If someone doesn't know history, what movies would be impossible to understand?

I wonder if they would understand Saving Private Ryan or Pearl Harbor.

Apocolyspe Now. Hamburger Hill.

It isn’t the historical context that makes Shindler’s list a compelling tale. If you dress the Nazis in alien creature suits, and set the action on a distant planet, the pile of teeth is no less unsettling. But your discovery, not 1, but 2 people ignorant at this time of the holocaust may well be worthy of its own dicumentary. I would not be able to let the 2 of them out of my sight without questions that would probably be off putting to them. But ask yourself, what would be required to allow 2 individuals reared separately to arrive at then travel through adulthood ignorant of the holocaust?

The Killing Field.

@stanleybmanly…. It blows my mind clean away.

All of those movies (Hamburger Hill and Pearl Harbor excepted) are riveting in their own right. More than one person has commented that Apocalypse is a retelling of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. And Casablanca is a great movie completely without the explanation opening the film.

I don’t think I’ve ever watch Casablanca. I’m so clunky.

Sure, they’re good movies in their own right….but to know they are TRUE, this REALLY HAPPENED ads a entirely different dimension on it, in my opinion. That’s why I’ll take a true story over fiction and day.

@Dutchess_III: “they had no idea what the holocaust was. Said they’d never heard of that before.”

This is an impossibility. They were likely just playing dumb because it seemed to get a reaction from you.

Not knowing history would help in understanding the films of Oliver Stone.

Ben-Her would sound like an early transgender story
Hell-Sid could be about the demonic possession of a man named, err…yeah, that don’t work so well

Are you sure there are no serious learning disabilities involved here? If not, I’m curious to know where their school district falls here?

Roughly the same district my kids went to, @DoNotKnowMuch. And my son, who is 28, is the person who brought “Auschwitz” up in the first place, in another context, a few days ago. I was trying to repeat the story to my acquaintance…but it fell flat. Never even got to the “Bridge of Frith of Forth,” which was the punch line…..

The Na’kuhl arc from Star Trek: Enterprise.
They have been messing with earth for a long time

I am a semi movie buff and cannot think of one movie that would have made more sense or been more enjoyable if I knew the full history of the time and events in the movie. I am well versed in the Vietnam war and all the war movies mentioned stand on firm ground because of the brilliant and careful directing and scripting of the movies. I have yet to meet another person who knows the real reasons we put troops on the ground in Vietnam. (To protect US corporate interests in the rubber plantations there)

But if I had to vote for a movie the Sound of Music takes on a bigger picture experience when you know just how intense if was for the von Trapp family escaping from the Nazi’s. I would also add in Casablanca for the same reason.

True that, @Cruiser. I saw the movie as a kid, but it wasn’t until I saw the movie as an adult that it all clicked in to place.

However, with Schindler’s list there was no love interest, like there was in the Sound of Music, or anything that any one could relate to outside of the basic plot, saving what Jews he could. If you had no idea what was happening or why he had to save them, could one really follow the movie do you think?

World Trade Center.
10 Days In October.
Lawrence Of Arabia.

All very good movies, but if you don’t have a working knowledge of the big picture, you’ll miss much of the importance of events.

I have trouble believing that anyone age 40-ish could be unfamiliar with the Holocaust. Is it possible that this couple was simply playing dumb and watching for your reaction? I hate to think that somebody would joke and tease about such a subject, but it’s incomprehensible that a person could be so stupid or deliberately ignorant. The woman would have been born around 1975, which means that her father, or perhaps some of her uncles, would have served during WWII.

The Third Man had a lot of moments that left me scratching my head. It was the movie with the most historical references I’ve ever seen. I guess you have to have a lot of knowledge about what happened in Europe after WWII to understand what is going on. To this day I still don’t know why this movie is so famous a guided tour is dedicated to it.

And I haven’t seen Citizen Kane yet but maybe it will be historically mind-boogling to me too.

Beloved is ahrd to understand even with historical context but if you didn’t know about slavery, it would be impossible.

Exactly. And not knowing about slavery is as unfathomable to me as not knowing about the holocaust.

@Dutchess_III Promise me you’ll watch Casablanca soon. I think you’ll love it.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

You could have told them to watch The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

I think if the people didn’t go to school much, dropped out, live in the backwoods, play video games all day and just exist in their little worlds of getting cigarettes, hanging around the trailer park, etc. they may not know of such things as the Holocaust, etc.

The Mask of Dimitrios, Peter Lorre (1944)

I promise @dappled_leaves. :D

That’s a thought @NerdyKeith…..

You would think that would explain it @jca, but this person, the woman, actually graduated from school and did not live in the backwoods or a trailer park. I don’t know about video playing, though. Somehow I don’t think so, but I don’t know.
I don’t know the upbringing of her friend though.

I thought about this question after reading an item in the San Francisco Chronicle on the way home today.

A woman who was given a lifetime appointment as Board Chair by her late husband for a foundation he started to concentrate on poverty and Jewish issues, did not understand what was meant by “the Holocaust.”

It’s at the end of this column.

“Holocaust. Yeah, I mean, I hear that.” said Koret, who is of Korean descent and whose first language is not English. “But can you can explain to me exactly, you know, what you’re asking me?”

You link sends us to “Ross Mirkarimi wants to bring medical weed to Uruguay” Go Ross!

@Dutchess_III that is the beginning, it is at the end of the link. Ross Mirkarimi was Sheriff in San Francisco until he lost the last election.

Well, it says I need to be a subscriber.

Oh, what about And The Ship Sailed On? It’s importance is not revealed until the end of the movie, and if you don’t know about how World War I started you won’t get it.