The Passion of the Jews ... DEVASTATING! Excellent movie, but devastating.

Rating: Null/10 (8 March 2004)

First of all, I hope that no one takes my title out of context and thinks that I like watching movies that show the suffering of ANYONE, unless, of course, the suffering is on an obvious villian or villians, thank you.
I also need to mention that I have seen this film at least three times before I even HEARD about what Mel Gibson was working on.
Anyway, after seeing "Passion of the Christ", I thought that was THE most devastating (but excellently done) film ever made about Anything or Anyone that took place in History. Then I remembered watching "Saving Private Ryan" (another Spielberg movie, excellently done) and it's being so intense that I literally had to remind myself a few times that I was in my living room watching a video; the intensity of the scenes and the sound made me almost FEEL bullets whizzing by my head.
Then I remembered THIS movie.
It is one of the hardest movies to sit through. And it's hard to sit through almost the ENTIRE TIME.
Even though everyone and their brother has at least HEARD about the Holocaust, this is a movie about two things. A)Yes, of course, The Holocaust, and B) a person who was a womanizing, sweat-shop owner type (who was, at first, only nice for the sake of production) member of the Nazi Party who eventually SAVED so many people from annihilation.
It is one thing to see the story of some "Plain old guy" save a life or two,... but to see someone who was FRIENDS WITH THE ANNIHILATORS manage to save over a thousand Jewish people and still be more or less friends with the Nazis during that time ...
All I can say is WOW!!!
Before any violence even takes place, a dark cloud forms just by watching the Jewish people being marched toward the ghetto and there's that girl screaming out "Bye, Jews!" over and over again along with other people being nasty.
A) It's like watching a whole bunch of Jesuses being marched down the road to their eventual crucifixions while the crowd throws insults and objects at them. B)You don't know whether you want to jump into the film and strangle her for her hatred (or her parents for teaching it to her, perhaps), or cry because of her innocence of not knowing better because the parents TAUGHT her that level of hatred because of buying into what was Politically Correct at the time and place.
I know it was just a fictitious character, but such things as hatred toward specific types of people being taught by the parents DO happen in REAL LIFE.
I won't tell what actually happens with the women at Auschwitz (or was it Dachau?), but that was another one of the most chair-gripping "Oh no ... Oh GOD NO!" moments in the picture.
And, of course, there are all the "Liquidation" scenes and the especially significant scenes with "The Little Girl in Red", which requires a cast-iron stomach to watch at that point in the film. By the way, don't you, Dear Reader, just love that euphemism "Liquidation"? ACCH!
Not to mention, all the people who get picked off simply because ... well, they were ALLOWED to be. Double-ACCH!
I read earlier of a comment about how there should have been more focus on Hitler, as it was a movie regarding the Holocaust. But this movie wasn't about Hitler's List of People He Wanted Dead; it was about Oskar Schindler's List of People He Could Afford to Keep ALIVE!
Even after all the carnage is over, it still makes anyone who is a human being get a huge lump in their throat when Oskar is breaking down because of however many more he could have saved with his own possessions.
As I said in my title and opening of this commentary, this is one of the best movies ever made about something that took place in history, but it's also one of the HARDEST movies to watch.
I really gotta give Spielberg credit not just for making this picture, not just for releasing it with as much as it has intact (after editing and getting past the authority boards and such), but ESPECIALLY for having the "juice" to get American television stations to show it without a single frame edited or altered. Even the private parts you DIDN'T want to see when the prisoners are given physical exams and they're so skinny that their spines are almost glued to their belly-buttons.
Take a bow, Stephen.
Aaannnnd ... cut!
That's a wrap.