Tuesday, 29 September 2009

• Valkyrie and Leisure

  Sobering describes my feelings after watching this movie with DH a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me of how ignorant I felt the day I graduated from college 31 years ago.  I distinctly remember thinking how little I knew about history (my major) and life in general.  Yet, I had met the qualifications for a Bachelor of (Liberal) Arts.  In fact, I had the third highest GPA in my class.

  So, even though I dont believe in learning my history by watching Hollywood films, I did pick up on a few facts by watching Valkyrie, adding to my *vast* knowledge of history.  There were 17 attempts to assasinate the Nazi dictator, Hitler, and Colonel Stauffenberg led one.  I've related the movie to my current book club book, Leisure:  The Basis of Culture, because in the second chapter of the essay, the author cites a socialist philosopher, Ernst Junger, who was in Hitler's army.

  I knew neither of those things when I graduated from college at the ripe age of 20, but because I still love learning at the mature (ha ha) age of xx, I followed up on the reference to Ernst Junger.  I discovered from Wikipedia that he was loosely associated with the Stauffenberg plot and lost his position in the army because of it.  Some how he avoided the firing squad faced by most of the *treasonists*.

  Mostly an atheist, by the end of his life Junger had converted to Roman Catholicism.  And even though he was a Nazi and Marxist in his thinking, he was conservative in that he disagreed with the national socialists.   I'm not sure that I would agree with much of anything he proposed, but I am reminded of my ignorance.

  Bottom line, I enjoyed Valkyrie more than Frost/Nixon.

  Have you seen either?

  Currently Valkyrie (Single-Disc Edition) By Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh see related

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