An unusual take on the story of the Holocaust though rather pointless.Same as the title-what is the Devils arithmetic? The film will teach you nothing about the Holocaust. As a time travel story it works to an extent in that it concludes by bringing the girl back to her own time as if its all been a dream. Obviously its full of artistic license-the Germans all speak English and it roughly follows what we already know about the ghettoes which were to lead to the camps. I don't think anyone could be unaware of what happened in Germany in the 40s but comparing this to the various documentaries on individual POW camps or classic movies like Schindlers List and its hardly in the same class. As a time travel movie its like Back to the Future or Peggy Sue got married without the music.

The Devil's Arithmetic is clearly made for television. It just lacks quality to be shown in a movie theater. Kirsten Dunst is still young in this movie and it shows, it's not the same quality of acting that we know her for nowadays. Whatever other positive reviewers say about her for this movie it's just not there. The rest of the cast are also just average at best. The story doesn't make much sense, it's rather dumb than smart. The Polish Jews talking in a bad forced English was also stupid, just speak Polish or Hebrew, or just speak correct English, any other attempt of a language is just irritating to listen to. As well with the Germans and their fake accent, it's annoying. The plot is basically learning about the Jewish traditions, which are by the way dumb, like any other religious tradions. As for the Holocaust scenes the actors lookd pretty well fed, besides their bad haircut they absolutely don't look like Holocaust victims, so here again they missed the whole point. The Devil's Arithmetic is a boring movie about a sensible subject.

We all heard of the Holocaust. We all know about the evil Nazis and the atrocities that happened during that horrible time, but none of us were there. It's hard to imagine what it was like and what those people went through.

This is the story of a modern girl in a Jewish family. She is not interested in hearing the stories of her relatives who survived the concentration camps because the idea is so foreign to her it's almost laughable.She reluctantly attends a passover seder with her parents where her aunts and uncles talk about "the camps" and she just dismisses the conversation. When she goes to put out the ceremonial cup of wine for Elijah, the profit she is transported in time to a village in Poland (I think it was poland). Everyone recognizes her as Hannah (her ancestor she was named after). She wakes up in a surreal "wizard of Oz like" setting where she is awaken after an apparent illness. Her "cousin" Rifka (played so sweetly by Brittany Murphy)tries to help her jar her "memory" of being her "cousin from Lublin" who is visiting". They walk through their quaint village as everyone is preparing for a wedding. Hannah is confused, but seems to just go with her new reality without too much question.

After the wedding is over several cars pull up to the village with Nazis with guns and trucks to transport the Jews to the camps. The people are scared and confused, but Hannah is the most terrified as she has the terrible forsight of what is about to happen.

She tries to figure out what is going on, whether she is dreaming, hallucinating, or what, but eventually realizes she is now a Jew in a concentration camp during world war 2 like it or not and she has to let fate play out.

This movie is powerful. To see the holocaust from the perspective of someone who already knows what has happened is chilling. From the time they arrive at the camp and are stripped of their clothes, dignity, money, possessions, have their hair shaved, are forced into slave labor and eventually murdered. Obviously the girl (hannah's) life would be changed forever if she ever woke up from the nightmare.

Great film.