Today’s Prayer Focus
MOVIE REVIEW

Uprising

MPA Rating: (TV-14)

Reviewed by: Brett Willis
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Very Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Mature Teen to Adult
Genre: War Docudrama
Length: 3 hr. 30 min.
Year of Release: 2001
USA Release:
Relevant Issues
Box art for “Uprising”

sin, depravity and the fall of man

RACISM—What are the consequences of racial prejudice and false beliefs about the origin of races? Answer

Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? Answer

What about the issue of suffering? Doesn’t this prove that there is no God and that we are on our own? Answer

Does God feel our pain? Answer

ORIGIN OF BAD—How did bad things come about? Answer

Did God make the world the way it is now? What kind of world would you create? Answer

Featuring LeeLee Sobieski, Hank Azaria, David Schwimmer, Donald Sutherland, Jon Voight, Stephen Moyer, Cary Elwes
Director Jon Avnet
Producer Jon Avnet, Raffaella De Laurentis, Hester Hargett, Marsha Oglesby, Lisa Lindstrom, Bill Haber
Distributor
Distributor: Warner Brothers Pictures. Trademark logo.
Warner Bros. Pictures
, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company

I’ve been waiting a long time for a fact-based treatment of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and it’s finally here. This film was shown as an NBC mini-series in the November 2001 “sweeps” and then immediately released on video.

Following the German capture of Poland in 1939, all 350,000 Jews in Warsaw are moved to one section of the city which eventually becomes a walled-off ghetto. Then the Jews are shipped off, by the trainload, to death camps. (The same process occurs throughout Poland and in other Nazi-occupied countries.) In Spring 1943, after most of the ghetto has already been liquidated, a group of young Jews decides to form a resistance fighter network and make the Nazis pay dearly for any further deportation attempts. They face unbelievable difficulties: little food; few weapons; discrimination from anti-Semitic elements in the Polish Home Army (the “regular” resistance organization); opposition from the Jewish puppet police and from nonviolent elements within the Jewish leadership. But they fight effectively, and their heroic stand creates a new sense of pride and helps reverse the longstanding practice of just taking injustice lying down. The Nazis, used to having everything their way, are startled and angered by this new development. Tiring of the booby traps and sniper attacks, General Stroop burns down the entire ghetto, and pumps poison gas into the sewer tunnels to prevent Jews from using them to escape to the “Aryan” side.

LeeLee Sobieski, Hank Azaria, David Schwimmer and others are all brilliant as resistance leaders. Notwithstanding his character on TV’s “Friends” and comic relief roles in movies like “Six Days, Seven Nights”, Schwimmer really is capable of serious drama. Jon Voight as General Stroop is not quite convincing, but OK. And Donald Sutherland’s detached-from-reality screen persona works well here, as he plays a Jewish leader who advocates compromise and nonviolence while his people are being wiped out.

Content Warnings: The entire subject matter is disturbing. There’s the onscreen violence, the starvation and disease, the implied killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the Nazi doctrine that Jews are “subhuman.” There are some elements here that were never seen on broadcast TV until Steven Spielberg’s films “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” were run uncut; now, we get them even in a film that isn’t rated TV-MA. Brief nudity is shown (there are naked dead bodies in the streets; and captured female resistance fighters are immediately stripped lest they surprise their captors with hand grenades). And there are some profanities (a resistance fighter disguised in a Nazi uniform jokes “Heil S**tler”).

The most unsettling images may be those of Poles attending Mass on Easter morning and ignoring the smoke from the burning ghetto. Are they actually thankful to the Nazis for solving their “Jewish problem,” or are they just trying to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble themselves? Some of both, no doubt. In the book “The Bravest Battle” by Dan Kurzman, there are accounts of Poles on Easter Sunday lifting their children up so they could see over the ghetto wall and watch Jews leaping to their deaths from burning buildings. Also accounts of Jewish fighters who escaped the ghetto and joined the Home Army, only to be shot in the back by their “comrades.” But that book also contains the account of Capt. Henryk Iwanski, who led a Home Army unit through the sewers INTO the ghetto to fight alongside the Jews. Iwanski was wounded, and lost two brothers and two sons, in that action; meanwhile, his wife caught tuberculosis from a sick Jewish girl she was caring for. The old saying about 20% of the people doing 80% of the work comes to mind. But I digress…

Back to the film. I disagree with the policy change that allows material like this to be shown on broadcast, especially in an early-evening time slot. It may be for a good cause, but next thing we know Roger Corman and Paul Verhoeven will demand that their work be shown uncut too. However, for anyone of age and maturity to handle the content, I recommend the video as a way to make history come alive. If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Positive—“Can a moral man maintain his morals in an immoral world?” This is the question asked in “Uprising.” As Christian’s most of us will think we know the answer already, but I believe unless we are faced with the kind of persecution these brave young men, women and children went through, we will never truly know. And I pray we never have to go through what these people went through.

They watched as their friends and families were marched packed like sardines into the infamous trains that took them to their certain deaths. Thousands of Jews taken and needlessly murdered, many women and children.

It’s hard to find any fault with this film. I love this genre, I have studies the holocaust for years, and I have to admit I felt some satisfaction when the leader of the jewish resistance shot his first German moments after this German had bayonetted an old man to death. Maybe I’m wrong, but I loved the fact that these Jews fought back. The sets, the battle scenes, the music, the actors, the cinematography… [all was excellent].
My Ratings: [Average / 5]
Chris St. John, age 30
Negative—Hoping for ground-breaking television and amazing moviegoing, I tuned in to “Uprising” both nights that it aired on NBC. I was very disappointed, however, with the sloppy way in which the movie was presented.

1) It utilized popular stars David Schwimmer and Hank Azaria (anything for those Nielson ratings)

2) It used many of the Holocaust cliches present in all films trying to be the next “Schindler’s List” (emphasis on armbands, religion, Polish accents) and

3) It so desperately wanted to be a two-part miniseries that it stretched out over four hours what could be a 20-page short story. My word to the filmmakers: When you do a story about one of the greatest travesties in history, make sure you do it right. This movie was a travesty. I didn’t find anything particularly offensive, but I also didn’t find anything particularly fantastic about this overbilled NBC conglomeration.
My Ratings: [Better than Average / 2½]
Eric Schmidt
Positive—The movie UPRISING is extremely well done. I purchased the DVD, which is loaded with additional historical information. The nudity in most of the scenes is largely unnecessary to get the point across. They could have used back shots rather than front shots on the women.

Also, there are two rather risqué scenes—one involving a strip-search of one of the resistance fighter women by an older German Nazi and there’s a brief love scene between two of the resistance fighters. Not much is shown in the love scene, but plenty is implied. Again, so much of this is needless and very frustrating for a Christian viewer.

You’ll have to weigh out the nudity and language against your personal convictions. It was however refreshing to see a movie about the Holocaust where the victims fought back. Some of the extra features on the DVD enter into the question, “What is resistance?” and go on to say that many forms of resistance took place in addition to this historic armed uprising.

Being of German decent, I desire the “shock value” of movies like this. I grieve over the fact that my people could do this, and during the film, I wept and cried out to God for forgiveness of my people and for the souls of the Jews who’s eyes have not yet beheld their Messiah (Jesus).

This movie, and others like it, has thrust me and my family into fervent prayer for the nation of Israel. Maybe the Lord will give my people a chance to rewrite history through ardent prayer.
My Ratings: [Extremely Offensive / 4½]
Mark Krieg, age 38