Although it is labeled "World War II", even if I love to cry while watching the movie, I didn't find any tears in the first 100 minutes of it. Although the plot of this movie has no ups and downs, it is just depression from beginning to end, and even made me pull out my phone five times to watch the time, but I still have to say that it is a good movie.
The plot of the story is not complicated: a Jew pretends to be a Persian with a Persian book halfway through in order to escape the Nazi slaughter, but because of this, he is selected by a Nazi party logistics officer to teach the other party the Persian language. . In order to keep the lies of survival from being seen through, the protagonist had to create a "Persian" out of thin air, so he began to use the names of Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps as the root to create thousands of "Persian" that did not exist at all. words and using them as bargaining chips to survive in Nazi concentration camps.
Although the plot is simple, there are many points worth writing.
There is only one cool tone throughout the entire film, the kind that pops into everyone's mind when they think of the concentration camps: the ever-grey sky, the misty mist, the grey-black uniforms of Nazi officers, the dirt and scrawny skin. Prisoners, and the gunshots that could go off at any time and the constant repetition of "Long live the Führer!".
There is no hope, and since the protagonist begins to lie, I have begun to imagine several possible endings, good and bad, all gray. And the only brilliance of humanity in the film comes from exploitation, which may be the most real Nazi.
This SS captain named Koch seems to be the supreme commander who has the power to kill everyone, but in fact he is just a general in charge of logistics. In other words, it's a canteen.
He is different from the murderous and cold-blooded Nazi in my impression. From the dialogue between him and the protagonist, we can know that he has never shot anyone, and he has no deep-rooted hatred for Jews; he yearns for a free and peaceful life, He loves food and can write poetry; and his purpose of learning Persian so hard is only to go to Tehran to find his brother (and possibly his gay man) to open a restaurant for the rest of his life after the war.
He seems to be an outlier, but in fact, the director tells you in every detail that he is no different from those cruel Nazis.
He asked the protagonist to record the list of prisoners in the concentration camp. Behind the seemingly meticulousness is his disregard for the lives of the people on the list.
One second, he laughed like a friend and told the protagonist about the good life he was looking forward to after the war. The next second, when he found out that the two words that the protagonist taught him had the same pronunciation, he beat the former in exasperation. He was dying, and he even ordered his subordinates to torture him so much that he would be worse off than death. (This is changed to Chinese, the homophones are enough for the protagonist to die hundreds of times)
And when he rescued the protagonist who was willing to die on behalf of others from the marching team, the quarrel between the two exposed Koch's ruthlessness even more. No Names", whose lives never matter.
It's only here that I understand why this film is a little boring at the beginning, because it doesn't want to shoot the vicious and crazy Nazi officer you want to see, he just points the camera at the most ordinary Germany far away from the front line Soldiers, they are so ordinary, they just perform their duties diligently every day. They're just a tiny screw in this massive crime machine.
But each of them is an accomplice. This is what the Jewish-American scholar Hannah Arendt referred to in "Eichmann in Jerusalem", the so-called "banality of evil", that is, no thought under the ideological machine , irresponsible crime. An evil that eliminates one's own thoughts, unconditional obedience to orders, and abandons the right to judge personal values.
I can't help but think that in the first few scenes, when learning "Persian", Koch once praised "What a beautiful language!" He used those wonderful words to write a song longing for a peaceful life. poetry. When he recites for the protagonist, the cadence should be matched with the tragic cries of soldiers beating Jews outside the window, and the seemingly peaceful and beautiful verses are written in the names of the victims he is persecuting. How ironic it is.
The executioner's romantic poems are written by the names of the dead, and the words of the survivors are remembered by the lives of their fellow men.
This is a very "hidden" film. It prefers to hide the "fragmented" details, silently and solemnly telling the terrible past that happened.
Except for a few shots, there is not much blood in a film about the Nazi concentration camp. The director just cut a few pictures when you were about to fall asleep, and reminded you of the passing of life with the beautiful composition of the golden section.
Changes in the protagonist's personality are also taking place unconsciously. In the beginning, he was just a cunning Jew who wanted to survive by any means, but this experience of survival in the concentration camp changed him - he experienced the torture of the quarry, was favored by Koch, and witnessed the The suffering of his compatriots, when he was deliberately postponed the "death penalty" again and again, when the original fear of death was numbed by the repeated gunshots, he had taken light on life and death.
He gradually gained a deeper understanding of the names that were recorded and crossed out. He no longer created words mechanically as before, but generated specific words based on the impressions of the people in front of him. He gave these dying people a whole new life in another language, more heart-wrenching and bloody.
What's more interesting is that the protagonist memorized the names of 2,840 "unknown people", but the whole film did not seriously explain his own name in several places from beginning to end. All the audience knew was the name of the Persian that he used falsely.
A "nameless person" who survived remembered 2,840 lives that were once alive, and when he said those names again, they resurfaced.
By the end of the film, the clever Koch had already arranged everything for his escape to Tehran before the Germans were defeated. However, when he proudly displayed the "Persian" he had learned at the customs, he did not know that what he kept repeating was only the names of the lives that disappeared under his hands. They shattered his dream of escaping punishment, as if resentful.
And the camera everything, the other side of the world. In the Allied barracks, the rescued protagonist is asked if he can recall the names of the people he was imprisoned with at the time.
"I remember."
"I remember the names of 2,840 people."
There are many ways of revenge in this world, but the protagonist chose the weakest one.
Live and remember.
Correct the names of the victims and put heavy shackles on the perpetrators.
As the protagonist slowly spits out the names of dead compatriots one after another, everyone in the shelter is attracted by his unhurried voice. Maybe many of them, like me, do not know German or French, and have no clue about the complicated pronunciation, but it is these unfamiliar and simple words that pierce everyone's heart.
Every face of pain that I had ignored for the past 120 minutes resurfaced, syllable by syllable.
Most people are easily numb to numbers, just like the number of new confirmed cases of the new crown epidemic every day, it is not painful to listen to. However, when the victims are no longer anonymized, the weight of history becomes clear, and the audience really realizes the unbearable shock from the long or short names.
Before she realized it, she had already burst into tears.
"Persian Language Lesson" abandons the intense emotional rendering or romanticized treatment like "Life is Beautiful", and chooses the more abstract form of "language", but also completes the reflection and accusation of the unjust war . Although the film did not have such a big audio-visual impact, and even the first half was mediocre, it was full of power and gave everyone a heavy blow at the end.
Small in size but powerful in strength—it was a dull roar, and it was also a mournful cry.
Lists can be thrown into the fire and burned, but sin can?
As the film represents, there will be at least two people in the world who will forever remember this absurd language. Those two people were not Reza and Koch, they were better known as: Victim and Perpetrator.
And in history, there are many, many more such "languages" -- using the most beautiful language to speak the most penetrating evil.
As long as someone remembers, they will never be forgotten.
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