I didn't get the cause and effect relationship between the kid's childhood at the end of World War One and his growing up to be a fascist leader. The child in this movie has long hair, wears frilly clothes and people keep mistaking him for a girl. In this regard, he's more like a little Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt than Hitler. The movie is based on a story by Jean-Paul Sartre. I don't know what he was trying to say. I'm surprised that Sartre thought the kid saying he didn't believe in prayer made him a future Nazi. The kid was American, the son of an American diplomat. How did he end up as a Nazi-like dictator riding around in a Mercedes? It would probably have been a better movie if it had cut the ending where we see him as an adult.
I watched it on The Criterion Channel.
Franklin Roosevelt as child.
It reminded me of what Nabokov said about Sartre and Camus, that their novels' existentialist themes were tacked on rather than being the natural outcome of the story. I don't know how closely this movie stuck to Sartre's story, but the dictator thing was definitely tacked on at the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment