See comments by obo-3. I have to agree on many of those weaknesses, although I have a talent for suspending my disbelief in order to appreciate some finer qualities of a movie. This didn't receive a very high rating from me, however, I have stringent guidelines.
I do think it is worth seeing merely because it does a good job of showing us a different perspective. For our generation to look back into history and judge those who were naive as doing nothing to stop the atrocities... I do not make excuses for those who saw the horror with their own eyes and turned away, or worse, gave up their neighbors... But for example, in this movie, when the local military knocks the town around a bit, some of the fine British believed it to be an isolated incident and just didn't believe that Jews were really being rounded up and carted away like livestock elsewhere. They trusted the word of Mussolini and believed in the greater good of the governments and aristocracy of the time.
This is a touchy subject, but in our age of media coverage, even I doubted the stories I read in the paper of the atrocities in eastern Europe and thought it may be propaganda and overblown. I just couldn't believe it what was happening in our modern times and in Europe. This disbelief was coming from an educated person (in political science, no less) who knows a bit of history. I still could not believe that was happening, until I saw the pictures of the refugee camps and the burned out homes with my own eyes, and finally, until I shared a flat with a man whose parents and child were driven from their homes. I can fully believe that some Europeans at that time, would not see the big picture to stop Hitler and his cronies until it was all too late. It frightens me, even to see how easy it happened.
It is worth seeing this movie just to understand the perspective of how quietly and quickly the Nazi/fascists did what they did.
I do think it is worth seeing merely because it does a good job of showing us a different perspective. For our generation to look back into history and judge those who were naive as doing nothing to stop the atrocities... I do not make excuses for those who saw the horror with their own eyes and turned away, or worse, gave up their neighbors... But for example, in this movie, when the local military knocks the town around a bit, some of the fine British believed it to be an isolated incident and just didn't believe that Jews were really being rounded up and carted away like livestock elsewhere. They trusted the word of Mussolini and believed in the greater good of the governments and aristocracy of the time.
This is a touchy subject, but in our age of media coverage, even I doubted the stories I read in the paper of the atrocities in eastern Europe and thought it may be propaganda and overblown. I just couldn't believe it what was happening in our modern times and in Europe. This disbelief was coming from an educated person (in political science, no less) who knows a bit of history. I still could not believe that was happening, until I saw the pictures of the refugee camps and the burned out homes with my own eyes, and finally, until I shared a flat with a man whose parents and child were driven from their homes. I can fully believe that some Europeans at that time, would not see the big picture to stop Hitler and his cronies until it was all too late. It frightens me, even to see how easy it happened.
It is worth seeing this movie just to understand the perspective of how quietly and quickly the Nazi/fascists did what they did.