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Composer: Ophir Leibovitch
Starring: Bettina Goring, Katrin Himmler, Monika Goth, Rainer Hoss, Eldad Beck, Niklas Frank, Yael Bedarshi, Adi Piper, Samuel West
More info: IMDB
Plot: A look into the lives of the descendants of the top Nazi officials who worked under Hitler's command.
My rating: 8.5/10
I don't mean to sound like an advertisement for Netflix streaming but I love this service. I get to discover all kinds of wonderful films that I normally might not find. This is one of them. It's absolutely fascinating on so many levels. One thing that couldn't escape me, even after the picture had long finished, was how it must feel to be the offspring or close relative to someone who did such horrible things. Think about that for a moment. You're a small child. Your father runs a huge death camp but all you knew of your time there was a beautiful home and garden (on the camp grounds), a privileged lifestyle and a loving family, not ever knowing what was going on just a few feet away. Then suddenly the war ends and your father is tried, convicted and sentenced to death. And now you spend the rest of your days without a father, not knowing until years later what the truth was. All you knew of him was he was a good and loving father and husband. Wow. That's got to be a major kick in the balls. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to deal with that. And to maker matters worse, people look at you with hate and contempt even though you had nothing to do with your father's sins. That's just one scenario and there are several people in this documentary that have similar and varying stories. One man has spent his entire life trying to find anything positive about his father. Think about that one. It's leisurely paced with a undercurrent of a subdued score. The moment that will always stick with me is when one of the subjects visits the concentration camp his father ran. A group was visiting at that time which included the son of a man who was murdered in that camp. These two share a moment that is so powerful and genuine that no fictional film could come close to achieving. Wow. I'm tempted to buy the DVD but I can't find out if it has any extras. I'd buy it now if it does. I'll probably wait until I'm ready to see it again and get it (if it's no longer on Netflix, that is).
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According to http://www.filmmovement.com/filmcatalog/index.asp?MerchandiseID=298 the DVD contains a short film called "Kun 65".
ReplyDeleteI signed up with Netflix a few months ago. I have mixed feelings about it. "Hitler's Children" isn't available on Netflix in the UK, but luckily I can spoof my IP address to access the American content. If they don't block it. There have been calls from the (greedy) film industry to block access to the USA Netflix site, but they haven't done it yet. I hope they never will, because the UK site only has about half the content.
I like Netflix, but it needs to become a lot better if it will ever replace discs, as some rather stupid film fans say it already has. The selection is limited, apart from big budget films made in the last 20 years. For instance, when Anita Ekberg passed away I decided to watch a few of her films on Netflix, and out of her 50 films how many did I find on Netflix? None! Not one! Not even on the American site.
Yeah, for as much as I like Netflix streaming as a value for what you get, it's shocking at how little they have pre-1970. I'm a huge fan of http://instantwatcher.com/ where you can set parameters like genre and year range. They currently have only14 horror movies prior to 1970. It's sad.
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