Cannes, May 29, 2007 / 12:31 pm (CNA).- The Cannes Film Festival has once again confirmed its radical reputation by choosing to give its top award this year to a controversial Romanian film on abortion.

Click here for the complete Catholic News Agency report.

Culture of Life/Death, Movie News | No Comments »

reviewed by Kevin Murphy

It is the middle of World War II. The Germans are challenged on the Eastern front, where their soldiers are freezing to death. To the West, America has just entered the war. To add to the Germans’ difficulties is the so-called "Jewish Question": what to do with the five million Jews they have attempted emigrating, but which no one - America and the Vatican included - will take.

Based on a single surviving record, Conspiracy reconstructs the Wannsee conference that put into motion the assembly-line atrocities of the Holocaust. Present are fifteen Nazi head officers and government officials, led by the SS Chief of Security, General Heydrich. The topic of discussion is "the solution to the Jewish question." It is frightening to observe the calm professionalism with which the logistics of extermination are dealt. It plays out much as any Microsoft executive meeting might. But instead of analyzing fiscal year results, they coolly deliberate the most efficient methods of genocide. 

There are no moustache-twirling villains here. Most of the members are well educated and articulate, with professional backgrounds as lawyers and doctors. Details of the possible forms of extermination turn some of their stomachs. Conspiracy reveals that a doctorate degree is not a saving grace from some of the most irrational evils mankind has ever committed. 

A central theme of Conspiracy is the mutable power of language. The Nazi officials employ delicate euphemisms to make unthinkable atrocities palatable: "killing" is referred to as "evacuation"; lawyer Wilhelm Stuckart suggests that "sterilization" be dubbed "Medical Resocialization"; the Jews’ annihilation is a "biological necessity"; an unborn baby is called a "fetus" (oops, wrong board meeting). Semantic "manipulation," if you will, is a skill best utilized by the well educated, word-wily lawyers foremost among them. (Shakespeare wrote, "First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers" — if you didn’t agree before watching this movie, you will afterwards). When one SS officer is asked in private how his training in law applies to his current duty, the officer replies, "It has made me distrustful of language. A gun means what it says."

Weighing in at a trim 90 minutes, Conspiracy is lean and to the point. A large cast of very fine actors portray the German committee; Kenneth Branagh gives a superb performance as the magnetically charming yet coldly ruthless SS Chief of Security; Stanley Tucci is perfectly anal-retentive as the meeting’s organizer Adolf Eichmann; and Colin Firth is captivating as lawyer Wilhelm Stuckart, the policymaker who embodies intellectualized anti-Semitism. 

For both its thematic merits and quality of filmmaking, Conspiracy is a must-see.

Historical, War | No Comments »

Now, this looks interesting. Francis Ford Coppola, always a fascinating and often a fabulous filmmaker (and one who can’t resist Catholic imagery, no matter what he’s doing) is going to release his first movie in a decade. Here’s the snippet from the New York Times Arts Briefly:

Coppola’s Comeback

Francis Ford Coppola’s “Youth Without Youth,” the first film he has directed since 1997, will have its world premiere at the RomeFilmFest in October, Variety reported. The film, produced, adapted and directed by Mr. Coppola is based on a 1976 novel by the Romanian-born writer and scholar Mircea Eliade. It stars Tim Roth as a 70-year-old Romanian who attracts the interest of the Nazis after he is struck by lightning and apparently given immortality. The film was shot in Romania and will be released in the United States in December.

Movie News | No Comments »