Political films have the obligation and luxury to give an account of the truth from opposing sides. Stubbornness, mudslinging, and honest, hardworking people are willing to impose control or ensure freedom. All the problems in the world are blamed on the other guy, leaving the only guy you can trust. One’s always David; one’s always Goliath, and vice versa. Morality has no politics, however. When something is wrong, it stays wrong. When something is right, it stays right. With politics, what’s wrong for some is right for others, and what’s right for some is wrong for others. Without politics, the whole system crumbles back down to truth and justice. Fascism is a political ideology that removes right and wrong.
Fascism uses corrupted justification through militant dictatorship, social hierarchy, punishment of dissenters, and complete authority over how society thinks and lives. For those grateful to have original thoughts and choices that improve their livelihood, these films welcome the fall of fascism and its close-minded, Orwellian inhumanity.
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10 American History X (1998)
New Line Cinema
Former neo-Nazi Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) serves his prison sentence and learns the error of his ways. On the outside, his younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong) slowly but surely becomes a skinhead. A rehabilitated Derek must find a way to prevent Danny’s indoctrination into the white supremacist gang, Disciples of Christ (D.O.C.) before his brother’s mind and life are lost. The dangers of group think, racism, and organized crime are seen as acts against injustice for the brothers and groups they join. Fortunately, history does not repeat itself and the lesson is learned.
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9 Defiance (2008)
Paramount Pictures
On the border of Russia during World War II, the Republic of Belarus is being invaded by Nazi Germany. The military occupation was met with resistance by the Bielski brothers, Tuvia (Daniel Craig) Alexander “Zus” (Liev Schreiber), Asael (Jamie Bell), Aron (George MacKay), and their group of Jewish partisans. Together, they saved Jews, survived in the Naliboki forest, and fought enemy forces in German-occupied Poland for almost three years. Despite all odds, the brothers took in over 1,200 Jewish people, never turning anyone away.
8 Life Is Beautiful (1997)
Cecchi Gori Group
The Holocaust comedy drama was seen by some critics as insensitive to historical events. How it handles its subject is telling of how anti-fascist it was. Taking place in Fascist Italy, an Italian Jewish man, Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) is separated from his family on a train to a concentration camp. Guido reunites with his son Giosuè (Giorgio Cantarini) and hides the horrors of the situation by treating their time like a prize-winning game. Metaphor after metaphor, Guido protects his son from cynical and manipulative powers in the changing world through small acts of creativity, imagination, and rebellion.
7 Schindler’s List (1993)
Universal Pictures
German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) with his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) employ Polish-Jewish refugees to work in his factory for profit during World War II. Schindler at first, indirectly saves the Jews from being killed in concentration camps, since his main concern is his wealth. His relationship with the Nazi party is also in good standing. He later has a change of heart, as he bribes the Nazis and spends his life’s fortune to keep the Jewish people from being worked to death.
6 Son of Saul (2015)
Mozinet
German Nazi death camp prisoner and Hungarian Jew Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) is forced to dispose of gas chamber victims. One of the bodies is of a young boy that Saul wishes to perform a Jewish burial for. He dodges suspicion, plots subterfuge, and avoids close calls just to honor the death of a child. Whether it’s one or one million, a life cannot be taken for granted.
5 The Great Dictator (1940)
United Artists
Charlie Chaplin broke his silence with silent films in his first picture with sound, The Great Dictator. The famous satire and condemnation of fascism was released during the height of Nazi Germany. In the film, Chaplin portrays a persecuted Jewish barber and a power-hungry dictator, showing the actions and consequences on both sides. He also delivers a powerful address, one of cinema’s greatest speeches about the end of machine men with machine hearts, the sound of world peace.
4 Inglorious Basterds (2009)
The Weinstein Company
An alternative history film from director Quentin Tarantino in which a team of Jewish American soldiers plan to kill and scalp Nazis, eventually assassinating leaders of Nazi Germany. The senseless violence on both sides is ruthless and exaggerated. One plot is to set a cinema on fire where Nazi Party members will be attending a showing of a propaganda film. The ironically mad groupthink and violence inciting more violence shows how destructive the wrong ideas can be and get.
3 The Pianist (2002)
Syrena Entertainment Group
In The Pianist, Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody) was a Holocaust survivor. He was separated from his family after his native Warsaw, Poland became a Nazi-controlled ghetto. From shelter to escape, Szpilman finds himself at a loss when the music of life stops. When German Army officer Wilhelm Hosenfield (Thomas Kretschmann), known for sparing the lives of many Polish and Jewish people, discovers him in hiding, Hosenfield keeps him hidden and fed after a harrowing and life-affirming performance on a lone piano.
2 The Wave (2008)
Constantin Film Verleih
The school assignment that went too far, The Wave shows what happens when a social experiment unchecked falls prey to fascist jingoism. The project demonstrated how the German population willingly followed the modus operandi of the Nazi regime. The movie was based on The Third Wave classroom exercise from California school teacher Ron Jones, who showed that the masses can be manipulated all too easily.
1 V for Vendetta (2005)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Guy Fawkes Night would never be the same again thanks to anarchist V (Hugo Weaving), the freedom-fighting vigilante. He rebels against Fascist Britain in a dystopian future, where certain factions and minorities are routinely executed for being themselves. Since its release, V for Vendetta and its Guy Fawkes mask have been symbols of protest against tyranny.
