marshm

So how inaccurate and meaningless are the Academy Awards?

The Shawshank Redemption - ZERO awards. Dr. Strangelove... - ZERO awards. Citizen Kane - 1 award (screenplay). Shichinin no samurai - ZERO awards. Rear Window - ZERO awards. Vertigo - ZERO awards

And yet a movie like Titanic can garner 11. I can think of 10 movies that might be deserving of such a number of Oscars since Ben Hur (righty) won that many. Titanic ain't one of them. In fact (at the time of this writing) Titanic is rated 6.9 - a number that, I would guess, may not put Titanic in the top 1000 movies.

Oh, I forgot... IMDb voters are likely not as "knowledgable" as the elite cattle who vote for Oscars.

Ridiculous.

I must confess to a lingering fascination of the condition of Germany, and the German peoples, immediately following WWII. The country, of course, was broken - destroyed - in ruins. More importantly, so were the people. The real life stories I have read speak to so many aspects of their condition: shame, starvation, disbelief, shock of the revelations of the evil of their own doing, and despair. Always despair. They are stories of how the human spirit can overcome the most horrific nightmares and conditions.

This movie drills to the heart of many of those issues, sometimes subtly, sometimes brazenly. Rossellini was never better.

I consider this movie to be a must view on two levels: First, it is quite frankly one of the best moves ever made. Easy words to throw around, and said too often about too many films. Those words apply here. Second, it is a must view for the understanding it can provide of what the world - particularly Germany and Europe - were like after WWII. It belongs to a small suite of movies (such as Schindler's List) that show real insight, a true view into the world during this bleak time in history.