Irena’s Vow: Dan Gordon’s Broadway Hit on the Big Screen

More Polish citizens have been recognized at Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations than any other nationality. Ninety-nine of them were named Irene. Gal Gadot is working on the story of one: Irene Sendler, who saved over 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto. Irene Gut [Opdyke] “only” saved twelve Jews during the occupation, but she did it literally under the nose of a senior National Socialist officer. Screenwriter-playwright-novelist-reserve duty IDF officer Dan Gordon adapted his own hit Broadway play for the big-screen, in time for it to release amid escalating antisemitic attacks, here and abroad. The rescuer’s story comes at a particularly urgent time, when Louise Archambault’s Irene’s Vow screens nationwide tomorrow and Tuesday, via Fathom Events.

Having been brutalized by Russian soldiers, Irene Gut had no love for the Soviets. She had little reason to like the National Socialists either. After occupying Poland, they confiscated her home and forced the student-nurse to labor in a factory overseen by Wehrmacht Major Edward Rugemer. However, her “Germanic” features led to transfers, first to a luxury hotel catering to officers and then to Rugemer’s newly commandeered villa. Witnessing the SS sadistically murder a mother and her infant on the streets horrifies Gut, but it later motivates her to devise an unlikely plan to save the hotel’s Jewish slave labor, ahead of their liquidation.

Under the dark of night, uot smuggled her former co-workers into Rugemer’s villa, first hiding them in the cellar, before they eventually discover the hiding chamber specially constructed by the dispossessed Jewish owners. To avoid exposure, Gut promises Rugemer she can handle the household single-handedly, using her traumatic history with the Red Army as an excuse to keep soldiers out of the villa. Of course, that means she must cater his receptions on her own, but she will actually have quite a bit of help from the basement.

Archambault definitely brings out the thriller aspects of Gut’s story more than the Broadway production, which was presented as memory play, showcasing Tovah Feldshuh. Sophie Nelisse is also considerably younger than Feldshuh during the Broadway run. Feldshuh could probably draw the tourist buses, but Nelisse’s younger, more naïve look and slight frame leads to a greater sense of vulnerability.

In fact, Nelisse portrays Gut with tremendous sensitivity. Thanks to her, the audience really understands why she did what she did. (Frankly, her work in a key scene truly makes Irena’s Vow a “pro-life” film in both past and present contexts.) Yet, Dougray Scott really elevates Irena’s Vow, proving he can do more than sniff and sneer his way through a film, portraying sinister blue bloods. His performance as Rugemer (an intriguing historical figure) is as complex as Gordon’s treatment. Plus, Andrzej Seweryn adds a lot of color and energy as the sly and sophisticated old Shultz, the only other serving staff Gut allows inside the villa.

Konchalovsky’s Paradise

The word “paradise” usually has nothing but positive associations, but to reach a Heavenly paradise, you necessarily need to die first, whereas instituting a utopian paradise on earth invariably involves mass murder and oppression. The connection between death and idyllic perfection comes through loud and clear in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Paradise (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Jules is a comfortable but far from compassionate middle-class French police officer collaborating with Vichy and the National Socialists. Helmut is a young German nobleman who takes pride in his status, even though it is a source of insecurity among his working-class SS colleagues. Both men will use their positions to sexually exploit Olga, an elegant Russian émigré arrested for sheltering Jewish children. Each will discuss their wartime experiences from a position of definitive hindsight. That means they are dead, as becomes evident when the resistance assassinates Jules during the first act. However, you cannot say they share the same ultimate fates.

In each case, the imprisoned Olga welcomed her jailer’s attention, as a means of survival. The outlook for her is especially desperate when she reaches the concentration camp Helmut is inspecting. Konchalovsky rather sparingly depicts the horrors of death camp life, but he periodically slaps us with a brutally intense episode of cruelty. Therefore, we can plainly understand why it is almost a godsend when Olga reunites with Helmut, a former summer fling, who became ridiculously enraptured with her. In the intervening years, Helmut drunk deeply of National Socialism, becoming a hardcore ideologue and anti-Semite. Yet, he himself readily admits, had he been born in Russia, he would have been a Communist. Indeed, he quite respects their fanaticism and statism, but those are not the terms he would use.

Konchalovsky’s strategy to combine Nuremberg-esque interview segments with dramatic sequences will be divisive, but it all pays off in the final scene. Even viewers who do not fully buy into Konchalovsky’s style and structure will concede the power of Aleksandr Simonov’s frighteningly beautiful black-and-white cinematography. Like Son of Saul, Paradise is shot in the box-like Academy ration, but every frame is still visually arresting.

Julia Vysotskaya (Konchalovsky’s accomplished wife) is also ferociously heartbreaking as Olga. It is an unflinching, morally complex portrayal of suffering and survival, but Konchalovsky only invites us to empathize, not to judge. Philippe Duquesne is fine as Jules, but he never stretches our conception of the corrupt French copper. In contrast, Christian Clauß is a chilling true believer, but he also develops disturbingly dysfunctional yet problematically human chemistry with Vysotskaya’s Olga.

Frankly, it is a minor miracle Russia selected Paradise as its official foreign language Oscar submission last year (it was shortlisted, but not nominated). Konchalovsky does not belabor the point, but he unambiguously suggests parallels between German National Socialism and Soviet Communism. After all, his second film was withdrawn from circulation by the Soviets and he has since become a reluctant critic of Putin (unlike his filmmaker brother Nikita Mikhalkov). That deeply rooted skepticism of isms, prejudices, and authoritarian leaders is reflected throughout Paradise. It is a film of great artistry and moral clarity. Highly recommended, Paradise opens this Friday (10/6) in New York, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

Submitted by Hungary: Son of Saul

In National Socialist concentration camps, Jews who served as “Sonderkommando” were afforded modest privileges and allowed comparatively free movement within the confining walls. Yet, it was undeniably hellish duty. Charged with escorting prisoners into the gas chambers and cleaning up after the mass executions, their first order of business was often to dispatch their predecessors. The new Sonderkommando’s families frequently followed soon thereafter. Consequently, they had no illusions about their ultimate fate. It is rather understandable why the most significant uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau was planned by the Sonderkommando. Saul Ausländer is part of the rebellion’s inner circle, but he will be distracted by an even more profound crisis in László Nemes’ Son of Saul (trailer here), Hungary’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Frankly, Son of Saul might be most effective if viewers are not fully briefed on what to expect. It is safe to confirm, this is indeed a Holocaust story, incorporating a very real event, executed with unusually personal immediacy. The resulting viewing experience is not merely bracing. It is sort of like being Tasered. However, judging from some colleagues’ reactions, it may well be that the more forewarned you are, the less potent Nemes’ approach will be, so proceed with caution.

It starts as just another day in the National Socialist death factory for Ausländer, until he sees a body that cracks his defensive shell. Like Ausländer, we see him only after his death. While not strictly adhering to Ausländer’s as-seen-through-his-eyes POV, Nemes largely limits his shots to what would easily be within his field of vision. As an experienced Sonderkommando, he is somewhat desensitized to the horrors that would have been horrific centerpieces of other Holocaust films. Instead, we get a sense of the kinetic maelstrom of death he must navigate.

To further emphasize its restrictive scope, Son of Saul was composed expressly for the pre-widescreen Academy aspect ratio. The audience is immediately aware just how much they are not seeing, necessarily feeling disoriented as a result. Nemes forces the audience to figure out Ausländer’s relationships to other Sonderkommando through the dramatic context of what follows. This is a remarkably physical film that is just as choreographed as any musical or martial arts extravaganza.

Evidently, Ausländer reluctantly agreed to help scrounge supplies for the revolt, because he understood how little he had to lose. However, when he thinks he recognizes the body in question, he starts recklessly improvising a scheme to prevent the requisite autopsy and find a Rabbi to say Kaddish. He will knowingly jeopardize the imminent uprising, but his mission is equally defiant in its way.

For most of the cast, simply surviving the non-stop bedlam constitutes quite a performance. However, Géza Röhrig is quietly devastating as Ausländer. Essentially, he shows us the stirrings of a long dormant soul struggling to assert itself. It is a painfully honest, desperately lean performance that will shame this year’s histrionically indulgent award-seeking performances (we’re looking at you, Carol).

Son of Saul is not exactly immersive, but it gives the audience a visceral sense of the confusion and dehumanization necessary to make the gas chambers run. This is an exhausting film, but also a uniquely powerful one, unlike almost any other well-meaning holocaust narrative. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (12/18) in New York at Film Forum.

Night Will Fall: Documenting the Concentration Camps

It was a case of one legendary director replacing another. Billy Wilder was in and Alfred Hitchcock was out, but the project was not a suspense-thriller, like Double Indemnity. It was a Holocaust documentary that was to incorporate devastating footage shot by Allied film crews during the liberation of National Socialist concentration camps. Only years later would a partial, incomplete cut see any sort of meaningful exhibition. However, the British Imperial War Museums have recently reconstructed and restored the intended director’s cut of the bureaucratically titled German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. Yet, there is still more to the story that is finally told in Andre Singer’s documentary, Night Will Fall (promo here), which premieres this coming Monday on HBO.

Some Hitchcock completists will be familiar with what was retitled Memory of the Camps when it aired on PBS, but the print was decidedly rough and the final reel was missing. Technically, it had never been completed (a problem the restoration team rectified using the surviving screenplay and cue lists). While it was generally known Hitchcock was more of an advisor than a hands-on director, Singer and company actually make a compelling case his vision largely guided the direction and aesthetic of the planned documentary.

While Hitchcock researchers really should consider it part of his filmography, producer Sidney Bernstein was the man most responsible for its day-to-day production and editing. Unfortunately, he would not see it to completion. With signs of the Cold War already surfacing during the early days of the Occupation of Berlin, the Allies essentially put the project in turnaround. The Americans still wanted a picture to convince Germans of their national guilt, so they recruited Wilder to recut some excerpts into the documentary short subject Death Mills.

As fascinating as the story is, Hitchcock fans will be disappointed he does not factor into Night to a greater extent, but he was only assigned to the project for a month. Nevertheless, they will gain a considerable appreciation for Bernstein, his team of editors, and the brave military cameramen who recorded the nightmarish footage in the first place. Ultimately, it is a tribute to their work, which in many cases left deep psychological and spiritual scars.

There are some dramatic interviews with surviving veterans and the excerpts from the finally finished film are truly horrific. Night also supplies a good deal of explanatory context that ought to be quite familiar to most viewers, but sadly is probably necessary given the declining level of historical awareness among younger generations and the precipitous rise of anti-Semitism abroad. If you have seen the work of Lanzmann and Ophüls, you should already know full well the bigger truths, but there are still telling details to be found throughout.

At just seventy-nine minutes, Night is brisk but surprisingly comprehensive. It also further burnishes Hitchcock’s reputation and gives Bernstein his long overdue acknowledgment. One can imagine it works best screening in conjunction with the restored Factual Survey (as it did at last year’s Berlinale), but it easily stands alone (as it will on HBO). Highly recommended for general audiences and particularly for students of history and cinema, Night Will Fall debuts this Monday (1/26) and repeats on various arms of HBO over the following days and weeks.

La Rafle: France, 1942

Conveniently, the infamous Winter Velodrome no longer stands in Paris.  Yet, perversely, cycling races were still held in the venue as late as 1958, well after it served as a temporary holding facility for 13,000 Jewish Parisians, forcibly “rounded up” at the request of the occupying National Socialists.  It was an episode of history France preferred to forget, since it was the Vichy authorities doing the rounding-up.  While the actual event went scrupulously undocumented, Rose Bosch dramatizes the tragic events in La Rafle (The Round Up), which opens this Friday in New York (trailer here).

The fatality rate of those imprisoned in the Velodrome was nearly one hundred percent.  Viewers will have no illusions where the captives are ultimately headed, but those in the Velodrome held out hope their next accommodations would be better.  We come to meet many of the roughly detained, including children like Joseph Weismann and his friends, the Zygler brothers.  While they used to run free through the streets of Montmartre, the boys suddenly find themselves enduring the heat and inadequate water and sanitation of the Velodrome.  Fellow prisoner Dr. David Sheinbaum is the sole extent of the medical treatment available until the arrival of solitary Protestant charity nurse Annette Monod.

Based on years of research, Bosch takes pains to show both the good and bad sides of the French national character.  While the Weismann’s anti-Semitic neighbors cheer their deportation, the Parisian fire department reacts with shock and empathy, struggling to improve conditions in the Velodrome, against the gendarmerie’s express wishes.

Those who have seen Sarah’s Key or read the novel on which it is based will be familiar with the 1942 Roundup.  Designer Olivier Raoux’s recreated Velodrome has the look and feel of a real life, slightly past its prime building, collapsing under the weight of its involuntary guests.  Bosch’s scenes within its confines have a visceral you-are-there impact.  However, the intermittent depictions of Hitler and the craven Petain lack the same power, only serving as a wan indictment of their banal evil.

In a bit of a surprise, it is Jean Reno who masterfully serves as the film’s moral center, portraying Dr. Sheinbaum with a profound spirit of world weary humanity.  The impossible romantic tension that develops between him and Mélanie Laurent’s Monod is also deeply touching.  That sense of “if only thing were different” palpably hangs in the air between them as they labor to ease the suffering around them as best they can.

Post-Schindler’s List, there have been a number of well-meaning dramas that have addressed the Holocaust, with varying degrees of success.  La Rafle ranks as one of the more accomplished due to its technical merit and Reno’s assured anchoring performance.  Recommended for connoisseurs of French cinema and WWII films, it opens this Friday (11/16) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Here I Learned to Love: In Search of Three Mothers

Two young brothers survived the Holocaust because their Aunt Malka put them on the Kasztner’s train, through sheer superhuman effort.  She may have been an aunt, but she became one of the women whom the boys would come consider their “three mothers” as grown adults.  Well into their seventies, the two brothers finally return to the Europe they barely escaped in hopes of learning more about their three mothers in Avi Angel’s documentary, Here I Learned to Love (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Izhak Weinberg has always been the older brother.  Protective of the younger Avner during those chaotic years, Weinberg wrote and researched the book Three Mothers for Two Brothers on which Angel’s documentary is partly based.  However, Avner Kerem never wanted to revisit the past and his brother never forced the issue.  Yet, he eventually agrees to the bittersweet pilgrimage in hopes of answering certain long held questions, including those involving his very name.

Tragically, the mother the brothers knew the least was their actual birth mother, the elegant Minda Weinberg, who entrusted the brothers to her sister Malka.  The nurturing Aunt Malka would also survive the National Socialist horrors, but at considerable personal cost.  By blindly entrusting the boys to the controversial Kasztner transport, their Aunt passed them into the sheltering hands of Naomi Meir, perhaps their most heartbreaking mother.

At fifty-five minutes or so, HILTL is brief by feature standards, but it dramatically conveys the courageous sacrifice of the three mothers and the resiliency of the two brothers.  There is not much padding in the film, but Angel still shows a shrewd eye for a quiet telling moment.  The brothers are not prone to sentimentality, but their homecoming bears a genuine emotional payoff.  Weinberg is particularly insightful, having become an expert on the Holocaust in his own right.

Like Tomasz Magierski’s Blinky & Me or Larry Weinstein’s Inside Hana’s Suitcase earlier in the year, HILTL follows a well established template for documenting survivors’ return journeys.  Duly respectful, it is concise but substantial.  A worthy and economical remembrance film, Here I Learned to Love is recommended parents, teachers, and students of history when it opens tomorrow (11/2) at the Quad Cinema in New York.

Six Million and One: In Their Father’s Footsteps

David Fisher chose to drag his siblings to the historic sites of Austria that the country would rather hide away from the world.  They would visit the concentration camps their father survived.  It is a trip Israeli filmmaker Fisher’s sister and two brothers make quite reluctantly.  Nevertheless, they experience family history as a form of therapy they never knew they needed in Fisher’s Six Million and One (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Fisher somehow lived through his internment at the Gusen and Gunskirchen camps, but just barely.  Amongst the last camp populations to be liberated, the Fishers’ father easily could have been the National Socialists’ final victim, the titular six million and first.  He did survive, but he never told the tale, except in the unpublished memoir discovered after his death.  While most of the family has no interest in plumbing the depths of their father’s wounded psyche, the documentarian brother obsesses over it, using it as the blue print for SMAO.

Brother David starts the voyage solo, traveling to Austria, where he meets several townspeople who were slightly surprised to learn they had moved into houses across the street from a concentration camp.  He also journeys to America to interview some of the surviving GI’s who liberated the Austrian camps and still suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome decades later.  In fact, these might be some of the most eye-opening scenes of the film, arguing for separate documentary treatment in their own right.

Eventually, Fisher cajoles his siblings into returning to Austria with him.  They literally retrace their father’s steps on the notorious death march between camps and in the munitions tunnel he dug as a slave laborer.  Yet, having not read their father’s chronicle, they are unaware of the significance of each leg of the journey until it is revealed by their filmmaker brother. 

Notwithstanding the humanistic empathy of his visit with America’s “Greatest Generation,” SMAO revisits some well traveled documentary roads.  For those of us who have covered many thematically related films, it clearly bears close comparison to Jake Fisher’s A Generation Apart (presumably no relation), as well as any number of films documenting Survivors’ return journeys to their old fateful homelands (such as Inside Hana’s Suitcase or Blinky & Me for instance).  However, the refreshing wit and attitude of the Fishers helps differentiate SMAO from the field.  It is clear they are never reading from a pre-written script, nor are they interesting in indulging in cheap-and-easy sentiment.

Yes, there have been a lot of films about this uniquely horrific episode in human history, but SMAO still finds something new to say.  Though it displays a bit of inclination towards the discursive, writer-director-producer Fisher and editor Hadas Ayalon ultimately shape it all into a compelling narrative.  Ran Bagno’s ECM-ish blend of chamber strings and experimental music also nicely underscores the dramatic presentations on-screen.  Recommended for thoughtful audiences, Six Million and One opens this Friday (9/28) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

Wajda’s Korczak

Janusz Korczak was like the Polish Dr. Seuss, Dr. Spock, and Father Flanagan combined.  He was born Henryk Goldszmit—a name that would prove fatal during the National Socialist occupation.  Master Polish director Andrzej Wajda became one of his first filmmaking countrymen to forthrightly address the Holocaust, following the brave example of his protégé and frequent screenwriter Agnieszka Holland with 1990’s Korczak (trailer here), which is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Kino Classics.

Korczak/Goldszmit devoted his life to children.  He was a popular children’s author and radio broadcaster, whose show was rather summarily canceled in the late thirties for sadly obvious reasons.  Though removed from the public eye, Korczak continued to serve his beloved children as the benevolent headmaster of a progressive orphanage.  A gentle gentleman by nature, Korczak loyally served as a doctor in the Polish Army, but nobody would have mistaken him for a military man.  Yet, as the Germens marched through the streets, he refused to relinquish his uniform when so many others did.   As viewers soon see, Korczak always did things the honorable way—the hard way.

Part of the agony of Korczak is watching the good doctor and his associates refusing to believe the situation is as bad as viewers know it is.  Of course, the scale and systemization of the National Socialist death machine still remain hard to process.  Yet, by 1942, enough escapees had sent word back to the ghetto that most of the involuntary residents would have a general idea what to expect from the concentration camps.  Nonetheless, despite offers of counterfeit papers, Dr. Korczak refuses to leave his children.  He had no use for one fake passport.  He would need over two hundred.

Many have identified Korczak as a significant inspiration for Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.  Shrewdly, the DVD cover prominently displays his unqualified endorsement.  While both films profile heroic individuals, Korczak has absolutely no sentimental uplift to placate shallower viewers.  It ends as it ended.  Nonetheless, Wajda, again filming a Holland screenplay, ventures into more expressionistic territory in his final scene, perhaps representing idyllic afterlife not so strongly defined in the Judaic tradition Korczak never closely identified with (a stylistic decision Wajda took some heat for at the time of its initial release).

Wojciech Pszoniak gives one of the defining performances of the immediate post-Communist era.  Yes, the Korczak viewers initially meet seems impossibly kind and virtuous.  Yet, as the doctor endures pain and humiliation for the sakes of his charges, Pszniak makes his anguish vividly clear.   Being a saint is trying burden.

Korczak also boasts a talented ensemble cast of pre-teen actors.  Their complex relationships with each other feel very real and human.  Conversely, those of Korczak’s colleagues are not as well established.  Still, Ewa Dalkowska has some touching moments as Stefa Wilczynska, a former Korczak alumnus, who returned from the safety of “Palestine” to assist the doctor and his children during their hour of need.

Robby Müller’s black-and-white cinematography is absolutely arresting.  Its influence on Schindler is unmistakable.  Despite the deliberate lack of on-screen horrors, it is a draining film to watch.  It is also exactly the sort of story that would have been impossible to depict under the recently deposed Communist regime, which had steadfastly relegated the Holocaust to the Orwellian memory hole.  Along with his visceral Katyn, Korczak represents an important burst of creative truth telling from Wajda and Holland.  Highly recommended, it is now on-sale at all major online retailers.

DocuWeeks ’12: Defiant Requiem

A Catholic requiem in a concentration camp might sound like a problematic endeavor.  So it was, but not necessarily for the reasons one might assume.  It was actually the programming choice of a group of prisoners, led by a remarkable maestro.  The story of the Terezin performances of Verdi’s Requiem and the subsequent on-site re-staging for survivors decades later are documented in Doug Shultz’s Defiant Requiem (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 DocuWeeks in New York and Los Angeles.

Verdi’s Requiem is a draining chorale work, in many ways.  It would not seem like a natural piece of music to unwind with after a hard day of labor—slave labor to be more accurate.  However, these were far from normal times for the Terezin (a.k.a. Theresienstadt) concentration camp captives.  These Czech citizens had been swept up by the conquering National Socialists and held at Terezin until they were deported to a death camp.  Nonetheless, many died at Terezin due to the inhuman conditions, but a determined young conductor harnessed the power of music to keep their spirits up.

Gathering those interested around an old upright providentially discovered in the basement of his barracks, Rafael Schächter started his make-shift chorus off with Czech popular songs and Smetana operas, but he eventually coaxed them into the Requiem.  The key might have been his translation of Verdi’s Latin into Czech.  As Murry Sidlin, the conductor of the commemorative Requiem concerts observes, the Requiem’s lyrics hold tremendous meaning for anyone unjustly denied their liberty and dignity.  Rife with prophesies of judgment from above, Verdi’s opus is not just a requiem.  It became a J’Accuse—an indictment of the National Socialist crimes so bold, only the International Red Cross inspectors could miss its significance.

Yes, the Requiem was performed at that Terezin, the concentration camp temporarily remodeled into a Potemkin village to fool the Red Cross.  It was there that Sidlin brought members of Catholic University of America chorale ensemble and a full orchestra, for an emotional performance.

In fact, mounting Verdi’s Requiem and telling the story of Schächter has become a mission for Sidlin, who serves as the film’s musical director and one of its primary commentators.  It is an important story, but the film also fosters a greater appreciation for Verdi’s work.  Wisely, Shultz takes a rather traditional documentarian approach, largely approximating the shape of Sidlin’s music-with-historical-context concert presentations of the Requiem, filling in here and there with tastefully recreated scenes in the rehearsal cellar and some animated sequences adapted from surviving Terezin drawings.  This is hardly the place to get experimental, after all.

Granted, anyone who knows anything about the Holocaust and the fate of the Terezin prisoners in particular will sadly know exactly what to expect from the film.  Nonetheless, it deepens our understanding of life at Terezin and offers up an example of music as an instrument of survival.  Frankly, hearing some of the stormier passages promising divine justice will likely make viewers’ hair stand on end.  Highly recommended precisely for such memorable moments, Defiant Requiem screens through Thursday (8/9) in New York at the IFC Center as part of DocuWeeks New York as well the week of August 17-23 during DocuWeeks LA.

Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness

Compared to the sewers of Lvov, Anne Frank’s attic would have seemed comparatively bright and airy. Nevertheless, those inhuman living conditions led to a greater survival rate than the famous house in Amsterdam. Master Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland dramatizes the true story of a roguish sewer worker who became one of the righteous by sheltering a small group of Jews beneath the city’s ghetto in In Darkness (trailer here), Poland’s ninth Oscar nomination for best foreign language film, which opens this Friday in New York.

An ex-con working amid Lvov’s sewage, Leopold Socha hardly cut a heroic figure. Nor were he and his crony above a bit of wartime plundering. However, his heart was never with the prevailing powers, as the audience learns when a young fascist interrupts their extracurricular activities. Since no proper German would debase themselves in the sewers, it makes a perfect hiding place for their loot. As it happens, a small band of Jews about to be deported to the concentration camps had a similar idea.

Although there is a standing bounty for any Jews he might discover, Socha initially extorts protection money from them. However, as he comes to know them as individuals, Socha starts to protect them in earnest. Thrown together under unimaginable circumstances, “Socha’s Jews” as he comes to think of them, are an often contentious lot, carrying the baggage of their jealousies and resentments.

Indeed, Holland and screenwriter David F. Shamoon repeatedly emphasize the point one need not be a saint to do the right thing. Likewise, the messy character flaws on display in no way mitigate profound injustice of their situation.

A former assistant to Andrzej Wajda, Holland returns to the grim, naturalistic aesthetic of her early Polish films, like A Lonely Woman. She captures a vividly sense of that dark, claustrophobic existence in the sewers. Even the relatively long 145 minute running time is a deliberate strategy to convey the sensation of confinement.

Again, Holland clearly handled her cast with finely attuned sensitivity, coaxing nuanced performances from them while they were restricted to dank, murky spaces. As Socha, Robert Wieckiewicz convincingly conveys his moral awakening. Arguably though, the breakout star turn comes from Benno Fürmann (probably best known to American audience for the historical mountaineering drama North Face and the Wachowskis’ unfortunate Speed Racer), truly dynamic and intense as Mundek Margulies, a former criminal among “Socha’s Jews,” who might be an even greater scoundrel, but directly prods the reluctant protector to unforeseen heights of courage.

Granted, Darkness might not hold a lot of surprises in store for historically aware viewers, but Holland adroitly expresses the tragedy and bitter irony of Poland’s wartime and immediate post-war experiences. It is often a tough film to watch, but it is not merely well intentioned. It is also well executed. In fact, it is probably the only foreign language Academy Award contender with an outside chance of upsetting Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation. A worthy companion to Holland’s Europa, Europa, Darkness definitely deserves an audience when it opens this Friday (2/10) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

NYJFF ’12: Lea and Darija

Lea Deutsch’s very name is a cruel historical irony. She was also known as the “Croatian Shirley Temple.” It could have been a hard title to live down later in her life, but Deutsch never had the chance. Branko Ivanda dramatizes the story of the ill-fated Jewish superstar and her German friendly rival in Lea and Darija (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Deutsch ruled benignly over the Children’s Realm, her father’s youth theater ensemble. A huge star in Zagreb, Pathé even filmed her for their Parisian newsreels. The only performer who could keep up with her was Darija Gasteiger, a young German expat with a ferocious stage mom. Despite the friction between their mothers, the girls become fast friends. Together, they triumph on stage as Hansel and Gretel. Shortly thereafter, Croatia follows the lead of its German ally, enacting a series of anti-Jewish laws. At this point, the Deutschs’ fortunes suffer a dramatic reversal, while Gasteiger’s star continues to rise.

Although Croatia did not exactly cover herself with glory during WWII, it seems like everyone in Zagreb wanted to save young Deutsch. Yet, for reasons the film cannot explain due to gaps in the historical record, every effort failed. At one point, a rendezvous was arranged with the partisans to take Deutsch and her mother to relative safety, but their contact never showed. They also had a slightly creepy but potentially life-saving marriage proposal from a young fascist soldier acting as their protector, which they do not outright reject, but for unknown reasons, it never comes to fruition. One thing is known for certain: Deutsch would perish in the bloody madness unleashed by the National Socialists.

L&D has far more singing and dancing than the typical Holocaust drama. As Deutsch and Gasteiger respectively, Klara Naka and Tamy Zajec are dynamic and polished performers. They also look awfully young, which is grimly historically accurate. Given the circumstances, Naka logically has the meatier role, painfully watching her sheltered world implode. She is certainly engaging, coming across a bit immature in a believably human way. Zajec in contrast, largely just dances, but she does it quite well. Yet, it is Sebastian Cavazza who really gives the film its soul as Deutsch’s reserved but deeply humane father, Stjepan.

As a conscious strategy on Ivanda’s part, L&D never shows the actual horrors of the camps. Instead, he uses symbolic interlude represent Deutsch’s final moments. It might be expressive, but it has the effect of whitewashing the reality of what happened. To be fair though, the film is never ambivalent or in any way problematic in the way it depicts the anti-Semitism of the NDH puppet regime.

L&D is not the exactly most absorbing Holocaust drama ever, but it is perfectly respectable, well produced and intentioned period production. It also offers a relatively rare (for American audiences) examination of the wartime experience of a minor ally of the Axis Powers. Indeed, the “Ž” worn by Jewish Croatians rather the notorious star is somewhat jarring, but no less ominous. A fascinating and tragic story, L&D is a solid selection for this year’s NYJFF. It screens this Sunday (1/22) and Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYJFF ’12: Remembrance

The unfettered flow of information is a powerful thing. During the final days of WWII, Tomasz Limanowski smuggled shocking photographic evidence out of a concentration camp. Thirty-some years later, his former lover is shocked to discover he is still alive, thanks to a BBC interview. Based on historical events, their incredible story of love and survival is told in Anna Justice’s Remembrance (trailer here), which screens at the upcoming 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Limanowski is not Jewish, but the resistance fighter is quite resourceful, which makes him a natural scrounger in the camp. He is thought to stand the best chance of breaking out and rendezvousing with the Polish Homeland Army with his comrades negatives. However, his decision to bring Hannah Silberstein with him complicates their plans. She is Jewish, speaks German, and is very sick. In fact, unbeknownst to Limanowski, she is pregnant.

Somehow, Limanowski and Silberstein manage to escape (in markedly well shot and edited sequence), but with her health failing, they are forced to take refuge at his former estate. Of course, it has been confiscated by the National Socialists, but his mother Stefania now lives in a servant’s cottage and Limanowski’s resistance colleague Janusz still tends to the stables. Unfortunately, his mother’s anti-Semitism comes as a rude surprise her son. It will also be the cause of much future grief when the couple must separate.

Decades later, both lovers assume the other is dead. Silberstein is now Hannah Levine, married to a perfectly nice research doctor in Brooklyn. When she happens to see Limanowski’s British interview on her dry cleaner’s television, it all comes flooding back, inconveniently during an important dinner party.

In a way, Remembrance shares a kinship with Sophie’s Choice, but it is a more forgiving, life affirming film. Levine nee Silberstein suffers acute survivor’s guilt that viewers can well understand and easily pardon. Indeed, her complicated but loving relationship with her husband is just as important to the film’s dramatic structure.

The inherent decency of its three principles (this obviously does not include mother Limanowski) is what makes Remembrance such a touching film. It vividly portrays the personal consequences of two successive totalitarian ideologies that conspire to keep the star-crossed lovers apart. In addition to the horrors of the concentration camp, Justice also forthrightly depicts the terror of the post-war Communist regime. Years later, its attempts to excise the Homeland Army from the history books fittingly dovetails with the film’s themes of memory and documentation.

As young Limanowski, Mateusz Damiecki is viscerally intense and totally credibly as the scholarly looking action hero. Alice Dwyer is also quite compelling depicting the young Silberstein’s drive to survive. Yet, there is something unusually honest and real about Dagmar Manzel and David Rasche’s scenes together as Hannah and Daniel Levine. (Though the Sledgehammer! star still apparently works round the clock in television, to Rasche’s credit, he has appeared in a handful of interesting international films recently, Remembrance being the most notable.)

Pam Katz’s literate screenplay (co-written with the perfectly named Justice) features one of the most moving letters ever heard on film via disembodied narration. Never ginning up phony drama, the sensitively rendered Remembrance consistently rings true. It is one of the best Holocaust themed features in recent years, considerably superior to Sarah’s Key, Protektor, and Berlin ’36. Highly recommended, it screens this coming Monday (1/16) and Tuesday (1/17) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

There Was Once . . . A Small Town in Hungary

Kalocsa’s synagogue was built with 40,000 bricks donated by the Archbishop, the town’s feudal ruling authority. Though relatively small in number, Kalocsa’s Jewish citizens were an integral part of the town economy and the backbone of its middle class. Surely there was the occasional expression of anti-Semitism, but none of the town’s surviving deportees remembered any before the War reached Kalocsa in earnest. Researching Kalocsa’s history, local high school teacher Gyöngyi Mago was alarmed by how few traces remained of the town’s once thriving Jewish population. Hoping to record their history and erect a proper memorial, Mago contacted every survivor she could track down, including filmmaker Gabor Kalman, who documented her efforts in There Was Once . . (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Though it still stands, the Kalocsa synagogue had been repurposed several times for secular uses. As a result, the commemorative tablets listing the names of Kalocsa citizens murdered in the Holocaust was moved to Budapest. Mago hopes to return them to the town as part of a memorial ceremony. Both the current archbishop and the town’s mayor are supportive of the idea, as is Kalman and several other former Kalocsa deportees. However, there are vague rumblings heard from Hungary’s new militant extremist party, clearly modeled on the Arrow Cross. Yet, with the official establishment firmly on-board, things proceed orderly enough.

On one level, TWO is a pretty compelling case-study of the Hungarian Jewry experience in the Twentieth Century. As a historian, Mago makes a particularly salient point explaining how Communism compounded the tragedy of the Holocaust. In fact, many more Jewish Hungarians returned to their homes than is often commonly understood. However, when they saw the inevitable rise of another totalitarian regime, they reluctantly emigrated, applying the hard learned lessons of history.

Shockingly, an ugly crime mars Mago’s carefully planned ceremony. However, this incident is left conspicuously unresolved, which gives the film an unbalanced feeling. While it raises some concerns for Mago and her family, the film concludes with something of a passing of the familial torch that should leave viewers satisfied and even inspired, nonetheless.

TWO is traditional in its approach, but obviously such subject matter resists unconventional treatment. Mago and Kalman relate tragic family histories with sensitivity and insight. Indeed, the notions of documenter and documented mix together, with Mago the historian recording the oral history of her subject, Kalman, while his camera captures Mago at work as an activist historian.

Throughout TWO, Kalocsa outwardly looks like a beautiful and inviting city. It would almost be a perfect film for the tourism bureau, were it not for the somewhat unsettling third act. Yet, everyone speaking on camera says all the right things. It is hard to underestimate the lingering psychological damage wrought by years of fascism and Communism, manifested in the Neo-Nazi-Arrow Cross wannabes. That is why the everyday heroics of Mago are so significant and why Kalman performs such a service in recording them. Informative and at times quite moving, TWO is definitely recommended when it opens this Friday (9/23) in New York at the IFC Center and in greater Los Angeles at the Laemmle Sunset 5.

Czech Protektor

Holocaust related films usually offer an example of nobility to counterbalance their horrors, but not here. For one jealous journalist, the German occupation of Czechoslovakia offers an opportunity to advance professionally, while tightly controlling his beautiful Jewish wife in Marek Najbrt’s ironically titled Protektor (trailer here), an alumnus of last year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, which opens in New York and Brooklyn this Friday.

Emil Vrbata is probably right to be concerned about his vivacious wife Hana. Having just completed her first film, her career is poised to explode. She also seems quite chummy with Fantl, her much older, but still charming, romantic co-star. However, her promising future is cut short by the Third Reich’s invasion.

The Vrbatas have a mixed marriage. She is Jewish, though not particularly observant (or traditional in any sense), whereas her husband is sufficiently Aryan to become the primary mouthpiece for the National Socialists’ Czechoslovakian propaganda machine. (Indeed, he bears a certain surface resemblance to Marcello Clerici in Bertolucci’s Conformist.) Though his nearly famous wife’s Jewish heritage is known to many, he is able to protect her, provided she stays confined to their apartment.

Suddenly, he is the one pursuing extracurricular affairs, secure in the belief that his wife is safely under lock-and-key. The tables have turned, but keep turning. Having made a deal with the devil, he understands the evil nature of his new masters only too well. As a result, when through ill-fated happenstance, he is accidentally caught up in the plot to assassinate the brutal SS strongman Reinhard Heydrich, he never considers simply telling the truth. To rely on another shopworn aphorism, those with guilty consciences always feel they have something to hide.

Protektor is not another heroic rescuer film. Granted, Vrbata shelters his wife from almost certain death, but his motives are hardly selfless. Likewise, Hana Vrbata cannot be simply dismissed as the standard issue victim, particularly in light of the solace she finds in the emotional intimacy and the morphine provided by a lonely projectionist. There are a lot of competing motivations at play in Protektor, but altruism is rarely a factor.

Jana Plodková shows real star power as Hana Vrbata, literally shining in the gorgeously shot film-within-the-film scenes. It is a fully dimensional performance, maintaining the audience’s sympathies and credibility despite her character’s manifest flaws. Unfortunately, Marek Daniel seemed to take his direction from Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil,” coming across rather stiff and reserved as the morally compromised Emil Vrbata. However, the true standout performance comes from Jiří Ornest as the seemingly rakish Fantl, who convincingly morphs into one of the films few tragically decent figures.

Alternating between vivid colors and elegantly stylized black-and-white sequences, Miloslav Holman’s cinematography is richly distinctive. It is a well crafted, striking looking period production, but its decidedly unsentimental perspective on occupied Czechoslovakia may leave some viewers cold. A somewhat cynical but intriguing film that delivers no heroics, Protektor is very definitely worth checking out when it opens this Friday (8/5) in the Lincoln Plaza on the Upper Westside and the Brooklyn Heights Cinema out in that other borough.

The French Memory Hole: Sarah’s Key

Though it crosses borders and flashes backwards and forwards in time, Sarah Starzynski’s story is French through and through. Decades after the German occupation, a continental journalist pointedly reminds her colleagues of France’s record of complicity while researching the notorious Winter Velodrome Round-Up. In the process, she learns of a particularly tragic case intertwined with her own family history in Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s Sarah’s Key (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Julia Jarmond’s husband has just assumed ownership of his family’s plum apartment in a thoroughly gentrified Parisian neighborhood. However, before the War, it was the traditional Jewish quarter. The Tezacs moved in shortly after the Round-Up. It is a coincidence her husband never cared to examine, but has nagged at her father-in-law Edouard for decades. When Jarmond confirms the previous occupants, the Starzynskis, were indeed Jewish citizens forced to vacate by the French police, she sets out to learn the fate of the only family member to survive the war, young tweener Sarah.

As we watch in flashbacks, Starzynski quickly grasps the nature of her temporary transit camp. Managing to escape, she eventually finds sanctuary with the Dufaures, stolid examples of French peasantry at its finest. Yet, Starzynski was desperate to return to her family’s Parisian apartment for reasons involving the titular key and the young brother hidden in a secret closet.

With no German characters whatsoever, Key never even reaches the concentration camps. All the holding camps and deportations viewers witness are entirely French, which though indefensible, will look relatively mild compared to the gruesome Holocaust imagery many might expect. Instead of revisiting German brutality (basically considered a given), Key is far more concerned with examining French guilt, both on the national level as well as the more complicated personal manifestations. In fact, Paquet-Brenner’s restraint serves Key rather well, allowing him to make his points on collective French memory holes without dooming the film to didacticism.

It is hard to imagine anyone but the elegant and bilingual Kristin Scott Thomas as Jarmond. Fluently moving between languages while seamlessly maintaining character, she projects a sensitive intelligence and mature allure that is always compulsively watchable. Yet, it is Niels Arestrup who truly makes the picture as Sarah’s adopted father, Jules Dufaure. His portrayal of reluctant heroism and hardscrabble dignity is unexpectedly compelling.

Frankly, Key’s greatest flaw is a structural problem most likely inherited from Tatiana de Rosnay’s bestselling source novel. Right from the beginning, there is never any mystery about the key’s significance and since Starzynski safely returns to the fateful flat approximately midway through the film, the entire second half is largely anti-climatic. Still, KST makes the most of Jarmond’s dramatic moments, including a particularly touching scene with Michel Duchaussoy as Edouard Tezac, another fundamentally decent Frenchman.

Ultimately, Key is a solid, faultlessly tasteful film, distinguished by the work of the ever striking KST and two rough around the edges late middle-aged Frenchmen. For French audiences, it is also a rather necessary memory jogger. Recommended with respect, Key opens this Friday (7/22) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

IFF ’11: The Matchmaker

Would you buy a second-hand heart from this man? Yankele Bride genuinely wants to make love connections, even for those who cannot afford to pay. Of course, the dodgy contraband in the storeroom is another question altogether. 1968 proves to be a tumultuous year for Bride and his adolescent assistant in Avi Nesher’s The Matchmaker (trailer here), one of the highlights of the 2011 Israel Film Festival in New York.

Bride was literally scarred by his time in the concentration camps, yet he still believes in love. He is still a realist though, telling his clients he “gets them what they need, not what they want.” Despite his many dubious enterprises, he scours the neighborhoods looking for the marginalized in need of his match-making help. That is how Arik Burstein initially encounters him. Fatefully, Burstein’s attempt at a practical joke at Bride’s expense backfires when it turns out he is a long lost classmate of his Romanian émigré father, Yossi. Before he knows it, young Burstein is working as Bride’s assistant, which largely involves trailing prospective clients to make sure they are on the up-and-up.

Although romance is Bride’s business of choice, he must settle for a close but chaste friendship with Clara, the love of his life, who remains profoundly haunted by her Holocaust experiences. In contrast, Burstein struggles against his attraction to the Tamara, his best friend Benny Abadi’s sultry hippy cousin, who finds herself spending her summer with the Jewish Iraqi family.

Matchmaker is filled with colorful characters and coming of age rites, but it does not happen in a vacuum. While Nesher keeps the tone wistful and nostalgic, the ever-present reality of war and terrorism periodically punctuates the proceedings. They also serve as a reminder that Bride (as well as Burstein’s father and even Clara) continue to choose life, despite the horrors they witnessed. Yet, it is the complex legacy of the Holocaust that is truly ever present, as the first first-generation Israelis (like Burstein) struggle to come to terms with implications of their parents’ tragic history. Nesher’s sharply written adaptation of Amir Gutfreund’s novel shrewdly examines this generation gap, with wit and sympathy.

Bride is easily one of the richest characters to hit screens in sometime. He might be a sentimental romantic, but is one shrewd customer. Misunderestimate him at your peril. No mere gentle giant, Adir Miller conveys a sense of his cunning and hardness, as well as his vulnerability.

Like Miller, Bat-El Papura also transcends physical stereotypes as the (not so) surprisingly smart and sophisticated Sylvia, one of the “Seven Dwarves” who own the Bollywood cinema Bride patronizes, as well as an impatient client. While Yossi Burstein is a relatively small part in terms of overall screen time, Dov Navon nails an unforgettable speech at a critical juncture that largely defines the film. As for young Burstein, Tuval Shafir comes across a bit petulant at times, which at least makes him a convincing teenager.

Haifa’s seedy “low-rent” district probably never looked as picturesque as it does through Michel Abramowicz’s lens. Indeed, it is quite an artful package, featuring original music composed by the great Philippe Sarde, scoring his first Israeli production here. Both challenging and moving, it is a deeply satisfying, bittersweet film. Highly recommended, Matchmaker screens again this Wednesday (5/11) and Sunday (5/15) at the 25th Israel Film Festival.

Holocaust Remembrance on PBS: A Film Unfinished

In any documentary film, each and every visual and sound-bite has been carefully chosen. Consideration of what might have been left out is just as important as what is included. Unfortunately, the ability to actively scrutinize and parse images on-screen has atrophied in the general film-going public. If it is in a documentary, it must be true, is the too common, too passive assumption many make. That is why Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished (trailer here) is important, both as a historical documentary in its own right and an object lesson in critically dissecting propaganda. One of several PBS broadcasts commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hersonski’s film airs this coming Tuesday as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

Innocuously labeled “Ghetto,” for years the film inside a dusty can discovered in an East German vault was taken at face value as an accurate representation of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, creeping into many documentaries about the Holocaust. A strange artifact, the never-completed film included scenes of both extreme suffering as well as images of wealthy Jews living ostensibly happy and prosperous lives in the Ghetto. However, the extent to which the entire so-called Warsaw Ghetto film, particularly the episodes designed to stoke class envy, was deliberately staged by its National Socialist film crew only became apparent forty years later with the discovery of nearly half an hour of outtakes. In Unfinished, Hersonski shows the audience the entire surviving Warsaw Ghetto film, with the help of a handful of surviving residents of the Warsaw Ghetto, who provide crucial context to understand just what really happened off-screen while the cameras were rolling.

Not so much a deconstruction in the contemporary academic sense, Unfinished is more a forensic inquiry into Warsaw’s production. Viewers see nearly all the extant footage, including many retakes and the occasional stray cameraman. We watch the Potemkin footage as well, but with the additional knowledge of whom and what were outside of the camera’s chosen field of vision. As a result, it is clear Warsaw is not an accurate portrayal of how things were. Just what their propaganda plans were for the film remains somewhat murky, despite the discovery of a surviving cameraman, who not surprisingly tries to present the production in the best possible light.

In addition to methodically analyzing the film and providing much needed context, Unfinished also acts as a corrective to notions (which Warsaw not coincidentally contributed to) that the Jewish Ghettos created by the National Socialists might have been uncomfortably cramped, but were not deadly per se. However, as Hersonski and her interview subjects make vividly clear, the Ghetto was indeed an environment intended to cause death and suffering, lacking only the fearful efficiency of the camps.

Unfinished was at the center of a small controversy when the MPAA bestowed an R rating on the film for “disturbing images.” While there are indeed such visuals in the film, they are never presented in a titillating or lurid manner. It was a problematic ruling because Unfinished is an educational film on multiple levels. Yet, in an odd way, it underscores the film’s point that images on film can have an insidious power on people’s perceptions. Meticulously assembled and scrupulously responsible in its treatment of admittedly “disturbing” imagery, Unfinished is a highly recommended work of nonfiction filmmaking. It runs on Independent Lens this coming Tuesday (5/3) on most PBS stations nationwide.

Holocaust Remembrance on PBS: Prisoner of her Past

Chicago-based jazz critic Howard Reich is an authority on Jelly Roll Morton. While it is often tricky winnowing the myths from the truth of the early jazz pianist’s life, Reich addressed a far more difficult research subject in his most recent book: his mother, Sonia. A Holocaust survivor, Sonia Reich’s late-onset Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) spurred her son’s investigation into her harrowing experiences during WWII, inspiring his book The First and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich and Gordon Quinn’s subsequent documentary, Prisoner of her Past (trailer here), which airs on many PBS stations nationwide over the next two days in recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

One day, the eighty-some year old Reich suddenly fled her Skokie home in a deeply agitated state of paranoia. She was obviously delusional, but not suffering from Alzheimer’s or similar suspects. Indeed, she could recognize her grown children and grand children perfectly well. When her doctors finally diagnosed late PTSD (“with all the bells and whistles”), her son set out to discover its roots, hoping a secret from her past could untangle her knotted psyche.

Reich’s mother never talked about her past and her few surviving relatives are nearly as reticent. The only exception is her cousin, Leon Slominski, who was sheltered (both physically and emotionally) by a brave Czech family. Reich pointedly notes how the contrast between his survival through the compassion of others and his mother’s formative years of constant fear and flight profoundly shaped the people they are today.

As befits a film with a jazz critic as its central POV figure (and writer-co-producer), Prisoner employs the music in distinctive ways. Particularly effective is the use of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” as the film’s theme. Poignant yet vaguely unsettling, it sets the appropriate mood, even for those who do not recognize the avant-garde innovator’s most “accessible” piece. (We also briefly hear guitarist Bobby Broom’s swinging soul jazz combo when Reich and Slominski visit Chicago’s Green Mill.)

In addition, Reich eventually visits the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans, as a way to take his story full circle. He shows how counselors are working with NOLA school children post-Katrina to prevent the sort of PTSD plaguing his mother. While these scenes seem somewhat abbreviated (and perhaps a bit tacked-on), it is nice to have some sort of positive take-away when the film ends.

As is often the case in real life, Prisoner does not end with a neat and discrete moment of closure. Yet, there are quite a few insights to be gleaned along the way. A very intelligent and compassionate film, it screens on many PBS outlets, including the Tri-State area, over the next two days (5/1-5/2). (Viewers might need to set their Tivos or old school VCRs in some markets though). Definitely recommended, it also screens the traditional way this Tuesday (5/3) at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the following Tuesday (5/10) in San Francisco at the Koret auditorium.

Holocaust Remembrance on PBS: Irena Sendler

There are more Polish citizens recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations than any other nationality. Irena Sendler was not just one of the Polish rescuers. She was an underground ringleader. Yet it was not until long after the fall of Communism that the Catholic Sendler was widely hailed for her heroism. Featuring Sendler’s final interview of appreciable length, Mary Skinner’s documentary profile records her words and deeds for posterity in Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers (trailer here), which airs on PBS stations across the country on Holocaust Remembrance Day, this coming Sunday.

Sendler was not the Irena whose story was told on Broadway in Irena’s Vow. That was Irena Gut. At tremendous personal risk, Gut sheltered twelve Jews slated for “deportation” in the basement of the home commandeered by an SS officer who had impressed her into service as his housekeeper. If not operating directly under the noses of the National Socialists, Sendler still faced profound dangers, eventually even seeing the inside of a Nazi prison and living to tell the tale.

Establishing a network of safe houses, Sendler and her colleagues in the resistance began smuggling children out of the ghetto and teaching them Catholic prayers should they ever be challenged by a German. Indeed, Poland’s widespread Catholicism was a major reason for the network’s success, with many Catholic schools and convents agreeing to shelter Sendler’s children. She even recruited a formerly virulent anti-Semite who simply could not countenance the atrocities underway. Ultimately, they saved over 2,500 children, including one man, now of late middle-aged years, who finally meets a crucial member of Sendler’s network in the film’s moving climax.

Skinner tells an amazing story with respect and economy. One gets a vivid sense of the fear permeating the era, gaining a genuine appreciation of Sendler and her comrades. However, the film never fully explains why Sendler and the veterans of the Polish resistance were largely scorned by the subsequent Communist regime. Of course, it makes intuitive sense that a record of resisting oppression was hardly the ticket to advancement in a Soviet captive nation.

Produced with great sensitivity, Mothers tells an important (but nearly overlooked) episode of history. Along with the recent 100 Voices, it should also help spread recognition of Poland’s record of resistance. It airs on many PBS outlets (check those listings) this Sunday (5/1).