Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

Use this form to submit comments directly to the Asylum moderators for this forum. We're particularly interested in truly outstanding posts that might be added to our FAQs.
You may also use this form to provide feedback or to call attention to messages that may be in violation of our content rules.

You must login to use this feature.

Inmate Login

By default, logging in will set a session cookie that disappears when you close your browser. Clicking on the 'Remember my Moniker & Password' below will cause a permanent 'Login Cookie' to be set.

Moniker/Username: The Name that you picked or by default, your email. Forgot Moniker?	Examples "Rapper", "Bob W", "joe@aol.com".
Password:	Forgot Password?
	Remember my Moniker & Password ( What's this?)

If you don't have an Asylum Account, you can create one by clicking Here.

Our privacy policy can be reviewed by clicking Here.

Inmate Comments

From:
Your Email:
Subject:

Message Comments

Original Message

How could it offer answers and be "real"?

Posted by sjb on January 26, 2009 at 20:01:01:
I think one of the strengths of the film is that it doesn't even try.

This is as much about ordinary people (or an ordinary person) becoming (or being) so calloused and insensitive that they allow or participate in mass murder, as you can get. She was thoroughly ordinary (it takes, and there are, all kinds).

And her illiteracy wasn't an excuse for the killing that she participated in but it was an aspect of her being that effected how she operated. She chose the girls for killing in the camp at least in part because they could potentially know her secret after reading to her but she would have chosen people no matter what and if you examined everyone's choosing criteria you'd doubtless find all sorts of quirks.

And her illiteracy had nothing to do with letting the women in the church burn. How much more banal can you get than the "we couldn't let them out because we were responsible for them and they'd have been running loose" excuse. Add in her defense of "What would you have done?" (to the judge) and it does get to the heart (and the truly disturbing nature) of the banality of evil story. It's all much simpler if the people involved are sociopaths or full on murderers.

In the end it's a love story... Fiennnes' time recording the books was based on his love for her. His not coming to see her was based on his disgust with what she did. He was also confused about how he could feel so much, so deeply for someone who was capable of such terrible things. He also seemed to want to believe in some kind of redemption.

She obviously had guilt about what she did. She wept when he brought her to the church and she killed herself rather than go back into the world. It's quite possible that besides being ashamed of her illiteracy, she was willing to take the wrap for the church burning deaths because of that guilt.

"The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson