One week ago today I spent several hours perusing the exhibits at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.  The importance of the display is not what I learned, since most of it was facts that I was already familiar with, but connecting on an emotional rather than an intellectual basis with what happened in Europe during the Nazi era.  For the same reason I have always been pleased when a film brings history to audiences in a way that allows us to create an emotional bond with historical experiences.  Last year Italy’s leading comedic actor, Roberto Benigni , gave us a poignant look at one man’s attempt to deal with the Nazi madness in “Life is Beautiful”. The film was a critical and financial success.

Hollywood in its typical copycat fashion decided to use the same formula this year with one of our leading comedic talents, Robin Williams, in the current film “Jacob the Liar”.  Unfortunately the whole point of this type of movie was lost in the translation. 

The movie is set in the Warsaw ghetto where a valiant yet tragic effort was made by the Jewish inhabitants to resist and stand up to the Nazis.  In this movie this ghetto is inhabited by a bunch of clowns who pick an incompetent liar named Jacob to be the leader of their resistance.  But the Nazis are also bumbling idiots that seem incapable of controlling or outsmarting these ghetto clowns.  In fact in one scene Robin Williams is sitting in a café having a good laugh with his best friend.  Why are they laughing?  It seems the Nazis are broadcasting throughout the ghetto that on the next morning 10 men will be hanged in the square if Jacobs’s hidden radio is not turned in.   Why is this funny? Well, ha ha , the joke is on the Nazis.  Jacob does not have a radio.    Don’t worry the movie has jokes like this from beginning to end to keep you laughing.  Unless of course you are one of those persons who thinks the holocaust was real.  In that case maybe this movie isn’t for you.

 

 

Stephen Van Lydegraf

10/3/1999