I only half-watched the first part. I was curious as to how they would cover the Rutherford/Knorr era. The sheer number of stuff left out as far as the history is pretty unreal. I couldn't help noticing the brutality of the reenactments of persecution against brothers. I'm surprised they depicted so much violence. And they even threw in a "damn" in the video! Whoa! I wonder if this means you can say "damn" in a talk or comment now! I doubt it. The rest of us would find ourselves in trouble for the same thing.
The reenactments...not bad blue-screen work, to be honest. The guy portraying Knorr looked a bit young for the role, but hey...whatever. There was a subtle highlight of the segregation going on, as the black Witnesses were always next to each other and never the white Witnesses. If I'm not mistaken.
I couldn't help feeling like it was one of those 1940s propaganda movies, when the letters are all coming at you..."1940". "QUEBEC". Also, it occurs to me that they blast Christendom for both supporting Hitler AND for fighting him. You just can't win; even if you fought and liberated Jehovah's Witnesses from Nazi concentration camps, you'd still be evil. The funny thing was they said "most" other religions supported Hitler. Which leaves the question of, well, it's easy to condemn those who supported Hitler, but why no discussion of how you feel about those who didn't? Because it just doesn't matter, they're still of a different religion and ultimately evil anyway, right?
Lots of persecution stories. Given Rutherford was an expert in law, it actually makes sense that he would use the courts to put the organization on the map. Makes me wonder if it was all orchestrated--the way those masses with placards were marching out there, it reminds me an awful lot of the protests that happened during the Civil Rights Movement, just with a different message. Of course, that was probably a common thing to do, so...let me not speculate. At least we know for a fact that Rutherford was living quite well while the poor foot soldiers were getting the crap beat out of them. Wanted to see a replay of that car he got out of on the way to give his talk...looked pretty nice.
I'm trying to remember which Governing Body member it was--he had this really creepy facial expression, like, if the organization told you to literally burn your kids in the fire, he would be the one officiating the ceremony. It was actually scary. There was another one who was sure to mention that the Translation Committee for the NWT was under the influence of holy spirit but not inspired. The way he said it--as if it was a rehearsed disclaimer--reminds me that probably a lot of GB members really don't believe the stuff that's written in the literature. Well, duh! Of course not. They don't have to. But it just seems like the way they were talking made me wonder, so...do any of you actually communicate with the Writing Committee? Because your status in the literature is a far cry from being just a group of humble, imperfect men eager to encourage people in the preaching work.
They had Knorr talking about a 29-page defense of the use of JHVH in the New Testament. I'd be curious to read it, but should that really require 29 pages? I think Jason David BeDuhn demolishes the whole concept in like 16 pages...BeDuhn called their uses of JHVH in some places "conjectural emendation". My favorite technical term for "b.s.ing your way through it".
It actually was pretty light fare, though. They seemed to steer away from anything particularly problematic, I thought. I thought it was weird that they actually showed the burning of Watchtowers--then again, for the JW today, a 1940 Watchtower would be apostate literature, so maybe there's a subtle psychological impact there, eh? Don't read the old literature? Nah...
I know I'm like, ten years late watching it, but...really not much to dislike about it, even the giant Watchtower logo coming out of the heavens at the end. You get used to it. I wonder whose idea that was? The WT logo like that? Would be interesting to find out.
It wasn't so bad. Still, I just went ahead and watched 'Thor' to rinse out the brain. I really enjoyed seeing it the second time...seemed better than I remembered.
--sd-7