the devil’s arithmetic

A 16-year-old American girl with an apathetic view towards her Jewish family history finds herself pulled through time into 1941 to a small Polish village where the Nazi have just began their genocidal propaganda.

Director:

Donna Deitch

Writers:

Jane Yolen (novel), Robert J. Avrech (teleplay)

Stars:

Kirsten Dunst, Brittany Murphy, Paul Freeman

Storyline

This is another telling of the holocaust, but this time from the perspective of a modern teenage girl who only grudgingly accepts the Jewish traditions, but when she is asked to "open the front door" as part of the Seder feast finds herself, not unlike Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, to have entered the 1940's and has stepped into the life of a prisoner in one of the German death camps where she experiences all of its horrors firsthand.

User Reviews

 

Emotionally Powerful and Excellent Education

15 January 2006 | by Corky2 (Canada) – See all my reviews

While obviously this isn't a perfect education of the horrors of the Holocaust, it's not meant to be. This movie was based on a Young Adults' book, and it's transformed into a Young Adults' movie. It's not supposed to be a perfectly accurate portrayal, and it's not meant for historians or anything. But it is a touching film and excellent education for people to understand what it was like then. There are many powerful moments in the movie. A particularly impressive part, to me, was when Kirsten Dunst's character points to the number branded on her arm, and cries, "I wanted one of these!" referring to a tattoo. I think the highlight, however, was Brittany Murphy's incredible part. She was virtually unrecognizable, and her acting was superb. She literally threw herself into the part, and she shines. She truly is one of the greatest things about this movie.