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 in a movie about people who speak a non-English language--aimed at English audiences-- will usually suck up to the exhausted intellects of these audiences by having the characters speak in English, instead of subtitling the film (like the estimable "Downfall" did).
So why the accent? Do they sound quaint and funny to each other? Can't they speak properly?
Here's why: 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 reading -- check! Gruff but lovable old man -- check! Glorifies reading? Oh yes, Hollywood loves seeing itself as promoting literacy, as worshippers of the sacred book.
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 relatively undistinguished "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 a film about a little girl living in Nazi German. 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 digestable 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 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.
"Did you know that your son has just killed the most important man in the entire world?" From "Parkland".
Well, well, aren't we important!
What is this crap? Even Aaron Sorkin used to do it... a lot. All of the major characters in West Wing at one moment or another would get into this coy, contrived shctick.
"I have to take a crap."
"Okay, but just so you know, the most powerful man in the world is now wiping
his ass."
Are they afraid that the audience doesn't understand that the guy they just shot in the limosine is the President of the United States (cue "Hail to the Chief")?
Like "Book Thief", "Parkland" looks like it is largely a projection of how we feel about ourselves feeling about the JFK assassination, and almost not at all about anything that really happened on that day.
Okay-- fair enough-- I'll wait until I've seen it before I comment any further on the film. I just honestly expect the worst, judging from the previews. There are clips of a young doctor being told that the person being brought to the emergency entrance is only the gosh darn holy cow president of the United States! Whoosh! All the drama just got sucked out of that moment because the audience has been clobbered with SIGNIFICANCE.
I can't wait, though, for "Parkland" to show us Dan Rather viewing the Zapruder film and then telling CBS audiences and the entire world that the film shows Kennedy's head jerking forward and to the left, exactly as it should have after being hit from above and behind by the lone assasin, Lee Harvey Oswald!