The thing is, if it were *more* surreal I think it would have made more sense. I'm not offended by humor in that setting, or anything. I think the idea of seeing people who have an attitude that protects them from despair in a place like that is great. So it's not the idea the movie's putting across to me that doesn't work, but the way it's executed, for me. I think a lot of people probably did get through the Holocaust by giving meaning to their experience in their imagination-that's a good thing. But in this case the story just didn't seem to fit the experience.
I mean, it's really not true that we "can't imagine" what it was like. We can't imagine what it feels like to live through it or experience it maybe, but we know what it was like. We have evidence and films and testimonies. Didn't he even do research and then toss it out? There are certain things we do know, and if those things made it impossible for things in the movie to happen, they were just not explained. It reminded me of reading a fanfic where the person wants to use something for angst but then can't deal with it in any realistic way. Not that I think these things have to be dealt with realistically--it's just it seemed like the way this movie used it seemed like it was trying to have it both ways. It wanted to use the Holocaust because it has a heavy meaning but then change it to fit the plot instead of making the plot work around that. And since the movie was about a triumph over ugly reality I felt like the triumph was just to say, "Let's pretend it was like this instead to make my point."
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Date: 2004-08-14 08:14 pm (UTC)I mean, it's really not true that we "can't imagine" what it was like. We can't imagine what it feels like to live through it or experience it maybe, but we know what it was like. We have evidence and films and testimonies. Didn't he even do research and then toss it out? There are certain things we do know, and if those things made it impossible for things in the movie to happen, they were just not explained. It reminded me of reading a fanfic where the person wants to use something for angst but then can't deal with it in any realistic way. Not that I think these things have to be dealt with realistically--it's just it seemed like the way this movie used it seemed like it was trying to have it both ways. It wanted to use the Holocaust because it has a heavy meaning but then change it to fit the plot instead of making the plot work around that. And since the movie was about a triumph over ugly reality I felt like the triumph was just to say, "Let's pretend it was like this instead to make my point."