life is beautiful

I thought the film was pretty good. To be able to make a comedy and not really say anything thats offending is pretty tough, but this movie pulls it off. It was also emotional at parts.
The similarities between this and the boy in the striped pajamas, they are both fictional and give a theatrical sense of the holocaust. Life is beautiful was a comedy where the boy in striped pajamas is a drama. Life is beautiful is  more historically accurate i would think.
It didnt seem like the kid had to work from what i saw, so i would think it's not exactly what it was like but i dont know for sure.
This is a different type of black comedy than South park which pokes fun at the event. This is making a funny movie without offending people, saying negative things, or mocking anyone/anything.

the boy in the striped pajamas

From the little bit i saw of the movie, i really enjoyed it. Smole was my favorite character, so i was sad to hear he died. I was sad that the elderly doctor who peeled potatos and helped the boy with ther hurt knee, was killed. i  thought the movie had a grim, sad, but inspirational swing to it.
   The movie shows the childrens experience a tad but not to the full extent. It shows smole working and stuff as well as getting punished but somethings are unreal, like that the guard son could just walk up to the fence and talk to smole. It also barely shows Smoles everyday life.
   I wasn't a big fan of the family because they were nazis but i liked their kid. The dad was a concentration camp officer and the mom was just ignorant. I dont feel sorry for them because the father killed jews left and right so now he knows how it feels to have a child taken away from him like many others in the holocaust. i didnt see enough of the movie to tell you how id write the ending.
  I don't think this is the only movie id reccomend for the holocaust. Its a great film and very touching as well as gives some good takes on the holocaust, but i dont think it's historically accurate enough to be the one and only movie to go off of.

imaginary witness #2

Stephen Spielberg makes the point that to make a good holocaust film, you need to be graphic. i agree to a sense because it gets the point across about how bad it was. i think there are ways of doing it without graphicness but not to the same degree. you have to see things to belive it for some people.
Elie Wiesel says that we should not attempt to make films about the holocause because we will never capture the true feeling of the real event. i feel like we have to try because it educates us even if it's a tad off. we cant go off of nothing but i do see her point. we shouldnt believe the films are completely true. it is hard to produce the unimaginable because of censors today and the viewing audience would be small so it wont be a blockbuster, money-making film.

night and fog

The film really got to me. It gave a really dark and gloomy impression of the constentratration camps which they were to a tee. The image of the nazis just throwing the bodies down the hill and making soap really disgusted me. They were just handling the bodies so disrespectfully and actually making goods from them which made me feel nauseaous.
  The film was graphic and made me feel sick but i agree with Spielberg, if you don't see it you don't get the full effect. There are other ways of getting the point across but i think being blunt gives you the full picture of what occured.

Swing kids blog

   At first the three young men were very close, if not best friends. As soon as the one was forced into the HJ and the other boy joined Arbid got distant and mad. Arbid hated Nazi's and whoever went with them. Towards the end Thomas and Arbid had become enemies almost. Peter tried to keep them together but to no avail. Propaganda was used to wash Thomas mind.
   This is a docudrama because some parts were fabricated such as the dance moves. Back at that time there wasn't many flip moves. There was also alot of drama between the three friends. The whole story seems a little iffy but i still enjoyed the movie.

   I chose the class " holocaust through film and literature for many reasons. I wanted to expand my knowledge on the tragic event and understand it. I've always had an interest for history and the Holocause is a big part of our worlds history. Being as it's my senior year, i figured it was one of my last chances to learn about there horrific events because i don't know if what im going to school later in life will present me with this kind of information.
   I hope to take away a new understanding of the holocaust from this class. Taking a viewpoint on the matter would be nice. I hope to walk away from this class more educated on the matter.