Well, the movie was made -- so to say -- around the corner from where I lived. The very rare newspaper articles all described Aroch's story as true. And I even saw a shot with Dafoe and Aroch together. But I learned to be sceptic about such stories, and "true" in movies is an elastic term. :-)
Couldn't find anything usable about Aroch either, even if I tried different versions of the name: Shlomo, Salomo, Salomon, Aroch, Aruch, Arouch...
BTW, an interesting trivia might be that Dafoe took regular boxer training before and during the movie, and his trainer said he was very good at this the first I know it is a fact, the second might be just a courtesy, but I believe it was possible.
As for the movie itself I was a little bit dissapointed, and irritated, but the second is mostly my reaction on American movies on the Holocaust, because they keep trying to explain things that are so much a part of Polish history and therefore obvious, that those explainings always feel somehow out of place.
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merfwriter
18 years ago
second is mostly my reaction on American movies on the Holocaust, because they keep trying to explain things that are so much a part of Polish history and therefore obvious, that those explainings always feel somehow out of place.
Thats true, but if this movie was ment to be shown to an American audiance, then in some cases because this is more Europian history then it is American history, some Americans don't seem to really care about the Holocaust because it wasn't something that happend on America soil. There for in order to reach out to the American audiances and to teach them about the Holocaust, they have to explain things in a little more detail.
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alveni
18 years ago
Yes, I know. But sometimes it is a strange feeling -- if one is rised in such great awareness of Holocaust, as it was the case in Poland, it is hard to imagine that others don't know that much about it. :-)
Of course it works in both directions. And I often wonder how many details and how much of the message in American movies get lost here in Europe, because the audience has no background knowledge. It became clear to me while I was watching Platoon, my first encounter with Willem Dafoe (and actually the reason why I was interested in Triumph later). I remember how the understanding of the movie kept changing, while I was learning more about the Vietnam war and the era in the USA.
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merfwriter
18 years ago
The revolving changes in the movie Platoon was to reflect the revolving changes in how the American's viewed the war itself. At first people thought the where going into this war thinking that they were going into help. Every one was all for until the war kept dragging on and on and on. Several issues were related to why the public appinion changed. First, it was the first time in the history of America that war was televised. My parents and my aunt can remember sitting at the dinner table eating dinner and watching televised news broadcasts of the war. The news reporters were right in the middle of all the action. It was a new method of reporting the news about the war so there were very little sensorship. Also the American millitary lied to the media about the number of people dead. The # of North Vietnamies was greater then the # of Americans dead. That wasn't true. More Americans were coming home dead then alive which changed the young men's appinion about going of to war. They didn't want get killed. Also it was the war itself. As shown in the movie the war was a vishes war. It was a war of good vs. evil and in the end nobody won.
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