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Alexandra 2022-12-25 20:48:53

After "Schindler's List", "The Pianist" and "Life is Beautiful", the fourth film I watched about Jewish concentration camps. Although the ending is somewhat condescending to the Germans, the angle is novel, and the magical reality woven by language and names is deeply moving. Human nature is also portrayed in a more comprehensive way, from the persecuted to the perpetrators, there are things that make people feel pity and embarrassment. Reza is not the role of Wei Guangzheng. He is greedy for life and is afraid of death. He is clever and eager to survive. Every choice is a typical example of an ordinary person facing a desperate situation. However, he has witnessed too many compatriots being killed, so he took the initiative to replace his Italian brother. Death, and the tears slowly reciting the names of compatriots after they escaped from hell by chance, these are all self-awareness and sacrifices that ordinary people with conscience can make. The Nazi chef's suspicion of Reza, from being different to a certain spiritual attachment, shows that even if he chose to join the Nazis, he is not a simple killing machine, but still has the emotional and spiritual pursuits of normal people. Of course, this does not forgive his "sin of mediocrity". In his bones, he regards Jews as lackeys, and he thinks that his detached spiritual world is still built on the bones of millions of Jews, and he is not worthy of sympathy at all. I don't know, when the coffin is closed, how to judge whether the person lying in the tomb is a good person or a bad person? If you follow a person's life, it's rare for a good person not to do a bad thing, and a bad person to do some good things too. To others, I only wish there were fewer wicked people in this world. To myself, I just need to ask, is this world better or worse because of me?

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Extended Reading

Persian Lessons quotes

  • Gilles: [about his daily fourty words in 'Farsi'] Inventing them is not a problem but to remember them all, it's impossible. And there will always be more. Many more.

  • Klaus Koch: [Koch took Gilles back after he was put to move to another camp] You would risk your life for those nameless people.

    Gilles: Those aren't nameless. Just because you don't know their names. At least they aren't murderers.

    Klaus Koch: I'm not a murderer.

    Gilles: No. You just make sure that the murderers eat well.