egarner-1 Reviews

Paper Clips (2004)

Fantastic, well done, educational and eye opening

[10/10 · 30 December 2005]

I was living in Memphis, TN in 2001, when I first heard about this project, and I really wanted to help. I soon found out that they were well beyond their initial goal, so I just looked forward to hearing more about the project and how it turned out. Since then I have become an educator and a much more dedicated Jew. I am more impressed today with the work that small town did than I have ever been. I remember being skeptical -- could collecting a bunch of paper clips really teach any one about these horrors? But the educators and the community made sure that the kids learned something as they were counting paper clips. The letters they received couldn't help but hit home. We saw these children go from sheltered, backwoods kids to educated people of the world. They know more about what people can do to one another than most of the grown ups around them. These teachers have educated an entire generation and their offspring, and they have done it in a manner that will actually have a life-long effect on them. They accidentally educated generations, and that is what teaching is supposed to be.

Protocols of Zion (2005)

Great documentary, a bit scattered.

[8/10 · 22 October 2005]

I felt like the movie was not so specifically about the Protocols, or about anti-Semitism specifically after 9/11. It was, in my opinion, a brief overview of the history of anti-semitism, and a defense of the 'other side.' He touched upon Arab anti-semitism, the whole white power movement, and African-American anti-semitism (albeit briefly). There were two things that struck me - one was that this man interviewed dozens of people who he knew hated him simply because of who he was - and he kept going back for more. The other was a memory - a year and a half ago I walked through Majdanek and Auschwitz, and was overwhelmed by the feeling of death and the pile of ashes. I am continually amazed by the ease with which seemingly decent people become full of such illogical, passionate hate for something they do not know or understand.

Everything Is Illuminated (2005)

Excellent Movie, true to book.

[10/10 · 15 October 2005]

So I read the book about a year ago before taking a bunch of Jewish teens on a trip through Eastern Europe - I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I was desperately afraid that the movie would destroy the experience of the book, and that I would feel that people who only watched the movie would miss something integral about the book (which, lets face it, usu. happens), but this was absolutely not the case. The story is a journey that I think a lot of us wish that we could take. This boy gets to travel through the life that his grandfather led that really was in a different point in history than any we could begin to understand. It made me think of a boy I knew who found where his grandpa carved his name in a bunk in Auschwitz. Even being there - standing in that camp years later, having seen the places the Nazis burned, and learning of the communities that were destroyed, and knowing all the things they did, you cannot begin to fathom what those things did to the survivors, and how they lived their lives afterward. This movie was, for me, the beginning of an understanding of the personal nature of memory.