The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews
Best2012Vote-1000x50

The Rape of Europa

Art-love tunnel vision
By MICHAEL ATKINSON  |  September 26, 2007
3.0 3.0 Stars
inside_the_rape_of_europa
THE RAPE OF EUROPA: An art-centric Holocaust.

This documentary from Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, and Nicole Newnham (who will be present) is an alternative history of the Third Reich’s ravages that focuses not on the human destruction but the Nazis’ scorched-earth impact on European art and architecture. The filmmakers are, it seems, assuming that after so much documentation of murder and torture we could stand to consider instead the material and cultural losses: the paintings stolen and lost, the centuries-old landmarks devastated (and not by the Germans — the Allied bombing of the Monte Cassino monastery is a centerpiece), the sculptures frantically smuggled to outlying estates before art mavens Hitler and Goering could get their greedy mitts on them. Still, in one example after another, it seems more than odd to be concerned about a hidden Leonardo, or the looted homestead of Dostoevsky, rather than butchered civilians and genocide. Meticulously researched, and narrated in reverent tones by Joan Allen, The Rape of Europa is intended as an adjunct document to Holocaust culture, and one has to keep reminding oneself of that fact amid the feverish art-love tunnel vision.
Related: Eternal returns, Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage|Sophie Scholl: The Last Days, Interview: John Cusack sounds off on War, Inc., More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, Adolf Hitler,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 02/14 ]   The Addams Family  @ Shubert Theatre
[ 02/14 ]   "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love"  @ Museum of Fine Arts
[ 02/14 ]   "Processes and Dreams"  @ Panopticon Gallery
ARTICLES BY MICHAEL ATKINSON
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS  |  November 08, 2011
    A sublime meta-fictional trifle that evokes Abbas Kiarostami's '90s mirror-films of children, Oliver Laxe's jaunt lands in a semi-rural Moroccan school for orphans.
  •   REVIEW: WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN  |  November 02, 2011
    Made as a communal experiment, the film is an avalanche of amateur avant-garde hijinks, closer to Brakhage and Markopoulos than to Hollywood.
  •   REVIEW: STRAW DOGS  |  September 20, 2011
    Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.
  •   REVIEW: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MCKINLEY NOLAN  |  August 30, 2011
    An investigative doc brimming with cultural resonance and historical savvy, Henry Corra's film has ahold of a pungent story — that of the titular black Texan fella who vanished in Vietnam 40 years ago.
  •   BUÑUEL CONTINUES TO DELIGHT, CONFOUND, AND SHOCK  |  June 16, 2011
    Openly, contentedly delighted with how our own dreams can appall us, and how close movies are to that appalling dreaminess, Luis Buñuel — the subject of an extensive survey at the HFA this month — may have been the greatest filmmaker of the medium's first century.

 See all articles by: MICHAEL ATKINSON

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed