Major flaw (spoiler)
The one huge problem with this film is that it's obvious almost from the start that he's guilty. I never for one moment thought he could be innocent and I doubt anyone else watching did either.
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MovieChat Forums > Music Box (1990) Discussion > Major flaw (spoiler)
I thought he was innocent in the beginning. Then wondered if he would get away with it. His daughter was an excellent lawyer and loved her father very much. Makes for an interesting play of events. I love when she goes overseas, talks to the lady and gets the pawn ticket. That was when I knew for sure that the daughter would find out and believe.
shareI thought the movie did a good job of making you guess. At first, I thought he was guilty. Then I thought maybe it was a Communist conspiracy to frame him.
I also love the part when she goes to Hungary. How brillant is it when the music box spews out the pictures.
I finally saw this movie today, and I really enjoyed it.
"No man is a failure who has friends"
It's A Wonderful Life
...
Oh yes...the music box. And the pictures on the wall of the apartment where she gets the pawn ticket froms the woman. The attitude of her ex father-in-law. And how she mails the proof to the guy who was connected with the Nazi war criminal investigation. I thought the movie was very well done.
shareUh, I don't know about the rest of you, but I remember what my father looked like when he was 20 and If I was a lawyer and saw his face blown up 20 by 20 on a big blackboard and everyone identifying him, I would recuse myself at the very least.
I remember the first time I saw a picture of the woman claiming to be Anastasia Romonov and the picture of the Polish peasantwoman. Gee, that was a no brainer. What was all the mystery of Anna about?
<< Uh, I don't know about the rest of you, but I remember what my father looked like when he was 20 and If I was a lawyer and saw his face blown up 20 by 20 on a big blackboard and everyone identifying him, I would recuse myself at the very least. >>
I absolutely agree...this is the plot hole that punches through the middle of the movie. I like the film, but it doesn't really work as a mystery for me because, Why wouldn't this daughter recognize a younger version of her father in old photos? Did they not have a SINGLE snapshot from his past around the house....or even, most people have stared at their parents' faces so much for decades, they'd undoubtedly recogize pictures of them as young adults, even if they'd never seen a photo of them when they were young before....right?
<< I remember the first time I saw a picture of the woman claiming to be Anastasia Romonov and the picture of the Polish peasantwoman. Gee, that was a no brainer. What was all the mystery of Anna about? >>
The reason "Anna Anderson" (Franziska Schanzkowska) passed as Anastasia Romanov for so long was because she knew a LOT of personal info about court life, family gossip, etc., and her use of court ettiquette (how one addresses a military officer of specific ranks, title-holders, etc.) was supposedly flawless. I believe it's still kind of a mystery as to where she picked up all those very numerous and technical details, and who taught them to her.
This isn't a flaw of this particular movie, but a general problem. Whenever Americans make movies about a person suspect for war crimes, child molesting or terrorism, you can always bet that he's guilty, and there's no chance you'll lose. And as these are their favorite movie topics, we got so used to it that we can tell everything in advance - Music Box is in no way different from the rest (except for being much better than average movies from the group).
sharekra79-1, the scene with the actual music box turning out the pictures, is one of the most haunting and shattering scenes in any movie. It had me thinking about it for days. The music added to the creepiness of the photos.
shareI thought it the most unbelievable! I exclaimed "are you kidding me!"
shareIt wasn't obvious. There was some reasonable doubt because of how the IDs could have been forged, or how a communist government operated - tons of corruption, or how old people's memories tend not to stay solid enough at trial, etc. And ofcourse there were the red herrings which made you think it was obvious - like the pushups, the "healthy body healthy spirit" saying, etc, etc. If the end wasn't so revealing, it could have gone either way with a judge/jury having to look at the evidence simply on face value.
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I'd agree it would be all but unthinkable to a Hollywood court drama of this kind to deny the reliability of surviving holocaust witnesses (and remember, the film was made just after the very similar John Demjanjuk case, they even refer to it). And the witness-box scenes when Ann is trying to suggest that the witnesses are commie puppets made me feel at once that, in the scripting of this film, she's being cast as deluded by her loyalty to her father. She comes out hoarse and a bit simplistic, and the movie demands that if she is to rescue her father and prove him innocent to all - to the court and us, the viewers - then she must come across as sympathetic and loving in the theatre. Jessica Lange is a very good actress but here it felt like she was fighting the limitations of her part.
The film has some very good passages in it but I don't think it bears close scrutiny.
After the revolution everything will be different. Your password is 'Giliap'!
It wasn't obvious, at least too obvious,in the beginning. But when several distinct, disparate witnesses give graphic descriptions, and automatically identify "Mishka", you know basically what the truth is. The witness Mr Bodai must have really created doubts in the mind of Ann Talbot, about her father. And the rape victim Miss Coleman was just too compelling and convincing, for her to even question. She still clung to a glimmer of hope, though. These people simply could not all be communist puppets. The climax was what it should have been, and what was expected. The method was brilliant.
I don't think that was a flaw. Definitely intentional.
Because the point of the film was watching the daughter struggle to accept the truth of something that she knew was the truth from the very beginning but needed time to psychology accept.
She knew it intuitively (things about her childhood suddenly made sense to her) and she knew it emotionally (subtle aggression and distrust towards her father; she tried coaxing him to confess several times), but psychologically, she denied it until the images of what he did rolled right out of her mind, I mean, the music box. She was imagining the atrocities in her mind from the moment she first read the court documents.
Her struggle was a metaphor for the struggle of people before and during WWII who knew the truth of what was going on but who, the truth being so utterly unbearable and incomprehensible for them, and the perpetrators of the truth in question responsible also responsible for rebuilding Germany and the German spirit and Germanic culture and revitalizing Germany's economic prosperity, they the people refused to acknowledge the truth until pictures and video footage and testimonies verified what they knew all along.
Her father - protector, cultivator, fed and clothed and raised her, made her the person she was, she knew the truth but didn't want to hate and reject him and didn't want to believe he was capable of committing those crimes.
Hitler and Nazi government and Wehrmacht - protected 'pure' Germanic blood, cultivated Germanic culture and nationalism and spirit, fed and clothed Germans, most Germans knew the truth of the concentration camps and ghettos and other crimes against humanity but didn't what to hate and reject a government that rebuilt Germany and they didn't want to believe their government was capable of committing those crimes.
Music Box was excellent, thanks to the writer's ability to explore issues people never dare to explore, and to not pass judgement.
None of the key characters in the film were even of German descent. Ann and her father have a Hungarian heritage - Hungarians are definitely not "Aryans" or Germanic and have never seen themselves that way. And the film takes place in America, about forty years after the end of the war, and is primarily aimed at a U.S. audience.
It is *possible*, by really stretching it, to read the film the way you do, but it would completely drain it of interest as a suspense film or a psychological chamber drama, because in that frame Ann becomes a cardboard figure, a flat morality puppet. I do not agree she "knows" from the start of the trial that her father is hiding a Nazi collaborator's past (or even sensed it long before the accusations surfaced): that's just backreading from the drift of the movie.
You are a lunatic, Sir, and you're going to end up on the Russian front. I have a car waiting.
WOW you did a great job at making this sound like a very good script! But I will stick to my gut ... it was not!
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