I saw this movie on Christmas Eve in a very packed city theatre and overall, although at times lacking details, the movie was good and I would recommend this movie for all viewers.
Good:
The plot, which, I’d have to say, turned out to be the movie’s biggest strength, is very intriguing. A 1944 assassination and coup attempt against Hitler and his Gestapo planned by some of his own soldiers, of which, a central figure is played by Tom Cruise. It was the last of fifteen known assassination attempts against Hitler. And that’s where I myself confess my own ignorance, as I had no idea that any of those organized attempts, with a considerable number of people involved, even took place. Here, of course, I have to clarify and say, by his own soldiers’, that is.
For the most part, I’d have to say the movie’s well researched and convincing and thus, makes it a fascinating viewing. I was also very much intrigued by the what-if speculation on what would’ve/could’ve/might’ve happened if the attempt was successful. The coup itself, in fact, sparked a bit of a debate among some of us after the movie. The year’s 1944. World War II is nine months away from being over. Germany is loosing. Would nine months really make that much of a difference? It’s too late. It’s simply too late. Is it though? Is it really too late? How can it be too late in a time where every minute/second mattered?
So yeah, some of the other intriguing questions came up during and after the movie, along with the question of Germany’s socialism. How it arose? And why it arose? And what it lead to at the end. National socialism vs. fascism. What is the difference? Is there a difference? Then somehow, we also got on the topic of Russia. And the regime there. Was there communism there or socialism? Difference between Stalin and Hitler? Was there really one?
Very good movie. Makes you think a lot.
Not So Much:
I thought the movie lacked character developments, and precisely, the clarification of the motives of these Germans. Who needs the motives, some might ask? Just kill the bastard! True, but we’re talking about German soldiers here. We, as viewers, all want him dead, no doubt, but why do they? Why do they want to eliminate their leader, who they so long and so loyally served?
The movie does start out with Stauffenberg, a German soldier, played by Tom Cruise, forswearing his loyalty to his leader and his country because of the murderous outrages Hitler has committed. That was the only place, unless I missed something, the explanation was offered. But because it’s so late in the war and the fact that Germany’s loosing, it’s still unclear what other motivations are driving Stauffenberg. And what about the other conspirators in the movie? Nothing in the movie is mentioned about their motives.
And last but not least, I’d like to briefly comment on Tom Cruise’s acting, and I will try to do it as nicely as I possibly can. My New Year’s resolution: Be nice! Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, here it goes:
I’m simply shocked and appalled. I personally can’t even begin to understand how he was even chosen for that role. He is a complete miscast as the German soldier. And the acting! Oh My G-d, the acting! It’s not that it’s bad… It is well, um, very bad. I’m totally kidding. Well, sort of. It’s just he tends to overact like he does in most of his movies, making his character seem unbelievable. What saved this movie, I think, was the fact that although he’s a key player in the operation, he actually shares the leading role with some of the others of more compelling performances. I loved him in the movie, Jerry Maguire, though. Two thumbs up for Tom Cruise!
And that’s all.
This is my second time around reading this book, because I find it absolutely brilliant.
“A triumph.” – Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review.
There is nothing I can say about this book that would sound better that that. Anything in addition will sound too cliché.
Summary: “Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.”
A sample of a fantastic dialogue:
“What were you praying for, Ma’am?”
“Not for anything. I don’t pray anymore. I just talk.”
“What were you talking about?”
“You won’t understand, baby.”
“Yes, I will.”
“I was talking about time. It’s so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place – the picture of it – stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.”
“Can other people see it?” asked Denver.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Someday you will be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it’s you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It’s when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. Where I was before I came here, that place is real. It’s never going away. Even if the whole farm – every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is there and what’s more, if you go there – you who never was there – if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can’t never go there. Never. Because even though it’s all over – over and done with – it’s going to always be there waiting for you. That’s how come I had to get all my children out. No matter what.”
Denver picked at her fingernails. “If it’s still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing
ever dies.”
Sethe looked right in Denver’s face. “Nothing ever does,” she said.
I just read a literary review of “Oscar’s Books,” a new biography of Oscar Wilde, by Thomas Wright. Wright became interested in Oscar Wilde at an early age, and had read “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” twenty times before he was fifteen. His passion for Wilde’s writing grew into an obsession “to touch every book Wilde had ever touched.” When he won a $5,000 prize from the Royal Society of Literature, he spent it all at Sotheby’s on one of Wilde’s personal copies of Swinburne’s essays and studies.
The interesting thing about this biography is that it is entirely speculation based on Wilde’s personal library, and the times of his life in which he read certain books. There are certain aspects of this style of “biography” that will irk a lot of people, as it’s generally considered better to know than to imagine when writing about a person’s life, but there are things about this book that strike me as very interesting. The author took the time to do extensive research into rare archives on Wilde’s book collection, and from there, learned much about the writer’s life. True, what he didn’t learn from the archives, he suggests, but that’s what interests me: the legacy we leave through the books we own.
My grandmother once gave me twenty dollars (a very big deal at the time) to go through her gigantic library and carefully paste her professionally printed calligraphy nameplates on the inside of each cover. It took me an entire weekend to do it, but I learned so much about her life that I hadn’t thought to ask her just by reading the titles of all of her books, by reading the clandestine notes in the margins, the greetings and professions of love on the title pages. Needless to say, realizing what books my grandmother owned sparked some very interesting conversations between us.
Books (the actual printed kind, not just the idea) are very important to me. I love scanning people’s bookshelves. I love buying used books that have Polaroids and notes and shopping lists tucked inside. I love learning something about someone through their reading habits. I can’t imagine living in my apartment without my books (as Wilde survived in prison for two years with only a prayer book), and I can’t imagine anyone else not having a bookshelf. It makes me wonder what someone could learn about me from my bookshelf, and what legacy I’ll be leaving through my personal library.
I just read a literary review of “Oscar’s Books,” a new biography of Oscar Wilde, by Thomas Wright. Wright became interested in Oscar Wilde at an early age, and had read “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” twenty times before he was fifteen. His passion for Wilde’s writing grew into an obsession “to touch every book Wilde had ever touched.” When he won a $5,000 prize from the Royal Society of Literature, he spent it all at Sotheby’s on one of Wilde’s personal copies of Swinburne’s essays and studies.
The interesting thing about this biography is that it is entirely speculation based on Wilde’s personal library, and the times of his life in which he read certain books. There are certain aspects of this style of “biography” that will irk a lot of people, as it’s generally considered better to know than to imagine when writing about a person’s life, but there are things about this book that strike me as very interesting. The author took the time to do extensive research into rare archives on Wilde’s book collection, and from there, learned much about the writer’s life. True, what he didn’t learn from the archives, he suggests, but that’s what interests me: the legacy we leave through the books we own.
My grandmother once gave me twenty dollars (a very big deal at the time) to go through her gigantic library and carefully paste her professionally printed calligraphy nameplates on the inside of each cover. It took me an entire weekend to do it, but I learned so much about her life that I hadn’t thought to ask her just by reading the titles of all of her books, by reading the clandestine notes in the margins, the greetings and professions of love on the title pages. Needless to say, realizing what books my grandmother owned sparked some very interesting conversations between us.
Books (the actual printed kind, not just the idea) are very important to me. I love scanning people’s bookshelves. I love buying used books that have Polaroids and notes and shopping lists tucked inside. I love learning something about someone through their reading habits. I can’t imagine living in my apartment without my books (as Wilde survived in prison for two years with only a prayer book), and I can’t imagine anyone else not having a bookshelf. It makes me wonder what someone could learn about me from my bookshelf, and what legacy I’ll be leaving through my personal library.
I’ve been hearing about Margaret Atwood for a while now, but it was only recently that I began to read her novels. And now I simply can’t get enough of them.
So I decided to go on here to write my first review on one of her books.
Alias Grace
In her book, Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood takes us back to the nineteenth century to tell us the story of Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant, who gets convicted for her involvement in the brutal murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress, to which she claims she has no memory at all. To discern her character’s status as murderer or merely accomplice, the author spins the controversy every which way possible, leaving us with only one question in mind. Is she guilty or not?
What gets me the most about Atwood, though, besides the plot, mystery, creativity, and character development of the story, are the depth and complexity of her sentences.
This is my favorite passage in the book, which consists only of a few sentences. But how much substance does it hold! Take a look:
“It is morning, and time to get up; and today I must go on with the story. Or the story must go on with me, carrying me inside it, along the track it must travel, straight to the end, weeping like a train and deaf and single-eyed and locked tight shut; although I hurl myself against the walls of it and scream and cry, and beg to God to let me out.
When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or someone else.”
These lines cut straight to my heart, and it suddenly clicked in my mind what the author was trying to show all along; they, these sentences alone, hold the vital point of the book; the trick that Atwood is playing. Or at least, that’s what I think. What is that point?
Read the book and fill in the blanks: Like the author of the book says at the end, “the true, historical character of Grace Marks will always remain an ¬______.”
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