Ghetto

I stumbled across this film by accident. And boy am I glad I did. I was hooked from the very start. A superbly made film. A great script, story and camera work. And the lighting is very good.The story is about a lot of Jewish people living in a ghetto during the 2nd word war in Lithuania. The main plot confuses you with the story of a German officer,who you can't tell or not is trying to save the Jews in the Ghetto. He was/is an artist and so he is drawn to the Jewish artists within the ghetto. They form a theatre while the Russians get ever closer to liberating them. And well I won't say any more and won't spoil it for anyone. Just watch it. It is an awesome film.

I saw this film when I spent some time in Vilnius. Not long before I head spent some time in the genocide museum in the Lithuanian capital and I was fascinated by there history, especially during WWII. Since this movie was spoken in English, and everyone was talking about it I went to see it in one of the big theaters.

It added to the experience to be in the city where the story took place, but regardless, it was very well done, it just seemed to be unsure whether it was a musical, play or war movie. That made it very original but also confusing at times. I see it as a lighthearted approach of something good during very bad times. Meaning that the tone of the movie switched often and took the audience of guard, which is a great thing, but it should have been done more subtle.

I must add that the acting was superb, and my hat's off to Hülk, great performance!

In 1942, in Vilna, the Nazi annihilate 55,000 Jews and squeeze the 15,000 survivors in a seven blocks ghetto. The twenty-two year old sadistic commander Kittel (Sebastian Hülk) is assigned to administrate the ghetto in the capital of Lithuania, becoming the master of life or death. When he finds the gorgeous Hayyah (Erika Marozsán) sneaking with one kilo of beam stolen from the German army, he sentences her to death; but when he is informed that she was a former successful singer, he decides to activate the old theater and promote shows in the ghetto. The Jew Chief of Police Gens (Heino Ferch) uses the theater and a sewing factory to save as much lives as he can; in his ambiguous position, he kills Jews to save lives of others.

"Ghetto" is an impressively cruel and depressive movie. The first point that impresses the viewer is certainly the cruelty and sadism of Kittel. Sebastian Hülk has an awesome performance in the role of the despicable Kittel and deserved a nomination to the Oscar. The screenplay does not spare the reality of the lives of the dwellers of this ghetto and their fight to survive in times of war, including the beginning of their resistance. However, it does not show the final destruction of the ghetto after a failed uprising on 01 September 1943 organized by the first Jewish partisan unit in Nazi-occupied Europe (the "Fareinigte Partizaner Organizacje" - the United Partisan Organization). The beauty of Erika Marozsán and the dramatic and conflictive position of Gens brilliantly performed by Heino Ferch, are also amazing. The music score gives a touch of class to this great Lithuanian production. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Ghetto"

A different and unusual take on the holocaust. "Ghetto" is almost a dark comedy-musical, if you had to put it into a category ( if such a category exists...) I don't think it's fair to compare it to "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List", because this film really does it's own thing. Not everyone's cup of tea, but then I wouldn't really consider this a mainstream film. There were elements which really brought Yiddish theater to mind, in a clumsily beautiful and poignant way. I was appropriately entertained, moved and depressed, so I enjoyed this movie very much, but again, not everyone would want a movie to elicit that combination of emotions. There were some very beautiful scenes, in terms of cinematography, and despite some distracting, less than natural lip-synching, I found the music really beautiful. This film is worth watching, as long as you do so with an open mind and an appreciation for originality.

This movie has apparently not been released in the US, but I found it available on DVD in Beijing, of all places. It takes place during the war in the ghetto in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania and shows the brutality of war, with a Nazi leader forcing Jews to perform as actors, and using the Jewish police to carry out orders. It is somewhat melodramatic with some comedic elements, but overwhelmingly brutal. I don't know is this is based on a true story or fictional. The acting was generally good, with some high and low points. There have been better holocaust films, but as one of the genre, this one is not too bad. The film was in English, but was likely dubbed. Amazingly it was a Lithuanian-German production, which in itself is somewhat ground breaking.