- The director wrote the IMDB synopsis, LOL. (I’m sure someone found a press release for the film and just pasted it in, but still.)
- As most people know, I have a not-so-secret love for movies about the Holocaust. I don’t know what it is, but I’m very drawn to them. One of the things that I find funny about them is their own internal visual language and visual shorthand so that the more ubiquitous these films become, the less work the filmmakers have to do to determine a sense of place. Usually this entails showing piles of suitcases, people going through discarded clothing, sifting through heaps of gold teeth, etc. If you see any one of those things, you know you’ve just gotten off a train outside Auschwitz. It’s that easy. So when I heard there was an entire film about a suitcase from the Holocaust, naturally that tripped my MUST SEE alarm.
- I’m not sure how I feel about these Holocaust films done with an attempt to present the Holocaust through the eyes of children (The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas being the other one that comes to mind at the moment). Actually, I’m quite sure how I feel: I dislike them. I always feel hit over the head with CHILDLIKE WONDER! and it annoys the hell out of me because it’s condescending to children, as if they only way kids can ever understand anything is by diluting it until it’s sanitized and palatable. In TBITSP it was all about Bruno’s cluelessness masquerading as naivety and in this one they make Terezin look like the Club Med of concentration camps. I know that in any exercise about the Road to Tolerance™, children are always taught to look for similarities between themselves and the people they initially think they couldn’t possibly have anything in common with. The problem is, by the time these observations make it to film they’re flat and uninteresting and there’s no sense that the kids are really grasping the enormity of the situation.
- They had kids from classrooms in Japan, Canada, and the Czech Republic re-telling Hana’s story and there was this hilarious pair of kids from Canada where the one kid almost always interrupted or otherwise cut off the kid she was paired with in every shot. It was pretty hysterical.
- The story starts off because this woman in Japan, Fumiko Ishioka, got a suitcase on loan from the Auschwitz Museum. This was to go on display at the Tokyo Holocaust Education and Resource Center. For the first ten minutes you’re kind of like “… Japan has a Holocaust Center why?” and then they eventually reveal that Ishioka started the centre to deal with the increase in bullying and violence between children. Erm. As I’ve already mentioned, much of what they do is talk about understanding and tolerance and all that good stuff, so obviously it can be related back to bullying, but I have to say that if I were looking for a way to address bullying, starting a Holocaust center probably wouldn’t have been at the top of my list. I think they must have left out some crucial bit of information that would have made sense of that leap of logic.
- A large chunk of the film was historical re-enactments of Hana and her brother George as children at various times in their lives. These parts are heavy on style and take on a kind of sanitized, fairy-tale type quality laced with a tiny bit of surrealism; it was almost infuriating because it was just so very sentimental. As Don Draper says, there’s nothing wrong with sentiment, but sentimental is not the same as sentiment.
- The director and the three leads were at the screening. George Brady is pretty hilarious in a cantankerous old man kind of way.
- The Japanese kids made George a really awesome lei out of paper cranes when he went to Japan to visit him.
- Ultimately, I’m having trouble determining who this movie is aimed at. As an adult, I don’t need all the re-enactments and whatnot to respond emotionally to Hana’s story because it’s all there in George’s face as he talks about his sister. His interviews in and of themselves are pretty upsetting at times. But then there’s all this holly jolly LOLOCAUST stuff that I’m sure would work if you wanted to show this to kids, but combined it’s just sort of incoherent.
- IMDB says that if I liked this, I will also like X-Men and Schindler’s List. A) That is correct. B) I kind of wish Magneto worked for Liam Neeson making pots.
Inside Hana’s Suitcase
Unnecessarily and condescendingly dumbed down.
IMDB Plot Synopsis The poignant story of two young children who grew up in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia and the terrible events that they endured just because they happened to be born Jewish. Based on the internationally acclaimed book "Hana's Suitcase" which has been translated into 40 languages, the film is an effective blend of documentary and dramatic techniques.
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Thanks so much for all of your attention towards our film – I’m sorry that you seemed to like it less than the rest of the audience…
I actually didn’t write that imdb description of the film – thanks for pointing it out.
It is true that the film does not concentrate on the horrors – as it is based on the book Hana’s Suitcase and trying to aim at a younger audience… but the emotions of George are real, the quest of Fumiko genuine… strange that you referred to Club Med – George has said that everything was relative – that compared to Auschwitz…
But you do hear of the death, the many diseases, the gas chambers, the smell of human flesh burning – Club Med may be an exaggeration on your part…
I suspect on further viewings your heart may open up to it a bit… the story is real and with or without my contribution I do think it’s a poignant one.
Larry Weinstein
Director
Inside Hana’s Suitcase