Tag: Jew

Kidnapped
(Rapito)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 April 2024
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(Rapito)
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Director – Marco Bellocchio – 2023 – Italy, France, Germany – Cert. 12a – 135m

*****

A boy is forcibly taken from his Jewish family by the Pope to be raised as a Catholic priest because he has been baptised into the Catholic faith – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Italy, the mid-nineteenth century. The Papal States will have disappeared by 1870 as Italy moves towards unification. In the meantime, they are still under the administrative control of the incumbent pope, Pius IX.

Bologna, 1852. A maid sees off a soldier in the night following a romantic tryst. The soldier is neither here nor there; the maid, Anna Morisi (Aurore Camatti) will play a significant part in what follows. The life of a nine-child Jewish family is about to be disrupted forever.

The home of the very ordinary Mortalo family, who are Jewish: father Momolo (Fausto Russo Alesi), mother Marianna (Barbara Ronchi) and their nine children. The parents are deeply religious and raise their offspring accordingly, teaching them, among other things, to recite the Shema prayer every night before they go to sleep. One night in 1858, they are visited by the authorities under Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) who have come to take away one of their children under Papist law.… Read the rest

Tags 1852, 1858, 1870, abduction, antisemitism, atheism, Aurore Camatti, baptised, Barbara Ronchi, boarding school, Bologna, Catholic, Catholic boarding school, Catholic Church, Catholic faith, Catholic ritual., Catholic services, Catholicism, church, Church authorities, conversion, dormitory, Enea Sala, ethnicity, Fabrizio Gifuni, faith, family, Fausto Russo Alesi, hate, heritage, Italian unification, Jesus Christ crucified, Jew, Jewish, Jewish family Pope, Judaism, kidnapped, Latin, Leonardo Maltese, lie, Limbo, liturgies, maid, Marco Bellocchio, Mezusah, Mortalo, nails, nineteenth century, ordination, Paolo Pierobon, Papal States, papist, Papist law, pharmacist, Pius IX, power structure, priest, protest, raised, religious artefact, religious conversion to Catholicism, ritual, ritual of baptism, Roman Catholic, Rome, salvation, Samuele Teneggi, school authorities, Shema prayer, statue, taken, Unification of Italy, upbringing, vision

Features Live Action Movies

Kidnapped

One God, two families

Kidnapped
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Certificate 12a, 135 minutes
Released 26 April

This Italian drama, based on true events, is set when the papacy was both the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the state authority in parts of Italy, a situation that would change with Italian unification in the 1870s and the instigation of a secular, country-wide system of government. There would be implications for the separation of church and state.

In 1858, six-year-old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortalo (Enea Sala) was removed from his family by the papist authorities following his Catholic baptism (how he was baptised emerges later) and taken to a school run directly by Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon) to educate such ‘Christians’ in the faith and turn them into priests.

The Church’s theological rationale behind this appalling action… [read the rest at Reform]

[Read my longer review on this site]

Tags 1852, 1858, 1870, abduction, antisemitism, atheism, baptised, Barbara Ronchi, boarding school, Catholic, Catholic boarding school, Catholic Church, Catholic faith, Catholic ritual., Catholic services, Catholicism, church, Church authorities, conversion, dormitory, Enea Sala, ethnicity, faith, family, Fausto Russo Alesi, hate, heritage, Italian unification, Jesus Christ crucified, Jew, Jewish, Jewish family Pope, Judaism, kidnapped, Latin, Leonardo Maltese, lie, Limbo, liturgies, maid, Marco Bellocchio, Mezusah, Mortalo, nails, nineteenth century, ordination, Paolo Pierobon, Papal States, papist, Papist law, pharmacist, Pius IX, power structure, priest, protest, raised, religious artefact, religious conversion to Catholicism, ritual, ritual of baptism, Roman Catholic, Rome, salvation, school authorities, taken, Unification of Italy, upbringing

Features Live Action Movies

Origin

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 4 March 2024
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Director – Ava DuVernay – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 135m

***

A US journalist researches a book reinterpreting US racist attitudes to black people through both the Nazi’s segregation of Jews and the Indian caste system’s treatment of Dalits – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 8th

This is based on both the 2020 nonfiction book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents and its author US journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson’s journey in writing that book. Highly effective in putting the first of those elements on the screen, the screenplay, credited to both DuVernay and Wilkerson, proves much more uneven in its attempts to do so with the second.

Wilkerson’s thesis looks at the US’ historic racist treatment of black people through the lens of a caste system. The term caste system derives from the Western European analysis of Indian society, and to a lesser extent other South Asian societies, in which certain designated groups are elevated above others to produce and maintain a social hierarchy. As portrayed here in the film, the book looks firstly at the US in these terms – a caste system favouring white people over blacks – then Nazi Germany – a caste system favouring Germans over Jews, a radical use of caste as an historical analytical tool I have never come across before – and finally India – a caste system putting the Dalits, the untouchables who traditionally clean latrines, at the bottom of the pile below everyone else.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Are You
There God?
It’s Me,
Margaret.

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 15 May 2023
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There God?
It’s Me,
Margaret.
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All stills: Dana Hawley / courtesy of Lionsgate UK

Director – Kelly Fremon Craig – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 105m

****

An 11-year-old girl navigates the difficult waters of religion and womanhood, talking privately to God as she does so – bestselling novel adaptation is out on digital Tuesday, July 18th and on Blu-ray & DVD Monday, August 7th

Is God there, can you talk to God, and does doing so make any difference? 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) talks to God, beginning with the “Are You There?” question and then continuing to talk to God as if God’s presence were real. Whether God is real or not, the practice of talking with God has a history in certain Christian traditions, and probably in other religious traditions with which I’m less familiar too. It does not, of itself, prove the existence or non-existence of God one way or the other.

In terms of organised religion, Margaret finds herself in a confusing place. She is the sole child of Jewish father Herb (Benny Safdie) and Christian mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) Simon. It’s a good marriage and the Simons are a very happy family, living in a cramped New York apartment with his Jewish mother Sylvia Simon (an hilariously dour yet joyous Kathy Bates).… Read the rest

Tags 11-year-old, 1960s, Abby Ryder Fortson, adaptation, agnosticism, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Amari Price, art teacher, atheism, beehive hairdo, Benny Safdie, bestseller, black church, boy books, boys, bra, bust size, bust-enlarging exercise, Catholic, Christian, Christian traditions, church, class heartthrob, club, club rules, committee, confessional, convert, Dennis Delamar, early developer, Echo Kellum, faith, family, feminine, first period, Florida, Gary Houston, Gazelle Fleming, God, good marriage, Gospel, grandmother, happy family, identity, Isol Young, Jersey, Jew, Jewish, Judy Blume, Karen Aruj, Katherine Kupferer, Kathy Bates, Kelly Fremon Craig, kissing, lying, marriage, menstruation, Mia Dillon, mothers and daughters, moving house, mows the lawn, New York, not wearing socks, novel, organised religion, ostracised, parents and children, period, priest, proselytise, Protestant, PTA, pulpit, Rachel McAdams, religion, school year, sermon, sexuality, singing, suburban, synagogue, their religious heritage, truth telling, urban, urban and suburban, US

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 7 August 2022
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Director – Ari Folman – 2021 – Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Israel – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

In Amsterdam, a year from now, her imaginary friend Kitty sets out to discover what happened to Anne Frank – out in cinemas on Friday, August 12th

Amsterdam, Holland, about a year from now. Early in the morning, the usual tourist queues are assembling outside the Anne Frank House, passing a tent housing refugees on the pavement. Inside, something strange happens as a glass case shatters and the original copy of Anne’s diary is exposed to ink from a pen, affecting the ink writing on the pages and materialising Kitty (voice: Ruby Stokes), the imaginary pen-friend to whom Anne addressed her diary.

The materialised Kitty is perplexed. Where is Anne Frank? What has happened to her, to the house? The staff, too, are perplexed. They can’t let the waiting crowds in with the case broken, but those people have been queueing for hours and it seems wrong not to open up for them. After a brief debate a solution is found and the diary moved to Anne’s room where it is placed on the desk where it naturally sits. The concerns of the house staff seem trivial compared to those of Kitty.… Read the rest

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Andrew Woodall, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, Clark Gable, crowds, defeat, dentist, dissolve, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, German soldier, glass case, Greek mythology, Greek underworld, handbags, hidden, hidden attic hideout, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, Margot Frank, Michael Moloney, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, Nell Barlow, Otto Frank, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Samantha Spiro, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, Skye Bennett, squat, Stuart Miligan, tent, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, Tracy-Ann Oberman, trial, Tristan Oliver, UK, Van Daan, Veronica Lake, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Hiding from deportation

Where Is Anne Frank
Directed by Ari Folman
Certificate PG, 99 minutes
Released 12 August

Amsterdam, about a year from now. Inside the Anne Frank House, Anne’s imaginary pen-friend Kitty (voiced by Ruby Stokes) materialises out of the ink from the pages of Anne’s diary. The perplexed Kitty wants to know what happened to Anne, and starts reading her diary to find out, taking it with her when she leaves the premises where she is invisible. Outside the house, she becomes visible.

Asking police ‘Where is Anne Frank?’ she is shown the bridge, hospital, school and theatre bearing Anne Frank’s name and is told, Anne Frank is all around you. [Read the rest at Reform magazine…]

[Read my longer review…]

Trailer:

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, crowds, defeat, dentist, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, hidden, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, squat, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, trial, UK, Van Daan, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2