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5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing and suspenseful!, January 2, 2006
This review is from: Geburtig (DVD)
Geburtig (2002) a Jewish film is set in 1987 and based on an Austrian novel; it is intriguing, complicated and a suspenseful film. A trial is set in Austria for a known Nazi war criminal, the Skull Cracker. In the concentration camps of Ebensee, he banged two people's heads together till the skulls would crack.
THREE stories weave together about the haunts of Holocaust past, a composer, an actor, and a journalist.
One: A German composer, Hermann Geburtig who lives in NY vowed never to return to Austria and he is pursued by a Viennesse journalist to testify against a Nazi camp supervisor, the Skull Cracker. Amidst the intrigue and traumatizing, a romance occurs when the journalist finds Geburtig and falls for him.
Two: While production of an upcoming Holocaust movie is ongoing, Danny, an actor who will portray a prisoner is pained by the horror and death his parents received in a Nazi camp.
Three: German journalist Konrad Sachs, who is haunted and tormented by his demons of the past, is the son of a Nazi doctor who dissected people while still alive. Among Sachs tormenting experiences are episodes of blood running from his nose.
The film won as Best Foreign Film 2002 Academy Awards plus other winnings. Like some Halocaust films, this one doesn't go into too gory details, but the presence of horror in any Halocaust film always remains.
Subtitle problem
This is a fast moving film, plenty of dialogue that often the DVD subtitles move fast and occasionally, the words will be there one second and gone, no time to read it. The languages are German, Yiddish, and little bit of English with English subtitles. There is nudity. The film features many characters and it may get confusing. Don't watch it while sleepy....Rizzo
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A film within a film..., November 30, 2011
This review is from: Geburtig (DVD)
Three stories are simultaneous as led by three characters: a Jewish Austrian composer, successful in New York, an Austrian journalist, an Austrian actor, both settled in Vienna. The three have in common that their parents went through the Second War: the composer's parents died in a concentration camp, so did the actor's parents. The journalist is the son of a Nazi doctor who performed 'experiments' in living Jews. The composer and the actor had sweet memories of their families,and miss them terribly, but go on with their lives as they are able to. The journalist, son of a nazi murderer, suffers from a guilt complex that takes him into episodes of visions and voices, all followed by a bleeding nose. Suddenly, an old man, father of a young journalist lady, discovers a nazi murderer casually talking and sipping tea in a tea house in the mountains. Overexcited with his discovery, he hardly has the time to call police to let them know about the man, and dies immediately after the call. He was a fighter against nazism in his young years. His daughter vows to have the murderer tried and for that she was able to convince the composer, living in New York, to return to Austria in order to help in identifying the nazi. After a lot of circumvolutions, with young ladies entering the scenarios and lives of the three men (the journalist, the actor and the composer), finally the nazi is brought to trial.- The movie is complicated. The director does not care for the spectator who might be confused. Furthermore (and this is not the director's fault), the English subtitles are faulty or absent, besides flashing for less than one second sometimes. - I believe that I would have enjoyed the movie more if I have read the novel first. Or at least one of the summaries that I came to find after watching the movie. - It makes one think about the heavy "legacy" that the monstruous war lef on Jews and non-Jews. It is one of these 'things' that will not go away with time. Except if we all loose this shred of humanity that we still carry on us (or think that we do).
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