 the real reader and the reader. He wrote movies we can learn from, learning with Karl Ackerman, Dr. Karl Ackerman, an historian and an author and a philosopher person. And he has gone out to see this movie, The Reader, and we are going to have a discussion about it. You know, Karl is into Eastern Europe, and this is a story of Germany in 1947, at sec about a young fellow who's on his way from high school. This never happened to me, by the way. On his way home from high school, he's 15 years old, and he's not well, and he's sick. He's got some kind of flu, and he stops in a hallway, and he's obviously sick, and a woman comes by and helps him. And this woman is Kate Winslet, fantastic. And she ultimately has a summer of love with him, and she's at least twice as age. Okay, and it goes from there, it's epical. Over a lifetime, we find that this summer relationship between two people who are completely different in age and orientation, the one thing they had in common was kind of an appreciation of literature, of reading. But that's only touching in at the very front end, Karl. Why don't you tell our viewers the story of this really interesting movie? Well, you know, this couple has this very romantic affair, and of course, as Jay mentioned, Kate Winslet is much older, or twice as age, and the young boy is 15, he's still in high school. And so they had this affair, and he has to go back to his parents and his dining room table, and he doesn't know really what to make of this. And then at the same time, there are his friends in high school, and they're going swimming. So you get the picture of this relationship, and suddenly the elderly woman disappears, and he has no understanding of why this woman has disappeared, and he's an expert. Well, you're racing through it, though. Let's talk about the sweetness of that summer. How did this relationship evolve? I mean, it was so interesting that, you know, he was like beside himself, a 15-year-old kid, and a woman who was quiet but strong, you know? Or it sort of turned in on herself, person, who gives him everything, but it gets to be transactional. It was a summer of reading, and at first the transaction went, let me think, first the transaction went sex first, and reading second, and then she turns it around on him, and she made him read first, reading for his sex. And Kate Wislin is a beautiful woman, but I would say she's not beautiful in this movie. The idea was to make her un-beautiful. And so here we have this relationship that every kid at 15 would love to have with this really exotic woman who was like strange, and it fulfills both of their needs in a transactional way. And what you don't realize at first is that the two of them, what the odd couple, really truly the odd couple, are actually falling in love. They are in a romantic, as you said, Carl, romantic relationship. He can't tell his family. He can't tell all the women who come around, you know, in his high school class. He can't tell them why he's not seeing anybody because he's busy. After school, he has this after-school activity that any 15-year-old would love to have. So, you know, it gets closer and closer, and they evolve. It's not just the sex, and it's not just the reading. There's an evolution over that summer. And it changes his life. And we don't know for sure, but we think it changes her life, too. Yeah. Jay, just adding on to what you said with these wonderful descriptions, there were two scenes that really struck me from this early part of the film, the first third of the film. And the first was, you know, the reason he gets into sort of a sexual attachment with this woman is because he has to shell a coal in order to put it into a pail, and that was used for heating. And of course, this is just at the end of World War II where, you know, basically what will eventually become the European Union, they all sign off on this coal and steel agreement, you know? And coal is the main source of heating for the houses. And, you know, of course, Germany is just decrepit. And as the film goes on, you know, Germany greatly improves. So there's a nice historical background to this. But the other thing is the real sexual meaning of this is there's a scene, and it could have been exactly with Dustin Hoffman, who was another young man seduced by an older woman. Mrs. Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, right. With this, you know, this whole putting on the stocking scene, and, you know, which just makes it that much more voluptuous, you know? And it's a great scene. And it really highlights their sexual relationship. And it's just, it's really wonderful. And by the way, she is his teacher at the beginning because she is the expert in sex. And as you mentioned, Jay, the relationship then turns on its head because he becomes a little bit or much more important because he is the person who can read to her. And she, you know, she wants him to read to her. And initially they have sex, so then they have reading. And then at the end, you know, before she leaves, you know, kind of suspiciously and we don't know why she leaves. And by the end, you know, she wants to have the reading done before the sex. So, you know, it's, that's an interesting, very interesting part of about the first third of this movie. You know, in preparing for this show, I checked it up on Google and YouTube and there was a Charlie Rose segment with Kate Winslet and the young German actor opposite her. And it was a fan, you know, Charlie Rose had a magic, I tell you the truth, I've seen so many shows, I used to watch him all the time, seen so many shows where he recreated the work of art at his table. And you could see Kate Winslet and this young German fellow who was 18 at the time. It was a little after the movie was made, it was to celebrate the movie and they were examining their roles retrospectively. With the, you know, the script writer and the director was quite a, you know, if you get a chance, that's really worth seeing. And what you get is that Kate Winslet and this young man and she's easily twice his age are still in it together at Charlie Rose's table. You could see the magic that you saw in the movie at Charlie Rose's table. That's what Charlie Rose could do with people. Anyway, he's absolutely wonderful. And I, you know, it's too bad he's still not on anymore because he was really masterful, not only in film, but also in literature. You know, he really could draw out the very best from people, you know, so there you go. Anyway, so here we are and they're having this summer and they have a wrinkle or two because she is a streetcar cashier conductor person and he follows her and he wants to know more about her. He doesn't know anything about her and she doesn't like that. She doesn't want him to know more about her and they have a little argument over it. But what happens as you said is that she kind of disappears. He goes to find her one day and she's gone. And then you begin seeing, you know, how attached he is to her. And you don't realize that at first. It's not just an afternoon gig. It's not just exploring sex and having this interesting transaction about reading. So what's the next chapter? There's a second chapter and a third chapter. What's the next chapter? The second chapter, Jay, is that, you know, we see the young man as a law student, you know, and, you know, he's pursuing the law and he's going into classes and he has another romantic affair with the younger woman. But he's pretty focused. I mean, he is a guy who focuses on the law, focuses on his studies and he finally enters this special law class which is, you know, dealing with morality but specifically dealing with natural war crimes. And, you know, lessons in the early 50s, early 50s, right? Correct. In the early 50s, a seminar type of class, big theater, you know, German theater classroom but there's like three or four students, that's all. And a teacher who is very probative, just like you, you know, who challenges them to deal with, you know, the Nazi thing. And what this tells us is that, you know, it didn't end in Nuremberg. It did not end in Nuremberg. Nuremberg was small potatoes because in effect, and that was, you know, it was globally publicized, but in Germany, they had other trials. The Germans had other trials and that went on for years. They were trying to come to grips, you know, with what happened in the war. This was an example of the intergenerational stress of what did you do during the war, dad? You know, were you involved in this? Because it's horrible what happened and I want to know. And then the parents wouldn't tell them. So this happened in the 50s. And so this whole class was an example of, you know, the students trying to figure out what their parents had done, trying to learn, study the morality, the ethics involved, what exactly was going on, how much engagement did the previous generation have in the Holocaust? Really important questions. And this class was all about that. So he was interested, he was into that. That's why he took the class. That's why he studied law. And that's why, and I'm getting to the moment of truth in the movie, that's why he was happy enough to go into the courtroom and observe the German war crimes trials that took place in the 50s. Tell us what happened. Well, you know, this is one of the most intriguing parts of the entire movie because there are basically guards from Auschwitz who were on trial. And they're all women guards. And there are about six of them. And they all have to go up and testify. And they're asking, the prosecutors are asking them sort of questions like, what did you know and when did you know it? And, you know, there's one particular scene towards the end of the questioning where they're asked, the prisoners are asked to recount a time when the prisoners are in transit. And this is at the end of the war. And these prisoners are locked up in a church and the church because of the Allied bombing catches fire. But the prison guards don't open it and they want to know why they didn't open the church to let the prisoners out. And, you know, five of the six people who are not Hannah, who's the main character, say, you know, testify that they, you know, they were ordered to do this and et cetera, et cetera. And Hannah takes full blame to this because, you know, she's an interesting character because when they asked her why earlier on, she became a member of the SS. She said, well, you know, I was looking for a good job basically. I mean, as if, you know, she was climbing the ranks and you get the impression even at this late date that she doesn't understand the moral implications of what she did. I mean, she just doesn't get it. And when the prosecutors ask her, why didn't you open the church and allow these people to escape? And apparently several people did, hence you have an accounting of this. She says, look, if they escaped, my job is a prison guard. I'm not allowed to let them escape. And that's her rationale. And then the other guards say to her, you say, yes, she was the one who wrote this all up and she was responsible and she gave us directions. And the prosecutor then turns to her and says- And that wasn't true. That was not true. Well, this is the gist of this moment is that she can't possibly have been the person to write it up because she's illiterate. And that's why she had- That was the measure of it. If they could establish, there's a report of this that went back to the higher ups. And the report was, we left them in the church to burn, okay? And so the person who wrote the report was presumptively the leader of this group. And if they could paste it on her, then they get off with life sentences. She gets off with a heavier sentence. So the idea was to paste it on her. Go ahead. So she's illiterate. So she really shouldn't have been charged with this but no one came forward. And of course her young boyfriend, Michael, is sitting in the audience and he knows that she's illiterate because he has all these flashbacks. And he has these flashbacks that say, why did she ask all these questions? And so it becomes particularly clear that she's illiterate and that Michael has the urge and talks with his professor about going to testify. But when he does so, he gets there but then he decides not to do it for whatever reason. And so the question in this film is really who's guilty and who is afraid? And who's guilty and who is afraid? Those are the two major questions I walked away with. And so it's a really poignant moment because he could have saved her from getting a life. He could have saved her. He knew, nobody else in the room knew that she was getting pasted with this. They were blaming her because they said she had written a report. He knew for a fact and it was kind of a secret, right? He hadn't told anybody about his relationship with her. If he stood up and said, wait a minute, she's illiterate, she can't write. She could never have written that report. He would have saved her. He was in effect a witness that the whole thing could have turned on him. So then you see him and you say, my God, what is going on in his mind? This was the turning point of the movie. So let me ask you, why did he not say anything? Why did he not save her? He loved her. Why did he not save her? I think that he basically was off the notion of being associated with this war criminal. I mean, what she did was horrendous. And her testimony, if you watch him during the testimony, his head is down, he's holding his head, but almost in between his legs, he's scarred by this. And of course, this is the woman he loved and he had no idea what she was involved with. And so, I mean, on the one hand, you feel sorry for him, but on the other hand, if he truly had loved this woman, he would have tried to save her. But the other part of this is that the other five guards are sitting there in the audience too, knitting, talking freely. And the descriptions of the actions, and of course, what she does in her testimony also, well, actually comes out in another guard's testimony, is that she would pick people who were going to the concentration camp and save them. She picked like 10 people from every train or so, or maybe every other train from every other day. And the other guards thought, oh, maybe she has some humanity in her and she's trying to save these people. But the answer is no. She just wanted these 10 people, even if they were sickly or old to read to her. And when she got done with them, she'd send them back to what the Nazis euphemistically call the selection process. So they'd die anyway. So it is a really dark moment in that courtroom. And I metaphorically, I was thinking that this is sort of Germany itself, where crimes are being prosecuted, but is a general population really coming to terms with it? And as the movie proceeds, Michael, the hero, and that's Robert Fiennes, not really a hero, the protagonist in this film, comes to grips with it with themselves and finally tells his daughter the story of this. Wait, before you go there, before you go there. Okay, I don't want to ruin because we have another third to go. Okay, I'll stop. Okay, so yes, of course we have to get to that because that's the long-term epical quality of the movie. But there's so much in that courtroom. Michael is the new Germany. He doesn't forgive what happened during the war. He is a moral ethical person studying in a classroom where this is being examined closely, including arguments with other members of his class. He's very, you know, the new Germany. And then you get her and she is not educated in any way. She's just sort of a primitive in her own way. She doesn't read or write, but she has sensibilities. So in another time, if there hadn't been a war, she might have been much, much better off. The war caught her. The war caught her in that silly job silly is the wrong word. And the war made a fool of her somehow. And the women who pointed to her who tried to paste her, who did paste her with that, they were mean, right? They wanted to escape from what was going to happen to her by being mean to her. They were the real Nazis. They were affirmatively mean. And the judge who was so angry at her, the judge was out to punish her. And his cross-examination and the punishment that court, three or four of them visited upon her, that was pretty heavy duty. They were the new Germany. They were emerging as the new prosecutors of the war crimes. Nuremberg revisited. Nuremberg by the Germans, in a way, they were tougher than Nuremberg was because Nuremberg only tried, I think 19 people and they didn't convict them all and some of them walked and some of them got put to death and some of them ran away. But Nuremberg was not perfect. These guys were trying to show they could do a better job, I think. Okay, and then her, I mean, she was really an interesting character. So all three of those, the women were so mean, the judge who was trying to vindicate Germany, the young kid who represented the new Germany, they all come from different places and her. She is like, flotsam, she's been victimized by everything and everybody around her and she doesn't know what to do. She never knew what to do. Okay, so it works out badly because they convict her and her friends get relatively minor sentences. She gets major, I forget, 20 years, was it? Yes. It was a lifetime. And in Rothschild's turn it was to jail. And then their relationship begins to revitalize somehow. What happens? Well, it's interesting that Michael, because he's kept this hidden all the time, he can't give a lot of his emotions away any longer. So he has a failed marriage. He has a wonderful daughter who looks like, doesn't wanna see him very often. She goes off abroad. But they have a decent relationship and he's not a bad guy. He's very kind, very thoughtful. He turns into Ralph Fiennes now. Yeah, yeah. We're not the 15-year-old kid anymore where Ralph Fiennes was a brilliant actor, one of my favorites. And it's very ironic that he played in Schindler's list as this totally brutal commandant in a death camp. So here he is in a completely different role and you can't forget what he played in Schindler's list. Or, I mean, he played the villain in Schindler's list and also in Harry Potter. So I mean, he was, you know, and the portrayal, Jay, and I'm glad you brought this up. I was talking earlier about this, is that his role in Schindler's list, he was the villain's villain. You can't get a worse depiction of a human being, even though Liam Neeson is trying, as Schindler is trying to defend him at one point. He's just horrible. I mean, with a capital H. And, you know, the interesting thing about just in terms of cinematography here is, you know, throughout this film, is there are selections in the film where people look in the mirror and they're looking at themselves and they're dressing themselves. And, you know, I always think of the song by Michael Jackson when I see people do this because, you know, you gotta fix the man in the mirror or the woman in the mirror first and then you can go on. But it's, you know, I mean, you can't get, I mean, you have to think of autobiographical stuff when you look in the mirror and things like this. So anyway, that's just an aside in terms of cinematography. But so what happens is that, you know, she goes into prison and, you know, her life looks pretty dismal and his life has not worked out all that well, although he, you know, he's a successful lawyer and he looks like he owns a construction firm for, you know, so, you know, he seems like he's pretty, pretty well off. But then he, you know, he makes contact again with her and writes her a letter and then what he does, he begins to, and his, her lawyer contacts him and when he begins, that's how they get in touch with one another and he begins to transcribe books to her. And it's interesting that the books that are mentioned, you know, there are a couple of books that are mentioned but two stand out for me. One is the Odyssey, you know, this great trip abroad, but, you know, there's all sorts of hanky-panky going on with, you know, Odysseus' wife back in Ingris and stuff like that, so that's one one. And then it mentions, and you know, this is the one that he, that you see him transcribe is by Anton Chekhov and it's a short story and it's the man with the little dog and that's about an affair of a Russian banker who comes down and has, you know, an affair with a woman who is, you know, Desai, I think, you know, which is, you know, being bombed right now by the Russians, but that's a whole nother story. But this is really interesting and so he transcribes all of these things. And I'm, the ending, I'm gonna leave for you, Jay, but what happens is he transcribes all these things eventually after 20 years, she's allowed to go free. The lawyer, her lawyer contacts him, he comes in and he says, you know, the first thing he says to her really is, you know, what did you learn? And she says, immediately, well, I learned how to read in here and you know, she's quite proud of that. And so- Oh, he's been sending her tapes, right? He- Right, transcribe tapes. Transcribe tapes of all these great books and sending her the book and the tape or maybe she gets the book out of the prison library but she has the books, she has his tapes and she puts two and two together and decides she got the time, lots of time. So she learns how to read and write from one character, one letter in the alphabet at a time. She starts out from ground zero and over the years she has actually read these books and learned how to be literate, which is quite something. And that's why the title of our review today is who is the real reader in the reader? Because you could say it was the 15 year old boy who was reading to her in sexual transactions but you could also say, isn't it true Carl? She's the real reader. She learns how to read. We have two readers here. We can't figure out which is the real reader. And just to sort of, well, let JL let you conclude with this but I just have two things to add to this is that this was very much like a reader that I had this whole film, this reader that I had in my European history classes and formerly I was teaching at Punahua school and a Punahua student had interviewed after work too and she was someone who worked in a concentration camp. I mean, this is an actual true story and she had to walk one of her best friends into the gas chambers. And the question was, her name was Inga, it was Inga guilty. And because she was only like 14 at the time but if she had not done her job, her parents would have been killed and her family would have been killed. So it meant for a good discussion about who is to blame basically here. And when I show this to a World War II vet who happened to be my stepfather, Jerome Shore from Brooklyn who, like myself as Jewish and like you, Jay is Jewish, his reaction to this is that if he had found her, they would have shot her immediately after World War II because he was one of those commanders that went into Germany during World War II. And so he had a very different angle on this because he saw what was being done and what had been done and what the Nazis did. So it's a tough thing. This film humanizes everyone, but at a bigger picture, and I'm gonna leave this with you, Jay, because both the outcome with Hannah and what happens when our protagonist goes to New York and now I'm gonna be quiet. Oh, well, we're not done yet, but that's, you're right. We must absolutely go to New York. We have to see this. And so what she does is she learns to read in prison. He comes to see her when she's about to be released and there's a moment. It's ethical. It's after all these years, 20 years, how many, 25 years, and now he's free again. He's not married. He has his daughter and he sits at a table with her in the visiting section of the prison, maybe the cafeteria, and it's this moment of truth. Just like when he was watching her in the courtroom, this is another moment of truth in the movie. And you have to sit and think about exactly what does this mean? So they have this, what do you wanna call it? This bland conversation and under the hood, all kinds of memories are popping up. It's a lifetime of feeling popping up, but they still can't talk to each other. It doesn't happen. She can't talk to him and he can't talk to her. And he leaves. He leaves the prison and you think, well, maybe he says he's gonna get in her apartment, but it's a dry romance. There's nothing left. You know that he's not gonna take care of her. She's old and frail, doesn't look so good. Her health isn't so good. So it's not like he can pick up from where he remembers her at age 15. That's gone, gone, gone. And she knows it too. So she stands on a pile of books, straps herself to the overhead, kicks the pile, a book's very iconic, right? She kicks the pile of books and commits suicide before she is released. This is a really symbolic moment. The books that made her a reader that made her literate, the books that express their romantic relationship over a lifetime, these books, she kicks them and dies. Fantastic. Now she had given him, or rather the warden of the prison, gave him her things, including a letter, I think, of her wishes as to where this meager amount of money she had was gonna go. And it was to, what, a survivor who now lives in New York on Park Avenue. And he makes this trip to Park Avenue and meets with this woman and she is wealthy beyond any expectation. She's really wealthy and he meets with her in her home, some kind of big apartment on Park Avenue. And that is another, that's the third extraordinary moment in the movie. And they have this conversation. Can you remember, can you describe what is said in this conversation? I can, vividly, because as you said, it's the third part and it is a wonderful, wonderful part because this woman who is actually the person I think that wrote the diary or the transcript that made these prison guards go on trial, she has pictures of her family in her Park Avenue apartment. And Jay, you and I have seen these apartments and they're quite nice. But she gives him no quarter. She's not gonna give this woman any solace who is a concentration camp prisoner. And nor should she, I mean, I was all with her, nor should she, but it's interesting that he takes the money and he, there are actually Deutsche Marks and they're in this tin can and the woman eventually takes the tin can because she had lost the tin can in the concentration camp. Someone stole it, which had her goods in it. She takes the tin can and she says, do what you want with this money. And one of the only comical scenes in this entire movie, except during their sexual relationship, which was kind of, some parts were pretty funny, is when he says to her, well, shall I do, I could give this to some sort of Jewish organization, like perhaps something for Jewish literacy. And she remarks back, she says, well, Jews don't have a particular problem with literacy. And I just couldn't help but laugh, because it was kind of a scene that made you laugh a little bit in this very dire movie. Comic Relief. It was definitely, that's exactly what it was, Jay. It was Comic Relief and he leaves, then he leaves, but when he leaves New York, he goes back to his daughter and he takes his daughter in Germany to where Hannah is buried and he begins to tell his daughter. So he's coming back to life. In a sense, she came back to life, I think because she atoned for her deeds, that she knew that she couldn't be a civilized person, even as she accepted his generous apartment and job at some sort of tailor factory or something like this. And so there is redemption. And I think the Germans to add on to this a bit, the Germans have really redeemed themselves. And the Japanese, including with the recent passing of President Abe, I mean, President Abe went after a professor at University of Hawaii, a guy named Emmerman, who had talked about the Korean war crimes, war brides, and the crimes against the Koreans during World War II. And the Japanese have really never come to grips with their war crimes against the Chinese or the Koreans and their death marches and things like this. And whereas the Germans have, the Germans have. And of course, it doesn't make me want to make cranes so that no one will use another atomic bomb in the world today. But the Germans are much more progressive about what they did. But my final thoughts, Jay, for you are this, is that the notion of responsibility is a key one today. And Donald Trump and the people around him who have committed the attempted coup in America, we should prosecute them like the Germans prosecuted the Nazis. I mean, because this was an attack on our basic democratic institutions. I think those people are criminals, of course. And as the prosecutors said in this film, you need to prosecute them using the law because the law is critical. And you can't just say they were immoral, you have to, which they were of course, but you have to say that they committed crimes. And I think they did commit crimes against the constitution, against our capital, and against our democracy. So anyway, I had to add that because I think that, Democrat or Republican, you may be, but those were pretty heinous crimes. I think the judge was really saying, and the movie was really saying, even though this took place, I think the movie was made in 2018 or so, before we got to insurrections and the like, he was really saying that the whole third right would not have happened had they followed the law. And he was making a comparison between the two countries and expressing concern wherever you find an autocratic arrangement where people are not following the rule of law. So it was very powerful in that regard. I think the one thing that threw me off, let me offer this thought, is that we saw the war through her eyes. She was a very sympathetic person. She was trying, but not succeeding, trying to find a way to live on this planet, to have romantic relations. She was trying to find a way to recover, to redeem herself through most of her life. And you saw the war through her eyes, and I was sympathetic, but we forgot about the women in the church, the people who were burned alive. We forgot, in this movie, we forgot about the victims of the Holocaust. And you have to remember that. You have to go back and reach for that view of it also to fully appreciate this movie. And just to add one thing, and I want to go back to my historical seminar, the thing about Inga is that this Pudaho student interviews her, and it was like taken from the 1970s before, of course, I was at Pudaho. And when they asked Inga at the very end, even after she talked about how she had to walk her best friend to the gas chambers, how there was such mass killing in the concentration camps, the last question was, well, did Hitler do any good? And she said, oh, yes. And then she became very effusive about Adolf Hitler and all the jobs he provided in all these sort of things. And I, that may be very true, but to be effusive about it. That's part of the peculiar is what it is after all these years. Yeah, well, I mean, it's an indication. And I think Hannah fit into that category. I mean, I think she, you know, when she was talking about, during the testimony about why she went into the SS, she described it as if you were getting a job, you know, you were working at McDonald's and you got a better job at Walmart or something, you know? I mean, those could be reversed, of course, I know, but you know, it was really uncanny. And it gave you a sense of the Holocaust that besides, you know, watching specific Holocaust films like Night and Fog, this was more like a film like Schindler's List. And of course, the best film that I've ever seen about youth and what happens to a young person during the Holocaust and during World War II is that Ignacio Holland film, Europa, Europa, which remains one of my favorite films of all time. Well, thank you, Carl. You know, one thing is, I keep wondering when I hear about anti-Semitism and where Holocaust deniers how ignorant they must be about the Holocaust. We've had 70 years of art, of scholarship about what happened in those days. And we have films like this that keep on being made, you know, that keep on reminding us what was going on. Brutality is the word. Not only were they killed, they were killed in the most brutal possible ways. It was heartless every damn time. And, you know, it happened all over Europe, wherever the Germans were, or they unleashed this kind of brutality. And for anyone not to know about that, we have to 70 years of art and history and scholarship in all the media, every media you can think of, and then to deny that it happened, this is really, really, really incredible. And I walk around with a sense of how in the world would they have missed this story. So anyway, just a thought. What is your rating of this film on a scale of one to 10, Carl? Well, as I just mentioned, because I think it was, well, I'll just say it right out. It's a 10, because I just thought that it was illuminating. And it's one of the films that I've seen, probably the only, well, one of the only films I've seen that really directly asks the question, the great 19th century Chernovchevsky's question, you know, who is to blame and what is to be done? And, you know, it doesn't knock you over the head with this, but it poses a lot of questions. And the notion of morality in your daily life, I think, comes out strongly in this film and how you're to conduct yourself as a human being. And it's interesting, the professor seems to have, that teaches a lot, seems to have a pretty good handle on this. You know, and he kind of... Michael's professor in the class. Yeah, Michael's professor in the class. He seems to be someone who has thought about these things, you know, for years and come to grips with them. And, you know, I don't want to put too much on it, because, you know, I don't know what the screenwriter was thinking about him, but, you know, I hope I'm not wrong about this. But it seems like it seems like, yeah. Unanswered in the movie. Yeah, and I would recommend it to everyone. And in fact, Jay, I went to one of my best friends here in Hawaii and I said to him, man, do I have a film for you? And he goes, oh, you know, Carl, I think I saw the film. And I said, am I the only person that saw this just because Jay Fidel and one of his wonderful suggestions told me about this and I went and immediately watched it? Well, you know, we've been asking for years, what exactly happened in Germany that they would have allowed Adolf Hitler to get into power? What was the process by which he exceeded to that power? And we don't really have an answer. We know that there's redemption in the country and they are much more moral now, although some of them who are not, some of them are still Nazis and it's always disturbing to see that. And we are disturbed and many Germans are disturbed to see that. But we need to understand. Not only what happened in Germany, but what happens to people in that environment, in that scenario. This movie helps us to understand. It's not like getting a job at Walmart. No, it's not. Thank you, Carl. Carl Ackerman, a historian, a professor, a reader and an author. Wow, great to have you on the show to talk about movies. We will do it again, I promise. Jay Fidel, thank you very much. And as your audience knows, if they've ever watched us together, I think that you're the supermench, the ultra-mench. The ubermench, ubermench. Let's see if it's a little bit German. Ubermench. Aloha.