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A+ |
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A+ |
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A+ |
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A+ |
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The banality of evil
by John S (movies profile)
Feb 2, 2009
5
of
6 people found this review helpful
Many years ago, while in Europe I saw one Russian movie about the Russian Civil War in 1920. There was an amazing episode in this movie – a Red Commander needed two boats to carry on his troops to the other side of some river, and he was an intellectual, a learnt student of Hegel, Kant ( and Marx, of course..), idealistic communist, etc. But the boats were full of White Tzarist prisoners guarded by Red Army soldiers, a bunch of simple, ordinary, illiterate countrymen, and he shouted at them that he needs these boats. When the guards said but how, they are full of the Whites, he said: “I do not care what you are going to do, I need these two boats in a half an hour for my troops!” When he came back - he, the outstanding graduate of the Moscow University, the humanist philosopher and great believer in the communist ideal- he was shocked to see that, yes, the guards had carried on his orders, they simply drowned all of the Whites in the river and he had his boats ....
So as it is in “The Reader” – “... how ordinary people can absolve themselves of all responsibility for facilitating evil....how ordinary people can commit terrible acts simply because the acts are performed systematically and within a socially sanctioned context that does not demand or encourage personal accountability”. And further on:...”Any widespread government program rests on ordinary civil servants who staff the halls of bureaucracy, who type and file the paperwork. These are the people “doing their jobs”; they obey orders and follow the letter of the law without questioning its content. The law assumes the role that conscience often plays. It tells them what is right and wrong to do, and they obey”.
Is it really so difficult to strike a deal with the devil? Imagine, the Government acts by Law to restrict the rights and liberties of, let say, the redheads (because of some “scientific” discovery that the redheads are genetically prone to killing) and you have a colleague who is smarter than you (you know that very well and this pisses you off every day...) and you know that he/she is a redhead although he/she had changed the color of his/her hair. You want badly his/her job, it is more money, prestige, etc. You don’t believe in this crap about genetically prone killers, but..you can get his/her position so easily!..and one day you simply pick up the phone and make a report...
Common, how many people in this country had the courage and the decency to stand up and shout angrily when the truth about this “head on the mantel” in the White House leaked out to the public? After Katrina disaster? No, it was simply much more easier to close eyes because of safety or political correctness or shear laziness...I am not kidding while asserting that these librarians from Iowa ( or Ohio, I didn’t catch that from Jay Leno show) who had someone arrested for not returning a book for $14.00 are small scale Hanna Scmidts, simple ““small people” who swell with self-importance that they borrow from their roles as enforcers of state policy”....
But I don’t think that this is the main message from the movie – we understand that Jewish people will never forget the Holocaust and we shall NEVER forget this dark page in the human history. But are they going to FORGIVE one day the people who performed these horrible acts even if they are punished for their deeds?
And here comes Llanna Mather in the last scenes of the movie:
Cold. Unflinching iron stare. Tight lips.
Unforgivable.
Are the Jewish people in their right not to forgive?
The movie will definitely go for an Oscar. |
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