Stranger than fiction--but wait, is it non-fiction?
Misha and the Wolves (or my title, Prances with Wolves)
Misha and the Wolves is a Netflix documentary for all documentarians, a primer on truth combatted by the thrust of lies, which too often are disguised as truth. Misha and the Wolves chronicles Misha Defonseca’s personal narrative of survival during the Holocaust.
Misha describes her flight as a 7-year-old Jew from occupied Belgium to Germany to find her deported parents. She does Anne Frank one better by not staying in a hideout but slogging countless miles, part of the time living with wolves. If the audience accepts the numerous staged shots as not compromising the veracity of the testimony, then this doc is a mesmerizing chronicle that won her best-selling book status and movie treatment.
Misha and the Wolves may feel like Jerzy Kosinski’s Painted Bird (1965), weaving a narrative of Holocaust survival and flight at a young age, winning a National Book Award, only to be disgraced by allegations of falsification.
Misha captures the enthusiasm of such notables as Oprah and millions of her fellow citizens buying Misha’s book and celebrating her with unbridled enthusiasm. But like Kosinski’s story, Misha’s is false. Publisher Jane Daniel researches Misha to reclaim Daniel's tarnished reputation, and after meticulous research in European archives, genealogists Sharon Sergent and Evelyne Haendel (a Holocaust survivor) prove Misha to have been a protected Catholic from a family whose captured father turned informant to the Nazis on his underground resistance fighters. Such a bizarre plot twist would almost not be accepted in fiction yet fooled the best literary minds of Europe and America.
The truth becomes a caution for those who don’t challenge whatever they hear until responsible verification. In a way, Donald Trump must be credited for making us aware of our vulnerability to “fake news.” While one talking head claims no redemptive value in Misha’s false narrative, our awareness of being conned can only help us become better stewards of cultural communications.
So many smart people like Oprah were duped by their desire to have Misha’s story be true, by their sympathy for Nazi survivors, and by their willingness to believe as long as the teller is using the right words and looking the right way for the role.
Misha and the Wolves is an effective primer on deceptive communication. After seeing Misha’s journey, few of us would doubt its truth, yet doubt should have risen hastily as some initially said, “This is too good to be true.”
Netflix
Misha and the Wolves
Director: Sam Hobkinson (The Kleptocrats)
Screenplay: Hobkinson
Cast: Misha Defonseca
Run Time: 1h 30m
Rating: PG-13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
