Movie Review

The Long Engagement (France)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Starring: Audrey Dodoux, Jean-Pierre Dafsan, Joan Claude Dreifuss, Tiki Olgado, Denis Lavant, Dominique Pinot, Jodie Foster, Michel Robin A French girl, Mathilde fell from a ladder at the age of three in her childhood and has since become disabled and crippled. She and her childhood companion, Manache, were childhood sweethearts. As time went by, the two grew up to be more affectionate. With the spread of World War I, Manash was conscripted into the army, and before joining the army, Manash and Mathilde had topped off their marriage contract. \n On the front lines of Somme, France, under fire, Menashe and four other young men who feared war shot themselves in the hands as a group, hoping to escape their bloody nightmare. Their deed was later discovered and they were court-martialed. The five wounded soldiers who had fled the war were sent to be punished in the savage land between the German and French armies, where the intense firepower of the belligerents would give them little chance of survival. \n Mathilde receives a letter from the troops informing her of what has happened to Menashe and putting him on the death list. Matilde, who was waiting at a distance in her hometown for her fiancé to come home and get married, did not want to admit her tragic fate. Her intuition told her that if Manash left her, she would sense it. Although the smoke of war has cleared, Mathilde has to begin a difficult journey of the heart.　　For the next two years, Mathilde read over and over again the 70 letters Menashe had sent her from the battlefield, expecting Menashe to suddenly appear in front of her one day. Every time she got closer to the truth, her heart became more and more fragmented, and she began to imagine how Menashe had passed his last moments with difficulty, and those scenes were like sharp knives cutting through her heart. And yet, Mathilde remained resilient. Determined, hopeful, and stubborn, Mathilde gradually sees the truth and connects the helpful pieces of information, beginning to uncover the little-known story behind the five unfortunate soldiers and their brutal punishment. Mathilde is deeply impressed by the horrors of war and the fishy bloodshed that leaves a lifelong imprint on those involved ......　


Schindler's List (USA)

Director: Steven Spielberg Main Cast: Eminem Nathan Ben Kingsley "Schindler's List" is a true recreation of the German entrepreneur Oskar Schindler's protection of 1,200 Jews from fascist murder during World War II, a true historical event. Schindler, a German speculator, was born in 1908 in Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. He was a member of the Reichstag party at the beginning of World War II. He was a womanizer, a pleasure-seeker, and a known local firm member of the Nazis. He was very good at using his relationship with the head of the stormtroopers to seize maximum capital. In occupied Poland, the Jews were the cheapest labor, so the shrewd war-rich Schindler in his new enamel factory hired only the victims specified in the Nuremberg race law. These people were given a job in the enamel factory, and thus were temporarily safe from the ravages of the killing machine, and Schindler's factory became a refuge for the Jews. Those who worked at his place were protected by working on important war products: the enamel factory supplied tableware and bullets to the troops at the front. By 1943, the brutal bloodbath in the Krakow ghetto shattered Schindler's last illusions about the Nazis. He had already known about the crematoriums and gas chambers built by the Germans and had heard that instead of water, poison gas flowed from the nozzles in the bathrooms and steam rooms. From that time on, Schindler had only one idea: to protect as many Jews as possible from the death of Auschwitz. He created a list of workers he claimed were "necessary" for the proper functioning of his factory, and by bribing Nazi officials, he was able to keep this group of Jews alive. He was increasingly suspected of violating racial laws, but each time he was resourceful enough to avoid Nazi persecution. As always, he continued to rescue Jews at the risk of his life. When a train transporting his female workers arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenli by mistake, he broke a large fortune to chase them back to his factory. Soon after, the Soviet Red Army arrived in the city of Krakow and announced to the surviving Jews working in Schindler's factory that the war was over. One night when it snowed heavily, Schindler said goodbye to the workers and was seen off by the more than 1,000 Jews who had been rescued, who handed him a testimony, automatically initiated and signed, to prove that he was not a war criminal. At the same time, they knocked off their gold teeth and their private stash of gold jewelry and made it into a gold ring, which they presented to Schindler. The ring was engraved with a famous Jewish saying: "Saving one life is like saving all of humanity. Schindler couldn't help but shed tears. He was chagrined that he still had a gold tooth because such a tooth could have saved at least one more person if he had sold it. Schindler had done everything he could for his salvation. All the money he had saved during the war was used to save Jewish lives. ...... After the war, Schindler lived in seclusion in a small town in Switzerland, penniless and living on the relief of the Jews he had helped. After a few years, Schindler died in poverty. According to Jewish tradition, Schindler was buried in Jerusalem as one of the "36 righteous". The film ends at Schindler's grave, where Jews who had been rescued by Schindler before the war and who were in their twilight years decades later, as well as their descendants, walk past the grave on behalf of their ancestors and place a stone representing "gratitude forever" on the tombstone as a tribute ......