B-


The movie's RT rating is 94% with the average rating being 8.3/10 or so, while its Metascore is 87. The IMDB score, however, is a mere 6.9/10. I have rarely ever seen such a smal correlation between the two. Trusting the reviews more and knowing the movie's plot, I thought I'd be in for a gem of a film. This Hungarian depiction of the Holocaust, however, left me with rather mixed feelings. I am not sure where exactly this thing went wrong, but it certainly did go wrong big time. Either I didn't "get it" or I just consider this film's approach of Holocaust just not...right. A movie that ends with a quote gping like "Next time someone will ask me about the concentration camps, I won't tell them of the gruesome cruelty there. I will tell them of the happy times there." just doesn't quite work for me, you know...

The scenes in the concentration camps themseleves are well-done. Most English-language films that deal with the Holocaust don't show the actual camps and what goes on in there. This one does. It still remains on a very tasteful side, though and doesn't show it as gruesome as it really was. The film is well-acted and its young protagonist can carry the movie. But the whole message of it, mixed with a somewhat shoddy editing makes this movie just mildly good instead of a great flick it could have been.

Kertész's thesis that the there is something fundamentally good about the Holocaust and all of the suffering. Not simply that it's good in that it makes you stronger, etc., but that it, the actual suffering, is good, that it itself can be the cause of happiness and goodness, not as a consequence, but in of itself.


The assertion is not new by any means, but this is an extreme form of it.

Okay, then I understood it correctly. Disagree with it big time.

I think that's because his argument seems to be that the Holocaust was a good thing, but I find that interpretation to be too simplistic. I think what Kertész is getting at is that the experience of the Holocaust had something in it which was good. Now mind you, that itself is a view that I think most if not the overwhelming majority will completely disagree with.