2005-08-09
I Watched A Movie and Then I Thought About It
ok, I know this is lame but I do it sometimes anyway -- this is a post I did in myspace this morning and usually I try to not post the same thing in both because then what is the point of having two spaces, but I really want to get the "I have a new template... and my period!" entry out of here, and lately I've been too constantly sweaty and stressed to write more than run-on sentences in more than one cyber-area at a time. So, I beg thee thine forgiveness, and proffer this:
I just looked at a trailer for the documentary, 'Paper Clips', about kids in Virginia (I think) who collected one paperclip for each individual killed in the Holocaust. My internet connection is too slow for me to actually stream a trailer of moving pictures, but the music works. I got the chills. That evocative "miracle" music gets me every time. 'Fields of Dreams' has it too.
This past weekend I watched 'Downfall', about the last days of WWII, inside Hitler's bunker in Berlin. I've been reading a book by a German theologian who lived in Germany through WWs I & II, who defines faith as "ultimate concern", i.e. existentially defining yourself by something. He talks about there being true and false ultimates, and nationalism / nation is the prime example he gives of a false ultimate, because of what he'd witnessed in the German people through the wars. He says that when someone realizes that they've put their faith in / given ultimacy to something that is ultimately finite and fragile they experience total existential breakdown and devastation and that often they do not recover.
So, I was watching this movie about the people closest to Hitler, who'd essentially given him their lives, and there were also scenes about the German military police, and child soldiers, and dead or terrified civilians during the bombing of Berlin, directly after I'd been reading that book and thinking about it quite a bit. And I don't know, I guess I was PMS-ing too, but the movie affected me more than a movie has in a long time. I think the last film that did was 'Requiem for a Dream'.
I was watching all these people -- these really really evildoing and evilbeing people -- and watching their hearts and being be progressively broken in front of their very eyes. And it was tragic! But, what a fucked up sentiment to have about the demise of the Nazis! I don't find the defeat of Hitler tragic, let me assure you of that, but -- and maybe this is the other half of the disturbing nature of the movie, besides the tragic part -- somehow the whole conflict was put back into the realm of individuals side by side, instead of fused masses moving like thumbs over the map. And even though the sample was people like Eva Braun, Joseph(?) Goebbels & his wife, and the last-standing soldiers of the SS, I think it's good to portray war and mass death like this -- and particularly WWII, discussions of which often lead to head-shaking about the choices of the German people. And, having been brought to sense the personal tragedy of these people, the most dedicated, murderous Nazis, I thought about the thousands of people who had put their faith in the nation.
I keep wanting to say -- not that I feel sorry for Nazis. But, I do. I don't feel support for them -- neither those of the past nor those now -- but I feel like they as individuals are tragic. I don't know how to explain. I got the same sense from looking at a picture of one of the people who bombed the tube in London. It conflicts with my socialized sense of what is ok. I can't really say out loud that I feel bad for terrorists, without someone leaping down my throat about how they're unrepentant, sadistic, civilian-killing hell-bastards. And I know that. I just -- well I'm still thinking about it. I guess that so far I think the moral of the story is "people make mistakes -- sometimes very very bad ones". Take that as you will. I don't feel like writing a very very long essay here right now, though I have to add something about Nietzsche and Martha Nussbaum to make that last moral make sense.
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and, in other news, 6 days 'til my oral exam (hominahomina!) and 8 days 'til holidays and seein' friends and family!! shoop shoop it's in 'is kiss!!
pansycline at 10:31 a.m.