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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Showtime Ent.
Salesrank: 3853
Released: September 21, 2004 |
| Our Price: $8.06 |
| Used Price: $9.01 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Based on the popular novel by Jane Yolen, a typical American teenager gets transported back in time and experiences firsthand the horrors of the Holocaust and discovers the meaning of her family’s heritage.
Description of The Devil's Arithmetic:
Executive producers Dustin Hoffman and Mimi Rogers present the truth of the Holocaust so a new generation can understand why it must never be forgotten. Kirsten Dunst plays Hannah, a modern teen more concerned with trends than history. During the traditional Passover dinner, she zones out as her relatives harp about concentration camps. But then Hannah passes through a portal to the past, where she becomes her own ancestor in Poland during the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Director Donna Deitch provides an infinite library of Holocaust detail, re-creating the period with minute dedication. Haunting images, every costume, every hair, every light and shadow conspire to maintain a sense of desolate desperation. Suspense pervades as escapes fail and mothers with newborns are taken away. Only the magical context of the story, taken from the original children's novel by Jane Yolen, allows for a life-affirming ending. The performances may not be multifaceted but, considering the single-mindedness of the tale, the deep commitment of the actors makes every moment real and meaningful. Dunst seems able to carry a movie herself, and Brittany Murphy is mesmerizing as Hannah's sweet cousin Rivkah.
The message is powerfully direct, but the film avoids extreme violence in deference to young audiences. The theme is enshrined in the Rivkah's words: "We must stay alive to tell everyone what we've been through." Indeed, when Hannah returns to the present, she is a new woman, with a profound love of her culture and a religious respect for the value of all human life. --Lloyd Chesley
The Devil's Arithmetic Reviews:
Excellent depiction 
2008-09-02 - Kirsten Dunst is bored with her family's Sabbath dinner and her old aunt, who was in a concentration camp. When she answers the door for 'Elijah' during the dinner, she is transported immediately to her aunt's life as a young girl in WW II Poland and Germany. She knows she is from the current time but realizes what is happening to her. Without giving away the story line, suffice it to say she learns what her aunt endured and also learns never to forget this time in history. She also learns how one person makes the ultimate sacrifice for a friend. I read this book when my daughter was small and it moved me greatly. The movie was done exactly as the book was written and it left nothing out. You must see this movie, if only to know what man is capable of doing to other humans.
Excellent Resources fosr World War II When Used with the Book 
2008-08-11 - Dustin Hoffman's poignant introduction reveals his passion that young people today never forget the horrors of the holocaust. To my surprise, the film proved to be a most riveting and attention-holding movie, "The Devil's Arithmetic" is geared to teenagers.
Modern teenager Hannah Stern, feeling no attachment to her religion, resents being made to participate in her Aunt Eva's Passover celebrations,. As her relatives, all concentration camp survivors, try to recount their experiences, Hannah turns away, bored. All of this changes as Hannah is chosen to perform the ritual act of opening the door for the Prophet Elijah--instead of the hallway of her aunt's apartment, Hannah is transported to rural Jewish Poland, circa 1941.
Hannah attempts to make sense of her old life, and the girl her new Polish "family" expects her to be. As time passes, Hannah and her cousin Rivkah explore the town before attending a wedding, at which point Nazis round up the wedding guests and load them onto trucks going to the concentration camp
If ever a theme of love, sacrifice, and the horror of hatred needed portrayal outside the realm of religion, one could not do much better than to show this film. What Hannah does for her best friend at the movie's conclusion is as gut-wrenching as it is predictable, and Nazi treatment of the Jews is brutally captured with appropriate reserve--no easy task! In the end, a young Jewish girl who began only with an interest in tattoos learns the lessons of history, tradition, and above all--life's priorities. In a nutshell, how lives and a culture can change in an instant is the strength of "The Devil's Arithmetic".
Be very sure--this film will make a powerful impact on young teens! The dropping of the gas pellets at the conclusion of the dream sequence is intense...very intense. Yet how can the Holocaust be portrayed without such reality? With younger teenagers, take care that background preparation, as well as a reflective time for discussion is provided.
Please remember me -- it matters that we always remember the costs, and more importantly the people
2008-08-08 - Kirsten Dunst as Hannah is an older teenager who could care less about her ethnic past, the history of her people, the Jews.
When various family members try to share with her stories of what they went through during the Holocaust, Hannah gave lip service just smiling wishing she was elsewhere.
This reminds me of myself as a teenager as well as many of our friends and family. If it did not directly impact me / us, why should we care?
Hannah some how finds herself in the past with her aunt, now around the same age as herself just days before the Nazi took all of the town members to death camps.
Through this process, Hannah goes from disbelief (this cannot be happening to me; when will I wake up), to a change of self... moving beyond just caring for herself to caring for others. The change Hannah goes through is what we all need.
While a fictional movie, the portal of events appears to match historical records of the times, and touches one heart.
To have various individuals being taken to the gas chamber with just a simple wish... remember me... don't forget me... please remember me... cannot be more impacting to one's heart.
If we forget what the Jews, and those who helped them, went through during the Holocaust (where the Nazi's wanted genocide -- the complete wiping out of the Jews), we risk many things from history repeating itself to everyone else left being less than human.
While I am guilty as a teenager of being very similar to Hannah at the start of the movie, I pray and hope that while I did not go through her ordeal, that I have learned.
I hope everyone who watches this movie does not walk away entertained. I hope everyone who watches this movie walks away crying and changed in some way.
So that we do remember, so that we never forget.
DISTURBING, TRUE, EXCELLENT
2008-07-09 - THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC
The Holocaust happened and is a horrible part of history. It is also a delicate subject to discuss, read about, or watch on the big screen.
I rented this movie because I am a fan of Ms. Dunst and because this time period in history fascinates me. I can barely stand to think about the Holocaust, yet it is something that keeps calling my name, so I try to read about it and learn all I can.
This movie -- also a book -- was well done. A young girl, a typical teenager who does not want to partake in her family's religious rituals or listen to stories from the survivors of death camps, is magically transported back to 1941. The entire town, including Hannah, are immediately picked up and put into a death camp. This would include her favorite aunt, who is now a young teenage girl in 1941. A few other 1980 relatives are also present at the camps. As Hannah's story is told we are witness to such tragedy and evil, yet the goodness of human nature is also evident over and over again.
Ms. Dunst plays Hannah, past and present with style and grace. The conditions of concentration camps are horrible enough when reading about them but when you actually see and hear and witness this first-hand through the wonder of movies, it is heart-breaking.
I totally enjoyed this movie and cried myself senseless throughout. Because senseless is what the Holocaust was. If movies like this can help educate and show people how things were, it is a great learning tool. This book and/or movie should be shown in high schools so students can really understand what happened back then.
Read the book or watch the movie, or do both. You will not be sorry!
Thank you!
Pam
Educator
2008-06-28 - I have purchased this DVD for my own collection to view at my leisure with my two children at home. I am an English teacher at one of our local middle schools. I have introduced the Holocaust theme and have shown this movie (from our school library collection)as a class study and all my students have been moved by this movie. They enjoyed it very much and could finally understand the Holocaust movement of prejudice and discrimination. I highly recommend this DVD to any educator introducing the HOLOCAUST!
