sâmbătă, 4 martie 2023

The Twins aka De Tweeling, based on the international bestseller by Tessa de Loos – De Tweeling https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322674/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 - 9 out of 10

 

The Twins aka De Tweeling, based on the international bestseller by Tessa de Loos – De Tweeling https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322674/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

9 out of 10

 

 

This is a compelling story, that has become an international bestseller and has been adapted for the big screen (this note is about the film, not the book, the motion picture is absent from the site where this is posted, the experience has been poignant enough to prompt the sharing of it online, and finally, last but not least, it is not as if this space is watched and has a role in making anybody decide on reading this, or the other volume, so there is the liberty to put here lines that do not affect in any way…

 

Everything, Everywhere All at Once https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2023/01/one-of-important-motion-pictures-of.html one of the most acclaimed movies of 2022, but not a favorite of mine (how could it be, since it was stopped at about fifteen, twenty minutes into the plot, given that there was no interest, or better said, no comprehension of what was going on, apart from some feeling that we have people doing things in parallel, or just different universes, without much to get my attention anyhow) becomes in this case Nothing, Nowhere All The Time, a mantra that is intended as a blague http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world?

We start the narrative in 1990 - which was such a good year for yours truly, after getting a mention in Newsweek http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html the issue that covered the Romanian Revolution, for taking part in the overthrow of Ceausescu (something I evidently feel proud of, hence the mention here and in multiple notes) I got into money, bought an Audi (well, somehow forced on me, but for details you need to read the whole story, ask me about where it is on the massive blog, which by now is awash with thousands of entries) and then became the lover of the first Miss Moldova, if only for about ten months, after which she dumped in, and then hell broke loose, coming to this need to impart with all sorts of rubbish – when Lotte Goudrian is in a spa.

 

In fact, the name of the Belgian city is Spa, and this is where we also have Anna Grosalie, who is also seventy four and looking for treatment…we are sent back in time, to the time when the twin sisters were six, and their father died, prompting the family to look for solutions and then having the two separated, one to be raised in Germany, and the other in the Netherlands, which reminds me of the Zen Master story, told by the Philip Seymour Hoffman character, at the end of Charlie Wilson’s War http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/charlie-wilsons-war-written-by-aaron.html which goes something like this

This Zen Master had a horse that run away, and the villagers express their sympathy, to be told by the Master that ‘we shall see’, and indeed, the runaway animal returns with other horses, the neighbors this time feel that this is cause for celebration, only the Master is again cautious ‘we shall see’, which is followed by his son breaking a leg, when he tries to domesticate these new horses, and you can guess that folks were sure this is bad news, if the Sage said the same thing…yes, the army came by to recruit people, and the son was exempted, because of his injury and we know what the conclusion is here…

 

For The Twins, it looked like Lotte has the bad luck, because she is ill, only as in the Zen Master Story, she turns out to be the privileged one, while Anna is abused, tortured and eventually beaten so severely that she will not be able (spoiler alert) to have children in the future, by the man that wants her to work to extinction on his farm…she is eventually taken off that Hades and she becomes a servant, eventually working for a rich woman, not just a Nazi sympathizer, but a vile racist, emphasizing the superiority of the ‘Master Race’, surmised when Anna wants to help the Polish people that have been brought for forced labor and one of the many examples of monstrosity that the war brought in people.

However, when confronted with the atrocities of the World War II, Anna will explain that she had no idea of what was going on, she never killed anybody, which is something that was tested in The Milgram Experiment, explained in the quintessential Influence by Robert Cialdini http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/05/influence-by-robert-cialdini.html participants in the research have been told to apply electricity and they did, to the point where they would cause screams, proving that the Principle of Respect for Authority gets humans to do callous, abject things, you could look on the net for details…

 

Anna marries a German man that is enlisted to fight in Russia, Poland and eventually becomes a SS officer, though at the beginning he was thinking this war was a mistake, maybe indoctrination, the aforementioned Principle of Respect for Authority and fear of being shot as a deserter made him take part in the atrocities inflicted by the Nazis on others…on the other side, Lotte and her family suffer from the Nazi invasion of Holland, the misery of hunger and fear, her Jewish fiancée is taken away.

David ends up in Buchenwald first, and then he arrives in Auschwitz, we all know what apocalyptic massacres took place there and in hundreds of other labor camps and places where Hitler and his butchers killed more than six million Jews, also minorities like the Roma, disabled and opponents of their regime, this will cause more than a rift, when they meet in Germany, while the atrocities have not reached their peak, the sisters get along well, in spite of the fact that their letters had been blocked.

 

The farmer wanted to have his slave to work to death, while the rich family of Lotte was worried that they may lose her, she might be taken to that farm…eventually the two reunite, only when her sister is departing, Anna looks at the photo of the fiancé and she says that he looks Jewish and Lotte realizes that the twin could well be a Nazi sympathizer or worse, after David is killed in Auschwitz, and her sister comes to The Netherlands, there is some hesitation and suspicion, but when the photo of the SS officer at the wedding is seen, Lotte is enraged, throwing her twin out of the house, shouting that she will never want to see her again, they live in different worlds, they will never have anything in common…there is a chance that at the age of seventy four, maybe they will find peace and Atonement http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/atonement-by-ian-mcewan.html

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