Erez Perey's THE INTERROGATION, a landmark film, finally arrives in the USA via home video

 

Made back in 2016, THE INTERROGATION -- the Israeli film co-written (with Sari Turgeman) and directed by Erez Perey (shown below) -- has taken five years to find release here in the USA, thanks to the estimable and risk-taking distributor, Corinth Films. This half-decade delay is due less, TrustMovies opines, to the film's subject matter than to the manner in which that content is handled and the resulting landmark achievement. (Though the film played at various festivals, it never, so far as I can see, found any theatrical or home video release till now.)

A narrative (done in documentary style) based upon the autobiography of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss, the longest-serving commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the movie deals with the interrogation of Höss (played by Romanus Fuhrmann, below) by Albert Piotrowski (Maciej Marczewski, two photos below) the  younger Polish investigative judge, chosen in part because of his command of the German language and his ability to better communicate with Höss. 

What the film achieves so well -- better than anything I've so far seen -- is finally helping us understand how "civilized" Germans in the military could have done what they did to the victims in these camps. Yes, it humanizes the perpetrators -- but without in any way lessening the horror of their despicable deeds. 

As The Interrogation progresses, you will finally be able to understand something of what those in charge of the genocide were thinking, feeling and experiencing. This is important in coming to terms with both how The Holocaust happened and how this kind of all-out atrocity might be prevented. 

Mr. Perey's style as both writer and director is to stick as closely to the facts and record as possible, with little dialog given to either the interrogator's own history (we know he is married, with a child who is very ill) or the defendant's personal history -- except in  terms of how that history affected his later acts as camp commander.

All this -- along with the excellent, close-to-the-vest performances from the two leading actors -- forces us to stay on track, our minds primarily concerned with how Herr Höss could have acted as he did. Perey is a subtle filmmaker, allowing minimal amounts of information to carry maximum weight and small changes of facial expression to stand in for what, in other hands, might be reams of dialog.

Visually, the film is a pleasure to view, color- and composition-wise. Even the near-silent visit of a woman (is this his wife, or a prostitute?), below, to the interrogator's hotel room offers the opportunity to imagine how very restrained -- in so many ways -- is this fellow's sad life.

In a mere 83 minutes, the movie manages to move and surprise us, open our eyes and minds, and maybe leaving us murmuring that oft-heard, if seemingly ever-less-hopeful mantra, Never Again!

From Corinth Films, in German and Polish with English subtitles, The Interrogation finally hits home video on DVD and digital streaming (Amazon Prime members can watch as part of their subscription) this Tuesday, March 23 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Rescue vs. revenge in Jonathan Jakubowicz's intelligent and immersive Holocaust-themed bio-pic, RESISTANCE

Yes, this is a bio-pic, but the biography we get here is a quite interesting look at that of the late/great world-famous mime, Marcel Marceau. For many of us, including those of the senior years, M. Marceau will have been known as only as a mime. Turns out, however, according to the new movie RESISTANCE, written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, Marceau was part of the French resistance to the Nazi takeover of France during World War II -- during which he helped save the lives of hundreds of children.

As the Venezuelan-born Señor Jakubowicz (show at right) tells it, in his tale as-close-to-truthful-as-an-entertaining-bio-pic-can-manage-it, Marcel -- born with the name Mangel, which he only later changed to Marceau -- was a Kosher butcher's son chaffing at his job assisting his father in the shop in Strasbourg, France. In the evenings he performs at a local cabaret, entertaining the patrons with his funny imitations, à la Charlie Chaplin, of the increasingly powerful Adolf Hitler (the film begins on Kristallnacht, 1938).

Marcel is played, surprisingly (to me, at least) and quite strongly by Jesse Eisenberg (shown above and below), who does a bang-up job doing mime routines, especially for the Jewish children he's seen training early on regarding how best

to hide from the Nazis, and he is expectedly excellent (when is he not?) in all other regards. Even his faux French accent is surprisingly good. Though he's no fighter, the need to save Jewish children -- initially in Germany, soon all over Europe -- has Marcel helping the French Boy Scouts and eventually joining the French Resistance, while getting up to the kind of derring-do that you'd expect from the most thrilling adventure film.

One of the great strengths of Resistance, however, is how it shows Marcel's need to place rescue above revenge, even though there is plenty of cause for the latter throughout the course of this two-hour-but-never-draggy film. The movie refuses to become an exercise in "revenge porn," in the manner of the new Amazon Hunters series, which my colleague Lee Liberman recently reviewed. (TrustMovies agrees with her mixed assessment of the series: that "the bits and pieces outweigh the whole.")

Here, the whole is relatively synonymous with the pieces, as Jakubowicz has filled his film with exciting events alternating with quieter scenes that help fill in the characters of Marcel, his family and the children that he and the other resistance fighters try to help.

The Nazi regime pretty much coalesces in the character of the notorious Klaus Barbie, here played well and even relatively subtly by Matthias Schweighöfer (above), shown as a "family man," though not above torturing a priest, let alone flaying alive a woman resistance fighter (in front of her sister, yet). Blood and gore are kept to a minimum, though the acts themselves are spelled out in all their horror.

In the role of the young woman resistance member whom Marcel loves, Clémence Poésy (above, right) registers strongly, as do Edgar Ramírez (below, right), as the father, and Bella Ramsey (below, left), who plays his daughter, the soon-orphaned child with whom Marcel and his brother first bond.

If, overall, the film retains the feel of a somewhat standard bio-pic, the fact that most Americans will be learning a good deal more here than they ever knew about mime Marcel Marceau and see Jesse Eisenberg stretch his acting wings another notch, all coupled to the theme of rescue vs. revenge, makes Resistance a Holocaust-themed movie worth a visit.

From IFC Films and running 121 minutes, the film was to have opened theatrically this coming Friday, March 27, but will now be available via digital platforms and cable VOD -- for purchase and/or rental.

Our August Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman: David Leveaux's THE EXCEPTION

Q: Can an officer have a loyalty greater 

to anything other than his country?

A: First he must ask the questions...

What is my country? 

And does it even still exist?

The 2016 film, THE EXCEPTION, streaming now on Netflix, is a World War II drawing-room melodrama with dashes of thriller thrown in that offers another small story told at a distance from the war theater and its central tragedy.

The film gives voice to the consternation, in fact grief, of some Germans as they glimpsed their upright, organized culture devolving into a torture machine (and timed with our own fears about democracy).

This is a first film-outing for David Leveaux, admired and loved for his theater direction in England and on Broadway, here using a screenplay by Simon Burke based on Alan Judd’s 2003 novel, The Kaiser’s Last Kiss.

Kaiser Wilhelm II (Christopher Plummer) and his second wife, Hermine (Janet McTeer), above, are exiles living on a Dutch estate near Utrecht early in the war mid-1940. There he rails at those who cried for war all those years ago, ignoring his orders, bringing on World War I. Now he spends his days taking daily briefings from his loyal aide, Col. Ilsemann (Ben Daniels), chopping wood (an obsession), and feeding the ducks, who do not blame him for losing the first world war or his throne. 

Brandt, a German captain with a stomach full of shrapnel, has been recalled from the battlefield in Poland under suspicious circumstances (he should have been court-martialed if not shot). He gets off easy with new orders to Utrecht to head the Kaiser’s personal bodyguard (below).

Brandt is hunky Australian Jai Courtney (Divergent, Suicide Squad), very convincing, showing us through his eyes and his nightmares that he follows orders but takes exception to murderous excess. Here he meets Dutch maid, Mieke (Lily James of Downton Abbey), providing the ingredients for a sexy, dangerous coupling.

If the pair are the heart of this story, the elders are its soul. Wilhelm and Hermine are so well-written and played, they hold their own against the furtive lovers. (Plummer is now nearly ninety and grand; McTeer, always working, much awarded yet shunning celebrity, is priceless and perfect in her constant conniving over Wilhelm’s well-being and late career.)

Brandt (the moving force here) and the local Utrecht gestapo are tasked with uncovering an English spy in the area. (Wilhelm is sly: “We must alert the ducks”.) After a visit to Mieke’s room, Brandt finds gun oil on a cigarette pack he had dropped on her table (nearly everybody in WWII chain smokes). Presently the household is in a tizzy preparing for the visit of Heinrich Himmler; the estate must be searched top to bottom. Brandt stakes out Mieke’s room but finds nothing there to do with gun oil.

At dinner, Himmler (Eddie Marsan, below), who has come to ask Wilhelm to return to Berlin as figure head, chats about ongoing research in Potsdam to industrialize murder —the present killing of 10 persons per minute by injecting carbolic acid is inefficient. Some at table turn pale at this talk.

There are twists and turns with the spy thing, two offers to the Kaiser (one delivered by Himmler, the second messaged from Winston Churchill), a bumbling chase with Nazis yelling and 1940-era cars barreling to and fro, and hopeful prospects for the lovers who must part. But despite theatrics that are more silly than thrilling, the drawing room and backstairs doings elevate the reward to Downton Abbey-level satisfaction (which is to say very entertaining but not Wolf Hall or Gosford Park).

The romance offers a rare, perfectly erotic few moments and a screaming fight (he: you used me; she: I used myself), making you want this pair to end up together; and Wilhelm and Hermine conjure magic of their own. Lily James, in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Cinderella, could not put a princessly foot wrong but although appealing here, she’s too much the ingenue for the steely business at hand.

But no matter, the film has its charms and one imagines that director Leveaux will make the thrills in his next film as good as the interpersonals (that is, make the former either more thrilling or more satiric). As it is, the domestic affairs that play out in this bit of imagined drama are well worth the flaws.

The real Kaiser, below, (grandson of England’s Queen Victoria) never went anywhere — he died in June 1941 at his Dutch estate (one imagines as a complication of smoking).

The above post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

Family history and the Holocaust explored anew in Jeff Lipsky's unusual THE LAST

Jeff Lipsky is back. This storied producer, shown below, who has also directed a number of interesting films -- one of which, Flannel Pajamas, is among TrustMovies' favorites -- loves to push envelopes. And while those envelopes would ostensibly seem to be filled with the usual envelop-pushing subjects such as sexual taboos, the results are films that actually push our ideas about those things, rather than the things themselves. Folk who want more sex and violence will likely feel cheated by Lipsky's movies, while those willing to have some of

their precious notions/beliefs upended in ways surprising but maybe salutary should find the experience bracing and perhaps a lot more than that.

Lipsky's latest, entitled THE LAST, may be one of his best. (I'll have to let it roll around a lot more before coming to any air-tight conclusions.) It is certainly one of his more provocative endeavors, dealing as it does with The Holocaust and the multi-generational history of one particular family in quite an unusual manner. Who these people are, together with how they got that way and what they plan to do about it, once they've learned the truth, makes for quite a movie.

The film begins by a lake with a certain Jewish ritual. The family here is mixed-faith: Jewish on the great-grandparents side downwards, Catholic on the side of the father (Lipsky regular, the fine Reed Birney, above), with dad's daughter (Jill Durso, below, right) about to convert to Judaism as she marries her hot-looking Jewish hubby (A J Cedeno, below, left).

A day at the beach with 92-year-old great-grandma (a most memorable performance by Rebecca Shull, below), during which our elderly non-heroine talks about her past, changes everything for the entire family.

How each member of each generation reacts to this news comprises the meat of the movie, and while the filmmaker, as is his wont, gives us all this via conversations, the dialog is good enough to keep us glued and alternately surprised and off-kilter.

Lipsky forces us, simply via dialog, to imagine, even experience World War II from a different viewpoint that we've heretofore encountered. He allows the leading members of his fine ensemble -- including Julie Fain Lawrence (above, right, as Birney's wife, Melody) -- to have their own scene or two in which they grapple, with intelligence and emotion, with this news.

It's both challenging and oddly diverting to be forced to come to grips with what's exposed here -- which includes everything from religious faith, morality and hypocrisy to genocide, justice, euthanasia (or maybe murder) and what actually constitutes a Jew.

And though the story is told almost exclusively through conversation, which includes a ton of exposition, so well-performed is the film -- especially by Birney, Shull and Lawrence --  that I think you won't mind. The younger generation is perhaps not quite as skilled, but even that makes a certain sense, given the fact that age, coupled to experience, does count for a lot, in performing, as in building character.

The Last is likely to set more than a few teeth on edge. I hope it plays down here in Florida, where audiences are more likely to be subjected to nonsensical feel-good twaddle such as Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel. What a mitzvah it would be to give our audiences something to actually think about that maybe shakes them up a bit.

From Plainview Pictures and running (just a tad long at) 123 minutes, The Last opens in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the newly reopened East 62nd Street and 1st Avenue cinema, the CMX CinéBistro. Over the weeks to come, the film will play other cities across the USA -- it hits Los Angeles on April 26 at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center 5 -- click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Claus Räfle's moving combo of narrative and documentary, THE INVISIBLES, tracks WWII Jews hiding out -- in Berlin!

What -- yet another World War II Holocaust survival drama? Indeed, and another very good one, too. THE INVISIBLES, co-written (with Alejandra López) and directed by Claus Räfle, tells of four young Jews (out of some 1,700) who elected to go into hiding in order to remain in Berlin, Germany, during WWII, rather than joining their parents and/or other relatives deported to concentration camps and near-certain death.

Using a well-calibrated combination of documentary interviews with the four survivors (some of whom have since died), well-chosen archival footage, and a majority of dramatic narrative of these characters during their war-ridden youth, Herr Räfle (shown below) and Ms López have created a movie that grows in interest and power as it moves along.

Toggling between the two young men and two young women, as they hide with one family and then another and another, finding work, food and shelter wherever they can (at one point Ruth, played by Ruby O. Fee, shown below, and her friend are employed by a Nazi officer and his family -- who treat the girls well and never betray them) the film shows us how -- by wit, luck and the kindness of others (often decent Germans) -- they managed to survive.

This can't have been easy, and the film, though somewhat sanitized, as these tales often are, proves compelling, suspenseful, surprising and moving. Best of all, The Invisibles is full of so many little details that, as pieced together here, make these stories both believable and different enough that TrustMovies suspects the film may stick with you longer than many others of its genre, whether narrative or documentary.

In addition to young Ruth, the movie tracks the fortunes of Hanni, the pretty Jewess (played by Alice Dwyer, below) who, via a bleach job, turns visually into the perfect German dream girl and thus makes her fraught way through this wartime maze;

Cioama, a talented artist (Max Mauff, below) who uses his skills wisely and well, yet still barely escapes the tentacles of the police to the SS to even the beautiful Jewish girl who works as an informant for the Gestapo but who grasps a moment of decency regarding Cioama;

and finally Eugen (Aaron Altaras, below, the good-looking young fellow who seems to have the easiest time in hiding, becoming romantically involved with the daughter of his host family. But even this must come to a halt, eventually. Virulently anti-German Jews may have some trouble with the movie, which shows us time and again at least some of the German populace doing the decent thing. 

But, as the now-elderly survivors insist, they would not be alive except for the kindness and help of those Germans. (The real Ruth Arndt, now departed, is shown below.)

The film's slow but solid accretion of detail and character helps us get to know both these elderly survivors and their younger, "acted" selves, building eventually to a surprising and very moving conclusion.

From Greenwich Entertainment and running 110 minutes, The Invisibles opens this Friday, January 25 in New York (at Landmark 57 West and the Quad Cinema) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal) and will expand to cities across the country in the weeks to come. Here in South Florida, look for it at the Living Room Theater in Boca Raton beginning, Friday, February 8. Click here to check if there is an upcoming city/theater near you where the film will be playing.

Marc Fusco's THE SAMUEL PROJECT opens in South Florida theaters

The Holocaust meets an After-School Special, and the results are actually a bit better than you might expect in THE SAMUEL PROJECT, a new film co-written (with Chris Neighbors), directed and edited by Marc Fusco. Yes, this is what we like to call "Holocaust-lite," yet as easy-going, obvious and predictable as the movie often is, it is not insulting nor stupid.

And if the idea of a Holocaust survivor not wanting to share his story of family murder and Nazi genocide with his son, let alone his grandson, this kind of secrecy was certainly not that unusual amongst survivors.

Filmmaker Fusco, pictured at left, does a decent, if standard, job of bringing his story to life, helped along by some classy cinematography (Stephen Sheridan), good performances from his cast, and some nice animation/illustrations by Donald Wallace. The movie is a mix of melodrama, slight comedy, animation art and generation gap, as its tale of grandfather (Hal Linden, above and below, right) and grandson (Ryan Ochoa, above and below, left) get to know each other and help each other out.

The two actors, both long-time professionals (young Mr. Ochoa already has 26 imdb credits, Mr. Linden 74), bounce off each other pleasantly and charmingly, with good supporting work provided by Michael B. Silver (below) as the middle-generation dad,

and Mateo Arias (below, left) as Ochoa's bizarro school-chum musician. The plot involves grandson, a hopeful artist still in high school, who begins questioning his grandfather regarding the latter's life during World War II, which leads to a long-buried story unfolding -- which is slowly turned into "art" via the grandson's drawings and some accompanying music, courtesy of that best friend.

While the tale, as well as its telling is quite unsurprising, the finale -- which is the showing of the grandson's complete video -- is charming and worth the wait. And the pretty and not-so-oft-seen San Diego shooting locations are attractive, too.

From in8 Releasing and running a swift 92 minutes, The Samuel Project, opens this Friday, October 12, here in South Florida in the Miami area at the Regal Southland Mall, in Fort Lauderdale at the Tamarac Cinema 5 and Cinema Paradiso Hollywood, and in West Palm Beach at the Movies of Delray & Movies of Lake Worth.