Word: van
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...film tells the story of a young Jewish woman named Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten) whose resistance name is Ellis de Vries. After seeing her family betrayed and butchered as they attempt to flee Holland, she joins the underground and is asked to seduce the local Gestapo Leader (Sebastian Koch, lately of The Lives of Others). Soon she's planting a microphone in his office - and falling authentically in love with this civilized, slightly depressive man, who fastidiously ignores what's going on in the torture chambers beneath his headquarters...
...other hand, we do learn that he has suffered a personal tragedy that may have turned him against noxious belief, and remember that we are seeing him through Ellis's bedazzled eyes and curiously innocent nature. We are always aware that she is not an ideologically driven woman. In van Houten's very brave performance - it's hard to think of an actress who has ever been so naked, literally and metaphorically, so often in pursuit of a characterization - she's all heart, instinct and good nature. Above all, she is calmly acceptant of her circumstances. This is what...
...ardent activist atheist, I second David Van Biema's proposal to add the Bible to the curriculum of our public high schools. I do so for the same reason I support teaching English, keyboarding and the U.S. Constitution: each is useful knowledge for informed citizens in a democracy. My only caution: teach all of the Bible. We wouldn't sample bits and pieces of Macbeth, Jane Eyre, 1984 or Catch-22 in a literature class; we would expect students to read an entire work. Just so with the Bible. My enthusiasm for this proposal is not entirely selfless. I subscribe...
...fifth day of the road trip, the van leaves Gyseni, a former colonial lake resort in the western province of Rwanda, and takes a bumpy and circuitous route to Kibuye, on the eastern shore of Lake Kivu. The driver constantly sounds his horn or drives frighteningly close to people to scare them off the road. The landscape outside is breathtaking: lush green hills, banana plantations and in the distance, the Virunga volcanoes, home of the famous Rwandan mountain gorillas...
...When the van stops at Kibuye's stadium, it is surrounded by children, who watch in excitement as the huge screen is inflated. Thirteen years ago, this was the site of a massacre of tens of thousands of Tutsi - many of them buried in a mass grave adjacent to the stadium. That dark chapter of Kibuye's history is obliquely addressed in one of tonight's movies, about a love affair between a Tutsi girl and a Hutu boy. And the audience laughs and cheers, raucously rooting for the couple...