great WWII movie, but relevant to today?

Rating: 9/10 (3 November 2012)

Just about everybody agrees on how important and how moving this film is in exploring the problem of how to assign responsibility for the terrible things that happened during the Nazi era. But, watching it today, I wondered if it overreached itself. The final words of the judge to the convicted Nazi judge are, roughly, "You became responsible for the millions of victims the first time you sentenced a man to death whom you knew to be innocent." It's a fine sentiment, and one we hope we would try to live up to today. But how realistic is it? Is it anything more than poetry, high-sounding phrases? If it is truly meaningful, then I don't think the lessons have been learned, because similar things are still happening. While they are not comparable to the atrocities of Nazi Germany, the same kind of corruption is still with us. When America feels threatened by terrorists, its justice department finds legal justifications for torture. In Texas a governor refuses to save a man from execution even when DNA evidence proves his innocence, for political reasons, as the public, frightened by crime, cries out for blood and a scapegoat. The Nazi era came to an end, thank goodness, but its venality, corruption, even traces of its brutality, are still among us today. And, sad to say, they probably always will be.