oyvindei

This documentary, which basically uses archive footage and was made rather hurriedly in about a week's time according to "shadow director" David Cole/Stein, is rather good. It was made for a US/Mexican film festival, and has not reached a wide audience (yet?). It presents several contemporary cases of people being prosecuted for revisionist historical research (labelled "Holocaust denial" by their opponents), e.g. Ernst Zündel, Germar Rudolf, and Bradley Smith. It gives these people a human face and shows the costs they have had to pay. The documentary succeeds, despite the limited resources it commanded, to make its points rather well and will be highly informative on the state of free speech in the West relating to this particular historical issue.

Recommended.

Historical "documentaries" have become popular among the lay population, especially when they deal with fascinating topics such as the Nazis. However, these so-called documentaries are of variable quality, and this BBC documentary is unfortunately one of the worst I have seen in years. It deals in sensation and hyperbole - and disregards (or invents!) historical fact where it needs to. Part of the statements made - e.g. that the Germans exterminated the Polish population in the period 1939- 1940 and that the Lebensborn used SS soldiers to impregnate "Aryan" women - are old myths that no serious historian believes anymore. The same goes for the old lamp shades of human skin and gassings in Dachau, stories that were totally discredited about 50 years ago. Nonetheless, these factoids are presented as if they are embraced by the community of historians, when in fact the opposite is the state of the art. This "documentary" does not distinguish properly between fact and myth, something that is key for such a work. Thus, it just adds to already existing myths and fables on the Third Reich rather than presenting interesting points of view.

It is not the easiest task to make Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun's book "Victoria" into a understandable movie for the mass market, but it rather succeeds in doing so. Rather good actors, especially Oftebro jr, and the production is high quality. The book also allows for complex characterization and a deeper understanding of the intricacies of the human dilemma. The story is generally told in a convincing manner, although certain elements always will be lost in adapting a novel. Nonetheless, the intensity of the love story is there, and the movie serves well in giving insight into Norwegian society around the 1890s, class differences and all.

All in all, this is one of the better Norwegian films I have seen in recent years. Reading the novel will add to the experience.