The Devil's Arithmetic
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Movie Reviews of The Devil's Arithmetic
Movie Review: DISTURBING, TRUE, EXCELLENT
Summary: 5 Stars
THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC
The Holocaust happened and is a horrible part of history. It is also a delicate subject to discuss, read about, or watch on the big screen.
I rented this movie because I am a fan of Ms. Dunst and because this time period in history fascinates me. I can barely stand to think about the Holocaust, yet it is something that keeps calling my name, so I try to read about it and learn all I can.
This movie -- also a book -- was well done. A young girl, a typical teenager who does not want to partake in her family's religious rituals or listen to stories from the survivors of death camps, is magically transported back to 1941. The entire town, including Hannah, are immediately picked up and put into a death camp. This would include her favorite aunt, who is now a young teenage girl in 1941. A few other 1980 relatives are also present at the camps. As Hannah's story is told we are witness to such tragedy and evil, yet the goodness of human nature is also evident over and over again.
Ms. Dunst plays Hannah, past and present with style and grace. The conditions of concentration camps are horrible enough when reading about them but when you actually see and hear and witness this first-hand through the wonder of movies, it is heart-breaking.
I totally enjoyed this movie and cried myself senseless throughout. Because senseless is what the Holocaust was. If movies like this can help educate and show people how things were, it is a great learning tool. This book and/or movie should be shown in high schools so students can really understand what happened back then.
Read the book or watch the movie, or do both. You will not be sorry!
Thank you!
Pam
Movie Review: Highly Recommended !!!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Devil's Arithmetic
The Devil's Arithmetic:
This is an outstanding visual performance where a Jewish teenager, rather secular indeed, goes against her will and innermost beliefs to celebrate the Passover festivities at an ants' house. Rather discontent with the festivities, she is chosen by traditions to open a door and then she goes into a trip that will change her religious attitudes forever.
She trespasses the limits of time, as inside a time machine, and finds herself immersed into the World War II epoch. She experiences firsthand the atrocities that the Nazis performed on the Jews- and others for that matter- and has first hand understanding of what living in the concentration camps really was about and meant.
As I watched this rather inspiring and educational movie, the only thing that crossed my mind was to pass the DVD to my children so they could learn more vividly and insighfully about the Holocaust, its violence, its murderers, its atrocities, and all its nonsense.
Of course, I have not read the book on which this movie is based, but for starters, I utterly believe it is a great choice.
If you are a Jew, it would be a great idea to pass it to your children, and if you happen not to be a Jew it would also be an extremely educational experience for your children and for all the family.
Highly Recommended!
Movie Review: another perspective
Summary: 5 Stars
As an adult survivor of child abuse raising an extremely spoiled and very loved teenager, who at this point in her life is only interested in tatooes, I found this movie very helpful in dealing with the "why" of why the unabused generations, not only of the holocaust but abuse of any kind, do not understand the "victims". Now when my daughter so carelessly and innocently hurts my feelings by not understanding where I come from, I remember this movie and thank God that her life, like Hannah's young life, is so untainted and whole and good and free of abuse of any kind that she actually has the time to think of "normal" teenage things instead of horror. I will never wish my daughter understood me better again. The only way she ever could understand me is to be as horrifically abused as I was. Hannah had to go back and visit the past so she would understand her ancestors. I do not want my daughter to go back, I only want her to move forward.
I would recommend this movie to anyone who is having a generational problem with adults who have been through some kind of trauma and the children in their lives who do not understand their emotional scars. Then I would have a discussion period afterwards, comparing the aftereffects of the holocaust with the emotional scarring of adult survivors of child abuse. We have all been through our own holocausts.
Movie Review: The Devil's Arithmetic - video and novel
Summary: 5 Stars
A fellow teacher let me borrow this (and I subsequently bought my own copy) to review before I taught a unit on the Holocaust. As a high school English teacher, I plan to use the two in tandem to illustrate how books become films. It's an excellent lesson in how film makers make subtle changes to the written word in order to accommodate the screen. Additionally, this film is great to use in the classroom as a way of bringing the horrors of the Holocaust to the students' consciousness in a way they can understand. While the film takes us on one girl's journey from her village to the cattle cars and then to a concentration camp, the film spares the viewer of the graphic details that might be too much for a child to see. A teacher should be careful, however, to explain that what the students will see is watered down because the reality of what happened is too bloody, graphic, horrific to show in the classroom.Movie Review: Excellent depiction
Summary: 5 Stars
Kirsten Dunst is bored with her family's Sabbath dinner and her old aunt, who was in a concentration camp. When she answers the door for 'Elijah' during the dinner, she is transported immediately to her aunt's life as a young girl in WW II Poland and Germany. She knows she is from the current time but realizes what is happening to her. Without giving away the story line, suffice it to say she learns what her aunt endured and also learns never to forget this time in history. She also learns how one person makes the ultimate sacrifice for a friend. I read this book when my daughter was small and it moved me greatly. The movie was done exactly as the book was written and it left nothing out. You must see this movie, if only to know what man is capable of doing to other humans.