Yes. He did not treat the Holocaust comically, but rather juxtaposed a comedic character to this barbarism. We see the juxtapositioning happening even earlier in the film, for example where the protagonist impersonates the education official. I think it is this juxtaposition that gives the film its haunting quality. We see a lovely man, swimming amongst demons, and employing his comic personality to survive. He later employs the same to protect his family, as we saw in the case where he "translated" the German instructions into Italian. Note the cold brutality of the German soldier, next to the haunting yet comedic translation. It was a very serious business.
But the theme of trying to shield your children from terrible things has a strong resonance, and there was no stinting on the horror of their predicament, and the father died in the end, so it was not an artificially happy ending.
This is certainly true. I thought it quite excellent, and heartwrenching. I could not easily sleep afterwards, and it takes quite a bit to rough me up that way (usually, I am out within a minute). The hopelessness of circumstances made me want to organise an army and obliterate the Germans. No. I wanted to capture them all, and allow the Jews to torture them to death. The film did a great job in provoking my protective instincts of children. Killing children provokes a rage within me as it is, and when one puts such an adorable face on the "children" as the face of the protagonist's son, well-- sign me up. I am ready to kill or die.
I liked the man's wife tremendously. Wasn't she just adorable? Not a remarkable looker, but gentle, yet with enough loveliness and defiance to keep the thing real interesting. The scene in which she crawled under the table toward her husband-to-be, was heavenly. In my heart, I cheered for that man.
The death paid for the rapidity of liberation and the swiftness of reunion, as it were, to prevent it from seeming to easy.
Very good, and true.
In the end, to have such a fate befall such a family is almost unbearable, and the humor merely makes it possible to bear, it does not trivialize it.....
I think this is true to a point. Toward the end, the protagonist's humour became part of his increasingly frentic but courageous attempt to live and preserve his family-- and this made it harder for me. It would have been much easier had he merely yielded in defeat, as it seems most Holocaust movies depict the victims. I'm used to that sort of thing. But seeing the man gaze seriously at his hiding son, then marching humourously with a gun in his back, looking at the boy, all the while knowing he would never see him again, well, I do not take that sort of thing very well. In fact, not at all.
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