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‘Dead Europe’
It’s a horrible title for a movie. But then ‘Dead Europe’ is a horrible movie.
Greek-Australian photographer Isaac Raftis has been invited to Athens
to attend an exhibition of his work. His family doesn’t want him to go.
His mother warns of a family curse. His alcoholic father refuses to talk
about his former life in Greece.
On his trip to a sordid, depraved Europe, the family’s hidden secret unravels.
Struggling with the guilt of their father’s wartime atrocity, Isaac’s brother says,
“Don’t you wish that not a single Jew ever walked the face of the earth?”
Now he might be drugged out and desperate when he says this.
But it’s the message that sticks, not the messenger.
(So now they blame the Jews for making them feel bad about what happened to the Jews.)
And the Muslim woman who links Israel’s ‘cruel’ treatment of the Palestinians
with the Holocaust – “The victim always carries the hate,” she says.
Isaac may dismiss her comments, but it’s the premise of Israel’s sins against the Palestinians
that sticks.
And the Jewish characters? A sleazy Hungarian whose family was wiped out,
but who now ”thrives” thanks to his child prostitution ring. And another one who smacks his wife.
And all this made by a director with the surname Krawitz.
Whatever his intended message on antisemitism and the decay of Europe, sadly, it’s an anti-Semitic message that will stick.