I think this is a great movie; I rated it a 9/10. A searing and very sad story about the Holoclaust. But was the full frontal nudity of the child lead really necessary? I don't see how it helped the story. It seems merely gratutious.
Blaine in Seattle
I've not seen this film -- in fact, I learned of its existence only minutes ago -- so I cannot truly respond in a "responsive" way. My guess would be that it was either to show the humiliation of the prisoners and/or to show what should have been the innocence of childhood. With regard to the former, you see almost-nude young people in another Holocaust drama, The Devil's Arithmetic. With regard to the latter, you see this at the end of another undeservedly obscure film about kids, Walkabout.
I find the question absurd.
If a scene in a movie depicts a child in a blue shirt, noone would ask the question of whether it was "necessary" to display a blue-shirted child, ask if it "helped the story". In that situation, the kid was for various reasons, wearing a blue shirt, so the movie would show exactly that, and noone would question its necessity.
A holocaust movie reports on an environment where people, including children, in certain situations were nude. If the movie covers such situations, obvoiously the actors are nude. Not because it "helps the story", but because that's part of the story told! People were naked, so obviously the movies shows it that way. Chances are that the prisoners didn't face the other way all the time either; they turned around in all directions - sure you may call it "frontal nudity" when they happen to turn in the direction of the camera. The camera isn't part of the story; it would be highly unnatural if the actors consistently turned their bodies away from it, as if ashamed of displaying their nakedness to us, as if we were present.
When Schindler's List came out, a US senator really made big headlines with his objections to scenes where naked people were being showed into gas chambers. Showing people into gas chambers is, in his eyes, perfectly OK as long as they are dressed... (He later had to apologize to the Jewish communities for his statements).
Something is completely crazy around here! The Last Butterfly is a movie about war, concentration camps, gas chambers, genocide... Are these reigstred as keywords? No! Out of the eight top keywords, seven is related to nudity: Female Full Frontal Nudity, Female Frontal Nudity, Female Nudity, Nudity, Infant Nudity, Child Nudity, Bathtub. That's what catches people's attention! Keyword #4 is the over-general "Child", then #9 is "Holocaust" and at the end of the list, as #10, we find another one completely unrelated to the story of the film, "Based On Novel".
Seven keywords relatedt to nudity, a single one relevant to the contents of the movie. It seems to me that the senator who accepted gassing dressed people, but not naked ones, sort of reflected public opinion, or at least the same opinion that assigns keywords to this movie.
The two responders here miss the point. The movie was not set in a concentration camp. And did not depict Jews naked there. Rather, the nude scene is in a hotel and the little girl undresses intentionally and parades in front of the main character. She has a crush on him. Presumbably she is "coming on to him".
I am not a prude, but the scene seems very unnecessary to say the least. The movie makes the point elsewhere that she is attracted to him. It seems merely meant to shock.
Blaine in Seattle
It's important to consider the differences between how Europeans perceive nudity and how Americans perceive nudity (and, it's also worth considering how non-Western cultures perceive nudity), including the nudity of children. Generally, American culture places all nudity as a taboo, whereas European culture tends to be more accepting.
Take care.
I'm not quite the narrow-minded puritan you stereotype me as. I have no objection to nudity per se. But here the movie uses the child's nudity in an erotic manner. The girl has a crush on the hero, and she is clearly "coming on" to the hero. So the nudity is hardly a natural and innocent act. My point was, and is, that it is not necesaary or realistic to expect her to go to such an extreme to flirt with him.
Blaine in Seattle
With all respect, blainefielding, I think your sensitivity dials are set too high. The poster cynnad did not "stereotype" you as a "narrow-minded puritan" but merely stated a factual cultural difference between the U.S. and Europe. I was surprised at how you took cynnad's comment so personally.
As for the scene you are criticizing, I have seen this film with adult family and friends and none of us found the nudity scene objectionable. With the Holocaust's palpable fear as an emotional backdrop for the film, the traumatized child had come to trust the man who had taken her under his wing as a father figure. In this scene she had bathed in his apartment in a separate room after a substantial period of having gone without washing, then stepped into his room afterward without yet clothing herself. Rather than "coming on" to him, she quite oppositely only displayed her complete assuredness in his unselfish and thoroughly platonic concern for her, as any good father would have. This film centered upon the man's moral objections to the Nazi treatment of Jews and upon his willingness, toward the end of the film, to risk his life for the children in captivity, who performed the climactic allegorical stage play at the concentration camp with its dramatized but nonetheless harrowing depiction of screaming children being thrown into ovens. Because of the film's ever-present sense of forboding and the horrific final scenes, I found the brief nudity to be absolutely unobjectionable in context and utterly tame in comparison.
[Note: An edit on Nov. 14, 2008 was required to correct a typographical error.]
Having seen the movie, I want to point out the young girl earlier in the movie had observed her father figure and a woman in camp in the man's apartment. At one point, she sees the woman nude in the man's apartment, the light's in the apartment go out and the girl realizes the woman is spending the night with the man. Later in the movie, when the girl is in the man's apartment and finishes her bath, I suppose in her child's mind, if she wants to remain in the apartment with the man who is her father figure, she needs to be nude. She only gets in the bed after the man pulls back the covers and tells her to get in to warm herself. He never touches the girl or gets in the bed with her.
If there is one aspect of that scene that is creepy is when the man is shown lying on the bed smoking a cigarette, waiting for the girl to finish her bath. The man hears the water drain out of the tub, he sits up and we see his eyes and face show a look of surprise (possibly delight?) as the camera pans over to show the naked girl standing in the door leading from the bathroom. He makes no attempt to cover her or look the other way.
[deleted]