Dovidl’s shocking behavior is a personal betrayal, as well, for the concert was produced and financed by Gilbert Simmonds. A dozen or so years earlier, Simmonds, an English non-Jew, had generously and tenderly taken the musically brilliant Polish-Jewish boy into his home until the rest of the Rapoports could leave Poland.
The Grudge has already been made twice, had lackluster sequels, and will be remade in 2020. The reason the franchise has been so successful is partially do to the rich lore surrounding its ghost’s origin story, which is rooted in Japanese culture.
The writer and director of Ju-On: The Grudge, Takashi Shimizu, created the original story as the third installment in the larger Japanese franchise, Ju-On, which Shimizu started in 1998. The original The Grudge was released in 2002, and after the success of The Ring in the US, Shimizu was asked to remake his own film for American audiences. More often than not, Americanized versions of foreign films fall flat, but under Shimizu’s directorial hand, the 2004 American remake of The Grudge, which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, KaDee Strickland, and Clea DuVall, was successful.
There’s a profound question at the core of the “The Song of Names.” What is the responsibility of a Holocaust survivor — or any Jew, for that matter — to those who died, and to their memories?
That aching existential and practical dilemma acquires a different meaning, and arguably becomes more relevant, as the generation that endured the war, the camps and the aftermath passes away.