For a few friends, I have summarized the film as “violence, violins, romance and clichés”. Had my father not been involved in the French Resistance, I would have left it at that. But after seeing the muscle-packed main character, (we are speaking of the current James Bond actor), and reading the director’s words in the New York Times where he acknowledges his debt to the book “Tough Jews”, it becomes clear that a particular level of “unreality” has been added.
There is something sweet about Zwick imagining his grandfather who might have had connections to the Chicago mafia and fantasizing about “powerful Jews”. In my view gangsters come in all sizes, but possibly not in the mind of a teenager...
REVISE: Infantile (A kid’s) desires “to be strong”, wanting role-models of the savior-kind "daddy saved me" - and the superheroes - the filmmaker, Zwick, even confessed in the NYTimes having being influenced by the book Tough Jews. Tom Segev's book, The Seventh Million" shows clearly the desire to escape "European Jewry" which represented weakness,. The "New-Jews" PR machine is a clear case of testosterone poisoning.
For me the way out is through a Brechtian use of media with the V-effekt as part of it.
And keeping a porous, yet particular point of view going.
Flaubert's "no conclusion" quote being part of the package.
