The Devil's Arithmetic

An unusual take on the story of the Holocaust though rather pointless.Same as the title-what is the Devils arithmetic? The film will teach you nothing about the Holocaust. As a time travel story it works to an extent in that it concludes by bringing the girl back to her own time as if its all been a dream. Obviously its full of artistic license-the Germans all speak English and it roughly follows what we already know about the ghettoes which were to lead to the camps. I don't think anyone could be unaware of what happened in Germany in the 40s but comparing this to the various documentaries on individual POW camps or classic movies like Schindlers List and its hardly in the same class. As a time travel movie its like Back to the Future or Peggy Sue got married without the music.

After seeing this movie, I first thought it was very, very sad. And then I started to consider the historical accuracy of it, and the more I thought about it...I was deeply and morally offended. The fact that the people who made this were actually trying to encapsulate all of the horrors of the Holocaust into ninety-minutes was horrible. I understand that it was on TV, and certain limits were placed on it, but the fact that the people in POLAND in 1941 had never seen a Nazi...hurt my feelings. All of Poland fell in two weeks in 1939. And all of the Nazis at that "camp" were dancing to swing music, although Hitler banned it in around 1938. The list goes on and on. And their inaccurate idea of a camp was not even close to what the real prisoners had to suffer through. I know that it was only on TV and not a "major motion picture" but still I thought it was terrible, and their lack of respect for the Holocaust victims alone is more heartbreaking than this horrible movie.

I think the movie is even better than the book, and the book is excellent. The movie changed Hannah and Rivkeh to be in their mid-teens rather than only about 11 as in the "Young Adult" novel. This might have been done for an "inside-the-box" reason, namely so that the director could work with more mature performers. But whatever the reason, the change was for the better, as it made the story more realistic to me -- I can "buy" that 16-year-olds could survive without parents in a concentration camp, but not 11-year-olds!

I expected a good performance from Kirsten Dunst, who is known for serious work. But the one who was a revelation was Brittany Murphy, more associated with (mediocre) light comedy (such as "Summer Catch" and "Just Married"). With dark hair, dark eyes and a believable Polish accent, she utterly disappears into the role of Rivkeh.

To answer a question posed by a previous poster, about why the great-aunt changed her name ... one reason, not obvious to the casual viewer, comes out of Jewish tradition. It is an old custom for a Jew, after having narrowly escaped death, to take a completely different first name. The (somewhat superstitious) belief is that you are trying to fool the Angel of Death; if you have a different name now, he won't realize it's you and therefore won't try to take you again! The other two reasons are more obvious: She was honoring her friend who sacrificed her life for her, and she was beginning a new life in America (many Jews and others took new names when they immigrated).

I actually liked this when I saw it on TV. A lot of people probably saw the cut, shorter version on (station named after famous novel written down by Homer, following the Iliad) in the US. But I got to see the whole version, and, after having read the book several times, I can say that it is a very good book. It makes Hannah (or Chaya, in the book) look like the spoiled wild-child that the book did not develop enough, and the other characters were perfect in their roles. The acting was good, the sets were realistic and quaint, and the storyline is historically accurate, as well as to the mark on the book. In short, it's a very good film.

The point of this film was not as much to be "great art" as it was to educate people about the Holocaust. In that sense, I think that many posters here are unfairly blasting it, holding it up to some high artistic standard. Believe it or not, there are many in this world, especially younger people, who have not clue one about the atrocities committed against the Jewish people. This film would be an excellent introduction (along with other films such as Diary of Anne Frank) for young people into this very real and recent historical nightmare. To read comments here about how bad the German accents were and how the Germans deserve better than this, lead me to suspect the sincerity of those posting them.