Tuesday, February 6, 2007

In life many times we view the way that we live and the place where we reside as Americans as a place of freedom and equality, many times taking advantage of what freedom we do have. Things we many times look over in our everyday walk of life; like the freedom of religion or the law that declares that all men are created equal.
This movie shows life from a different perspective, a perspective from the eyes of a people that were tortured because of their outward appearance or their religious beliefs.
This movie takes the selfishness out of ones everyday life and puts the focus on a true historical time period that affected a culture of men, women and children.

In the movie “The Shop On Main Street” it shows the struggle of two different people or cultures. First it shows the financial struggle, those of the lower class who had to fight for the respect of the higher class, fight for a descent paying job so that ones family would not die of starvation and lastly, fight to keep ones sanity. With all of this on a breadwinners shoulder as in the case of the main male character the pressure of all of this could drive one insane!

Next this movie showed the deathly struggle of the Jews and what they had to endure simply because of who they were (not being considered one hundred percent Arian) and their religious beliefs. The focus on Mrs. Lauthmann was phenomenal, because it show the helplessness of a people that did not do any thing wrong or any thing to harm anyone else. The biblical references in this movie had great symbolism.
For example, the building that they were building in the middle of town was referred to by many as the “Tower of Babel” from the Old Testament in the Bible. The reason why this name held true was when it was erected it brought nothing but confusion and chaos to the town just like in the Bible.
All in All this movie opened the eyes of those who viewed it put the beholder in the shoes of the main characters to make one feel what they were feeling.