The Painted Bird.
2h 49m | 18
www.imdb.com
Based on a Polish novel which I have not read. The history of the novel is not without controversy. Whether it was acucurate portrayal of polish peasants or based on the authors real life experiences.
Its almost three hours of wonderful black and white wdescreen cinematography. Following a young Jewish boy as he tries to flee. At beginning of the film we are not told he is Jewish. It looks like its set in the far past not WW2.
Its split into different chapters. One for each person the boy flees to. Its an unending sequence of cruelty and abuse. Not until he falls in with some Russian soldiers does he find sanctuary.
On the references to the Holocaust in the film. What the film left me with is how the Holocaust would effect his life as a survivor. The film has been criticised for showing the boy as almost numb emotionally. He, like us, watches powerlessly the cruelties enacted on him and others. This to me seems plausible. I watched documentary series recently on Iraq. The people interviewed had haunted faces of those who saw their country descend into barbarism. The boy at end of this film has this.
The other thing the film accurately portrays is Jewish survivors in Europe were not welcomed back.
I thought that the boy stands in for Jewishness in Europe. Whatever community he ended up in however hard he tried he was not accepted in the end. Except the Communist Russian soldier who acts as a stand in father for him. I did wonder if the boy would be a ardent communist in the new post war ( Poland).
The grim lesson he learns from the Russian soldier who takes him under his wing is that an "eye for an eye" is the only way to live. The boy gradually learns to use violence to survive. To survive one has to become inured to violence. Another scene shows him witnessing the shooting of Jews by Germans. He later goes through the luggage of them to look for food. To survive he had too numb himself and become almost callous.
There is no cathartic ending to this film. Throughout the film he is asked where is he trying to get to. Home he says. When asked where that it he doesn't know. The film left me with feeling that his future life is uncertain.
The film reminded me of Bela Tarr Satantango In particular the chapter about the Miller and the woman healer who "buys" him. There is something almost blackly comic about the scenerios staged. Its like he is moving across a landscape by hieronymus bosch.
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