Did This REALLY Happen?
It's not Robin Williams' best movie - not even his best drama. Nor is it the best holocaust movie - not by a long mile. But Rachel is eleven and while she's been introduced to a lot of this stuff as historical fact, she doesn't really know the "story" of things like the holocaust. As we were watching Rachel kept asking questions. Why do the Jewish people live in such nice houses? (Well, these were some of their homes before the war - but notice that there's a lot of people living together - and they don't have any food - and there's barbed wire and armed guards making sure they stay there - this isn't the camps, this is what they called the Ghetto) Why do they wear yellow stars? (To show that they were Jewish) Why can't they be out after dark? Why can't they have a radio? And on and on the questions came.
And in the end the questions were, "Did this really happen?" In broad strokes, yes. This is what happened when Germany occupied Poland. Jewish people were herded into neighborhoods and many were shipped off on trains never to be seen again. And now she has some story to go along with the facts of what she's learned about the holocaust. So, did this really happen? Well, I don't know about this guy Jakob or the barber and free haircuts. But this kind of stuff really did happen, yes.
Like when we watched The Help Okay, again, not the greatest movie on its own**, I get it - not bad, though, and it certainly had its moments. But Rachel seemed to have trouble believing that people could treat other people like that just because their skin color was different.
Or they were Jewish.
The world HAS changed. Or at least the world IS changing. Each generation gets a little farther away from the prejudices of the previous generation. I'm not naive enough to think that prejudice is in any way gone - or even close. It is going away...very slowly. One kid at a time. And there will probably be new prejudices that come in their place, I know, but for now it's good to hear Rachel not only be surprised that people really could act that way, but disgusted.
And its also important that she have some stories to tie all this to. We have Schindler's List - maybe she'll be ready for that soon. And lots of other stuff too...
Yes, Rachel, it really did happen.
*It's a worthwhile watch - not the greatest movie, but a decent Hollywood adaptation of a holocaust novel set in the Jewish Ghetto in Poland in the late war. It falls to stereotyping and probably oversimplifies the major themes of the novel (which I've never read - but I might someday) - but most of the criticisms that I've seen complain that it's not as good as the 1975 German adaptation of the novel...can't say that I've ever seen it, so I can't compare. I can only say that on its own merits, the film stands pretty well.
**Again, we tend to fall into stereotypes. All the blacks have the same poor grammar and all live same oppressed life - all the whites (but one, of course) are ignorant of their racist superior attitudes and live the same, monolithic lives of entitlement... And maybe in the South in the Sixties it was exactly like that...but I bet it was a lot more complicated than the movie makes it out to be. Still, for what it IS, it's not a bad movie.
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