Before the film Schindler’s List or the miniseries Holocaust,
Nelly Sachs used poetry to bear witness to the Holocaust. Sachs was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature, so literate viewers might expect to hear readings of
her verse in a documentary exploring poetry that addresses the Holocaust. Yet,
in this case, they do not. Filmmaker Richard Kroehling takes a much more personal
and subjective approach to the subject. Sometimes that leads to powerful
moments, but other times it clouds the film’s focus. Without question,
Kroehling incorporates some haunting verse that illuminates the
incomprehensible in After: Poetry Destroys Silence, which opens Friday
in New York.
To
its credit, After has one standout moment that will truly make your hair
stand on end. It comes when poet and actor Geza Rohrig (best known for Son of Saul) reads his poem “Aushwitz,” which includes a line recalling German
tourists speaking the words “never,” but also “again.” Its resonance for this
time of skyrocketing hatred directed at Jews is absolutely off the charts.
On
the other hand, After includes rather confusing hybrid dramatic
vignettes starring Melissa Leo and Bo Corre, who seem to also be exploring their
tragic family history. These add confusion rather than clarity. Indeed,
Kroehling periodically widens the film field of reference to discuss poetic
responses to other forms of trauma. Arguably, a subject with the weighty significance
of the Holocaust can carry the film on its own, without more “contemporary”
reference points.
Still,
there are memorable passages, like an archival recording of Paul Celan reading “Todesfuge,”
in a dry ghostly voice that sounds reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s appropriately deathly
tones on his classic reading of “The Waste Land.”
Gabriel the crime boss likes quoting Machiavelli and forcing his prisoners to
play Russian roulette, because he thinks they are both intimidating. At least
once, someone should tell him: “go stuff your Machiavelli, I read Sun Tzu.” He
is less than thrilled about paying-off the anti-crime task force, but he
accepts it as a cost of doing business. When a group of crime-scene cleaners find
their overdue payoff stashed up the chimney, both the gangsters and the crooked
cops will come looking for them in Jon Keeyes’ The Clean Up Crew, which
releases tomorrow on-demand.
Gabriel
might possibly have been dragging his heels a little too long with their latest
payment, so when two rogue thugs temporally intercept the bribe money, the cops
threaten to expose Gabriel’s operation. With full-scale war on the horizon, maybe
he really should be reading The Art of War.
It
is quite a mess by the time the cleaners got there. Nobody escaped the Mexican
standoff cleanly, but one of the injured thugs survived to return to the scene
of the crime just as Alex and his co-workers were leaving with the money. Somehow,
the cops missed it, but in their defense, they were probably just incompetent.
Alex’s
boss, Siobhan just wants to turn it over to the cops, but his fiancée Meagan
convinces him to take the money, for the sake of their future. Fortunately, the
drug-addicted former-something-military Chuck can handle Gabriel’s wounded
enforcer. In fact, they decide to take him with them. Soon, Gabriel returns the
favor, kidnapping Meagan, which enrages Alex, making him much more amenable to
Chuck’s methods.
Throughout
it all, Antonio Banderas is highly entertaining preening and gorging on scenery
as Gabriel, the pretentious crime boss. He elevates the character above his literary
quirks, raising the level of the film with him. Derek Carroll and Conor Mullen also
add some nice gritty energy as Gabriel’s police contacts.
