The Painted Bird

This is a brutal yet beautiful movie that relentlessly comes at you from the get go. This poor kid goes through it all and from all angles. Eastern Europe in WWWII, a poor kid winds up alone and fending for himself with tiny bouts of kindness, ironically from the soldiers in this world, to propel him to its anti-climactic conclusion. I read up a bit, and it would appear this tale, while originally pitched by its author as a true story, was almost entirely fictional, though his parents confirm that he was stuck, alone in Poland for a brief time. Largely regarded as a compelling hoax now, the film still rings as authentic despite, with some wonderful cameos, though it remains a pale imitation of the far superior "Come and See." If you're in the mood for a wonderfully shot and acted downer of a movie, their are a litany of holocaust stories to choose from. This one has a quiet dread and belongs in that list, but definitely towards the middle.

Beautiful cinematography and great acting. Everything else is dull. Zero thought went into the story. The movie is basically 3 hours of vignettes depicting the worst memories of a child’s life. That makes the entire story a lie, life simply isn’t this bleak, even in WW2. So we get a plot that goes from horrifying to just plain silly by the 2 hr mark. Even worse- there is zero character development. None. They could have had a different boy in each scene and we’d have the same (or better) movie. Really dumb film. I’d be more forgiving if it didn’t use ww2 as a backdrop to make it seem more profound. It’s like using September 11th to show us how bad child abuse is for 3 hrs. We already know it’s bad. Give us an actual story and character progression.

Main idea of film is jewish superiority. No human in the world except jewish. This is what sionism is.