Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Der Untertag

Finally, a world war 2 movie that does not capitalize on the emotions of the audience. It depicts the excruciating end of Hitler's tyrannical regime. The movie attempts to humanize the Nazis, a difficult feat but the results are ambiguous (how life is anyway) and fascinating. An introspective study of human follies, there were numerous scenes depicting the incomprehensible loyalty to Hitler. How can one individual inspire mass delusions remains an enigma. A mystery that the movie does not attempt to explicate. Instead it shows a physically weak Hitler, plagued by his illusions, who utters profanities one second and delivers a speech that impresses an entire nation the next. How can one man with very bad hair, comical mustache, and so uncool enchant an entire nation and intrigue the whole world decades later after his death? The movie does not pretend that it has answers to such questions. I don't know what it wants to achieve by showing such trivial details, like what Hitler ate for his last supper, how the crazy Goebbels couple poisoned their kids, etc. I'm sure it does not want to incite misguided empathy towards that Nazis. The people already know about their atrocities and no amount of humanizing them would result to understanding them. What the movie taught me is that evil lies within each and every one of us. It is not a magical abstraction that just happens. Hitler, the men and women who worked with him were human beings just like us. And we are capable of what they have done if we do not emancipate ourselves from mental slavery (from the great Bob Marley). We should not be afraid to ask questions, to disobey authority figures, to be different from the horde, to think for ourselves, and to attempt to comprehend those that are different. The movie does not provide absolutions to the Nazi crimes, instead it shows a country struggling at the realization of what is has done. How do you forgive youself and ascend from the ruins of your stupidity? Do you shoot yourself with a gun or do you face your errors and hopefully learn from them? Life, unlike the movie, is not black and white.

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