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Title: Why is this so great?
Review: It is politically correct, perhaps, to call any work dealing with the Holocaust great just because it deals with the subject, maybe because one fears the charge of anti-Semitism. I suspect that's the major reason this film has built a reputation. But this is NOT a great film. Like many period pieces dealing with aristocrats, it's a stately bore. The plot and character development take forever to build any steam. Just when you begin to care about the characters -- the movie ends. Or, more accurately, just stops, dead in in tracks, not a single plotline resolved. Characters just disappear along the way, randomly, with no dramatic impact. I wondered if they chopped away the last third of the film by accident when I rented it. It is beautifully photographed, but way too detached from it's subject matter until it's too late. In the end, too frustrating to be entertaining or thought-provoking.
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