More on Nazi Kitsch
I thought we got beyond this after “Hogan’s Heroes” was cancelled. Why do the characters in “The Book Thief” talk English with German accents? We understand that they are not English. We get that a movie aimed at English audiences about people who speak a non-English language will usually suck up to the exhausted intellects of these audiences by having the characters speak in English, instead of having them speak their native tongue and subtitling the film (like the remarkable “Downfall” did). I get it. Audiences do increasingly accept subtitles but the larger audience isn’t quite there yet.
But why, in heaven’s name, do they have an accent? The accent does not correspond to an artistic rendering of foreign speech. Do they sound quaint and funny and foreign to each other? Can’t they speak properly?
No, they don’t. But American audiences have a ridiculous preference for foreigners who sound foreign even to each other.
This film — and the book– caters to the audience’s desire to feel good about their sympathies for a little girl who hates the Nazis, loves books, and has an endearing old German man looking after her. And a gruff woman who– SPOILER ALERT– has a heart of gold.
All right– it’s Oscar season. Nazis– check! Little girl who loves books — check! Gruff but lovable old man — check! Glorifies reading? Oh yes, Hollywood loves seeing itself as promoting literacy. Except when they glorify working-class thugs who make educated, cultured “elites” looks weak and vapid and always get the hot girl.
Okay, we’re missing the character with a disability, but everybody has an accent– CHECK CHECK CHECK! I smell Oscar contender! (Check back to the extremely mediocre “The Reader”— Ah! I see where it came from! And the relatively banal “The King’s Speech”– how we love the illusion that privileged people are really quite admirable because they allow us to admire them for not being as aloof as we thought they thought we thought they were.)
This is not really a film about a little girl living in Nazi Germany. This is a film about how modern audiences feel about little girls, and Nazis, and old men (who I know would do anything– ANYTHING– for me if I were that little girl), and the faint but digestible taste of titillation, and how much you want people to know that you are smart because you just love books so much that you approve of stealing them, especially from Nazis.
Let’s leave aside the fact that the Nazis actually loved books, and art and poetry and music, but it didn’t make them better people. Please, please, please, leave that aside, because it’s almost as unbearable as this film, which the New York Times rightly called kitsch.