September was a very lazy month from the movies´ point of view. With a couple of new projects, a lot of personal appointments and things to do and almost a full month of Jewish holidays, watching movies was a very side activity. Especially when the best time of the day for watching movies is late by night. But if I would stay late, the next day I cannot freshly start therefore, movies were neglected. However, I suceeded to watch three good ones that I will recommend, and I also had a marathon watching of Allenby St., an Israeli series based on a homonymous book by Gadi Taub which unfortunatelly was not yet translated from Hebrew.
Im Labyrinth des Schweigens (Labyrinth of Lies) directed by Giulio Ricciarelli
Released in 2014, the German-speaking movie Im Labyrinth des Schweigens (Labyrinth of Lies) directed by the German-Italian film director Giulio Ricciarelli features a young state-prosecutor - played with style by Berlin-based Alexander Fehling, who also played in the American series Homeland - decided to go on with revealing the Nazi crimes. Such efforts, both in film and in reality, could not have been possible without the open support of the judge and state prosecutor Fritz Bauer.
The movie, released so many years after such situations made it into the news in Germany, outlines very well the perfid game between the pressure towards forgetting everything, and going on with life, the circumstantial interests of the Americans in West Germany, and the reality of the survivors. The losers were always the survivors, facing their former guards as respectable members of the society.
The Auschwitz-Frankfurt trial started only in 1963. Enough time for the perpetrators to run away in Middle East and South America or even to be saved and recycled in the US. It´s deeply distressing to realize that until then, for over a decade after the end of the war, what happened during the war, the very reason why Germany was divided and occupied, was not openly discussed.
Im Labyrinth des Schweigens displays carefully those borders between guilt and denial, and how important individual search for truth is for a dramatic society healing.
J´accuse (Intrige/An Officer and a Spy) directed by Roman Polanski
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| Source: www.suddeutsche.de |
J´accuse by Roman Polanski is developing further the topic of individual responsibility against society lies. A colonel in the French Army, Georges Picquard (played by Jean Dujardin) becomes aware of the injustice the French captain of Jewish origin, Alfred Dreyfus (played by Louis Garrel), was victim thereof. Accused of being a spy, it is in fact his Jewish origin that was the main reason for his diffamation and military degradation.
Although I was not very impressed by the play of the actors, it is the story who matters in this case and it is told in a very nuanced and insightful way, taking into account the complexity of the historical and social elements of the French society at the time.
Le Passé directed by Asghar Farhadi
The movies of Asghar Farhadi, as not few of the Iranian movies I´ve watched in the last years, are always very much focused on painful life decision making.
Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) comes back from Iran to France after four years to divorce his wife (excellently played by Bérénice Bejo) who is in a relationship with a man (Tahar Rahim) whose wife is in coma after committing suicide. She has two kids from a previous marriage, the new by a son of his own. Ahmad is caught in between power games between, one side, the new boyfriend, and on the other hand, the older daughter. At the beginning, it seems that the woman is the power broker, but it seems that things are more complicated.
The ways in which the relationships between characters evolve as well as the broken pieces of truth who are sparkling here and there are very important for understanding the characters, but also create a very fine tension and expectations.
In the end, which is so unexpected, we are left with so much to think about honesty, trust and how to treat each other. I´ve watched the movie on MUBI.
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