We Are Everyone, From Everywhere. We Do Not Ethnically Cleanse.

Photo: the Lady Liberty posted by Rihanna, Mandy Moore, Jessica Alba, and others after The Ban. From this website via The Daily Mail.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Just not after January 28th, 2017, I guess.

This nation was founded by those escaping religious persecution. Such persecution happens somewhere in the world, every day, and always has. But never before has it happened here.

We are the only nation on Earth that, by our very nature, is a consistently changing population. The population of most countries is predominantly an unchanging group of said peoples. The majority of the population of France is French; in Denmark, the Dutch. But in America, we're everyone, from everywhere. That is the very essence and nature of this country. We are Everyone, from Everywhere.

Let's not change that now. Let's not turn our backs on those who need us now. They're the next Us.

Germany tossed out, and closed its borders, against a certain peoples. That's not what we do. Let's not toss out Muslims, the vast majority of whom are not violent people. Let's not toss out Mexicans and then put up a wall against them.

The Muslim Ban today. The Mexican Wall tomorrow. What's next? When will it end? Is this the start of an American cleansing?

Let's not start this. Let's not do this. This is not who we are. That, is un-American. Literally.

[Please feel free to copy and paste into your social media, without giving credit. Please just share this message and spread the word.]

All (as of 10/16) of Trump's Bullying and Biased Quotes in One Place and with Links

Photo: Trump (left) and Alec Baldwin (right) from this MSN article about Trump dissing Baldwin.

Each of the following examples has a link to a page that has the YouTube video appropriate to each item. This is from a list from an article outlining The Washington Post's closing statement about Donald Trump's candidacy. The comments, of course, are mine. But click the link to see the YouTube videos. Seeing Trump mimic and mock a physically disabled reporter really has to be seen to be believed.

1. "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the -----. You can do anything." October 2016

That's the infamous Access Hollywood tape. He called it "locker room talk," but as I've blogged before, it isn't. It's sexual assault talk. The laughter you hear in the tape is Billy Bush, formerly of NBC. He's getting a $10 million buyout from the network--which means that NBC would rather give him $10 million for free, than to have him work for them and earn it. If a network distances itself from Billy Bush, who only laughed and egged Trump on, shouldn't America distance itself from Trump, for free, simply by voting for somebody else?

By the way, having been in plenty of locker rooms--both as a former ballplayer and as an older guy--I can tell you with 1000% certainty that A) that isn't locker room talk, and B) guys who talk like that also think like that, and they do so all the time, not just in locker rooms.

2. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best...They're bringing crime. They're rapists." June 16, 2015

If you believe this, you're as racist as Trump is. I don't know how else to say it. Besides bias, this shows a shocking lack of historical perspective. From the 1920s to the end of WW2, millions of European immigrants came to this country. Italians, Germans, French...millions. Assuming all of the Mexicans were criminals is like assuming all of the Italians were mafia figures or mobmen wannabes. They weren't. My grandfather wasn't. Your ancestors most likely weren't, either. Were a few of them? Of course. Trump's ancestors gave birth to someone who sexually assaulted women and somehow slithered his way around tax fraud--both federal crimes. So who's the criminal now?

And do you want a President who will obviously be biased towards Mexicans, women and plenty of other demographics? Do you want a biased President at all, towards anyone? If you do, vote Trump.

3. "I like people that weren't captured." July 18, 2015

This is Trump talking about John McCain, who was a prisoner-of-war for a number of years--and a popular figure in his own party. This is unforgivable. I didn't vote for McCain (Palin also had something to do with that), but I had no problem with him as a person--with what little I knew about him. He won points with me for telling a woman at his rally that Obama was not a terrorist, that he was a decent family man with whom he had political disagreements. That's class. Trump wouldn't have done that. He instigates such falsehoods and then blows them up. But you don't slander an American war veteran, especially one who was tortured for his country for many years. The lack of respect shown here proves he will have the same lack of respect for anybody. As we have seen...

By the way, Trump evaded the draft five times. And I like people who don't criticize war veterans for being captured.

4. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her, whatever." August 7, 2015.

This was the first warning shot before his full-front verbal assault on women. (The physical assaults apparently started over 30 years ago.) But, yeah, a candidate for President mocked a woman's period, and the entire world heard it. A woman he thought was against him. A foe. He didn't respond with a logical argument, or stats about something relevant, or even a witty comeback. Nope. Like a four year-old, he went right for the lowest denominator. I grew up with a mother and two sisters, and I can tell you I would've gotten my block knocked off if I'd ever disrespected a woman like that. This was the first hint for some of his complete disregard (and fear) of women in general.

5. "Thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down." November 21, 2015.

This was Trump saying that he somehow saw thousands of Muslims in a New Jersey city cheering on 9/11 as the buildings fell. This is a scary lie, because it says he believes that somehow every Muslim in America knew that the attack was on. (Similar to how racists used to think that every black person had a mysterious method of communication with every other black person during the Civil War and during slavery.) They didn't. And not every 9/11 attacker was Muslim. And blaming all Muslims for 9/11 is like blaming every Christian for each of The Crusades. Not logical. But worse, it's hate-mongering. And it's teaching that hate and bigotry are okay. And it's teaching that facts are irrelevant. The lunatic fringe will think, speak and believe lunacy, but the rest of America shouldn't.

Do we want a President who thinks these things? Do we want a President who Hates close to that red button?

The Killer of Little Shepherds -- A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science

Photo: The book, from the author's own webpage. Here is an overview of the book itself.

Outstanding book that gives you a real feel for the lives and time of those involved. Written in a newspaper-like fashion, with no author intrusion at all--rare for this genre--and with a distant tone that is just right, almost too-distant, but not quite. Cast of real characters include serial killer Joseph Vacher, the French investigators, lawyers and judges involved in the trial, and his eleven known victims--there may have been as many as 25-30 total. One of my favorite investigators, Alphonse Bertillon, is covered a little. He was a French criminologist, one of the world's first accepted criminal profilers, and he's the author of one of my favorite, true-life quotes: "One can see only what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind." Feast on that for awhile.

Vacher was a psychotic, narcissistic, borderline schizophrenic vagabond who killed ten little shepherd boys (and one or two girls) and one old lady. He sodomized and brutalized the bodies after death. What made him unique amongst killers of his type, besides for how long he got away with it, and the list of ineptness he festooned in others who associated with him, was that he was one if the first to declare himself not responsible for his crimes due to insanity. The prosecution disproved this by showing that his MO was so consistent that the perpetration of his crimes must have taken some thought, and forethought. They also showed that his talent for leaving the area quickly to avoid capture showed that he could rationalize--otherwise, why go to such consistent lengths to avoid capture?

The author concludes that his case is also unique because he was declared fit to stand trial (therefore, sane), and responsible for his crimes (so, not insane), and yet also clearly had at least one mental illness--paranoid schizophrenia, with a healthy persecution complex and fits of sexual mania. Therefore, it's possible that he was responsible for his crimes, yet also classifiably mentally ill. The author says he believes Vacher would also be found guilty today, just as he was in the late 1890s. But this reviewer is not quite so sure.

Photo: Joseph Vacher posing in prison after his capture in 1897. From the book, and this New York Times Review website for the book.  Vacher said that the hat symbolized his purity, and the keys, which he borrowed from a prison guard, symbolized the keys to heaven that he'd receive. Vachon believed he was protected by God and doing God's work. Just in case you were wondering

Certainly this case highlights the question of how much a mental illness can be said to make someone responsible, or not responsible, for his crimes. In today's heavily-diagnosed America (Donald Trump has been said lately to be harboring a potent textbook narcissistic disorder, and one wonders how fit he is to be President because of it. Look up the symptoms and I think you'll agree.), in which it seems that more people than ever may be diagnosed with a mental illness (and I mean that seriously and without judgment), this is a real question for our time. If a great many people are a classifiable something, how much does that make us culpable for our actions?

An interesting philosophical thought came up while I was reading. Another questions posed: If someone is guilty of murder (as Vacher was, and he was guillotined), and if that someone is responsible for his crime, yet is also suffering a mental illness that maybe helped instigate those crimes, can that person receive capital punishment? Again, where is the line drawn? Someone who is against capital punishment, as I am, would say No, no matter what the variables are. But those not against it, or even those on the fence, may use what I'll call the Rabid Lion Theory.

It goes loosely like this: If a lion is charging at you, obviously intent on killing you, don't you have the right to defend yourself and shoot it? If the answer is yes, what does it matter if it has rabies or not? You still have the right to kill it to defend yourself. But let's say it's foaming at the mouth and obviously has rabies. It's therefore, in a way, not responsible for its actions, as maybe it doesn't want to kill you, but the rabies is controlling it. (We can call this the Cujo Theory as well.) But even so, don't you have the right to defend yourself and kill it anyway, even if it's not responsible for its own actions?

Now, you're French society (or any society, including this one), and the rabid lion is Joseph Vacher (or any serial killer who has frequently escaped and who will obviously kill again). Don't you, as the society, have the right to defend yourself against the rabid killer, even if he's not responsible for his actions?

A real slippery slope, especially in these heavily-medicated times. And it's not going to get easier.

But I digress, a little. This book is more a history of really bad rural police work, really shoddy asylum practices, and a completely disorganized system of law if the murderer has the intelligence, good fortune, or whatever, to kill people in more than one jurisdiction. Surprisingly, this is still a big problem today (especially in these United States, and for a great number of reasons), but it was a catastrophic issue in the days before Interpol, before anyone thought to write down similarities of crimes committed across a large area over a number of years. Simply stated, nobody communicated well with each other, across provinces, just like today, where communication between departments, jurisdictions, states, and federal and regional agencies are slipshod and often testy.

This should sound very familiar for those who read about crime. Remember JonBenet? The local cops in Denver and the state and federal people were stepping on, over, and through each other immediately, screwing up the crime scene, the evidence, the witnesses, the testimonies, and every procedure and law, known and unknown to them, beyond repair. One of the guys in charge said the whole thing was botched beyond repair within a few hours of the reported crime.

And so it was with Vacher, until three guys started paying attention to some unsolved crimes, all of which involved the killing of young shepherd boys and girls, in the middle of rural nowhere, with the same MO (attack from behind, cut the throat, drag the body behind bushes or trees, sodomize and butcher the body quickly, change out of your clothes into clean clothes, and walk quickly away, often for a great many miles) and with the same descriptions of a vagabond seen in the area (short, bearded, scarred, gave off a dangerous vibe, couldn't talk correctly, and swelled foully because of yellow pus that drained from one ear). Sounds like something that anyone would put together, right? But with all the crimes happening all across very rural, nowhere France, before computers or phones, and with no system to keep track of such things, and no way to communicate?

So the history of forensics and crime is covered here, and it's all very informative and interesting.

The Revenant -- Movie Review

Photo: from the film's Wikipedia site

Very gripping, in-your-face film with fine performances and great directing and cinematography. The setting is really the main character of the film, and there are long stretches of it, with little action or dialogue, so you'd better like it. I did, like I do watching Terrence Malick films, but if you don't, this film may be an ordeal for you. (It's supposed to be an ordeal, but more on that later.) This scenery does for beautiful negativity what Malick's does for gorgeous serenity. It's all supposed to be taking place in the northern climes of the Louisiana Purchase in 1823, though most of it was actually shot in the Canadian Rockies and in Argentina. But I'm gonna call it the Arctic, 'cause that's sure what it seemed like to me. Unless you're an expert hiker and really know your landscapes, it'll seem that way to you, too.

There are so many shots of snow, trees, rivers and streams that it'll either strike you with awe or with annoyance. These shots are supposed to be metaphysical; yet they're also supposed to nail the point home that this is a beautiful, but desolate and unbelievably harsh landscape. The movie is more about survival in this setting than it is about revenge or anything else.

In no particular order, DiCaprio's Hugh Glass has to survive the greed of his fellow trappers; the anger and desperation of Native American tribes (three of them are mentioned in this movie); the unlawfulness of French trappers and traders (which includes murder, kidnapping and rape); the freezing temperatures; the blizzards and snow; starvation and dehydration.

And, oh yeah--that bear.

Photo: Hugh Glass (or an 1800s James Cromwell?) and DiCaprio, from The Telegraph's article of the real Hugh Glass

This is not a film for the squeamish, though the bear attack was not as bloody and brutal as we've heard. (Or maybe I'm just battle hardened.) More disconcerting is the frequent brutality of many forms. You know how in most movies guys get one bullet to the head or one stab in the chest and that's it, they're done? Not so here. And violent things happen to CGI bears, bear cubs, moose, elk and wild dogs, too. And a horse, from that cliff clip we've all seen, when Leo and Horse go over. And Leo uses that horse like Han Solo did to another creature in Jedi, but even more so here. Yuck!

And it's all very realistically written, acted and directed. If you've seen last year's Best Picture winner, Birdman (and if you haven't, you should), then you know that Innaritu--last year's Best Director--really likes close-ups. And I mean, close. So much so, so often, that the frozen wilderness will seem claustrophobic, though it's all open space and wide expanses. But the camera is right on these guys. Not in their face, exactly, but closely above them, or beside them, or under them. There aren't too many distant shots of these actors. If they're on screen, they're taking up the whole screen. So be ready for that you-are-there feeling that this type of direction generates. You'll feel like you're in the Arctic with them--and you'll feel like you can't wait to get the hell out of there. An interesting achievement, that: You'll be glued to the screen (no small feat, since it's over two and a half hours long), but you'll be so overwhelmed by the brutality and the conditions that you want to be able to leave. I got the feeling, somewhat, that I was trapped.

Which was the director's goal, of course, and he succeeds. The film is an ordeal, and I mean that in a positive way. You suffer along with everyone--and everyone does suffer. This movie is about suffering and survival, and it does not have a solid, clear, winning ending. Consider yourself warned.

Photo: The director, Alejandro Inarritu, and Leonardo DiCaprio, from the same Telegraph article

DiCaprio deserves his nomination, and I'm not sure I saw a better leading performance this year. I don't mean that negatively, but nobody has stood out for me in terms of an obvious win at Oscar-time. I suppose DiCaprio is that guy.

Tom Hardy also deserves his nomination, as did Mark Rylance, whose performance I liked a little bit better. He didn't have the conditions to play off of, as Hardy does, and he says a lot more than Hardy does. (Tom Hardy, since his performance as Bane, seems to have specialized in roles that require minimal verbosity. He says more here than he does in Mad Max, but not by much.) I still feel Benecio del Toro deserved an Oscar nomination for Sicario, which itself was also not nominated. His was the best supporting performance I've seen this year. It's hard, as I mentioned in another entry, to compare his performance to Rylance's, because they're so different: his is exceptionally harsh and cold, and Rylance's is very powerfully quiet and nuanced. But del Toro's role and Tom Hardy's role are actually quite similar--though Hardy evoked quite a bit of Tom Berenger in Platoon for me here--and they both play guys who are cold and evil to the core, and who don't change. This was a nice change, by the way. Hardy says some very memorable things at the end of Revenant that you may not soon forget.

So go see this film if all of the above sounds like your cup of tea. Speaking of that, you will want something hot to drink after you see this, because the surroundings are so much the main character of this film that you will feel like you've just spent two and a half hours in the frozen, bloody Arctic.

P.S.--I always sit through the credits, so here I saw a name I haven't seen since the early-80s: Lukas Haas. Can you guess the movie? He was the little boy with Harrison Ford in Witness. Yeah, my mind works like that--I didn't even have to look it up. It hit me in the theatre. It's an illness.

Sicario

Photo: Sicario's movie poster, from its Wikipedia page.


A pulsing soundtrack, tense you-are-there direction, a fact-filled, dramatic screenplay and great performances--especially by Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt--all make this a great movie you just have to see.  The cinematography by Roger Deakins is an unbelievable plus.

Modern political topics like the U.S. / Mexican border, violent drug cartels, and free-wheeling cops all converge when Blunt, a specialist at knocking down doors in prototypically suburban Chandler, Arizona, is asked to join some federal operatives as they try to interrupt the drug cartels.

It's some very serious stuff, handled stylishly and seriously by French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, who I've never heard of before.  (The screenplay is also by guys I'm not familiar with.)  There are a lot of helicopter shots--which actually deserve a special mention.  These shots are not only beautiful and tense, but also weaved smartly into the plot and screenplay so they're not drawing attention to themselves.  How's that done?  By frequently having the characters talking to cops in helicopters "tracking" the bad guys via heat sensors and long-range video.  Good stuff, but still things that can be done from the ground, or in advance.  You'll see what I mean during the tunnel scenes; surely the drug traffickers can hear, if not see, a helicopter in the distance.  But you don't think of that at the time, because everything's so tense and beautiful.  There are some other nice directorial touches in those tunnel scenes.  They grabbed me so much that I ate much less popcorn than usual.

Emily Blunt's character works very nicely as the audience stand-in figure.  The movie has a you-are-there feel because she's there.  She's always tense, scared, and confused--and so you are, too.  The ads may make you think she's in almost 100% of the scenes.  She's not.  She's the main character, but quite a few scenes happen without her, especially those with Del Toro--who's the real scene-stealer of the movie.  I've never seen him in a role like this.  By the end, you'll be wondering who the real "bad guys" are.  (But don't forget what the guy at dinner had hiding behind the walls in that house in Arizona.)  Josh Brolin also does a good job in a small role.  He's had many such roles before.

The music is so pulsating, so tense, so grabbing, that it almost transcends the film.  (Currently I'm listening to it on YouTube.  I'll probably buy it.  It's that memorable.)  It makes the tense scenes even more tense, almost unbearably so.  It's very good.

Notice I've used the word "tense" a large number of times here.  It's not necessarily lazy writing; the movie is, in a word, tense.  Everything about it is tense: the acting, the action, the direction, the music.  It may be the most tense two hours you spend at a movie.  If you like that, go see it.

And let me know here who you thought the bad guys really were.

P.S.--On a side-note, kind of, ask yourself why Judas Iscariot had a last name in the Old Testament when nobody else did.  Even Jesus was called Jesus of Nazareth, or The Nazarene, in His lifetime.  (And he was called Joshue, or Joshua, of course, as well.  Christ, for those who don't know, is a Greek word that means "Anointed One" or "The Lord."  He was never known as Jesus Christ in His lifetime.  Neither the first name, nor the last, was ever his own.)  I mention all this because this movie begins with a definition of the word "sicario."  Compare it with the word "sicarii."  I'm just sayin'.

Perfect Murder, Perfect Town by Lawrence Schiller--Book Review

Photo: Paperback cover of the book (I read the First Edition hardcover) from harpercollins.com

Incredibly dense and thorough chronicle of the JonBenet Ramsey investigation, from the POV of almost everyone involved, from reporters to DAs to police detectives--and everybody in between.  If you're interested in what happened to that little girl on December 26th, 1996 (Could it have been that long ago?!?) then this is mandatory reading for you.

Like the case itself, it is a complicated maze to read, and you may, like me, forget momentarily who somebody is.  There's a character page in the back to help you with this problem.

Schiller doesn't pull any punches and immerses you in everything for the sole purpose, as he says, to chronicle what happened for anyone interested in the case.  It reads like a 579-page report.  There are no writers' tricks here, and no embellishments.  Schiller does an amazing job of organizing all of this stuff into one (mostly) seamless flow.

What does it show?  Oh my goodness, it shows how very thoroughly and completely the D.A.'s office, the Boulder Police Department, the witnesses, the suspects, and the media all worked together to screw up this case beyond repair.  Like the research into AIDS in the early-80s, when American and French scientists fought each other over copyrights and egos and countless people died, so too did the Boulder PD and the D.A. office fight each other over supremacy, evidence and theories.

And we know what happened.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.  A grand jury failed to indict anybody in 1997, and here afterwards have we sat. (Though to be more concise, the grand jury found that there was enough evidence to proceed to trial, but the D.A. did not proceed.  He refuses to this day to give his reasons.)

As detailed in this book, this case never had a chance.  Evidence was immediately trampled upon.  Both Ramseys, and their son, Burke, took leave of the police for a very long time upon the arrival of the first cops.  The crime scene was not controlled and it became very, very compromised.  And the Ramseys somehow were allowed to not be thoroughly interviewed until four months after the killing.

And the police bungled evidence and interviews that anyone who's ever seen an episode of Law & Order could have done better.  The D.A. turned down help from the FBI, whose officers had investigated and tried tons of murder cases against children.  How many had the current D.A.'s office tried?  Zero.

You may imagine yourself, as I did, screaming at, and shaking, some of the well-intentioned but hopelessly inept people involved in this case.

And that's just the beginning.

But, sadly, there's nothing much to add since.

Patsy Ramsey has died.  Nobody's ever been brought to trial.  It may seem there's nothing more to say.

But there is.  Schiller takes pains to try to remain unbiased with his book, and largely he succeeds.  But his one-page epilogue gives him away a little bit, as does the preponderance of the evidence he allows the real people to supply here.

Ultimately the reader has to make his own decision about who did it.  Was it the Ramseys?  Any of them, in the murder and / or in a cover-up?  Was it an intruder?

You'll have to decide.  I have, I think, for the most part.  Maybe I'll write about it in my blog one day--keeping in mind, of course, that many of the people are still alive.  And able to file lawsuits for slander.

But still a riveting read.  If this case interests you, read it.

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

photo: cover of French version, second edition, from the book's Wikipedia page

Very effective book--about the French populace not recognizing the culpability of the French police being the Nazi's stooges in 1942--that would have been great without the emphasis on the present-day relationship struggles and the moralizing/browbeating by the author, through the main character.  Though the real incidents portrayed via Sarah were real and horrifying, there isn't too much room for moralizing and browbeating in fiction.  I could've taken quite a bit of that, as it is that warranted, but this book crosses the line and becomes a bit of a soapbox.

Having said that, this book is worth the read just for the scenes with Sarah, culminating upon her return to her apartment--though, really, culminating with a car and a tree in Connecticut.  The tragedy of the tragedy ends with that car and tree, as we want our victims to live long and prosper.  That doesn't happen too often in real life, and it doesn't happen here, and the tragedy is multiplied because of that, and because of the reasons behind the suicide.  You never want the victim of unspeakable horrors to commit suicide, but the reality is that they often do.  All of this is very sad, and it will stay with you, whether you want it to or not.  Sarah's character will be a long-lasting one in the world of fiction, and Sarah's key is one of the better metaphors and symbols to come along in a long time.  In fact, as such, it is shockingly underused in the book.

That the book focuses instead on the relationship between the main character and her husband is an author's mistake, I think, that is further highlighted by her comment in an interview at the back of the book that she did not want to write a book of historical fiction.  Her aim was to include a bit of that, but to focus instead on creating a parallel to a modern-day relationship and its problems.  It is this parallel, unfortunately, that very much doesn't work.  You expect them to cris-cross at some point, and of course they do, but when they do, the moralizing starts, which degrades the effect of the tragedy.  Part of the tragedy, in fact, is that the tragedy was largely ignored.  It needed to stay tragic, rather than become fodder for a soapbox.

This failure with the parallel--and, I think, a failure on the author's rationale, as she states in the interview at the end that she thinks her readers want a book more about relationship struggles (and, hell, maybe they do, though this reader doesn't)--is that it counts too much on that moralizing, and on over-sentimentality, and on a large dose of coincidence.  The main character's marriage ends in divorce, it is said, because the husband couldn't handle her devotion to the tragedy, and to her unborn baby (though the marriage was actually in trouble long before that, and one supposes that the husband would've had a problem with her focusing her attention on anything and anyone at all but him, and he was cheating on her for many years even before the timeline for this novel started); another man's marriage falls apart because his wife couldn't handle his preoccupation with the same thing--even though Sarah was this man's mother, so he had a much better reason for his preoccupation.  Anyway, the main character and this man, separately, move to NYC after the failure of their marriages, and they both think about each other and keep track of each other without letting on to the other.  They fall for each other right away, though the man was also upset with her, and his marriage was fine at the time.  That they get together at the end, and the name that she gives her new daughter, will not surprise even a six year old reader, especially since the main character goes out of her way, several times, to narrate how beautiful this man's fingers and hands are...

...sigh...It becomes Schindler's List Meets Sleepless in Seattle.  I do not exaggerate.  (Well, perhaps a little.)

Could've been an outstanding book had the author book-ended the main story with the suicide, perhaps, or otherwise focused more on that.  Focusing the entire second half of the book on the aforementioned things, rather than on Sarah at all, or on the tragedies in her childhood, and then at the end of her life, actually degrades the real-life tragedy and drags the whole thing into quasi-sappy melodrama.

Sarah deserved a LOT better than that.  Sarah, in fact, transcends the trappings of this novel she's trapped in, and will live within you, outside the rather narrow confines of this book's borders.  She's a character, much like Shakespeare's Juliet, that is superior to the work she's placed in.  You'll be grateful, though, that the book exists as a vehicle for her to be born in, and then to survive and surpass.

For a look at a movie review from the New York Times that agrees with my assessment of the book the movie's based on, go to http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/movies/sarahs-key-directed-by-gilles-paquet-brenner-review.html.  Its final word is the same as mine, in terms of the essential fault of the book and film: both stories couldn't co-exist in the same vehicle, and the one about the pitfalls of today's relationships trivializes the truth and tragedy of the horror that really did happen in Paris, France in July, 1942.

A Few Mystery- or Crime-related Epigrams

Monk, first panel: Remember, it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Hagar, second panel: But I enjoy cursing the darkness!


                        ---Chris Browne, Hagar, the Horrible
                                    11/27/93


One can see only what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.


                        ---Alphonse Bertillon, French criminologist.


Mr. and Mrs. America you are wrong.  I am not the King of the Jews, nor am I a hippie cult leader.  I am what you have made of me and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society…Whatever the outcome of this madness that you call a fair trial or Christian justice, you can know this: In my mind's eye, my thoughts light fires in your cities.


                        ---Charles Manson.


According to the U.S. Department of Justice, roughly one-third of all homicides become cold.


                        ---Marilyn vos Savant,
                        Parade, Oct. 7, 2007