Uprising

Rating:
Summary: Why Show Only One Victim Group of the German Hitlerites?
Review: Although heavily fictionalized (and I emphasize the word heavily), this film even then gives only a stilted picture of the actual conduct of the German Nazis. By showing only the sufferings of the Jews, it fails to capture the full scope of the inhumanity of the Nazis, as well as the heroism of non-Jews who resisted these evildoers. In fact, this film almost dwells in a historical vacuum? Why? The notion that 3 million Polish Catholic victims of the Germans (and millions of others) were merely "collateral losses", as implied by the film, is totally untrue. At the Nuremberg trials, Hans Frank, the butcher of Poland, admitted that the vast majority of the millions of Poles he had put to death had not been resisting the Germans in any way. Few people realize that the Slavic peoples were also slated for eventual total extermination (with the exception of some Germanized ones), but this was to be done after Germany won the war, and over a long period of time (if only because there were tens of millions of Slavs versus only several million European Jews). Long before the Wannsee Conference of 1942 had decreed the extermination of the Jews, the Germans had already been at work exterminating intelligent Poles, leading to Poland's cumulative loss of some 60% of her prewar non-Jewish scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc. This pre-planned act of cultural genocide had begun the moment the German army had entered Poland in 1939, and followed Hitler's order to "kill without pity every man, woman, and child of Polish extraction". Eventually, the Polish population was to be resettled in Siberia, but note that "resettlement" was the exact same phrase used to herd Poland's Jews to the gas chambers of the Operation Reinhart death camps. This cannot be dismissed as rhetoric unless one wants to dismiss similar statements against Jews as "just rhetoric". It is a shame that Avnet could not bring himself to recognize the equality of humans in the face of death at the hands of the German Nazis. A film which tells the full account of what happened is long overdue.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! About Time..
Review: One of the least told stories of WWII. Whether or not the movie portrays everything accurately (What movie does?) this is a true to life story that should have every anti-gun person rethink their views. A relatively small group of heroic Jew's took on the Nazi army and created mass havoc tying up large portions of personnel and material. If only more people of the enslaved nations would have done the same. This movie depicts what anti-gun laws do to honest, law abiding citizens. A must see movie!!!

Rating:
Summary: I Laughed, I Cried, I Used A Cliched Title For The Review...
Review: I first saw this movie when it aired originally on NBC. I liked it, got it for Christmas, and in the interim period between when I got it and now (roughly two weeks), I've watched it five times. Depressing as the movie was, there were humorous parts...nothing designed to ellicit a giant belly laugh, but certainly some smiles. I agree with the reviewers who pointed out historical innacuracies in the film, but almost all movies I've seen that are based on historical events are dramatized. A viewing tip for viewing this DVD is to play it with the English subtitles and the cast commentary. The four lead actors, Hank Azaria (Mordechai Anielewicz), Leelee Sobieski (Tosia Altman), David Schwimmer (Yitzak Zuckerman), and Jon Voight (General Jurgen Stroop), will clue you in to some subtle points in the movie and will explain part of the background of the time period. Even if you are watching the movie without the cast commentary, I reccomend using the subtitles because the accents used by the cast can make some words more difficult to understand. Also on this DVD are two documentaries...one about the filming of the movie and one about the people who were involved in the uprising. The documentary about the uprising, called Resistance, features interviews with actual participants as well as with the actors in the movie and the director, Jon Avnet. This is a very good DVD (also happens to be the first one our family bought...good choice) and a great buy. Happy viewing!

Rating:
Summary: Courage at its best
Review: This is probably the most powerful movie I have seen in a while. It centers on the Warsaw ghetto uprising. This is a story of courage; of people who had nothing, but were willing to give up everything. The cast was wonderful, and provides outstanding commentary as a special feature. See this film!!

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: I really enjoyed this movie. The action and the acting was excellent. I also read the memoirs of Kazik (a character in the movie) and found it to be helpful as well. I recomend this to everyone who likes drama and action!

Rating:
Summary: JEWISH UPRISING IN GHETTO FOR HUMAN DIGNITY
Review: There are some inaccuracies surrounding UPRISING but they are not what Holocaust revisionists complain about in their reviews. Rather, NBC announced that UPRISING is the "first" TV dramatization of the ghetto uprising. That's wrong. A 1982 television movie, THE WALL told essentially the same story. But rather than a docudrama, it was a work of fiction. IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES, a 1996 TV movie, dealt more intimately with this topic.

To begin with, UPRISING is about the 1943 doomed Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto against the occupying Germans. Director and executive producer Jon Avnet (who also made "Fried Green Tomatoes," and "Red Corner") clearly had his heart in this production. He hired a good cast: Hank Azaria, Leelee Sobieski, David Schwimmer, Jon Voight, Donald Sutherland and Cary Elwes. Avnet also built a realistic replica of the Warsaw ghetto in Bratislava, Slovakia including the hand-placed cobblestones. He commisioned a first class score from Oscar winning writer Maurice Jarre.

The action is based on the exploits of the actual members of the Jewish Fighting Organization. Azaria plays the key role of JFO founder Mordechai Anielewicz. UPRISING keeps asking how a moral person can adhere to a moral code in an immoral world. This is always a poignant question in movies about Nazi Germany. The chairman of Warsaw's Jewish Council, Adam Czerniakow (Sutherland), struggles with the dilemma while the Germans corral some 500,000 Jews into the ghetto. He naively chooses cooperation to save lives -- explaining, "I try to minimize the damage." Ultimately, Czerniakow takes his own life when the Germans begin mass deportations to the death camps.

Anielewicz, is a militant Zionist with a more defiant nature than Czerniakow's. He responds with armed resistance whose outcome is certainly death; and honorable death. Schwimmer and a contemplative Sobieski are among fighters who join him. Voight portrays the German Gen. Jurgen Stroop who is sent in to put down the uprising. In a grotesquely comic scene, a Nazi propagandist (Elwes) directs a film about ghetto life. Sutherland plays Czerniakow sitting in his office, is his reluctant subject. A menorah has been placed on Czerniakow's desk, and wax drips onto the desktop as Czerniakow fumbles for something to say on camera. Elwes completes his phony tableau by ordering Czerniakow to churn his hands, because "Jewish people usually move their hands around when they talk."

Alas, UPRISING does not manage to succeed in providing a sense of the uplifting triumph that it attempts from a handful of Jewish fighters escaping Warsaw as Stroop fumes in humiliation. The survivors are too emotionally drained to be jubilant. But by and large, UPRISING makes its point.

To those who wished UPRISING would "balance" the 3-million Poles who died during World War II against the 6-million Jews are either naively mixing apples and oranges, at best, or thinly veiling homocidal anti-Semitism at worst. By today's military jargon, the 3-million Polish "gentiles" were tragic victims of "collateral damage" during the invasion by the Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht into and occupation of Poland. It is not true that "the 3 million Polish gentiles were ALSO victims of the Holocaust." The Holocaust was the end result of a plan formally called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question designed in Wansee, Germany several years earlier. The "Final Solution" was based on perverted and scientifically fraudulent eugenics theories for getting rid of all Jews as a global, Nazi "public health" project. The Holocaust, as it is now called, was specifically designed to hunt down, steal property from, and then murder Polish men, women and children who had only one thing in common. Each of them was a Jew. UPRISING makes this very clear. Those disappointed in its sympathtic portrayal of the handful of Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto may find old propaganda films by Josef Goebels more satisfying. In his films, Goebels managed to dehumanize Jews to the point where certain sub-strata in each society could find it very appealing to rob and then murder these people.

What UPRISING revisits is how alone in the world Polish Jews had become. Yes, of course, in very rare instances a few decent Poles took their humanity and Christianity seriously. They risked their lives to protect a few of their countrymen, who happened to be Jews, against the German Nazi onslaught. But that was untypical. Even more rare were those instances in which the herded Polish Jewish population rose up against their Nazi oppressors. This happened for some 28 days in a walled off section of the city of Warsaw called a ghetto. Life on the outside went on more or less normally as inside the ghetto Jews were stripped of their dignity and starved to death. When it became clear to the victims that the Germans planned to have all of them taken away to Auschwitz and murdered, a handful of them rose up to steal back some of their dignity by choosing a warrior's death. That is what UPRISING is about. Good movie!

Rating:
Summary: It's Entertainment
Review: People who want every fact about the Warsaw uprising should consider purchasing one of the fine books about it. As a piece of entertainment, this is an excellent movie. It introduces people to an event that many are unfamiliar with. The acting, costumes, and set are all exceptionally well-done. Actual Jewish participants in the resistance served as consultants to the film and their comments are included in the making-the-movie chapter on the DVD. The DVD also contains a documentary about the uprising that is a solemn treatment of the subject and may be of particular interest to teachers.

Rating:
Summary: Much Ingratitude to the Poles in this Film
Review: While many films have historical inaccuracies, this one has too many of them to be coincidental. What's more, the inaccuracies are not random, but display a clear tendency to cast Poles in a negative light (by commission and omission). Even the relative duration of the Jewish and Polish conflicts are not correct. And that is only the most egregious blunder. What of the false (unhistorical) scene of Jews going to Polish prostitutes? Or the caricature of Poles unwilling to help the Jews going threw the sewers? Or the slanderous insinuation that the Polish underground was secretly delighted by what the Germans were doing to the Jews? Why no mention of Poles giving their lives to throw bread over the ghetto walls--a fact that prompted eyewitness Abraham Lewin, in his book, A CUP OF TEARS, to remark "Polish ahd Jewish blood is spilled and mixes together, demanding revenge". For that matter, why no mention of the millions of Poles ALSO murdered by the German Nazis? How is it that the arms which the Jews acquire appear out of nowhere like magic--is it to give the Polish benefactors as little credit as possible? Or the fact that it was Polish railwaymen, not Jews, who informed the ghetto Jews about the extermination of Warsaw's Jews at Treblinka? Why no mention is made of Polish fighters who joined the Jews in their hopeless struggle? Or the fact that more Poles have gotten the Yad Vashem award for helping Jews than those of any other nationality--despite the death penalty for helping Jews in any way? The ingratitude shown towards the Poles reeks to high heaven. Shame on you, Jon Avnet.

Rating:
Summary: solid but inncurate
Review: I didn't understand what was with the scene in the church. Yes, the organ music makes the deaths of people jumping out of burning buildings more compelling but I don't see the connection between the Latin songs and organ music. And what was with Hippler? I could not understand him or the proganda movies he makes. I really didn't think the movie needed him. Where were the gentiles when you needed them? In real life, they weren't invisible and took an active role against the Germans. Why would they show Pole visitors to the underground headquarters when they suddenly disappear? Except for the guy who gets threatened at gunpoint in the sewer but I don't remember him coming with the other visitors. Why would the gentile Poles visit the tunnels without helping them? I think they must have been stupid to leave a simple plot detail unfinished. But the acting was good. It was pretty funny that Stroop likes his table so much. And it is a good thing that they they hold on to their honor no matter what. It was pretty compelling showing the disaster realistically. It was pure awe when I saw how much the ghetto looked like Ground Zero after so much destruction. But why not a more accurate depiction of the Gentile Poles?

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: As a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist youth movement that was the origins of the majority of fighters in the JFO, I can say this movie was brilliant for myself. Sure, it has numerous historical accuracies, but most docu-drama movies have those (seing is how history is so specific, and the smallest error can cause an uproar). The acting was actually well done, especially on the part of the women fighters. Anielevicz is a strong character, and his deptuy, Zukerman, is also grea (those Schwimer is so-so). Best of all were the action scenes. I loved the scene where it was the first time the Germans entered the ghetto and they got slaughtered. Seing those bullets fly from the barrels of the JFO guns to the heads of the German soldiers made my heart beet fast. And the part where a JFO fighter, with his clothes on fire, running to a German solider and hugging the flames from him to the soldier, thus killing both of them, was incredibly shot.

One thing I would like to have mentioned would be more facts. Near the end, it briefly explained what happened to the fighters of the JFO, but it would be much nicer to have seen a lot more other basic facts (ie. how the JFO formed, collection of weapons, world reaction, etc)

All in all this is an incrdible movie, one worth seeing and buying, to own a piece of Jewish history that I consider the most heroic.