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I just don't know why it is that this movie so powerfully underscores the weakness of The Pianist, Schindler's List and scores of other holocaust movies. But I recommend it highly. The writing is so superior. All the characters are well developed and sympathetic. The action is intensely exciting. The story: Alan Arkin, a philosophical jack of all trades, and his camp cronies ponder a way to escape. They must leave or die. They know that having survived the initial gassing, they only have a few months to live as workers. Plus, they're being starved. They have also learned the hard way that groups of three escapees are ineffectual and groups of 13 too large. They've witnessed that fact over and over. They then decide to take all 600 prisoners with them at the same time, banking on the power of a human juggernaut. Unanticipated Russian prisoners show up from the front, serving as a catalyst for the escape and helping with the brilliant plan. I think because the writing is balanced and not sententious, you care about the characters much more and suffer along with them right to the end. I found everyone in Schindler's List intensely unlikable. This crew seems more realistic with both good and bad attributes. The Nazis are super nasty but not caricatures. They are shown to be bored, self-centered, larcenous and racist but not exhaustingly monstrous. They are the authoritarian bullies you've always hated who meet intensely satisfying fates. The victims do not bask in their victimization. So they're likable and relatable. The actual escape is thrilling and an achievement any director would be proud of. 600 make the attempt with about 330 survivors. The dramatic intensity is almost unbearable. Their audacity led to the camp closing. This telling comparison bespeaks the superiority of Escape from Sobibor as a drama: look at the the treacly sweet image of the girl in the red coat in the otherwise black and white Schindler's List. It is a bathetic Hallmark card next to the breathtaking quick cut in Sobibor from the pretty, newly arrived, young woman looking puzzled and apprehensive at the station to the scene in the garment-sorting building that follows immediately where her check coat is being examined after her murder.

Why would he plead with the hunters to spare the mother cat and then perversely watch the kitten lose weight and disappear. There's nothing about his occupation that does not intrude on nature. So why wouldn't he intrude and call a vet for the wounded cub? There are whole shows on Animal Planet about vets who fix and restore animals to wild habitats. His spoken concern for the dwindling ranks of maintain lions is thus ridiculous. An even bigger asshole photographer did a story about a baby elephant rejected by the heard and then torn to pieces by hyenas. This genre is not noble, it's just porn.

Watching Streep's creation of Helen Archer is a complete joy, from her poignant silences to her gemuetlich cabaret turn, humorous, tragic, moving but never maudlin. The character puts me in mind of that other sublime derelict from opera, Kundry, for whom it would seem Meryl has done workshops throughout her career. In addition to her Helen Archer, We have her femme fatale, Jill, in Manhattan, Madeline Ashton, a woman cursed with a Kundry-like longevity, like that of Emilia Marti from The Makropoulos Case, albeit actively sought and dearly paid for. Don't get me wrong, I loved the performance of Katarina Dalayman in the Met's most recent production of Parsifal, but, during my second viewing, not in the opera house, but in an HD theater, it became clear that one really needs an actress as mindful as Streep to make this spectacular acting opportunity realized to full satisfaction. She should take off for a year to work on it. And her voice. Yes, she will be required to sing high B and low B on the same word, Lachte. That vocal firework explodes as Kundry describes the ancient sin that occasioned her self-imposed curse. It has kept her alive over a thousand years in many guises: Herodias, Gundryggia and many personalities the audience never hears about. Now in the employ of Klingsor, she is required to tempt and bring down Parsifal, yet another vulnerable protector of the Grail. Streep would have amazing growth potential in that second act. For here she needs to communicate infinite wisdom, dumbness, innocence, guilt, power and impotence simultaneously. In the third act she is without a single line or note to perform, and yet a central character transformed as much as Parsifal himself. I'm sure she could meet the challenge of performing in silence with impressive creativity. As in all great scripts, this libretto is open ended in a way that would afford a freedom of interpretation any actor would sign on for. She could pull it off vocally, too. Back in 1977, before Broadway singers were miked, she did Lillian Holiday in Happy End and was a knockout vocally. In fact, one was surprised later when she chose to do non-musical roles. It was an operatic voice. Yes, 37 years have passed. But a Parsifal movie would not require the vocal heft required to fill the 4,000 seat Met opera. Moreover, computers do amazing things these days to add and subtract age. Yes, of course, it's four and a half hours long and Wagner, so it wouldn't exactly pay for itself, but would probably end up being definitive with the involvement of such an artist.