Fahrenheit 9/11

Well, I finally got to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight. I had mentioned in an earlier post that Michael Moore might influence the election but I am not so sure about that anymore.

I have to say, the movie transports its message in a very powerful fashion. However, I am not the one Moore was trying to convince. I am an outsider, a foreigner, a German living in Germany. What good does it do that I know that there where no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and that no link could be found between Saddam and Al-Qaeda?

The American public ought to have been convinced by this movie but obviously it wasn't. President Bush may very well be re-elected. Or maybe the public even acknowledges that it was being lied to but doesn't think that Senator Kerry would be any better.

This film is meant to drive Bush out of office. It is propaganda. Is it bad because of this?
I think Fox News is as one-sided. Propaganda goes both ways.

Anyway, so many people talked about this movie, praising it, denouncing it... in the end it won't make a difference. The DVD release probably was meant to boost the Democratic Candidate Kerry. I don't know whether it does. But I guess the impact of the film on the election could have been greater if it had been released only one or two months prior to the election.

Good thing though it wasn't released on September 11th. That would have appeared tasteless.

Some more movie recommendations

I have been a lazy blogger, recently.

But I went to the movies. :-)

I really enjoyed Girl with Pearl Earring. This is the title of a painting by Dutch 17th century artist Vermeer.
The movie is a fictional version of how that painting came to be.

Also interesting but not so recent:

Open Range by Kevin Costner. Beautiful landscape shots! I especially liked the slow, slow build up to a thrilling "bullet-intensive" climax.
Not your conventional Western movie, if you ask me.

I don't know whether it will be released in the US but it's worth it:
Der Untergang.
This movie is about the last days inside the Führerbunker based on the autobiography of Hitlers secretary Traudl Junge.
Quite a shocking movie for me. I think this is as close as it gets to see Hitler's menace and yet the reason why he was so appealing to the folks at the time. (He could appear quite charming or caring in private life.)

Next movie I am planning on watching is Fahrenheit 9/11. Let's see what all the fuzz is about.

A few movies to watch

After recommending some books I would like to draw your attention to some movies that I consider worth watching.

Let's start with a classic: Billy Wilder's One Two Three. Set in Berlin July 1961 (one month before the Berlin Wall was erected) it tells the story of a CocaCola representative being troubled by the daughter of his boss, who ...

***Spoiler*** (mark the text to read the spoiler)
runs off to East Berlin and marries an East German Communist.
*** End of Spoiler***

It is a very fast paced comedy. You 'll have to watch the movie like 10 times to get all jokes.
Back in the 60s it flopped, probably due to bad timing of the release. With the wall up noone seemed to like a comedy about East and West Berlin.

Another movie set in Berlin is Good Bye Lenin. I mentioned it at the bottom of an earlier post. It is a serious comedy that brings us back to the next most significant point of Berlin history: The fall of the wall in 1989.

***Spoiler***
a young man is at a forbidden rally in East Berlin when his socialist mother sees him being arrested. She falls into a coma and awakes miraculously months later. But everything had changed. The wall was gone. Western products in the shelves...
Doctors say that the sudden shock of this could kill her. So her son sets up a show for her pretending that the GDR (East Germany) still existed in order to save her life.
***End of Spoiler***

This movie is about a loving son-mother relationship, about hanging on to things that are bound to change, about loss of things you know and about new beginnings.
It won several international awards, really worth watching... Not many good movies come from Germany these days, but this is one of them.


For now this must be enough. I will continue some other time with movies not connected to Berlin.

A few books to read (Part One)

Hi, in my previous post I recommended Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It really is a good yet shocking book.

But I have decided to let you in on a few other literary works that I recommend reading.

Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt by Dieter Noll:
This is about an adolescent during World War II who goes through a process from naively believing nazi propaganda to disillusion and resistance.
One could argue that it is for WW2 what Remaque's All Quiet on the Western Front is for WW1.

Werner Holt is not available in English as far as I know, so read Remarque, if you haven't already. It is stunning.

If you are interested in ancient Rome and like crime stories read John Maddox Robert's SPQR series. These books are very well researched and a lot of fun to read. All the most important characters and events of the late Roman Republic are described from the point of view of a fictinous son of one of the most important arisocratic families of that time, the Metelli. This guy, Decius, meets Crassus, Pompeius, Cicero, Cato, Catilina, Coldius, Milo, Caesar and even Cleopatra.
The first book of the series is called The King's Gambit. The second book is about the Catiline conspiracy. It is my favourite from the series.
The author works his way from 70BC (book no. 1) to 49BC (book no. 9) I am sure he will cover Caesar's death eventually.
The series is full of suspense yet funny and very educational as well.

Speaking of Rome: For the early Empire (1st century AD) I recommend Robert Graves' fictional autobiography of the Emperor Claudius which comes in two parts.

There is a great BBC mini series available on DVD which is believed to be the best mini series ever put on film. Playing time about 12 hours. Have food and drinks close to the couch because you 'll get hooked easily.

To be continued...

Filmmaker Michael Moore

Michael Moore is an interesting guy. He is the most successful left-wing activist in the US although coming only from a highschool background. He is from Flint, MI and used to edit a paper there until he made the famous documentary Roger and Me in 1989.

In this movie he shows the downfall of his hometown from the car capital of the world to the worst place to live in the US (according to Money Magazine) I couldn't find the list of worst places online but you 'll find it in the movie. He criticised General Motors for laying of thousands of workers while earning record profits.

Until now Moore has continued to show and attack aberrations in society. During a tour through the country promoting his book "Downsize this!" he made a new film: The Big One. In this movie, he addresses a variety of issues leading to the climax of the film when Moore interviewed Nike CEO Phil Knight. He was trying to convince him to stop producing shoes in Indonesia with child labor and instead to open a shoe factory in Flint.

In 2003 Moore received an Oscar for his documentary "Bowling for Columbine". His reception speech made news world wide because he attacked President Bush in it.

Bowling for Columbine is a large scale assault on the gun lobby in the US headed by Charlton Heston.

Moore's style is to use a mix of compassion and humor. He shows compassion for the victims and ridicules the people he deems responsible. However, he never makes fun of them directly. Instead he trys to let them make fools out of themselves on their own.

His new movie Fahrenheit 9/11 is competing at the Festival in Cannes right now. It has been very well received there.
This one is said to be aimed at unsure voters of the US. Moore is trying to convince them to vote Bush out of office. Apparently Moore is showing connections of Bush's clan to Saudi princes and the Bin Laden family. Furthermore he is reporting that Bush spent half of his time as president on vacation till 9/11.

Anyway, Moore is an interesting guy because he might be decisive on who will lead the US for the next four years.

The scriptures of Mel

Yesterday night I went to watch the Passion of the Christ.
It touched me. It is really incredible how much torture a human being can endure. Especially if (according to the bible) he did it freely. He chose to endure it.

I felt much compassion, especially for mother Mary during the film. However, faith-wise the film didn't have any effect on me. Maybe it was due to the nature of the project. Gibson intended to show the suffering, the Passion. He did. Hard to believe how much blood fits inside a human being. Much criticism has arisen from the way Gibson combined the four Gospels into his own version. That alone isn't a good point because every movie about Jesus does that.

I can understand why jews today feel scape goated in that movie. Some of the characters (especially among the high priests) look like the caricatures the Nazis printed in their yellow press paper "Der Stürmer". But even in Mel's version not all the jews want Jesus dead.
So I wouldn't say that the movie is anti-semite. It is as anti-semite as the bible, I guess. So if we decide to live with the amount of blame that the bible casts on the jews we have to live with the message of the movie as well. I think the romans come off at least as badly. Pilate as an incompetent administrator and his soldiers as bloodthirsty beasts.

Final impression of the movie: Much ado about nothing.
Moving? yes
Inspiring? No
Hatemongering? Not really.