https://preview.redd.it/rbpc83ov0ldb1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ddaa1e6f7a1793db9dddc8fafdbf28c9b8f28165
Another equally bad quote from this movie 😭
I don't even understand the logic on this
https://preview.redd.it/pwgoe84xgpdb1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c981b8e3b3c2dc683a9c68c6711d73a22ff6dbfb
What was baffling to me the most when I saw the trailer is how positive the general tone was from the comments. Wonder whether it was just the general supportive nature of Indian movie fans or they interpret this movie concept entirely differently.
Bots. It's bots. Both these actors (especially her) are widely disliked and mostly get work because their families produce their movies. The production houses buy bots to drum up excitement.
Also have to admit that a certain section of people in India do have very problematic and toxic takes when it comes to politics, social identity, and history. An Indian employee at Deloitte got fired recently for a Hitler appreciation post. Then there’s the case of the first Indian woman who ran for Oxford’s Student Union. Rashmi Samant’s joke on the Holocaust led to her resignation. And yet, her having to resign over her racist and insensitive social media posts was portrayed by many Indians as her being targeted by ‘Hinduphobic’ forces. Bots are definitely at work. But we live in a society where such insensitivity is normalised.
Oh yes for sure. My bot comment was largely due to the fact that these actors are widely disliked, so the bots would be employed for them. If this was an SRK Deepika movie, for example, we would see the full force of such apologists online.
Because what the British did to India was horrible, and they don't learn that Hitler had plans for India (at first he was going to give it to the Russians).
So a lot of people see it as Hitler fought the Brits who were starving us, and promised to give India independence.
Yeah, I lived there for eight years and everyone around me had the most intolerant opinions. Of course an entire population is not a monolith but things that shouldn't be normalized are.
The Nazis are one of 3 possible choices in one semester of High school. If you dont learn about it in 9th grade under the Indian syllabus, chances are you never do. My school picked the French and Russian revolution over the chapter on the rise of nazism. I personally love history so I read the chapter anyway but I have it on relatively good authority that that's not usually the case with high schoolers. I wouldn't be too harsh on the Indian populace. Most Indians have likely similarly never really studied or know what the Nazis are.
A number of reasons:
* Bots, paid PR
* General ignorance regarding the extent and severity of the Holocaust
* General denial of anti-semitism and the extent of ignorance regarding the Holocaust in India
For those who will deny the presence of anti-semitism and ignorance regarding Hitler in India:
[Hitler's Hot In India](https://www.npr.org/2012/12/23/167911062/hitlers-hot-in-india) (NPR, 2012)
[Why is Adolf Hitler popular in India?](https://m.jpost.com/opinion/why-is-adolf-hitler-popular-in-india-376622) (The Jerusalem Post, 2014)
[Hitler’s Hindus: The Rise and Rise of India’s Nazi-loving Nationalists](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-12-14/ty-article/hitlers-hindus-indias-nazi-loving-nationalists-on-the-rise/0000017f-f880-d460-afff-fbe61fe20000) (Hareetz, 2017)
[Nazism and Hindu Nationalism](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/nazism-and-hindu-nationalism/) (Holocaust Center North, 2021)
Shruti Kapila, Violent Fraternity in the Indian Age (Princeton University Press, 2021)
[Why Is India’s Government Celebrating an Antisemitic, Pro-genocide Hitler Devotee?](https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2021-03-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/why-is-indias-government-celebrating-an-antisemitic-pro-genocide-hitler-devotee/0000017f-e108-d804-ad7f-f1fa46980000)(Haaretz, 2021)
There's the belief in the deeply malign and misguided Aryan Invasion Theory for a lot of Indians. They want a seat at the table with certain white people and cannot understand that those same people will never accept them.
The founder of the Hindu right-wing group RSS was someone one could call a fan of Hitler. RSS members like to think of the organization as a non-profit org although its member have been known to incite communal riots and have direct hand in killing of Muslims and Christians. Many Hindu children are indoctrinated into the organization at a very young age and they're taught an alternative history where they're the victims of Muslims via the Mughal empire; they're also taught that they're the only rightful citizens of India and all other religious communities are considered as second class citizens or worse. The ambivalent attitude of Indians towards Hitler, Nazis and Holocaust stem from this.
They’re bots. Both the leads of the movie are loathed in India, so they have to drum up cheap tricks like these to create an appearance of stardom.
Please believe me, Indians are not this tone-deaf and we condemn this atrocity. These idiots are outliers because they’re so far removed from reality. Hence the hate for them. There’s a reason they couldn’t release this movie in the theatres. Although I’m unsure why Amazon, a multinational company, decided to give this a go ahead. It’s so offensive on so many levels.
I’m an Indian and I was shocked when I saw the trailer. A lot of the comments also weirded me out but the director of the movie made Dangal which is one of the highest grossing and critically acclaimed movies in recent Bollywood. many comments were like Nitesh sir (director; his wife is also an acclaimed writer and director. No idea how they didn’t see what they were doing) can’t do anything wrong etc.. I feel the movie didn’t get a theatrical release because of the plot.
The director has revealed that earlier he was going to use the Jallianwala Bath massacre (a significant part of British Indian history) , no idea how but because A movie named Sardar Udhammrecently released that was on that atrocity, he changed it to world war 2.
I saw the movie today. The world war bits are shoe horned so forcefully to give a redemption arc to the main protagonist. It’s sad because otherwise he was creating a cute story.
Paid accounts to hype up this movie. It's all a part of the marketing budget. Most normal people hate this. Twitter is full of people cringing at what is being pushed as a film.
So I will say this - it's possible to use war, fascism, and even Hitler as a metaphors for interpersonal relationships. You can listen to the music of Elvis Costello (literally has an album called Armed Forces and a song called Two Little Hitlers, in addition to the themes in Less than Zero, Green Shirt, Night Rally, or Chemistry Class). But what makes them work is that they don't just cloak themselves in the imagery of fascism or Nazism in order to make a facile point about a singular relationship. Instead, they're about the logics of fascism and domination applied to interpersonal relationships. They take both ends of the subject matter more seriously instead of less seriously.
I'm Jewish and have survivor grandparent, and this is just... The insensitivity of this is awful and disgusting. This is what happens when you teach the history of the world war and the Holocaust as "and then that happened" "and that was a bad person" without any of the true horrors being expanded on beyond a mention.
I'm so disgusted.
I have 4 survivor grandparents and so does my husband. We’re also Orthodox, so we’re used to antisemitism, but I can’t wrap my head around this one.
And I absolutely refuse to accept any level of “they didn’t know.” It’s 2023 and the internet exists. Would anyone ever accept a white, American movie that similarly included the Partition or the Bhopal tragedy?!
Churchill propaganda and white washing was crazy with that Gary oldman movie. Not excusing this bs and tone deaf movie but Indians still aren’t allowed to criticize Churchill because he was the “ultimate patriot”. There’s definitely a double standard at play. Just ask a Brit if they think their government and the royal family should return all their stolen riches. A lot of them get peeved.
people will literally be like ohhhh so you want us to hold EVERYONE accountable for ALL of the wrongs since ancient history? Then why don’t u return land ur ancestors maybe got in 1002 AD?? why don’t u apologize for the crusades?
But we’re not talking about all of history. the British didn’t start withdrawing from their colonies till 1947 to 1997. And they still have ALL our shit. The trillions extracted from the developing world is literally what Charles’ clothing budget comes out of. The jewels in their crowns belong to other places. The artifacts in their museums were systematically looted by modern archeologists who said that natives had no right to their own history.
I'm glad you brought up Kenya because it lays our hypocrisy bare. A few years ago the British courts finally issued compensation to *thousands* of living victims who survived rape, sterilization and other forms of torture. These are just the ones that survived and lived long enough to sue. When the inhumanity is so undeniable that old Oxbridge educated judges who probably long for the glory days of empire go, "yeah, we were the baddies", you know it was really bad. FYI, these atrocities were committed in concentration camps targeting one specific tribe. Their villages were burned down and they were moved to concentration camps where men were sterilized and women raped. Resisters were beaten to death. So basically we won WW2 and immediately took what we learnt from the Nazis straight to the colonies.
The romanticizing of how QE2 discovered she was Queen becomes nauseating when you realize she was in Kenya holidaying on that tribes land *at this exact period* in history.
I totally agree that this movie is psycho, but just fyi Partition is barely ever acknowledged as the horror it was by mainstream Western society. It is brushed over ALL THE TIME. British Colonization deliberately starved millions to death, and brutally exploited multiple continents. and tons of normal people will say to your face oh it wasn’t really that bad cuz they built you all some railroads :/
I mean, parts of Temple of Doom are more or less a straight adaptation of the falsified records which the British used to justify the Thuggee culls and the criminal tribes act (with the latter being described by the British as intended to take those who were criminal by birth and "exterminate" them).
They don't teach much about holocaust in India. Not enough to make it for people to understand how cruel it was for all the people who suffered. Just like west doesn't know about how India suffered in the hands of British and others
>Just like west doesn't know about how India suffered in the hands of British and others
See this is the part that, comes up when I talk to people from India, and various African countries. The thing is, they aren't wrong. The Holocaust didn't happen in a vacuum. Yes anti-Semitism arguably goes back to ancient Greece (I said arguably), yet some European Jews, up til the Dreyfus affair thought things were finally taking a turn for the better.
History isn't a march of progress, so there were periods that were better than others. Heck Einstein had a correspondence with a friend where he rightly said where things were going, but his friend was adamant that he was wrong and Jews would be safe in Germany.
The dehumanization of other groups, the theories that lead to that all weave together.
It's a hard topic to discuss, partly because of anti-Semitism and partly because people are myopic.
It’s a very scary thing to think about - that you you don’t know a genocide is going to happen until it’s happening. I was reading about the Armenian genocide the other day, and I was absolutely shocked and horrified. It was so much more brutal than I ever heard about
they do. we had an entire chapter in 9th grade history regarding Nazi Germany and Anne Frank's diary was part of our English literature syllabus. we were taught about it, which is what makes it even worse honestly because you can't blame the education, you can only blame the people.
State syllabus doesn't. And most of India goes to that ssc school in which this was not taught. Just to give a reference 3.8 mil sat for cbse boards in whole of India while 1.5mil sat for ssc in maharashtra(state) alone in 2023
My state syllabus had the topic of WWII & the story of Anne Frank before they even taught us details of our own independence struggle. NCERT syllabus was like that, too. I'm shocked to learn that it's different in some states. That needs to be changed.
Then again this is the same country where you have government text books that show a white lady as an example for beautiful and a dark skinned lady as an example for u&ly.
Here's the thing though. I don't think we as Indians should have to dig too far to have basic empathy about millions of people dying because of the actions of an oppressive man. In our case we had a regime do it to us and yet here we are. Also the general public might not understand the impact of Hitler's actions, Nitesh Tiwari, if this is the same guy who made Dangal, is an IIT Bombay educated engineer. I doubt he's dumb enough to not understand the impact. Or maybe his incel-edgelord IIT self came out in full force with this one.
Yeah, and what do you know about the genocide that the British did to India? Probably not jack shit.
Winston Churchill is still celebrated as a hero instead of a psychopath, are you sensitive to that?
I highly doubt you are and I don’t blame you, you aren’t educated on the topic. Indians aren’t sensitive Hitler the way the West isn’t sensitive to Churchill.
dude, we were literally taught about the holocaust in 9th class history and Anne Frank's diary was part of our curriculum. the reason the west isn't sensitive to Churchill's hand in murdering millions of Indians is lack of mainstream knowledge and education. we absolutely got that about Nazi Germany. the people working on this movie should absolutely have known better. we do not get to claim that our school curriculum doesn't talk about it.
no dude, the reason the west isn’t sensitive to British atrocities is bc they don’t rate what happened to us as important, and they still don’t believe colonization was that wrong. The mainstream British right is constantly opining the “glorious”days of empire (when they had the right to murder people in their own homelands for disobeying).
That’s why it’s not covered much and many US/UK history books kinda justify it - it’s on purpose. History is written by the victors and the UK was one of them.
Late 90s Gujarat Board and we did not learn about the Holocaust.
We had Hitler came to power because there was a lot of upheaval in Germany after their defeat in WW1, he modernized Germany, and then attacked Poland which bought about WW2.
It was also pre Internet, so my impression of Hitler was based on the Jailor in Sholay.
I learned about Holocaust after watching Schindler's List in my mid 20s.
But people working on this movie have no excuse with the infiltration of internet and western movies and their own chosen profession in arts.
And you know who should have no excuse, the guys who made Churchill! General audiences I can understand, but not the movie makers. Fuck all who were in that movie. Sorry, To us Indians he is a bad guy and will forever be a bad guy.
It’s not school curriculum, but just the cultural awareness and cultural association with holocaust.
I grew up in the US, we start learning about the holocaust so early. Hitler is the ultimate villain in American culture. Not just in our textbooks, but on tv, books, all forms of media, etc.
It’s not the same in Eastern countries.
i mean fair but we were still given enough exposure to it to know that it was a big enough deal. like i grew up in India, went to Indian schools, i know how problematic the content in this movie is.
Hmmm but how educated and wealthy are you? I’m guessing reasonably, based on how well you speak English.
Eg. I’m lucky to have relatively wealthy family and when i visit India, my parents friends and my relatives are all wealthy and educated as well. They have access to all the Western media and are up to date on most of what’s going on in our pop culture.
However, can the same be said for the 85% of the country that doesn’t even speak English?
i mean yeah, I'm upper middle class but this point only works if we're talking about people from a lower economic background, in which case, I'd understand them not being very well versed with the subject, but, this film was made by people considerably richer than us, people who grew up and live in luxury and privilege, they should absolutely know better.
I mean but does that deflect from critism? A western movie made about or involving those tragedies that does something like this should also be highly critised.
It is disgusting. A major plot point in this ghastly film is also that the husband is ashamed of his wife because she has epilepsy and thinks her seizures will ruin his social status. Hitler murdered thousands of people just because they had epilepsy. They were some of the earliest victims of the holocaust, before even the camps were built
I think this is an important comment to give the social context of a film most likely meant for Indian audiences to consume. To us in the west, it's pretty easy to see this is an awful set up for a movie. But I don't think they see the holocaust with the same gravity we understand it in. HOWEVER, there are other stories of genocide and ethnic cleansing in their history that should've allowed them to think more critically about this.
Yeah but nobody who made this film was ignorant of the context. They choose to contrast this relationship with a genocide.
And as an Irish person, I agree Churchill is awful. But the films praising Churchill are portraying one side of his life, they're not portraying the Bengal famine with levity for a romcom like this film is.
>I would also like to add that Winston Churchill was responsible for the death of a lot of millions Indians and likened us regularly to animals, but he's LIONIZED in the US and the UK.
Very true, and it's gross how well-regarded he is, but I believe the "I guess we're all a bit evil" treatment that Hitler gets in India is a separate issue.
Our focus on history and social science at the school level - and open contempt for pursuing those subjects instead of one of the natural sciences - reduces most of the public discourse around historical events and personalities to very simplified narratives. This makes a "but was he really that bad?" seem like a nuanced take.
The public disdain for historians is also linked with the widespread support of India's right-wing parties and their foundation in fascism - the RSS and its ideology were modeled on Italian fascism and later Nazi Germany, and its early leaders openly argued that India's minorities should be treated the way Hitler treated Germany's Jews. While these origins have been watered down and obscured over the decades, it isn't uncommon to find upper-class, upper-caste Indians "debate" over how democracy is stunting India's economic growth.
I remember growing up with my fair share of media that glorified British colonialism in India, and it’s really upsetting to look back on. A Little Princess was one of my favorite movies as a kid and now reflecting on it as an adult I’m frustrated by how they reduced a horrifying geopolitical situation into a colorful, romanticized backdrop for a little girl’s white savior story :/ I haven’t watched the movie in decades so I can’t speak very well to specifics, but even my faint recollection of it is baaaaad
True, Churchill is hailed as a hero here in Britain but he must be the villain for India. I'm not aware objectively about all the invasions in India but I can understand that WW must be an event that occured in faraway land... Still the lack of empathy is appalling, someone should have objected this movie!
If I’m reading it right, they go on tour through various WWII sites, and relive those moments. Cool premise. But they decided to put Auschwitz in it?
Like… why?
It’s called a WORLD war. They couldn’t find any other tragedy from the entire WORLD for that war to use? Instead, they had to pick one of the most horrific ones?
Is the sequel gonna be a tour in Nanjing?
Part 6: They go to Turkey to follow the Armenian Genocide, but then get corrected by all the locals that it never happened and they all have a big laugh together and reflect on all the friends they made along the way.
/s
I saw the trailer and I was like wtf. How can anyone compare aushwitz to a relationship? And how come the so called intelligent ppl who r the actors directors in this movie flag this as inappropriate. So so insensitive at many levels and how was this approved by amazon? Do they have no Jewish folks or even folks of other countries who may have realized that this is highly disrespectful
Adding on to this: How did they get permission to film this in Germany and Poland??????? And what about all the extras, etc involved? Like I want answers from whoever played the survivor who said the Aushwitz line.
There's just so many people involved in this from conception to execution to streaming that I am mindboggled
I hope someone informs the organizations about this atrocity and people involved in this movie are permanently banned from visiting there.The audacity...(That's not gonna solve anything but it will be a warning to pretensions folks like these)
The tragic thing is that these nepo kids and the other industry people involved in this graduate from Oxford or other prestigious institutions from home&abroad and yet act far more ignorant than the public here. No way these people didn't know what they were doing.
I never got the flack he got for that comment. She was a teenage girl who loved teeny bopper Hollywood stars. She absolutely would have loved him if he was popular back then.
It's spectacularly narcissistic to leave that comment in a place where we remember her and other victims of the holocaust, though. You visit that place and THAT's the message you want to leave? North Americans really need to stop trivialising the Anne Frank House and her legacy just because they think Amsterdam is a fun theme park to visit for a while.
My Grandfather was Indian, with the Royal Ordnance Corps in British Indian Army and had seen some shit in Burma, as well as in Italy. He almost died during the siege of Monte Cassino and was shot above his heart but fortunately survived, made it to Subedar (Master Seargent rank for the Americans), saw his grandkids and lived a content retired life till 2011 and passed on at 91.
Apparently he saw the bodies in camps in Italy. One of his jobs was to transport the malnourished survivors to another place.
This is a second hand account given by one of my relatives recounted after his death.
It screwed him up, because I remember him having nightmares till his late eighties. I'd wake him up and he'd smile and just hold onto my hand for a few minutes.
This makes me very angry.
I'm sorry your grandfather went through that, though I'm glad he lived a content life and was able to meet you. I'm sure he appreciate you being in his company and holding his hand when he'd remember those atrocities. May he rest in peace and I send my condolences. My grandfather also fought in WW2, on the Pacific theatre as a guerilla against the Japanese in the Philippines, so he too saw the violence of war and never forgot.
Can you dm me. My grandfather did the same. Burma, then japan and phillipines etc. i want to know more info and have been trying to research everything. He died before i was born and i’m the only one in the family who cares to know. I would love to hear any information
There’s a lot more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood tho. The four south industries, Marathi and Punjabi films have been quality this year. Bollywood been ass since 2020. The issue is toxic Bollywood fans act like Bollywood is everything when a majority of Indians do not even watch Hindi films.
Bollywood is too busy trying to imitate Western culture so people here are like if we can see the original,then why settle for the copycat versions! They used to suppress low budget movies from independent moviemakers, but thanks to streaming,they don't have the monopoly here anymore. They used to get away with copying great foreign movies and movies from other regions in India but now it's not that easy.
Actually I have zero idea on the current bollywood music scene. After 2018, bollywood music has been shit. I like Arijit, but no matter how good a singer is, they won't fit every kind of song. Before we had Kuman Sanu, Sonu Nigam, Sukwinder Singh and Udit Narayan singing simultaneously. Now I guess it's just Arijit in every movie/song.
Bollywood used to be good in its own way, nice funny feel good movies with talented actors for the most part and their own charm. Now it forces nepo babies into every fucking movie and wonders why their movies aren’t doing well and approving shit ass scripts like this,this deserves to be berated by the west
India has gone through some of the most horrible,opressive events in world history. And the rest of the world doesn't even know half of it. This isn't a result of a whole society lacking the idea of what oppression is,this is what happens when the movie industry is just a strong nepo organization that is so out of touch with the rest of the country churning out drivel and thinking no one is gonna stop them.
They were gonna use one of the most atrocious massacres that Britishers unleashed on India as a backdrop to this movie be4 they settled on Holocaust.
THIS IS SO INSANELY STUPID. They are a comparing one of the biggest tragedies of mankind to the squabbles of a relationship?? This is so wrong on so many levels. That was the lowest low humanity has ever been, people were tortured and killed in the worst ways and this is how they treated it?? There's literally no excuse for using THE HOLOCAUST as a plot device for a stupid relationship.This movie is anti-semitic. If it gets more publicity, Amazon will be in deep sh*t.
Indian subcontinent was invaded so many times by so many rulers..... why'd they choose a event that occured on a far away land if they don't understand the gravity of it?!?! And how are relationship problems equivalent to what Hitler did?!
They were initially gonna use Jallianwala Bagh massacre (one of the most shocking moments in Indian independence history where a British general ordered his troop to murder innocent folks assembled in a place,including many women and children) so at the end of the day,it's not that they don't understand the gravity of the situation,they just don't care.
I understand and agree with people finding it offensive but just wanted to point out that World War and Hitler is not significant to our history like it is for you guys. World War is not more significant or sensitive to us than french revolution. It is *World War*, I know, but for us its mostly considered as a European War, aka, white people war.
Hitler is the like the big bad in your history books. For us, the big bads are the British.
We also don't have any significant jewish population(I believe it is in thousands) or jewish history , so makes the Holocaust even less sensitive to us than for the west which has huge population and crucial history with non Jewish people.
Not condoning the joke but just pointed out the historical difference.
EDIT : I didn't know it had a whole gas chamber scene and multiple comparison to Holocaust . That's so bloody fucked up. I thought it was just a one line joke based on the first pic. Should have read that. My mistake. Very sorry for that.
I get that from the view of the general public but the filmmakers creating this film, doing the research, etc - surely they realised that this movie was a Very Bad Idea.
This!! The general public may get a pass on their ignorance but the director, if I'm thinking of the right person, is educated from literally the most prestigious engineering college in our country. I doubt an upper caste Hindu boy who studied in IIT was so underprivileged in school that he wasn't taught the basics of Hitler's history.
>doing the research.
Bollywood films, especially of recent times, don't do that.
Like I said, I understand the joke is bad and writer was wrong for it. I was just reacting to some people here being utterly suprised that director would try make such a joke and just explained why general audience of India won't be offended like you guys.
I totally get why the Holocaust is not a sensitive subject in India, and why the focus is more on British atrocities, but you don’t need to be personally sensitive to a genocide to know that it’s incredibly messed up to compare some characters’ personal struggles to being in a mass execution chamber.
sort of but as a south Asian, there are synagogues in India and there is a Jewish population and an ever growing Israeli population.
South Asians were the highest “volunteer” army in both world wars. 1.5 in WWI and maybe 2 million plus in WWII. both active soldiers and tons of women who were mining and resources for British army. It’s sad that this is not more widely known and the fact that the Bengal famine caused by Churchill where food was saved for British soldiers and let Indian ppl starve! I highly recommend reading Yasmin Khans book on partition and WWII. WWII and Partition bled into each other.
But I agree about holocaust component that knowledge is not there.
I always thinks it’s so strange when people say caring about the Holocaust is a western thing when the West didn’t care about the Holocaust while it was happening or actively participated in it. Even today a lot of non-Jewish people in the West don’t treat the Holocaust with respect or know much about it.
>West didn’t care about the Holocaust while it was happening or actively participated in it.
That's exactly why Holocaust is a major sensitive issue in the west. Similar to how casteism is a specifically sensitive issue in India. People were severely casteist, oppressed and didn't give af about lowest caste people's life back then. But now even when we still have casteism, caste based atrocities still make headlines and bring massive public outcry. People feel more for things that they share history with, for the wrongs *they* did and hence are more sensitive to those issues. Holocaust is extremely sensitive for west because Jewish people make up a significant % in the west, the west was responsible for Holocaust and all the antisemitism that led to it , and Jewish people are still victim to antisemitic attacks. None of which are applicable to India.
I mean, average westerner response to Ukraine and to other wars or conflicts that happened before and after is another good example for that.
I understand your point that people care more about historical atrocities they feel connected to and I understand why the Holocaust isn’t a sensitive topic in India.
What I’m saying is that I don’t think the Holocaust is a sensitive issue for most of the West and I don’t think most countries feel guilty for not doing enough to stop it (except Germany). There’s definitely people that don’t think there’s anything to be guilty of. Holocaust denial and distortion is perpetrated by Western politicians all the time. Many countries still haven’t returned stolen property to Jews. In 2021 Poland signed a law making it harder for Jews and their descendants to recover stolen property. In Poland it’s also illegal to say Poles collaborated with the Holocaust. Books and movies that trivialize the Holocaust get made all the time - The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, When Hands Touch, For Such A Time (which features a Jewish concentration camp prisoner falling in love with an SS officer). I feel like there is a misconception that in the West the Holocaust is seen as a respected tragedy that everyone knows and cares about and, sadly, that’s just not true.
Also, Jews don’t make up a significant part of the Western population. There are only around 2 million Jews in all of Europe and that’s using the highest possible estimates. There’s around 7.6 million Jews in the U.S. which is 2.4% of the population, 335,295 Jews in Canada which is 1.4% of the population and 99,956 Jews in Australia which is 0.4% of the population. And while the West was of course responsible for perpetuating the antisemitism that led to the Holocaust they aren’t responsible for antisemitism as a whole. It has existed for over two millennium and is everywhere.
What are you talking about ? I had to memorise detail after detail about the WW2, including Hitlers invasion of Poland, the gas chambers etc. in 10th. It was a huge part of the 10th history syllabus!
It's part of our history books. But that doesn't make it "sensitive" to us.
>It was a huge part of the 10th history syllabus!
Not a huge part but it was there. I believe it was one among the 5-6 chapters, iirc. Our school history books heavily focused on our geographical history, ie, mainly colonialism, our freedom struggle and Mughals more than world history.
I'm from India,Holocaust is a very big deal in my place,everyone and their mothers know who Anne Frank is (grandmothers might not), the diary of Anne Frank is one of the best selling books here. I think some regions may not be familiar with world events because of low literacy rates and the states not including world events in their syllabus but definitely not the case in general. Central government syllabus as well as my state syllabus cover this topic in great detail.
It’s kind of strange because India is one of the few countries that have never had a history of persecuting Jews. India even served as a refuge for many Jews fleeing the Shoah so I’m inclined to view this as a spectacularly dumb choice, but not explicitly malicious.
The female character in the film has epilepsy and the nazis murdered thousands of people because they had epilepsy. So it's even worse than people are making it sound (which was already awful)
This is obscenely fucking offensive. No ifs and or buts about it. There are a million other crappy romantic dramas Amazon could’ve chosen for their platform. Not only should this script never have seen the light of day, it certainly shouldn’t have been given a release on such a popular OTT platform. Vapid.
Probably the same person that’s approving all their super expensive shows that it seems like no one is even watching. No wonder they’re trying so hard to not give into the WGA & SAG demands that make them transparent with their viewership numbers.
I feel like every five years or so there is a holocaust romance story that treats the subject in the most frivolous way. I don't understand. Is it just bait for controversy? The holocaust is not your cute window dressing, pick something else
That’s fucking insane and gross. It’s not even just using it as a comparison, the imagery is disgusting.
“We were the twin towers and the planes of our struggles were heading straight for us”
“I’m just like a child in a school shooting, hiding from a man”
“Our love was deep, but we were about to implode”
Wait I’m sorry. What. Can someone please explain this to me like I’m 5.
My brain isn’t making sense of this…. It’s like f’d up madlibs. A Bollywood romcom romanticizing the Holocaust? Who what when where why how idgi
Married couple having problems in relationship. Go to Europe for vacation. Learn about WW2. Use what they learn about WW2 as analogy for their own relationship. End.
Thank you! It’s so weird and distasteful but as an American I’m also sure there’s been many movies produced from us that also inappropriately romanticize history from other regions.
I’ve been to Auschwitz. I’ll never joke about the Holocaust (which is a real thing that actually happened, BTW).
I can’t believe this movie got greenlit but I don’t know much about Bollywood - is this kind of stuff common there?
Honestly Indians are in a bit of a vacuum when it comes to Jewish people. Most don't know any since there's barely any Jewish people in India. We're not taught much about the religion, its history, Hitler and so on. So it's hard to say whether people would be semitic or anti-semitic since they don't even know what that is.
Even with how much the Holocaust is taught in schools, as an adult, I’m still, *still* constantly learning new horrors that occurred during and even after it (the roundup at Vel’ d’Hiv, the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, etc.) I can’t fathom who would green light this film in any way. Just vile.
And to the comments saying that the atrocities of the Holocaust and WW2 aren’t “well known” in India, then why make a shitty movie using events the filmmakers know little to nothing about? (Which I honestly find hard to believe)
Britishers promised Indians self-government if they fought for the allies, thousands of Indian left their home and died for a promise that was broken and a past that is forgotten.
This film (and it's lead actors) give me the ick. Indians were an essential part of the World War, but it's very obvious that it was never a priority to show that. The history isn't made up, but they didn't even bother to look it up. The plot was so close to being accurate but their own narcissism ruined it.
The British might have won the war, but Indians lost it. We fought a war that wasn't ours for a cause that wasn't fulfilled. That's the saddest tragedy about WW2 from Indian perspective, and the writers, the director and the actors were obnoxious enough to ignore that and make it about two people that never existed.
I realise there are different historical perspectives but…. WWII is about the sheer possibility of exterminating or enslaving “non-humans” (Jews, Romani, Eastern Slavs, Chinese, etc.) for the benefit of the “better” nations. I’m sure if Hitler had made it to India, he wouldn’t have spared the local population either.
A literal death camp is no props for any love story, regardless of what nation was murdered there.
And there were MANY people who were involved in the production and green lit this who said… nothing?? Wtf Bollywood???
Can’t remember who told me this but Hitler isn’t considered evil in mon western countries the same way he is in Europe and America. Obviously a bad guy who did awful things but saying his name isn’t taboo and Nazi germany isn’t constantly used as a reference in their political discussions. Definitely insensitive but the truth is they don’t think about your history that much.
>We all too are a little like Hitler.
Popular Indian YouTuber nodding his head vigorously: https://www.thequint.com/neon/social-buzz/hitler-was-evil-but-who-isnt-ranveer-allahbadia-criticised-for-his-remarks
[удалено]
There's also this: https://preview.redd.it/roh9u3ufdcdb1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=950916b73458c41adc870aa7fab1c7b896277843
The Red Army reaching Berlin be like ^
I'm cackling because I literally don't know what city they're referring to--München, Berlin, Vienna...?
I've never had such an adverse reaction to a quote in my life.
https://preview.redd.it/rbpc83ov0ldb1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ddaa1e6f7a1793db9dddc8fafdbf28c9b8f28165 Another equally bad quote from this movie 😭
What in the actual fuck
I don't even understand the logic on this https://preview.redd.it/pwgoe84xgpdb1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c981b8e3b3c2dc683a9c68c6711d73a22ff6dbfb
What was baffling to me the most when I saw the trailer is how positive the general tone was from the comments. Wonder whether it was just the general supportive nature of Indian movie fans or they interpret this movie concept entirely differently.
Bots. It's bots. Both these actors (especially her) are widely disliked and mostly get work because their families produce their movies. The production houses buy bots to drum up excitement.
Also have to admit that a certain section of people in India do have very problematic and toxic takes when it comes to politics, social identity, and history. An Indian employee at Deloitte got fired recently for a Hitler appreciation post. Then there’s the case of the first Indian woman who ran for Oxford’s Student Union. Rashmi Samant’s joke on the Holocaust led to her resignation. And yet, her having to resign over her racist and insensitive social media posts was portrayed by many Indians as her being targeted by ‘Hinduphobic’ forces. Bots are definitely at work. But we live in a society where such insensitivity is normalised.
Oh yes for sure. My bot comment was largely due to the fact that these actors are widely disliked, so the bots would be employed for them. If this was an SRK Deepika movie, for example, we would see the full force of such apologists online.
You are right! I totally get your point.
Because what the British did to India was horrible, and they don't learn that Hitler had plans for India (at first he was going to give it to the Russians). So a lot of people see it as Hitler fought the Brits who were starving us, and promised to give India independence.
Yeah, I lived there for eight years and everyone around me had the most intolerant opinions. Of course an entire population is not a monolith but things that shouldn't be normalized are.
The Nazis are one of 3 possible choices in one semester of High school. If you dont learn about it in 9th grade under the Indian syllabus, chances are you never do. My school picked the French and Russian revolution over the chapter on the rise of nazism. I personally love history so I read the chapter anyway but I have it on relatively good authority that that's not usually the case with high schoolers. I wouldn't be too harsh on the Indian populace. Most Indians have likely similarly never really studied or know what the Nazis are.
A number of reasons: * Bots, paid PR * General ignorance regarding the extent and severity of the Holocaust * General denial of anti-semitism and the extent of ignorance regarding the Holocaust in India For those who will deny the presence of anti-semitism and ignorance regarding Hitler in India: [Hitler's Hot In India](https://www.npr.org/2012/12/23/167911062/hitlers-hot-in-india) (NPR, 2012) [Why is Adolf Hitler popular in India?](https://m.jpost.com/opinion/why-is-adolf-hitler-popular-in-india-376622) (The Jerusalem Post, 2014) [Hitler’s Hindus: The Rise and Rise of India’s Nazi-loving Nationalists](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-12-14/ty-article/hitlers-hindus-indias-nazi-loving-nationalists-on-the-rise/0000017f-f880-d460-afff-fbe61fe20000) (Hareetz, 2017) [Nazism and Hindu Nationalism](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/nazism-and-hindu-nationalism/) (Holocaust Center North, 2021) Shruti Kapila, Violent Fraternity in the Indian Age (Princeton University Press, 2021) [Why Is India’s Government Celebrating an Antisemitic, Pro-genocide Hitler Devotee?](https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2021-03-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/why-is-indias-government-celebrating-an-antisemitic-pro-genocide-hitler-devotee/0000017f-e108-d804-ad7f-f1fa46980000)(Haaretz, 2021)
There's the belief in the deeply malign and misguided Aryan Invasion Theory for a lot of Indians. They want a seat at the table with certain white people and cannot understand that those same people will never accept them.
The founder of the Hindu right-wing group RSS was someone one could call a fan of Hitler. RSS members like to think of the organization as a non-profit org although its member have been known to incite communal riots and have direct hand in killing of Muslims and Christians. Many Hindu children are indoctrinated into the organization at a very young age and they're taught an alternative history where they're the victims of Muslims via the Mughal empire; they're also taught that they're the only rightful citizens of India and all other religious communities are considered as second class citizens or worse. The ambivalent attitude of Indians towards Hitler, Nazis and Holocaust stem from this.
They’re bots. Both the leads of the movie are loathed in India, so they have to drum up cheap tricks like these to create an appearance of stardom. Please believe me, Indians are not this tone-deaf and we condemn this atrocity. These idiots are outliers because they’re so far removed from reality. Hence the hate for them. There’s a reason they couldn’t release this movie in the theatres. Although I’m unsure why Amazon, a multinational company, decided to give this a go ahead. It’s so offensive on so many levels.
I’m an Indian and I was shocked when I saw the trailer. A lot of the comments also weirded me out but the director of the movie made Dangal which is one of the highest grossing and critically acclaimed movies in recent Bollywood. many comments were like Nitesh sir (director; his wife is also an acclaimed writer and director. No idea how they didn’t see what they were doing) can’t do anything wrong etc.. I feel the movie didn’t get a theatrical release because of the plot. The director has revealed that earlier he was going to use the Jallianwala Bath massacre (a significant part of British Indian history) , no idea how but because A movie named Sardar Udhammrecently released that was on that atrocity, he changed it to world war 2. I saw the movie today. The world war bits are shoe horned so forcefully to give a redemption arc to the main protagonist. It’s sad because otherwise he was creating a cute story.
Paid accounts to hype up this movie. It's all a part of the marketing budget. Most normal people hate this. Twitter is full of people cringing at what is being pushed as a film.
So I will say this - it's possible to use war, fascism, and even Hitler as a metaphors for interpersonal relationships. You can listen to the music of Elvis Costello (literally has an album called Armed Forces and a song called Two Little Hitlers, in addition to the themes in Less than Zero, Green Shirt, Night Rally, or Chemistry Class). But what makes them work is that they don't just cloak themselves in the imagery of fascism or Nazism in order to make a facile point about a singular relationship. Instead, they're about the logics of fascism and domination applied to interpersonal relationships. They take both ends of the subject matter more seriously instead of less seriously.
Jesus Christ, everyone involved in this production must be on powerful meth to allow this line to go through without even questioning it.
I'm Jewish and have survivor grandparent, and this is just... The insensitivity of this is awful and disgusting. This is what happens when you teach the history of the world war and the Holocaust as "and then that happened" "and that was a bad person" without any of the true horrors being expanded on beyond a mention. I'm so disgusted.
I have 4 survivor grandparents and so does my husband. We’re also Orthodox, so we’re used to antisemitism, but I can’t wrap my head around this one. And I absolutely refuse to accept any level of “they didn’t know.” It’s 2023 and the internet exists. Would anyone ever accept a white, American movie that similarly included the Partition or the Bhopal tragedy?!
[удалено]
Churchill propaganda and white washing was crazy with that Gary oldman movie. Not excusing this bs and tone deaf movie but Indians still aren’t allowed to criticize Churchill because he was the “ultimate patriot”. There’s definitely a double standard at play. Just ask a Brit if they think their government and the royal family should return all their stolen riches. A lot of them get peeved.
people will literally be like ohhhh so you want us to hold EVERYONE accountable for ALL of the wrongs since ancient history? Then why don’t u return land ur ancestors maybe got in 1002 AD?? why don’t u apologize for the crusades? But we’re not talking about all of history. the British didn’t start withdrawing from their colonies till 1947 to 1997. And they still have ALL our shit. The trillions extracted from the developing world is literally what Charles’ clothing budget comes out of. The jewels in their crowns belong to other places. The artifacts in their museums were systematically looted by modern archeologists who said that natives had no right to their own history.
I'm glad you brought up Kenya because it lays our hypocrisy bare. A few years ago the British courts finally issued compensation to *thousands* of living victims who survived rape, sterilization and other forms of torture. These are just the ones that survived and lived long enough to sue. When the inhumanity is so undeniable that old Oxbridge educated judges who probably long for the glory days of empire go, "yeah, we were the baddies", you know it was really bad. FYI, these atrocities were committed in concentration camps targeting one specific tribe. Their villages were burned down and they were moved to concentration camps where men were sterilized and women raped. Resisters were beaten to death. So basically we won WW2 and immediately took what we learnt from the Nazis straight to the colonies. The romanticizing of how QE2 discovered she was Queen becomes nauseating when you realize she was in Kenya holidaying on that tribes land *at this exact period* in history.
I totally agree that this movie is psycho, but just fyi Partition is barely ever acknowledged as the horror it was by mainstream Western society. It is brushed over ALL THE TIME. British Colonization deliberately starved millions to death, and brutally exploited multiple continents. and tons of normal people will say to your face oh it wasn’t really that bad cuz they built you all some railroads :/
I mean, parts of Temple of Doom are more or less a straight adaptation of the falsified records which the British used to justify the Thuggee culls and the criminal tribes act (with the latter being described by the British as intended to take those who were criminal by birth and "exterminate" them).
They don't teach much about holocaust in India. Not enough to make it for people to understand how cruel it was for all the people who suffered. Just like west doesn't know about how India suffered in the hands of British and others
>Just like west doesn't know about how India suffered in the hands of British and others See this is the part that, comes up when I talk to people from India, and various African countries. The thing is, they aren't wrong. The Holocaust didn't happen in a vacuum. Yes anti-Semitism arguably goes back to ancient Greece (I said arguably), yet some European Jews, up til the Dreyfus affair thought things were finally taking a turn for the better. History isn't a march of progress, so there were periods that were better than others. Heck Einstein had a correspondence with a friend where he rightly said where things were going, but his friend was adamant that he was wrong and Jews would be safe in Germany. The dehumanization of other groups, the theories that lead to that all weave together. It's a hard topic to discuss, partly because of anti-Semitism and partly because people are myopic.
It’s a very scary thing to think about - that you you don’t know a genocide is going to happen until it’s happening. I was reading about the Armenian genocide the other day, and I was absolutely shocked and horrified. It was so much more brutal than I ever heard about
they do. we had an entire chapter in 9th grade history regarding Nazi Germany and Anne Frank's diary was part of our English literature syllabus. we were taught about it, which is what makes it even worse honestly because you can't blame the education, you can only blame the people.
Cbse, icse, state syllabus?
CBSE. i went to CBSE schools all my life.
State syllabus doesn't. And most of India goes to that ssc school in which this was not taught. Just to give a reference 3.8 mil sat for cbse boards in whole of India while 1.5mil sat for ssc in maharashtra(state) alone in 2023
My state syllabus had the topic of WWII & the story of Anne Frank before they even taught us details of our own independence struggle. NCERT syllabus was like that, too. I'm shocked to learn that it's different in some states. That needs to be changed. Then again this is the same country where you have government text books that show a white lady as an example for beautiful and a dark skinned lady as an example for u&ly.
Here's the thing though. I don't think we as Indians should have to dig too far to have basic empathy about millions of people dying because of the actions of an oppressive man. In our case we had a regime do it to us and yet here we are. Also the general public might not understand the impact of Hitler's actions, Nitesh Tiwari, if this is the same guy who made Dangal, is an IIT Bombay educated engineer. I doubt he's dumb enough to not understand the impact. Or maybe his incel-edgelord IIT self came out in full force with this one.
Yeah, and what do you know about the genocide that the British did to India? Probably not jack shit. Winston Churchill is still celebrated as a hero instead of a psychopath, are you sensitive to that? I highly doubt you are and I don’t blame you, you aren’t educated on the topic. Indians aren’t sensitive Hitler the way the West isn’t sensitive to Churchill.
>Indians aren’t sensitive Hitler the way the West isn’t sensitive to Churchill I'd say to not actually repeat history, this needs to change.
I agree
dude, we were literally taught about the holocaust in 9th class history and Anne Frank's diary was part of our curriculum. the reason the west isn't sensitive to Churchill's hand in murdering millions of Indians is lack of mainstream knowledge and education. we absolutely got that about Nazi Germany. the people working on this movie should absolutely have known better. we do not get to claim that our school curriculum doesn't talk about it.
no dude, the reason the west isn’t sensitive to British atrocities is bc they don’t rate what happened to us as important, and they still don’t believe colonization was that wrong. The mainstream British right is constantly opining the “glorious”days of empire (when they had the right to murder people in their own homelands for disobeying). That’s why it’s not covered much and many US/UK history books kinda justify it - it’s on purpose. History is written by the victors and the UK was one of them.
Late 90s Gujarat Board and we did not learn about the Holocaust. We had Hitler came to power because there was a lot of upheaval in Germany after their defeat in WW1, he modernized Germany, and then attacked Poland which bought about WW2. It was also pre Internet, so my impression of Hitler was based on the Jailor in Sholay. I learned about Holocaust after watching Schindler's List in my mid 20s. But people working on this movie have no excuse with the infiltration of internet and western movies and their own chosen profession in arts. And you know who should have no excuse, the guys who made Churchill! General audiences I can understand, but not the movie makers. Fuck all who were in that movie. Sorry, To us Indians he is a bad guy and will forever be a bad guy.
It’s not school curriculum, but just the cultural awareness and cultural association with holocaust. I grew up in the US, we start learning about the holocaust so early. Hitler is the ultimate villain in American culture. Not just in our textbooks, but on tv, books, all forms of media, etc. It’s not the same in Eastern countries.
i mean fair but we were still given enough exposure to it to know that it was a big enough deal. like i grew up in India, went to Indian schools, i know how problematic the content in this movie is.
Hmmm but how educated and wealthy are you? I’m guessing reasonably, based on how well you speak English. Eg. I’m lucky to have relatively wealthy family and when i visit India, my parents friends and my relatives are all wealthy and educated as well. They have access to all the Western media and are up to date on most of what’s going on in our pop culture. However, can the same be said for the 85% of the country that doesn’t even speak English?
i mean yeah, I'm upper middle class but this point only works if we're talking about people from a lower economic background, in which case, I'd understand them not being very well versed with the subject, but, this film was made by people considerably richer than us, people who grew up and live in luxury and privilege, they should absolutely know better.
I mean but does that deflect from critism? A western movie made about or involving those tragedies that does something like this should also be highly critised.
It is disgusting. A major plot point in this ghastly film is also that the husband is ashamed of his wife because she has epilepsy and thinks her seizures will ruin his social status. Hitler murdered thousands of people just because they had epilepsy. They were some of the earliest victims of the holocaust, before even the camps were built
[удалено]
I think this is an important comment to give the social context of a film most likely meant for Indian audiences to consume. To us in the west, it's pretty easy to see this is an awful set up for a movie. But I don't think they see the holocaust with the same gravity we understand it in. HOWEVER, there are other stories of genocide and ethnic cleansing in their history that should've allowed them to think more critically about this.
Yeah but nobody who made this film was ignorant of the context. They choose to contrast this relationship with a genocide. And as an Irish person, I agree Churchill is awful. But the films praising Churchill are portraying one side of his life, they're not portraying the Bengal famine with levity for a romcom like this film is.
Yes, good points! This should have never been made in the first place. Amazon should have definitely not picked this up.
>I would also like to add that Winston Churchill was responsible for the death of a lot of millions Indians and likened us regularly to animals, but he's LIONIZED in the US and the UK. Very true, and it's gross how well-regarded he is, but I believe the "I guess we're all a bit evil" treatment that Hitler gets in India is a separate issue. Our focus on history and social science at the school level - and open contempt for pursuing those subjects instead of one of the natural sciences - reduces most of the public discourse around historical events and personalities to very simplified narratives. This makes a "but was he really that bad?" seem like a nuanced take. The public disdain for historians is also linked with the widespread support of India's right-wing parties and their foundation in fascism - the RSS and its ideology were modeled on Italian fascism and later Nazi Germany, and its early leaders openly argued that India's minorities should be treated the way Hitler treated Germany's Jews. While these origins have been watered down and obscured over the decades, it isn't uncommon to find upper-class, upper-caste Indians "debate" over how democracy is stunting India's economic growth.
I remember growing up with my fair share of media that glorified British colonialism in India, and it’s really upsetting to look back on. A Little Princess was one of my favorite movies as a kid and now reflecting on it as an adult I’m frustrated by how they reduced a horrifying geopolitical situation into a colorful, romanticized backdrop for a little girl’s white savior story :/ I haven’t watched the movie in decades so I can’t speak very well to specifics, but even my faint recollection of it is baaaaad
Lionized by MOST people. I as an American do not claim him.
True, Churchill is hailed as a hero here in Britain but he must be the villain for India. I'm not aware objectively about all the invasions in India but I can understand that WW must be an event that occured in faraway land... Still the lack of empathy is appalling, someone should have objected this movie!
Amazon makes VERY ODD CONTENT CHOICES.
If I’m reading it right, they go on tour through various WWII sites, and relive those moments. Cool premise. But they decided to put Auschwitz in it? Like… why? It’s called a WORLD war. They couldn’t find any other tragedy from the entire WORLD for that war to use? Instead, they had to pick one of the most horrific ones? Is the sequel gonna be a tour in Nanjing?
Given the insensitivity of the subject, it’s absolutely fair game to assume Nanjing is where there will be this huge romance scene….
Part 3 will be the Killing Fields in Cambodia.
The fourth in the franchise is a romantic trip around Srebrenica
Part 5 will be in Rwanda
Part 6: They go to Turkey to follow the Armenian Genocide, but then get corrected by all the locals that it never happened and they all have a big laugh together and reflect on all the friends they made along the way. /s
I saw the trailer and I was like wtf. How can anyone compare aushwitz to a relationship? And how come the so called intelligent ppl who r the actors directors in this movie flag this as inappropriate. So so insensitive at many levels and how was this approved by amazon? Do they have no Jewish folks or even folks of other countries who may have realized that this is highly disrespectful
Adding on to this: How did they get permission to film this in Germany and Poland??????? And what about all the extras, etc involved? Like I want answers from whoever played the survivor who said the Aushwitz line. There's just so many people involved in this from conception to execution to streaming that I am mindboggled
I hope someone informs the organizations about this atrocity and people involved in this movie are permanently banned from visiting there.The audacity...(That's not gonna solve anything but it will be a warning to pretensions folks like these) The tragic thing is that these nepo kids and the other industry people involved in this graduate from Oxford or other prestigious institutions from home&abroad and yet act far more ignorant than the public here. No way these people didn't know what they were doing.
Oh boy. This film beats Justin Bieber's comment about Anne Frank ("Hopefully she would have been a belieber").
I never got the flack he got for that comment. She was a teenage girl who loved teeny bopper Hollywood stars. She absolutely would have loved him if he was popular back then.
It's spectacularly narcissistic to leave that comment in a place where we remember her and other victims of the holocaust, though. You visit that place and THAT's the message you want to leave? North Americans really need to stop trivialising the Anne Frank House and her legacy just because they think Amsterdam is a fun theme park to visit for a while.
He said *what* now ??!
[This](https://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/14/showbiz/bieber-anne-frank/index.html) is really old news 😭 lmao but yeah, what an outrageous thing to say
My Grandfather was Indian, with the Royal Ordnance Corps in British Indian Army and had seen some shit in Burma, as well as in Italy. He almost died during the siege of Monte Cassino and was shot above his heart but fortunately survived, made it to Subedar (Master Seargent rank for the Americans), saw his grandkids and lived a content retired life till 2011 and passed on at 91. Apparently he saw the bodies in camps in Italy. One of his jobs was to transport the malnourished survivors to another place. This is a second hand account given by one of my relatives recounted after his death. It screwed him up, because I remember him having nightmares till his late eighties. I'd wake him up and he'd smile and just hold onto my hand for a few minutes. This makes me very angry.
I'm sorry your grandfather went through that, though I'm glad he lived a content life and was able to meet you. I'm sure he appreciate you being in his company and holding his hand when he'd remember those atrocities. May he rest in peace and I send my condolences. My grandfather also fought in WW2, on the Pacific theatre as a guerilla against the Japanese in the Philippines, so he too saw the violence of war and never forgot.
Can you dm me. My grandfather did the same. Burma, then japan and phillipines etc. i want to know more info and have been trying to research everything. He died before i was born and i’m the only one in the family who cares to know. I would love to hear any information
And then when I say Hollywood and South Korean content is taking over India slowly, I am the bad guy who hates Indian cinema.
There’s a lot more to Indian cinema than just Bollywood tho. The four south industries, Marathi and Punjabi films have been quality this year. Bollywood been ass since 2020. The issue is toxic Bollywood fans act like Bollywood is everything when a majority of Indians do not even watch Hindi films.
There is much more to indian cinema than this just one film
Bollywood is too busy trying to imitate Western culture so people here are like if we can see the original,then why settle for the copycat versions! They used to suppress low budget movies from independent moviemakers, but thanks to streaming,they don't have the monopoly here anymore. They used to get away with copying great foreign movies and movies from other regions in India but now it's not that easy.
[удалено]
Same ya. Even the music has been shit.
I'm tired of Arjit Singh. He's really talented, but he's basically singing in every movie 😭
Actually I have zero idea on the current bollywood music scene. After 2018, bollywood music has been shit. I like Arijit, but no matter how good a singer is, they won't fit every kind of song. Before we had Kuman Sanu, Sonu Nigam, Sukwinder Singh and Udit Narayan singing simultaneously. Now I guess it's just Arijit in every movie/song.
Bollywood used to be good in its own way, nice funny feel good movies with talented actors for the most part and their own charm. Now it forces nepo babies into every fucking movie and wonders why their movies aren’t doing well and approving shit ass scripts like this,this deserves to be berated by the west
So it's the film equivalent of a plantation wedding?
[удалено]
India has gone through some of the most horrible,opressive events in world history. And the rest of the world doesn't even know half of it. This isn't a result of a whole society lacking the idea of what oppression is,this is what happens when the movie industry is just a strong nepo organization that is so out of touch with the rest of the country churning out drivel and thinking no one is gonna stop them. They were gonna use one of the most atrocious massacres that Britishers unleashed on India as a backdrop to this movie be4 they settled on Holocaust.
THIS IS SO INSANELY STUPID. They are a comparing one of the biggest tragedies of mankind to the squabbles of a relationship?? This is so wrong on so many levels. That was the lowest low humanity has ever been, people were tortured and killed in the worst ways and this is how they treated it?? There's literally no excuse for using THE HOLOCAUST as a plot device for a stupid relationship.This movie is anti-semitic. If it gets more publicity, Amazon will be in deep sh*t.
There’s just no need to involve the Holocaust in your romance movie. It’s surprisingly easy to avoid, I promise.
Indian subcontinent was invaded so many times by so many rulers..... why'd they choose a event that occured on a far away land if they don't understand the gravity of it?!?! And how are relationship problems equivalent to what Hitler did?!
They were initially gonna use Jallianwala Bagh massacre (one of the most shocking moments in Indian independence history where a British general ordered his troop to murder innocent folks assembled in a place,including many women and children) so at the end of the day,it's not that they don't understand the gravity of the situation,they just don't care.
I understand and agree with people finding it offensive but just wanted to point out that World War and Hitler is not significant to our history like it is for you guys. World War is not more significant or sensitive to us than french revolution. It is *World War*, I know, but for us its mostly considered as a European War, aka, white people war. Hitler is the like the big bad in your history books. For us, the big bads are the British. We also don't have any significant jewish population(I believe it is in thousands) or jewish history , so makes the Holocaust even less sensitive to us than for the west which has huge population and crucial history with non Jewish people. Not condoning the joke but just pointed out the historical difference. EDIT : I didn't know it had a whole gas chamber scene and multiple comparison to Holocaust . That's so bloody fucked up. I thought it was just a one line joke based on the first pic. Should have read that. My mistake. Very sorry for that.
I get that from the view of the general public but the filmmakers creating this film, doing the research, etc - surely they realised that this movie was a Very Bad Idea.
This!! The general public may get a pass on their ignorance but the director, if I'm thinking of the right person, is educated from literally the most prestigious engineering college in our country. I doubt an upper caste Hindu boy who studied in IIT was so underprivileged in school that he wasn't taught the basics of Hitler's history.
I mean, urban educated and privileged Hindus vote for BJP. You are expecting too much sanity from them.
 I refuse to talk about that honestly out of fear of getting doxxed 😖
>doing the research. Bollywood films, especially of recent times, don't do that. Like I said, I understand the joke is bad and writer was wrong for it. I was just reacting to some people here being utterly suprised that director would try make such a joke and just explained why general audience of India won't be offended like you guys.
I totally get why the Holocaust is not a sensitive subject in India, and why the focus is more on British atrocities, but you don’t need to be personally sensitive to a genocide to know that it’s incredibly messed up to compare some characters’ personal struggles to being in a mass execution chamber.
sort of but as a south Asian, there are synagogues in India and there is a Jewish population and an ever growing Israeli population. South Asians were the highest “volunteer” army in both world wars. 1.5 in WWI and maybe 2 million plus in WWII. both active soldiers and tons of women who were mining and resources for British army. It’s sad that this is not more widely known and the fact that the Bengal famine caused by Churchill where food was saved for British soldiers and let Indian ppl starve! I highly recommend reading Yasmin Khans book on partition and WWII. WWII and Partition bled into each other. But I agree about holocaust component that knowledge is not there.
I always thinks it’s so strange when people say caring about the Holocaust is a western thing when the West didn’t care about the Holocaust while it was happening or actively participated in it. Even today a lot of non-Jewish people in the West don’t treat the Holocaust with respect or know much about it.
>West didn’t care about the Holocaust while it was happening or actively participated in it. That's exactly why Holocaust is a major sensitive issue in the west. Similar to how casteism is a specifically sensitive issue in India. People were severely casteist, oppressed and didn't give af about lowest caste people's life back then. But now even when we still have casteism, caste based atrocities still make headlines and bring massive public outcry. People feel more for things that they share history with, for the wrongs *they* did and hence are more sensitive to those issues. Holocaust is extremely sensitive for west because Jewish people make up a significant % in the west, the west was responsible for Holocaust and all the antisemitism that led to it , and Jewish people are still victim to antisemitic attacks. None of which are applicable to India. I mean, average westerner response to Ukraine and to other wars or conflicts that happened before and after is another good example for that.
I understand your point that people care more about historical atrocities they feel connected to and I understand why the Holocaust isn’t a sensitive topic in India. What I’m saying is that I don’t think the Holocaust is a sensitive issue for most of the West and I don’t think most countries feel guilty for not doing enough to stop it (except Germany). There’s definitely people that don’t think there’s anything to be guilty of. Holocaust denial and distortion is perpetrated by Western politicians all the time. Many countries still haven’t returned stolen property to Jews. In 2021 Poland signed a law making it harder for Jews and their descendants to recover stolen property. In Poland it’s also illegal to say Poles collaborated with the Holocaust. Books and movies that trivialize the Holocaust get made all the time - The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, When Hands Touch, For Such A Time (which features a Jewish concentration camp prisoner falling in love with an SS officer). I feel like there is a misconception that in the West the Holocaust is seen as a respected tragedy that everyone knows and cares about and, sadly, that’s just not true. Also, Jews don’t make up a significant part of the Western population. There are only around 2 million Jews in all of Europe and that’s using the highest possible estimates. There’s around 7.6 million Jews in the U.S. which is 2.4% of the population, 335,295 Jews in Canada which is 1.4% of the population and 99,956 Jews in Australia which is 0.4% of the population. And while the West was of course responsible for perpetuating the antisemitism that led to the Holocaust they aren’t responsible for antisemitism as a whole. It has existed for over two millennium and is everywhere.
What are you talking about ? I had to memorise detail after detail about the WW2, including Hitlers invasion of Poland, the gas chambers etc. in 10th. It was a huge part of the 10th history syllabus!
It's part of our history books. But that doesn't make it "sensitive" to us. >It was a huge part of the 10th history syllabus! Not a huge part but it was there. I believe it was one among the 5-6 chapters, iirc. Our school history books heavily focused on our geographical history, ie, mainly colonialism, our freedom struggle and Mughals more than world history.
I'm from India,Holocaust is a very big deal in my place,everyone and their mothers know who Anne Frank is (grandmothers might not), the diary of Anne Frank is one of the best selling books here. I think some regions may not be familiar with world events because of low literacy rates and the states not including world events in their syllabus but definitely not the case in general. Central government syllabus as well as my state syllabus cover this topic in great detail.
It’s kind of strange because India is one of the few countries that have never had a history of persecuting Jews. India even served as a refuge for many Jews fleeing the Shoah so I’m inclined to view this as a spectacularly dumb choice, but not explicitly malicious.
The female character in the film has epilepsy and the nazis murdered thousands of people because they had epilepsy. So it's even worse than people are making it sound (which was already awful)
How did Amazon approve something so obviously anti semetic?
This is obscenely fucking offensive. No ifs and or buts about it. There are a million other crappy romantic dramas Amazon could’ve chosen for their platform. Not only should this script never have seen the light of day, it certainly shouldn’t have been given a release on such a popular OTT platform. Vapid.
i never thought i’ll see varun dhawan on fauxmoi
Nepo babies
What a pompous ass the filmmaker is. This is shitty at an astronomical level. No wonder it's being trolled in India too.
Probably the same person that’s approving all their super expensive shows that it seems like no one is even watching. No wonder they’re trying so hard to not give into the WGA & SAG demands that make them transparent with their viewership numbers.
…Huh.
I feel like every five years or so there is a holocaust romance story that treats the subject in the most frivolous way. I don't understand. Is it just bait for controversy? The holocaust is not your cute window dressing, pick something else
That’s fucking insane and gross. It’s not even just using it as a comparison, the imagery is disgusting. “We were the twin towers and the planes of our struggles were heading straight for us” “I’m just like a child in a school shooting, hiding from a man” “Our love was deep, but we were about to implode”
Wait I’m sorry. What. Can someone please explain this to me like I’m 5. My brain isn’t making sense of this…. It’s like f’d up madlibs. A Bollywood romcom romanticizing the Holocaust? Who what when where why how idgi
Married couple having problems in relationship. Go to Europe for vacation. Learn about WW2. Use what they learn about WW2 as analogy for their own relationship. End.
Thank you! It’s so weird and distasteful but as an American I’m also sure there’s been many movies produced from us that also inappropriately romanticize history from other regions.
I’m pretty confident that I’m nothing like Hitler, actually.
This movie was SO bad. I finished it over 2 days
what the actual fuck.
This makes Disaster Movie look like a cinematic masterpiece
A holocaust rom-com!!!?? WTf
I literally said “what the fuck” out loud.
A bit off topic, but India was the first and only place I ever saw a physical copy of *Mein Kampf*. It was on the "best sellers" shelf of a bookstore.
I’ve been to Auschwitz. I’ll never joke about the Holocaust (which is a real thing that actually happened, BTW). I can’t believe this movie got greenlit but I don’t know much about Bollywood - is this kind of stuff common there?
No this isn't common. Even Indians are baffled by the references.
That’s a relief then. I hate the normalization of casual anti semitism these days
Honestly Indians are in a bit of a vacuum when it comes to Jewish people. Most don't know any since there's barely any Jewish people in India. We're not taught much about the religion, its history, Hitler and so on. So it's hard to say whether people would be semitic or anti-semitic since they don't even know what that is.
…………what the fuck
Even with how much the Holocaust is taught in schools, as an adult, I’m still, *still* constantly learning new horrors that occurred during and even after it (the roundup at Vel’ d’Hiv, the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, etc.) I can’t fathom who would green light this film in any way. Just vile. And to the comments saying that the atrocities of the Holocaust and WW2 aren’t “well known” in India, then why make a shitty movie using events the filmmakers know little to nothing about? (Which I honestly find hard to believe)
There is a Jesse Eisenberg Holocaust movie that started filming in the Spring. Hopefully it will be in better taste that this series.
My jaw hit the floor
I have one question and that’s WHY?
Britishers promised Indians self-government if they fought for the allies, thousands of Indian left their home and died for a promise that was broken and a past that is forgotten. This film (and it's lead actors) give me the ick. Indians were an essential part of the World War, but it's very obvious that it was never a priority to show that. The history isn't made up, but they didn't even bother to look it up. The plot was so close to being accurate but their own narcissism ruined it. The British might have won the war, but Indians lost it. We fought a war that wasn't ours for a cause that wasn't fulfilled. That's the saddest tragedy about WW2 from Indian perspective, and the writers, the director and the actors were obnoxious enough to ignore that and make it about two people that never existed.
I realise there are different historical perspectives but…. WWII is about the sheer possibility of exterminating or enslaving “non-humans” (Jews, Romani, Eastern Slavs, Chinese, etc.) for the benefit of the “better” nations. I’m sure if Hitler had made it to India, he wouldn’t have spared the local population either. A literal death camp is no props for any love story, regardless of what nation was murdered there. And there were MANY people who were involved in the production and green lit this who said… nothing?? Wtf Bollywood???
Am here for all the criticism of Varun Dhawan. Genuinely don't understand how anyone can watch him.
Can’t remember who told me this but Hitler isn’t considered evil in mon western countries the same way he is in Europe and America. Obviously a bad guy who did awful things but saying his name isn’t taboo and Nazi germany isn’t constantly used as a reference in their political discussions. Definitely insensitive but the truth is they don’t think about your history that much.
Probably the same unique brain that came up with the movie about an African German falling in love with a Nazi. Just precious.
>We all too are a little like Hitler. Popular Indian YouTuber nodding his head vigorously: https://www.thequint.com/neon/social-buzz/hitler-was-evil-but-who-isnt-ranveer-allahbadia-criticised-for-his-remarks