He
was a dictator, but Marshal Tito maintained a degree of Yugoslavian
independence from the Soviet Bloc. Besides the wise counsel of future dissident
Milovan Djilas, many credit his Titoist policies to his history as a real deal
partisan. Yet, Adriana Altaras’s former partisan father barely escaped the
business end of a Soviet-style purge. Despite his good luck, Jakob Altaras recognized
the writing on the wall and subsequently smuggled his family into Western
Europe. Now a mother herself, Altaras takes a road trip into the past to
explore her complicated relationship with her parents and their native Croatia
in Regina Schilling’s Tito’s Glasses (trailer here), which screens
during the 2016 New York Jewish Film Festival.
Altaras
was somewhat in awe of her father, but she spent many of her formative years
living with her staunchly anti-Communist aunt in Italy. Like Altaras herself,
her parents’ attitudes towards Tito and their Yugoslavian homeland remained complicated
and contradictory, even though they got out while the getting was good.
Nevertheless, Dr. Altaras achieved a good deal of professional success in Germany.
His daughter even visits the university where he taught, which has erected a stone
memorial in his honor, shaped like the radiological probe he invented. It is a
small monument, but it sure looks uncomfortable, if you follow me.
The
charming, philandering Dr. Altaras and his standoffish wife Thea are intriguing
figures, who helped revitalize the Jewish community in their provincial German district
(hence, Glasses selection for this
year’s NYJFF). They could easily support a feature length documentary.
Therefore, it is rather frustrating how much time Schilling spends on Adriana
Altaras’s road movie business. Granted, the film is based on her family memoir,
but viewers will be coming to hear about her father’s service with Tito in the
forests and trenches rather than her struggles to discipline her entitled
teenaged son.
