What would you have done?By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Holocaust movies are tricky efforts: the replication of history is difficult to bear and distracts from the story, or the story is literary and distracts from the reality. Schindler's list and Boy in the Striped Pajamas are two examples of both attempts at the same time with degrees of success. Add Sarah's Key, adapted from the best seller by Tatiana de Rosnay, to my list, the sometimes sentimental story of a young girl caught in the 1942 Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of Jews in Paris, not by the Nazis but the capitulating French.
Although Sarah's (Melsuine Mayance) story, starting when she is 8 and locked her brother in a closet to keep him from being deported, is the stuff of fiction, the roundup is real as she is depicted losing her brother and parents in circumstances bizarre and mundane, the film being loaded with irony and paradox. Her journey to rescue him and modern day bi-lingual Julia's (Kristin Scott Thomas) search for the elderly Sarah uncovers not just the secrets of Sarah's flight but also the latent prejudices and denials lingering from that horrific event.
The story intercuts between eras to help show the immediate effect of the search on Julia's life and the universal sadness still living in the souls of the survivors. The film gently reveals the secrets and lies while it respects the complexity of the roundup and Shoa in general. Peeling away the layers of historical camouflage that cover even a family renting the rooms where the soon-to-be-corralled Staczinzky family lived is not easy. It isn't for those in the audience either who wonder what they would have done.
Sarah's Key is not perfect, for it tends to be more thriller than drama, the parallel stories of strong women are too balanced, and the ending leans toward the clich? and the sentimental.
Although I still love the less than historical Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but Sarah's Key has its own power to impress.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain
Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com