Yesterday my wife and I took a rare trip to the movie theater -- not just rare because of the COVID lockdowns, but rare because of our schedules -- to see All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the famous Remarque novel.
The filmmaking is intense, and it's an incredible portrayal of life in the trenches in World War I, when millions of lives were lost to move the front a few hundred meters this way or that. Germany, robust at first, must eventually capitulate.
I wanted to see the movie for several reasons. One -- I loved the book when I first read it, even if it was part of an intellectual movement that encouraged pacifism and may have delayed a more robust response to Hitler in the 1930s.
Two -- I wanted to see a war movie in which the Germans were the good guys. There are many World War II films where they are the bad guys and rightfully so, but life is more complex than that, and so are my own artistic interests.
The film is largely true to the book, though a little less whimsical than the book, at times, manages to be. There is no scene of returns home on leave; instead, we se Germany through the eyes of politicians, diplomats, and generals.
That is a bit of artistic license, but it is meant to explain, in part, the various currents of thought within Germany about the nation's defeat -- and the threads that would later be rewoven by the Nazis into a terrible juggernaut.
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
