Kirsten Dunst starts The Devil's Arithmetic in the same way she might start any 1999 movie: she's a self-absorbed teenager who doesn't care about history or her elders. She's in a tattoo parlor watching her friends mar their bodies and trying to pick out a meaningless design for herself. She doesn't, though, because she checks her watch and realizes she's late for Passover dinner. She rolls her eyes through the entire evening; she just doesn't care about her Jewish heritage. As she walks down the hallway, she gets transported to another time and place: Poland in 1941.
Just when Kirsten starts believing her new surroundings aren't a dream, Nazi soldiers enter the village and imprison everyone - including Kirsten and her cousin, Brittany Murphy. Men and women are separated, their heads are shaved, and they're given what Kirsten so frivolously thought was cool at the start of the movie - tattoos. Sufficed to say, she learns a lot of lessons about what's important. This will be a pretty heavy movie for the teen audience, but I would recommend it if you want to see Kirsten's acting chops (you can also check out Fifteen & Pregnant) or if you want some perspective. Produced by Dustin Hoffman and featuring Louise Fletcher, The Devil's Arithmetic shows that the world seems to revolve around you when you're sixteen, but everything can change in the blink of an eye.
Just when Kirsten starts believing her new surroundings aren't a dream, Nazi soldiers enter the village and imprison everyone - including Kirsten and her cousin, Brittany Murphy. Men and women are separated, their heads are shaved, and they're given what Kirsten so frivolously thought was cool at the start of the movie - tattoos. Sufficed to say, she learns a lot of lessons about what's important. This will be a pretty heavy movie for the teen audience, but I would recommend it if you want to see Kirsten's acting chops (you can also check out Fifteen & Pregnant) or if you want some perspective. Produced by Dustin Hoffman and featuring Louise Fletcher, The Devil's Arithmetic shows that the world seems to revolve around you when you're sixteen, but everything can change in the blink of an eye.