Customer Reviews

Weapons of the Spirit [VHS]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first saw this film on TV on a local PBS station several years ago. From that day on I searched in video stores, the PBS station's gift shop in the Philadelphia area (WHYY) and video catalogues to find it. Then, for a paper I was writing on "altruism" I searched the web and came across this film,a copy of which I ordered from Amazon. This is a true story of French people who, while unremarkable in many ways, were extremely remarkable in the way they almost naturally lived out their Christian faith by, along with their neighbors, hiding and helping to protect many French Jews during WWII from Nazi terrors. After seeing this film and reading "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There," by Philip Hallie I have pondered what I might do in their place. I can only hope I might be like them, and have asked, "Lord, enable me to be like these people who loved You and others this way - in a real way, when faced with evil and danger." Please view this film and share it with others.

Five stars aren't high enough for some movies. This is a masterpiece to savor, watch again and again, share with children, and pass along to generations yet to come. Why can't more movies inspire as much hope and goodness as this one? Buy a copy for yourself; buy another to give to your church or synagogue.

Through personal interviews and on site filming, a young Jewish film maker recounts and attempts to analyze the courageous display of love and commitment to essential truth in the French Heugenot village of Le Chambon during WWII. French Protestant Christians, themselves with a history of extreme persecution, shelter five thousand Jews in a village of five thousand. Not one Jew is lost. The mystery of the courageous response, the sacrifice and the success is skillfully laid out in a series of interviews. You won't take your eyes off this film for one minute, you won't go away without tears and you will want to see it again ... and share it!

In 1984, when Pierre Sauvage was in post-production on "Weapons of the Spirit," as he is now on "And Crown Thy Good," he wrote an article for MOMENT magazine in which he explains his motivation for speading the stories of righteous Gentiles. In so doing, he replies to the comment: "There were so few of them." "As if we even knew the numbers in this largely uncharted chapter of our past," Sauvage writes. "As if we didn't believe, we Jews especially, that even tiny minorities may own important, perhaps even divine truths.
"The late pastor of Le Chambon lived his life, his eloquent pacifist's life, as a demonstration of Christian faith. Yet in his unpublished memoirs, he confided that his faith was, ultimately, in the possibility of good on earth, 'without which,' he added, 'the theoretical existence of God doesn't interest me.'
"And I, the father of David, who want to believe in that possibility too, who want to extend it and pass both the belief and the evidence for it on to my child and to his, am bound to seek out and to treasure and to learn from the bits and pieces I can find even in the moral rubble of these times - especially in the moral rubble of these times.
"That is why, as I tell David of these things, as he learns that there is in all of us a great capacity for evil and an even greater and more insidious capacity for apathy, I want him to learn that the stories of the righteous are not footnotes to the past but cornerstones to the future. I owe my life to the good people of Le Chambon. I owe even more than that to my son."

I've ever seen. I first saw it in 1993, and have wanted to own it ever since. It's easy to think we would do the right thing in horrendous circumstances, but it is impossible to know until we are faced with that decision. The people of Le Chambon neither blinked, nor bragged. We could all be incinerated tomorrow: on which side of the good/evil line do we want to be? If you buy no other film this year, this should be it. I paid $40 for VHS with a smile on my face -- AND plan to buy more for Christmas and birthday presents.

I watched this video in an ethics class in graduate school, and was struck by the simple faith of those Christians who thought it nothing special to put their own lives on the line in order to help their neighbors, the Jews. There are so many lessons that can be learned from what happened there that this video has great educational potential. It will help people work out their own thoughts and the implications of how they would act in that situation. I highly recommend this video.

Sauvage does a great job of portaying the folk of Le Chambon in their magnificent modesty. He allows the characters to speak at length and refrains from melodrama for the most part. He demonstates the awesome potential of good-doing in the midst of extreme cruelty, even if he plays down the Christ-centered source of the Protestant's compassion.

Weapons of the Spirit is one of the most touching, enlightening and disturbing films I've seen in many years. The villagers of Le Chambon, mostly poor, Protestant farmers and small shopkeepers, sheltered thousands of Jews during the nightmare of the Holocaust. For these simple people the choice was obvious, and not to help their brothers in need was unthinkable. The interviews are touching, direct, and often quite funny.

I have shown this film and taught it many times. It never fails to bring tears to the eyes of the audience, and to convince them that humans, all too obviously capable of great evil, are also capable of good.

Weapons of the Spirit
I searched for several years to find this film. It is powerful, memorable, an inspiration. It has impacted my life.

This was a fantastic documentary! I took a Humanities course this summer and needed to write a paper about this video. It was awesome-as a Jehovah's Witness I completely understand the persecution of those who stood up to the Nazi intimidation. Fellow sisters and brothers were imprisoned, and lost their lives along with many of the Jews in occupied countries. It is wonderful to see the courage and conviction against the bitter persecution and torture of those who resisted. I feel the same as the brave townspeople of Le Chambon. If this were ever to happen again-I would resist also! I was able to get an A in this class because of the detailed and specific account in this film. Very worth watching! :)