starved parents continue to require motion pictures they can safely take their kids to, but also (presumably) enjoy as much as their progeny. While "Nim’s Island" is far from first-rate, it’s most definitely a solid ride with as much to recommend it to Moms and Dads as the kiddies. However, this recommendation and rating is extended, and I repeat – extended ONLY – to those requiring a family fantasy adventure based upon a book they may (or may not) have already read to their children. All others need not apply.

"Nim’s Island" ambles along pleasantly enough as it spins a yarn involving the cute, perky and (of course) precocious little darling of the title – Nim (Abigail Breslin) – as she and marine biologist Dad (Gerard Butler) live out their idyllic existence on a tiny tropical island in the middle of God-knows-where. Palm trees abound, fresh fruit sprouts from every nook and cranny and Nim’s pals include all the animals of the island including an especially flatulent seal.

When Nim is not gamboling about her island paradise, she reads voraciously. Her literature of choice comes in the form of the seemingly autobiographical adventure tales of the swashbuckling Jack Rover (also Gerard Butler). When her Dad disappears at sea whilst on a mission to survey marine life, Nim – using satellite email – sends cries of help to Rover. Believing the swashbuckler to be real, she suspects he’ll swoop in at some point to answer her pleas.

Unbeknownst to our heroine is the sad fact that Jack is a fictional character who exists – not only exclusively to the written page, but also as an imaginary character in the mind of agoraphobic authoress Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster). Touched by the sincerity of Nim’s emails, the writer with the irrational fear of a world outside her home embarks bravely on a dangerous to take the place of her fictional character in order to rescue both Nim and her Dad.

Two things, and two things only, make this potentially hoary family fantasy palatable.

First of all, the cast is pretty first-rate. Abigail Breslin continues to amaze and delight – she’s an engaging young actress and as she matures and fills out, she’s becoming quite riveting – the camera clearly loves her and she has only one way to go – up, up and up. Gerard Butler, he of the firm buttocked King Leonidas fame in “300”, seems more at home as the Indiana-Jones-styled hero of his dual role duties, but he’s a terrific actor and it’s fun watching him prance about as a Daddy in second fiddle mode to Miss Breslin and her amazing farting seal. Jodie Foster manages to use her annoyingly pinched qualities to exceptional use. This tightly-wound, oh-so-serious actress who is as highly skilled as she is dull seems quite at home in her role as an agoraphobe and even manages to loosen up a tad in order to – you heard it hear first, folks – make us laugh.

The second reason to recommend the picture is its strict belief in family values. While Mr. Butler portrays a single parent, it is not the otherwise usual sort of pathetic baby-boomer characters who've messed up their children’s lives by being selfish and breaking up their families through divorce. No, Mr. Butler’s character is widowed, not divorced. This not only allows us to feel more for him and his child, but rejoice when he and Nim eventually become a full family unit with the appearance of the husband-less Jodie Foster.

If you’re looking for a shred of originality, you won’t find it here, but if you’re looking for a relatively pleasant time to kill time with the child you love, you can do much worse than “Nim’s Island”.

And how about those family values? Family values abound and prosper on “Nim’s Island”, and for that, we can all be just a little bit thankful.

“Nim’s Island” is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

8/6/08

HARLAN: In the Shadow of Jew Süss - DVD Review by Greg Klymkiw - TV styled presentation disappoints, but there's no denying the power of this documentary about a brilliant filmmaker who directed one of the most hateful anti-semitic films of all time.

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss (2008) **1/2
dir. Felix Moeller
Starring: Thomas Harlan, Christiane Kubrick (nee Harlan), Jan Harlan, Stefan Drosler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Veit Harlan was the director of a dreadful picture called Jew Süss.

His movie is dreadful on two counts.

Firstly, it’s no good – awful, in fact. It creaks and groans with storytelling techniques from another age and renders melodrama in ways that allow detractors of the genre to level their knee-jerk criticism at even the genre’s best work because movies like Jew Süss are, simply and purely, BAD MELODRAMA.

Secondly, the picture is the vilest, most hateful, prejudicial anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda ever made. The picture was such a huge hit upon its first release that Jew Süss is credited with inspiring pogroms, became required viewing for the S.S. and took its rightful place in the Final Solution as the film equivalent of a murder weapon. The movie was commissioned by Josef Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda under the Nazi regime. Released in 1940, this disgusting and poorly made piece of trash told the story of a Jew who rises to power, rapes a Gentile woman (instigating her suicide) until his actions eventually result in all the Jews of the region being run out on a rail - "triumphantly" , no less - by all the non-Jews. And I reiterate, the picture was a HUGE success at the box office in Germany.

And yet, perhaps because of the movie's success, one is shocked at how utterly execrable the picture is as a movie. If you could, for only a moment (God forbid) look past its anti-Semitism and try to assess it as a film, you'll find it works neither as fiction, nor does it APPEAR to even be good propaganda. Sure, bad movies have often been hits in all countries all over the world, but Jew Süss is not just bad, it's a total clunker of a movie. In spite of this, and sadly, even the most cursory analysis of the historical events surrounding the time this picture was made yields complete and total understanding of the picture’s power.

So many examples of propaganda, especially of the dramatic variety (not just in Nazi Germany), are inevitably replete with all the hallmarks of moronic incompetence. [It is, I think, worth mentioning that an earlier draft of this review bore a weird Spell-check-generated typographical error and produced the word “incontinence” rather than “incompetence”.] In essence, effective propaganda is, more often than not, the artistry of the obvious and aimed at the lowest common denominator. That said, Jew Süss, as cinema is in complete contrast to the work of another filmmaker who was working under the same regime, Leni Riefenstahl.

Jew Süss is clearly without the style, artistry and slow burn intensity of Riefenstahl’s great work, The Triumph Of The Will, which, no doubt, brought more than a few Germans on board Hitler’s bandwagon of evil as Der Fuhrer descended from the Heavens to deliver his evil plan to the masses at the Nuremberg rally.

Even now, though, unlike Jew Süss, Triumph still has the power to GENUINELY stun, shock, thrill and even (dare I say it?) enchant – simply and almost profoundly on the basis of its sheer cinematic virtuosity. Riefenstahl, the Adolph Mädchenname des Kinos of Nazi Germany was not simply a blonde, beautiful dancer and actress, she was one of the 20th century’s most dazzling filmmakers.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Arnold Fanck, the mad master of German mountaineering melodramas, Riefenstahl was, I’d say, a born filmmaker and a great one at that who, in spite of making Triumph should have been allowed to keep making movies with the same level of support Veit Harlan received – not just during the war, but AFTER, as well.

Riefenstahl’s pariah status after the war was truly lamentable – shameful, in fact.

Not so lamentable in Veit Harlan’s case. Jew Süss might well have been made by Ed Wood (if he’d been an inbred totalitarian nincompoop) as a sort of period Plan 9 From Outer Space, or if you will, Plan Jew From the Middle East.

Pariah? Yes. Working filmmaker? Veit Harlan? Absolutely yes! This is what's even more extraordinary. Harlan kept making movies. Then again, call me a Bleeding Heart Liberal if you will, but I must admit I've always been against the notion of blacklisting any artists for anything, and that includes perpetrating propaganda. So many American films include(d) hateful propaganda at various points throughout its history and in the former Soviet Union, Sergei Eisenstein extolled the virtues of a regime that butchered millions of people in the pre-Stalin era. Once Stalin was in power, Eisenstein, save perhaps for his last film, Ivan the Terrible II and the unfinished Ivan the Terrible III, continued - much like Veit Harlan in Nazi Germany - to strap on the kneepads before his totalitarian boss and extoll HIS "virtues". Stalin murdered many more millions in the former Soviet Union including the Ukrainian Holocaust - the forced starvation of millions of nationalist peasants. Stalin's purges murdered even more.

Certainly Riefenstahl should not have been blacklisted and, I'd argue that maybe even Harlan should not have been made a pariah - a laughing stock for just how dreadful Jew Süss is as a movie, would not have been out of line.

Harlan and his place in both the Nazi regime and in cinema always seemed like natural subject matter for a movie and it’s odd it took so long for a documentary on Jew Süss and its maker to materialize, but that it now exists, is cause for some kind of celebration.

Alas, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss is in that horrible never-never land of “it’ll have to do for now“. Director Felix Moeller doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on the story he wants to tell and by covering too much in too short a running time, the movie leaves one with far too many questions – not questions of the philosophical variety, but more along the lines of wanting to simply know more within the context of the material presented. Sadly, the movie lacks a clear focus.

There is, however, a fascinating tale buried in this flawed, half-hearted TV-style feature length documentary. The movie not only focuses on Harlan’s career as a filmmaker in the pre-and-post Jew Süss period, but it includes numerous interviews with his family – children (the great political filmmaker and author Thomas Harlan), grandchildren, nieces, nephews and, I might add, one fairly prominent niece, Christiane Kubrick, the widow of the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (and executor of his estate) and her brother, an equally prominent nephew, Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s long-time producer.

On one hand, Moeller seems intent on telling the story of a family and how they’re connected to a legacy of evil. On the other, Moeller seems equally interested in delving into the career of Harlan himself. Pick one, already, Felix - or if you want the whole boatload of bananas, choose that and do it properly. Oddly, the story of Jew Süss itself, feels almost like an afterthought in this documentary.

Moeller’s movie is a mixed bag.

This, of course, is what makes it the most frustrating type of documentary – its filmmaker has no voice. He has great subject matter, terrific interview subjects (the surviving family who run the gamut of defending, demonizing and being indifferent towards Harlan), carte blanche access to family home movies and photos, rare archival footage and scenes – not just from Jew Süss, but from all of Harlan’s films. While we watch with fascination because of all the elements listed above, the experience and overall impact of this documentary seems lacking.

Just as Harlan’s Jew Süss pales in comparison to Riefenstahl’s The Triumph Of The Will in the Nazi propaganda sweepstakes, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss pales in comparison to Ray Muller’s brilliant documentary, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. With the latter film, Muller sought to provide balance to his cinematic perspective of Riefenstahl’s life and in so doing, he was compelled to infuse the picture with an epic scope. It is this sense of sweep and the presence of a filmmaker’s voice that makes it work. Moeller, on the other, has great material, but has no real idea what to do with it. The picture, and as its title asserts, seems to be more about a family living in the shadow of one picture.

Well I, along with Peggy Lee, must ask, “Is that all there is?”

There’s nothing wrong with the surviving family thrust, but their perspectives don’t have the power they need to because one feels there’s simply not enough focus placed on Harlan himself – his life, his work and finally, why he chose to remain unrepentant.

Perhaps, it was enough that he was the only filmmaker from Nazi Germany to be tried for war crimes (for making Jew Süss in particular) and that he endured two trials and was acquitted both times.

This, however, is one of many maddening aspects of Moeller’s documentary. I longed to get more details about these trials – clearly the materials exist as public record. As well, I wanted to know more about Harlan and what his state of mind might have been before, during, between and after the trials. Surely enough people have thoughts on the matter.

Interestingly enough, the clips used from Harlan’s other films that pre and post date Jew Süss look great – so great I want to see as many of them now as possible. The clips suggest Harlan was a master of melodrama – perhaps even an inspiration to Douglas Sirk – and weirdly, their use in the documentary serves to suggest that he was a great artist in his own right.

Even more weirdly, they lend credence to Harlan’s firm insistence that he was coerced into making Jew Süss and furthermore, my own assumption based upon the documentary’s use of these clips that Harlan perhaps intentionally made a bad picture.

Moeller's film, like so many documentaries these days, has not been created by a real filmmaker. It’s been cobbled together by a camera jockey with great subject matter and finally, he manages to deliver a picture that is still worth seeing because it addresses issues surrounding what might be the most notorious, evil and artistically lamentable film of the 20th century.

For me, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss was and still is a must-see film. Even if it doesn’t quite do what it should, it’s better than nothing at all. And that is something.

"Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss" is available on DVD from Zeitgeist Films. It’s a fine transfer and includes a few superb extra features that certainly supplement what’s lacking in the film itself. Definitely worth renting for anyone interested in the subject matter and of special interest to any Kubrick fans in light of the major release of the Kubrick Blu-ray box set. Scholars of this material may be better off buying the film since it has some excellent footage in spite of the film's lack of clear focus.

6/15/11

"i am a good person/i am a bad person" and "Modra" and "Only" - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hot on the heels of a Major Career Retrospective at the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa, one of this Country's Great Filmmakers will have her Features screened in Toronto at the Royal Cinema! Miss them at your peril.

Here is a complete list of the screening times at the Royal Cinema, 608 College Street, Toronto. There will be Q&A’s with director and cast following each screening. As well,revenue from "i am a good person…" go into a filmmaking fund. Details HERE!!!

Screening Times: Thursday June 14 OPENING 9:30pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person | Friday June 15 7:00pm - i am a good person/i am a bad person 9:30pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person | Saturday June 16 – SPECIAL TRIPLE BILL DAY. $20 to see all 3 movies! 4:30pm i am a good person/i am a bad person – ONLY 7pm – MODRA 9:30pm | Sunday June 17 4:30pm - i am a good person/i am a bad person 7pm - i am a good person/i am a bad person 9:30pm – MODRA | Monday June 18 7pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person 9:30pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person | Tuesday June 19 7:00pm - ONLY 9:30pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person | Wednesday June 20 9:30pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person | Thursday June 21 9:30pm – i am a good person/i am a bad person

i am a good
person
i am a bad
person
(2011)
dir.
Ingrid
Veninger
Starring:
Ingrid
Veninger,
Hallie
Switzer

***1/2

Review By
GregKlymkiw

A dervish derives inspiration from God and does so with complete and total devotion, honouring the Creator with continuous, strenuous forms of physical manipulations, such as exercise or dance that involve literal whirling at breakneck speeds.

Influenced by John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh and Jean Renoir, Canadian filmmaker Ingrid Veninger is also developing an approach to her humanist form of dramatic cinema that is clearly all hers.

In fact, Veninger might well be cinema’s only living equivalent to a whirling dervish. Like a dervish, she honours her Creator (cinema), her prophets (Cassavetes et al), then whips her creative concoction into a frenzy – literally living and breathing cinema – producing film from within herself, her devotion and life itself.

With her previous work and second feature as a director (she’s written, produced and acted in so many more), Modra, a personal dramatic exploration of her Slovakian roots, Veninger was on the cusp of embarking upon the film festival circuit.

This got the dervish whirling.

She wrote a script about a filmmaker taking a trip to Europe to present her film on the film festival circuit. She cast herself as the filmmaker Ruby, and her own real-life daughter, talented young actress Hallie Switzer (female lead of Modra) as Ruby’s daughter Sara. With ace cinematographer Ben Lichty and sound recordist/boom operator Braden Sauder, Veninger and Switzer blasted across the pond from Canada to Europe and made a movie. The screenplay, already workshopped and in final draft, accompanied the group who knew that as long as the structure of the story was adhered to, there would potentially be room for rewriting depending upon the exigencies of production.

The movie, i am a good person/i am a bad person, is funny and heartbreakingly moving, and while full of ‘realistic’ touches, it never descends into Canadian Cinema Dreariness 101 and is, in fact, imbued with a sense of scope to allow its tenderness and intimacy to shine in all the ways they should in movies.

The world is, of course, replete with father-son pictures, but mother-daughter relationships – in terms of numbers and quality – pale in comparison. This is a film that contributes admirably to this relatively rare tradition.

Ruby is a loveable scatterbrain. Her film, a crazed, seemingly political avant-garde celebration of – ahem – the penis, is set to premiere overseas at the – ahem – Bradford International Film Festival in dear Old Blighty. Eighteen-year-old Sara is dragged along on the trip to be her mother’s assistant, though one gets the feeling that deep down, Mom craves some one-on-one quality time with her burgeoning daughter.

Sara is decidedly serious – in general, but especially on this trip – and Mom’s carefree spirit is driving her up the wall. Mom, not totally oblivious to this, is still intent on having a good time.

Things in Bradford reach a bit of a head and it’s decided that Sara will go to Paris on her own to visit with relatives whilst Ruby will forge on to a screening at the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin.

As mother and daughter each face personal challenges, it also becomes glaringly apparent how much they need and love each other.

I suspect it might not be too much of a spoiler to suggest that hard decisions are wrought and events inspire more than a few tears from even the most hardened viewers. Those who stick with the seemingly freewheeling spirit of the picture are rewarded a thousandfold during the extremely moving finale.

Filmmakers of all stripes will, I think, get a kick out of the sequences shot in Bradford and Berlin. How many times have filmmakers heard the rather embarrassed words from festival directors – as Ruby does in the film – ‘It’s a much smaller house than expected, but they’ll no doubt be a spirited bunch.’

It’s also worth mentioning that i am a good person/i am a bad person is full of humour – gentle bits of human comedy and full-on Bridesmaids-style blowjob gags (pun intended) and scatological humour.

Happily, this doesn’t temper any of the sentiment, but in fact, enhances it. And unlike Bridesmaids, i am a good person/i am a bad person NEVER overstays its welcome. The picture is taut, trim, hypnotic and passionate.

Kind of like a whirling dervish.





Modra (2010)
dir. Ingrid Veninger
Starring:
Hallie Switzer,
Alexander Gammal
****

Only (2008)
dir. Ingrid Veninger
Simon Reynolds
Starring:
Jacob Switzer,
Elena Hudgins Lyle
****

Review By
Greg Klymkiw



Consider this review a love letter to a true artist, an artist who has created a film so delicate, inspiring, moving and heartbreaking that it connects with all who see it on a very personal level.

So.

To now begin.

You!

You were born in the former Czechoslovakia – Bratislava, to be precise – but you are too young to have experienced the phenomenal rise to power of Alexander Dubcek and his extraordinary Prague Spring – the grand cultural explosion that infused a national pride that threatened to topple Russian domination.

As a young adult, you knew the Prague Spring was cool – not only was there Milan Kundera’s great book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but there also existed Philip Kaufmann’s sumptuously romantic and sex-drenched film rendering of it.

And as much as Kaufmann brought the Russian invasion so sadly to life on film, you can’t – try as you might – remember being clutched in your mother’s arms as your family flees the Russian tanks rolling in during that horrendous year of 1968 when the Spring turned to a communist-ruled Winter once more.

Or perhaps you remember all too well.

The brain is a powerful machine, as is the soul. Your parents’ reminiscences of that time, your experience of being the child of immigrants who were forced to leave everything they loved behind to give you the life you never would have had under communism, your sense of childlike wonder that grew within you and stayed in your heart long beyond childhood – all this and more still might have managed to retrieve these memories and allow you to blossom into the artist you are – to blossom within your soul, the soul of a Slovak!

You grew up in Canada – as Canadian as maple syrup (but with more than a few dollops of Neil Young) – and yet something nagged at you about your beginnings, your parents’ struggles, the painful inability to connect with family left behind (for fear of communist reprisals against them) and always wanting to discover your roots.

At the age of 17, you visited the ‘old country’ and reconnected with your family and ethnicity. Returning to Canada, you worked as an actor, a producer and eventually a director.

You are Ingrid Veninger – an auteur of the highest order: the real thing and then some.

Frankly, there’s a film in the above, but as an artist you have taken it so much further in your extraordinary solo directorial feature debut Modra. After producing such ground-breaking Canadian feature films as Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods and LSD and Charles Officer's Nurse Fighter Boy, co-directing with Officer the fabulous experimental short URDA/Bone that premiered at the New York Film Festival and the exquisite feature film Only, co-directed with your greatly talented friend and colleague Simon Reynolds that was feted with a screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and festivals all over the world, you took the next logical step and solo-directed Modra.



Your co-directorial feature effort Only, was comprised of tiny, tender moments and infused with the warmth and love of family. Only starred your son Jacob Switzer as a young boy living in a small Northern Canadian town who, along with a young girl the same age, discovers the simple pleasures of life, the glory of nature and most importantly, love.

Modra stars your 17-year-old daughter Hallie Switzer as Lina, a young lady who, like yourself, takes a trip to the ‘old country’ to connect with her roots. Having just broken up with her boyfriend, she drags along a platonic pal Leco (Alexander Gammal) who has a bit more on his mind than friendship.

During the weeklong trip, both kids discover that they have little in common and romance is not going to be part of the equation. However, all of Lina’s old world relatives think they’re a couple. As Lina finds her roots, she finds herself and so does Leco. Most importantly, they discover the value of connecting as human beings and the true power of friendship and shared experience.

To say this movie had me squirting tears would be an understatement. I chocked up emotionally at several points, but also wept tears of appreciation for the movie’s consummate artistry. While Modra, much like Only, feels unscripted, it IS, in fact, beautifully scripted, and the natural performances of the kids, the real friends and relatives in Bratislava and your magnificent probing directorial eye, add up to a film where art meets life, and in so doing, creates a lovely collection of those precious cinematic pieces of time that make us realise again how precious life is, and at the same time, what a glorious, wonderful gift the art of movies is.

My love letter draws to a close.

It’s nice to review movies this way – especially when they're so infused with love.

If you wish to own these Ingrid Veninger productions on DVD, consider ordering them hereby clicking the following links:

SUMMER HOLIDAY (aka BOOGIE) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Consider this a Romanian version of Fellini's "I Vitelloni" and Levinson's "Diner" . It's funny, dark and deeply moving.

Summer Holiday (2008) dir. Radu Muntean
Starring: Dragos Bucur, Anamaria Marinca, Mimi Branescu, Adrian Vancica, Vlad Muntean

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

I found the plan for living
That'll last me all through life
I'm gonna take this girl of mine
And make her my wife
Have you heard the news?
Have you heard what I've been saying?
I've been saying I'm in love with you
Have you heard the news?
Have you heard why I'm so happy?
I feel happy 'cause you love me too
-Cliff Richard, "Big News", from the movie Summer Holiday (1963)

In director Radu Muntean's 2008 Summer Holiday, vacation time at a seaside resort in post-Ceauşescu Romania is a far cry from the shenanigans undertaken by dreamy British heart-throb Cliff Richard in the squeaky-clean 1963 British musical with the identical title. Muntean's Romania is utterly bereft of sweet-faced lads emitting dulcet tones - especially those attached to lyrics promising that marriage to the woman you love is a happy "plan of living" that will last forever. (That said, there IS an uncharacteristically sleazy sequence in Rouben Mamoulian's identically titled 1948 Arthur Freed-produced musical involving Mickey Rooney and a sordid barroom floozy. But I digress.)

Not much in Eastern Europe ever seems to last forever. Within the post-Communist context, themes that should be (and indeed are) universal, have that extra tinge of sordid dreariness that offers humour of a much darker nature and drama laced with arsenic. Summer Holiday is all about those fleeting moments of youth that men spend their whole lives the world over desperately trying to recapture. Add Eastern Europe to the mixture, however, and Western male angst pales mightily in comparison.

Shot with well-composed long-takes, there's a Bresson-like quality to Muntean's picture as he goes for a realist approach in this melancholy tale of Bogdan (Dragos Bucur) who, whilst vacationing with his beautiful, loving wife Smaranda (AnaMaria Marinca) and their sweet little boy Adrian (Vlad Muntean), longs for his youthful days of "freedom". On a chance meeting with Penescu (Mimi Branescu) and Iordache (Adrian Vancica), a couple of old buddies from Bogdan's carefree past, he indulges himself in a night of wanton boozing, bowling, clubbing, shawarma gobbling and whoring. The evening of debauchery concludes when the men visit Ceauşescu's long-abandoned country villa to see if the Communist Dictator's peacocks still roam the grounds.

This is "freedom"?

As the film unspools there are numerous moments where most men will wince with the sort of recognition and self-realization that comes from looking into either a literal or figurative mirror. Watching Bogdan playing with his son on the beach - clearly loving the kid, but quickly losing patience as the child wants to follow his own muse instead of Dad's is the first sign that all might not be right with the film's central character.

We see the looks of frustration on his wife's face as he takes an endless cel phone call to deal with a business matter, but when he puts the phone away, his wife's demeanour softens and she looks at him adoringly. Alas, Bogdan's gaze fixes on some young people romping in the water. The wife's face sours again. This, unfortunately is when Bogdan chooses to look at her. This will not be the last time something like this happens.

The movie is replete with so many moments of crossed-wires and misunderstandings. The film's sense of humanity is palpable - it's real, painful and yes, at times funny. The writing is very good, but Muntean's direction and his magnificent cast are even better. It's familiar territory - a man yearns for what he thinks he no longer has and discovers that what he has is so much better than what he regrets not having - but in spite of this slight been-there-done-that quality to the material, Muntean and his actors make it fresh and vibrant.

Bogdan's shenanigans with his buddies - especially the wonderful dialogue and rapport between the men - is like a Romanian heir apparent to Fellini's I Vitteloni and Barry Levinson's Diner. Closer in spirit to the former than the latter, Muntean delivers the humour, but every so often, a moment of heartbreak sneaks in or worse, some genuine meanness and our laughs are doused with the recoil of recognition - we almost cringe with the pain of shame.

Men might resist growing up, but the more they do, the sadder and more pathetic their lives become. There might be more truth in that old Cliff Richard song from HIS Summer Holiday that spills over into Muntean's Summer Holiday. Bogdan, like Cliff, ultimately did find "the plan for living" to last him "all through life" when he took that "girl of mine" and made her his wife. As dark as Muntean's film gets, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Summer Holiday" is available on the very fine label, the Kimstim Collection and is distributed exclusively in the United States by Zeitgeist Films. It's available via both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca and I highly recommend you complete your "Summer Holiday" collection and also buy the Cliff Richard musical AND Rouben Mamoulian's "Summer Holiday" which is - I kid you not - a musical remake of O'Neill's "Ah Wilderness" starring Mickey Rooney. Come on, get all three. I dare you. Make it a "Summer Holiday" hat-trick.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lame Family Fantasy on DVD

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) **
dir. Mark Waters
Starring: David Strathairn, Nick Nolte, Joan Plowright, Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Mary Louise Parker, Seth Rogen (voice), Martin Short (voice)

Review By Greg Klymkiw

My first helping of this family-oriented fantasy was on the big screen and my recollections of that experience are relatively positive. However, keep in mind that it was the EXPERIENCE of seeing it, NOT the movie itself that left me with a positive feeling. In fact, I had pretty much filed the movie under forgettable save for the vaguely lingering feeling that Nick Nolte was a great villain and that David Strathairn was (almost as always) pleasing, but so much so that one wanted him to be the main character instead of the annoying dysfunctional family we’re forced to spend the rest of the movie with.

The other reason I recall it being a good experience was that I saw it with my kid and she seemed to have a reasonably good time watching it. But that’s about it. That’s about all I remembered until I watched it again on DVD, which confirmed why the initial experience on the big screen was ultimately so forgettable.

Basically, The Spiderwick Chronicles is more done-to-death family fantasy with nothing especially new or exciting added to the mix (save for the occasionally welcome tone of nastiness on the part of Nick Nolte and his unholy cohorts).

The narrative is way too familiar. A single Mom with money problems moves her kids (a pair of male twins and their sister) into a creepy old mansion bequeathed to them. The kids discover weirdness in the house and surrounding neighborhood – a whole other world of creepy creatures (most evil, some helpful). The kids find their long dead grandfather’s (Strathairn) creation - a magical field book that had the power to open doors between our world and the world of monsters. The main monster, played with scenery-chewing delight by Nolte, wants to possess the book to have ultimate power over pretty much everyone and everything on both sides of the dividing line. One of the boys leads the way in battling the monsters and eventually grows up by reuniting with Grandad in the spirit world and bringing his dysfunctional family together.

Isn’t that nice?

Apparently, the movie is based on a series of popular family books. Big surprise. Isn’t everything these days?

In any event, I have never bothered to read any of these contemporary masterworks since I’m more inclined to expose my kid to the classics rather than these mass-marketed franchise empires masquerading as literature. Therefore, I am unable to compare the movie with the books, but I can only assume they’re of the same ilk. (And for those who do not mind exposing their children to such books, I’m willing to concede that they’re probably good for what they are – maybe even first rate. But again, for what they are.)

Another thing that’s getting tiresome in these fantasy movies is seeing families that are torn apart by divorce. This is getting old fast. Even if this represents the legacy of the baby boomer hippies and resembles most “families” (if you can call them that) these days, it would be nice to see a return to the true family values of the classics (both in film and literature). If popular culture – especially movies like this one could present such values at the forefront, then maybe, just maybe they’d provide more acceptable propaganda to inspire values other than selfishness and dysfunction.

All in all, The Spiderwick Chronicles is a vaguely competent and certainly watchable family fantasy, but it’s also nothing really special. The picture is well acted and sports some terrific special effects. If your children have been reared in some nut-job Waldorf-styled school, the movie might prove to be a tad scary or intense for the really wee ones. That said - when my daughter saw it at age-seven she didn’t find it scary. That said, she’d already seen Hellboy, Sin City, all the classic Universal horror movies, all the Ray Harryhausen fantasy adventures, all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies and Gremlins, to name but a few – so The Spiderwick Chronicles was pretty much a walk in the park for her.

Once again, all the technical credits on this picture (in addition to the sfx) are first rate – everything from Caleb Deschanel’s rich cinematography, Michael Kahn’s razzle-dazzle cutting and James Horner’s suitably sweeping score. The screenplay, such as it is, appears to bear a co-writing credit from John Sayles which is nice knowing since it means he was probably able to raise an entire independent feature budget from his writer fee in order to make a movie he actually cared about.

One of the main reasons the picture is so forgettable might also have more to do with the ho-hum by-the-numbers direction provided by the thoroughly unexciting Mark Waters. Someone with more flair or panache might have nudged this picture a little further into something more memorable. At least it would have had style – something resembling a personal voice rather than feeling like it was cobbled together by studio marketing analysts.

There are a lot worse family fantasy adventures than The Spiderwick Chronicles to foist upon your kids, but with the wealth of classic material available out there, one wonders why this picture would come close to anything resembling a first-choice.

The recently released disc is presented in a 2-Disc Field Guide Edition which means that the cover bears a fake wax seal holding the cover closed with Velcro and that the two discs are crammed with the usual assortment of EPK-styled extra features."Spiderwick Chronicles" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment

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THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fable of the Holocaust through a child's eyes

A CINEMATIC 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, EASTERN-RITE NATIVITY AND FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY: Join me in this special celebration of cinema as each day I will be publishing a review in honour of this season of good will and focusing on films and filmmakers who have made a contribution to both the human spirit and the art of film.

For the SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS, Klymkiw Film Corner gives to you…

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) dir. Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Richard Johnson, Rupert Friend and David Hayman

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

This movie should not work. By rights, it should be an utterly unpalatable and, even offensive, overtly manipulative and exploitative drama that renders the tragedy of genocide to something resembling fairytale Holocaust porn, especially since the story is told with three extremely huge hurdles for an audience to overcome. The first hurdle is the entire cast of British actors playing the roles of Germans and a variety of Eastern European Jews replete with full-on natural British accents. The second hurdle is the almost-hard-to-swallow notion that two boys could continue to sit on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at Auschwitz and not be noticed – by ANYONE. These are two formidable adversaries to making this picture work. Then there is the third hurdle – the ending. It’s powerful, alright, but getting to it strains credibility.

So, why then, is this a terrific picture?

Simply put – it works – in spite of the abovementioned hurdles, which ultimately, are not that strenuous for an audience to surmount.

The tale is a simple one. Bruno (Asa Butterfield - who plays the title role in Martin Scorsese's magnificent Hugo) is an eight-year-old boy growing up in the cozy, comfy and idyllic world of Berlin. His Father (David Thewlis), a high-ranking officer receives a new assignment and is transferred to preside over Auschwitz, the horrific Nazi death camp. He moves his whole family – Bruno, an older sister and Mother (Vera Farmiga) to a huge country home.

The death camps are just out of view of their new home, but Bruno soon notices that there is a farm he can see from a third story window – a farm populated by workers in striped pajamas. Bruno eventually and secretly makes his way to the “farm” where he meets a young Jewish boy, Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), who wears “striped pajamas” and lives on the other side of the barbed wire that entraps him. The two boys strike up a close friendship that grows ever deeper as the film progresses.

Bruno is innocent to the evil around him – his parents shelter him, to be sure, but his Father shelters the full truth about what’s going on in the camp from even his wife. Eventually, Bruno’s Mother realizes what her husband is presiding over when a young German soldier "quips" over the constant smell of burning flesh wafting over from the concentration camp. "They smell worse dead than when they're alive," he chortles, referring to the gassed Jewish bodies being incinerated. Her horrified response, the eventual disappearance of a Jewish prisoner who works as a domestic and the reality that a horrible fate awaits Shmuel begin to culminate in a spiral of emotional release and a whirlwind of tragedy.

The innocence of childhood against the backdrop of war is certainly not new territory, but what sets this picture apart from many others is the brilliant and consistent use of perspective. The point of view, for about 80% of the picture is that of Bruno’s. We are almost always seeing and hearing and experiencing things from the eyes of a child. This heightens our emotional response to the story, by forcing us to apply BOTH a perspective of innocence in addition to the awareness of adulthood (our own, that is). Remarkably, this does not split the focus, but has the unique effect of providing a sense of balance as we participate in the actions of the story – not in any journalistic sense, but in an emotional one.

Director Mark Harman presents the first shot of Bruno in the new house as he sits behind the bars of a staircase. Bruno lives in what feels like a prison. He is not allowed to leave the home - which is fenced in and patrolled by armed guards - nor does he have any friends. When he discovers a secret way out of his home/prison, he takes flight in freedom. While the irony of finding freedom outside the barbed wire of a Nazi death camp might seem cheap and obvious in black and white, within the context of this brave film it works quite perfectly. The two boys on both sides of the fence are innocents in the face of war.

One picture I am reminded of when thinking about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, is Louis Malle’s immortal classic Au Revoir, Les Enfants – a picture that also details the doomed friendship between two children on opposite sides of the fence (as it were). Malle’s picture is rooted, however, in memory. The perspective is that of Malle himself who chose to cinematically fictionalize his own experience as a child who was friends with a young Jewish boy during occupied France. The story is always filtered through that of a much older man who reflects back on his REALITY. The Boy With The Striped Pajamas, on the other hand, creates its OWN reality within a completely different structure – that of the fable.

And this is precisely why the picture works. It is, for all intents and purposes a fable – a succinct tale that uses its figures in the landscape to teach us a moral lesson and, like all good fables, the didactic qualities of the form are supported by storytelling of the highest order. On one hand, one might find that the moral lesson of the picture is rooted in Bruno's denial of his friendship with Shmuel to a Nazi officer. This betrayal causes Shmuel to be severely beaten. Bruno, feeling shame and remorse over this offers to assist Shmuel at a later point which has dire consequences. However, Bruno's innocence - as a child - is a good part of why he denies his friendship with Shmuel. If anything, this is a huge moral lesson for Bruno within the context of the story. It is, however, the lynchpin in providing a moral lesson to the film's viewers - that the innocence of children is so pure and precious that they are primarily the real victims of evil in this world, and that adults, as nurturers and protectors must do everything in their power to create an environment of caring and openness in order to both protect this innocence, but to alternately provide the sort of guidance that will ensure that this innocence blossoms fully and naturally into adulthood.

In a nutshell, The Boy With The Striped Pajamas creates a world that first and foremost exists within its OWN world, while at the same time and in so doing, reflects OUR world.

Within this context, the hurdles, or, if you will, potential flaws mentioned earlier, seem completely in keeping with the form in which the film is presented to us. The use of British accents, the suspension of disbelief on a number of fronts and the unabashed telling of a tale with a clear moral could, individually and certainly all together, result in wildly disparate and perhaps even negative responses.

It’s a bold move, especially considering the subject matter, and while I am not in the habit of applauding boldness for its own sake, the fact that it works so exquisitely is cause for celebration.

One other interesting element of childhood innocence in the film is reminiscent of Hope and Glory, John Boorman's classic autobiographical tale of children growing up in London and its environs during the Blitz in World War II. Boorman's picture paints a portrait of young boys in wartime who view the world calamity as "fun". Certainly the opening scenes of The Boy With The Striped Pajamas set in Berlin have a similar feel as young boys cavort through the streets, oblivious to the evil around them.

Even the final mad adventure undertaken by Bruno and Shmuel is steeped in childhood innocence - two boys collaborating together as they scuttle through the concentration camp on a boyish quest.

By the end of the picture, I felt transformed. I also felt utter devastation and was unable to leave my seat long after the end titles credits ended. One of the things that contributed to the powerful emotional feelings the picture elicited is the subtle, seamless, powerful and downright brilliant shift in perspective.

The final portion of the picture shifts from the eyes of innocence to the eyes of adulthood (our own), and, with eyes wide open, we are finally faced with the grim realities of what face us – not only within the context of the film, but within life itself.

Mankind has always lived in a world where genocide seems to be a sad fact of our existence. Stories such as these are always important ones to be told. Often, one reads criticism that there’s “nothing new” that can be done when examining the Holocaust dramatically. This, of course, is utter nonsense. As long as mankind exists, we will always have genocide until we all face and accept that this reality is so sickening and appalling that maybe, just maybe, as a species we will finally do something about it. Hopefully it will be art that contributes to exposing us to the terrible truths, but will also assist in removing the very definition of the word “genocide” from the dictionary – EXCEPT within a historical context.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas may ultimately not be for everyone, but it’s a beautifully directed and acted tale of innocence maintained – in spite of the horror and pain of war.

Witnessing innocence NOT being lost is what finally moves us to both tears, and hopefully, to action.