Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire

Two years after his death, Elie Wiesel’s boyhood Romanian home was defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti. Even in 2018, nobody was really shocked. Today, it would just be more of the same. Wiesel spent most of his adult life remembering the horrors of the Holocaust, in hopes they would never be allowed to repeat. Imagine how painful 10/7 would have been for him had he lived to see it. Apparently for the sake of tidiness, director Oran Rudavsky ignores such recent tragedies entirely. His resulting film feels like it might have been produced in the days closely following Wiesel’s death. However, Wiesel still has much to tell us by example, when Rudavsky documents his life and work in Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, which opens in theaters this Friday.

Wiesel was a survivor (but his parents and younger sister were not). That will always define his identity, especially because Wiesel started writing and speaking to bear witness, before acts of public remembrance were encouraged. Although not an immediate bestseller, Night became an acknowledged classic that paved the way for more such works.

Rudavsky also chronicles Wiesel’s personal rebirth, marrying his wife Marion, with whom he had the child he once resolved to never bring into the world, their son Elisha. This might be the most inspiring aspect of Wiesel’s story, which Rudavsky does full justice. Instead of an unknowable voice of conscience, Wiesel emerges an acutely human and humanistic husband and father.

However, Rudavsky (who also helmed the entertainingly neurotic rom-com The Treatment) quickly dispenses with Wiesel’s life-long support for Israel with one soundbite expressing empathy for those who identify as Palestinian and one talking-head claiming Wiesel refused to criticize the democratic nation publicly.

The film ignores the controversy that ensued when the London Times refused to publish Wiesel’s ad criticizing Hamas’s use of children as human shields during the 2014 Gaza War. Instead, Rudavsky devotes considerable time to more pressing controversies, like Pres. Reagan’s 1985 visit to the German Bitburg military cemetery. (Seriously, it garners over eleven minutes out of a total 86-minute running time.)

Weirdly, for a film defined by the act of remembering, Soul on Fire seems bizarrely forgetful of recent events. Frankly, Soul on Fire plays out like it was deliberately sanitized to make it more palatable to leftwing New Yorkers. Yet, Wiesel’s life and work speak for him better than any documentary ever will. If it encourages viewers to read his work, then it will inadvertently lead them to embrace Israel as a sanctuary of life and condemn Hamas as a cult of death. Indeed, it is highly rewarding to see young Newark students thoughtfully engaging with Night.

Soul on Fire is highly compelling when it focuses on Wiesel’s personal story and his family’s memories. When it addresses post-war politics, it is suspiciously incomplete. Wiesel deserves a better documentary treatment, but for now, this is what we have. It earns a mixed recommendation, as an important but flawed film. Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire opens this Friday (9/5) in New York, at the IFC Center.