Montauk Chronicles

I had originally planned to write a review of the Montauk Chronicles, so I started to re-watch it. I bought it last night just so that I could have the extra interview footage to study. I realized halfway through again, that really what I needed to write about was about the visceral feelings this movie brought up in my heart and my gut. My mind is partially still stunned into silence, EVEN though I have studied this for years.

What this movie is really about is a monster that is still out there, still roaming free. Invisible and dangerous, stalking us with the same voracious antipathy towards the sanctity of life that it had at Auschwitz. In the end, some get away, but so does the monster, so you never know when it will come out of the darkness to strike again.

The most horrifying thing about this monster is that it is real.

When I was in high school, my freshman English teacher thought it would be a good idea to expose an entire class to the movie Night and Fog. I thought to include the URL at the end of this so you could take a look. Sadly you cannot find the entire movie. Only bits and scraps survive anymore. It was the most heart wrenching thing that ever happened to me at 15 ….and at 60, seeing in great detail what they found when they liberated Auschwitz. Until this movie.

At 48 minutes I was so upset at the abuse scenes and their truly horrifying depiction I couldn’t breathe. My heart was beating fast and I was slightly nauseated. Serious visceral reactions, rightly so, to facts that I had hoped I would never see become a reality again.

I try so hard not to look evil in the face, preferring to promote as much love and light as I can. Last night I felt like I was staring down it’s fetid, endless, evil maw. The stench of its breath withered me. This was our own little private Auschwitz, right here in the United States that nobody knows about. It screamed, it stunk of Nazi(!), of the cavalier disregard for life in the face of getting the prize.

The strength of spirit it must have taken to produce this movie, to make it, to birth it, is beyond my conception. I can’t imagine it. I would have been totally insane afterwards, if there was an afterwards. KUDOS Mr. Garetano. This was an eloquently crafted, visual bombshell. It adds the gut punch that just research cannot deliver. To those who watch this movie and don’t know enough to understand the story is very real, the concepts, the metaphors will be with them, opening their eyes. Maybe later on, but the seeds will be quietly waiting to germinate.

There is a huge messy war going on out there, between good and bad, light and dark positive and negative, service to self and service to others. From what I can tell at this point, its endless. It always will be at this level of being. I think the main question being asked of all of us living in an existence where this can happen is:

Which do you choose?