Original title: Persian lessons · Vadim Perelman · Russia · 2020 · Script: ILYA TSOFIN · Interpreters: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Lars Eidinger, Leonie Benesch…
Original title: Hope · Maria Sødahl · Norway · 2020 · Script: Maria Sødahl · Interpreters: Stellan Skarsgard, Andrea Bræin Hovig, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osbourne…
Regarding portraying Nazi intervention during World War II, Commercial cinema has opted for two groups of films that, With their differences, They have come to fix the master guides who have prevailed in the industry during the last two or three decades. In the first group, They would be tapes like Schindler's list from the American Steven Spielberg and The pianist by Roman polanski. Both films imposed their visual approach so much, next to an alleged hyperrealism, as the idea of placing the center of the story about some lines that changed the great events for the struggle of the particular victims to survive the holocaust, as well as a series of patterns in the construction of their characters that would remain as models, prototypes, today universally assumed, to "explain" the reasons for what happened. The other group would be marked by films such as Life is beautiful De Roberto Benigni o The boy with striped pajamas From Mark Herman, in which these elements were taken to build a kind of child moral story or low dramatic load melodram, Much more digestible for an audience that would be intended to raise awareness, entertaining it. Halfway between these two models, It is presented The Persian teacher de Vadim Perelman.
We are in France occupied by the Nazis, In the year 1942. A Reich soldiers command captures a group of Jews. Among them, It is Gilles, a man who, for what is perceived, is surprised by events. In the middle of the fear and hunger to those who lead the war, But encouraged by compassion, Gilles offers another of the detainees a piece of a snack that is hidden among its clothes. In exchange, The other man gives him his only property, an seemingly useless object in this context: A book written in Farsi Language. The command that leads the truck stops and takes prisoners, that aligns at the edge of a forest for its ruthless execution. Guilles gets out for dead, But the trick does not deceive its captors. When they are preparing to finish it, He replies that he is not Jewish, but Persian, and offers, as proof, The book that his partner gave him, now deceased. And here the chance will come to intercede in your favor, Well one of the leaders of the prison field from which the soldiers come, Look for a Farsi teacher to teach him the language. Guilles follows the current and, So, will enter to work for the officer. The problem is that, As we all know, Guilles ignores a language that will now have to invent to save his life.
To build your proposal, and continuing with the above at the beginning of this chronicle, Vadim Perelman has been taking elements of each of the two models that prefigure the works we mentioned before. Of The pianist, Take your main character, an ordinary man that could well resemble (physically, even) Al Wladyslaw Szpilman de Polanski. Guilles is an innocent being, Personification of all the good of humanity against evil in its pure state that surrounds it. That evil is embodied in Klaus, The officer who protects him (For interest), character that, Without becoming so twisted, It reminds us of the one who played Ralph Finnes in Spielberg's movie. In addition to these elements, The Persian teacher It is accepted to a narrative plot that raises the same step of time as a greater challenge. As was the case in the Tapes of Polansky and Spielberg, Guilles survival depends on how long the war will last and if it will perpetuate its deception until it ends. Meanwhile, will face a series of situations that will put it on the tightrope. On the other hand, of Benigni or Herman's works, Perelman hosts that ambition to build a simple modern fantasy story. Guilles is an alma that, in front of horror, He is still able to maintain his ability to empathize with others, putting their survival at risk to safeguard that of others.
Con The teacher of lost, Vadim Perelman has built a story that wants to reflect on the possibility of preserving purity, Even in the most desperate situations. Perelman, There is always a possibility for fraternity among men. Goodness triumphs over evil. To this, We add language seasoning. In the midst of misunderstanding and nonsense, Guilles and Klaus build a new language that only they know. During the learning process, The two men get, For different reasons, project their hopes in the other. "Farsi" lessons areolate them, So, of the rest of the prison field, What undoubtedly makes that storm present. The metaphor is served.
However, where Perelman's tape loses power is in that aroma to copy of the one who fails to part. And it is not so much for the mixture itself. Perhaps what makes the design more evident is related, both with the Directorate of Actors and Staging, as with its dramatic development. Perelman Nazis, More than inspired, They look like a mere cartoon of Spielberg, Forced, for his histrionism, to express their evil in gestures that are not always appropriate, as well as his guilles is in a groong too emphatic, obvious, From the protagonist of the Polanski movie. All of this, It is underpinned by a treatment of photography and composition that reminds us of the works of these two authors that serve as a reference (Klaus's presentation, Eight in front of a window of his office and illuminated by a beam of light that draws his figure in Claroscuro, Remitted us to Schindler's list). But what undoubtedly accentuates and drags these problems is in an argument that, not seeming to decide which of the two narrative models wants to opt, If the story or the realistic story, he ends up having history with difficulty solutions for the spectator and that, In good part of the footage, They put the likelihood on the edge of the precipice (dramatic) of the facts. How story does not work, Well, what tells us is too serious. And as a realistic story, neither, Well, everything seems too extraordinary and, therefore, improbable. In that wandering from one end to another or trying to take both, It is when the stubborn tape then, In the memory we are the impression of a something already lived that makes us question what the movie discovers us, as exploration of Nazism and as a story itself.
In a completely different terrain it is presented Hope, Second long work of the Norwegian director Maria Sødahl. In this case, We are as Anja, A mature woman who enjoys a good professional situation as director of a theater company, as well as a family to which he appreciates and robbers. But Anja's world falls apart when they announce that the checks he suffers are caused by cancer that has spread through his head. From here, All your attention will focus on how to address a fact that, suddenly, He has put an expiration date to his life. On this trip, Tomas will accompany him, His now inseparable couple and father of their children.
Maria Sødahl's tape plays her best bazas, First, In a sober staging, Without juggling, but solid and effective. A camera that is put at the service of a script that, Despite what we will say later, Walk in a straight line and without hesitation in pursuit of your claims without derailing in any scene. Sødahl's play, also author of the libretto, reveals, At the end of the story, bold. HopeHe brings us closer to a high middle class world that reminds us of the cinema and the universe of directors such as Claude Cabrol, Ozon is a Hankey Michael. A world of individuals living in a privileged environment, culturally well trained, that reside in houses in the center of the city and to those who assault existential court questions. This provides the viewer towards the drama, trying to anticipate what happens. But it is in the way that Sødahl dodges that anticipation where the tapestry complex that is weaving reveals its strength. Nothing is what we expect or what we expect.
In his favor, He also plays a cast headed by two magnificent actors, Andrea Bræin Hovig Y Stellan Skarsgård, who know how to get and exploit, with enormous clarity and in balance, The subtext that lies under the surface of the Sødahl libretto. Despite the plot and conflict premise, The Norwegian director is not so interested in the facts, how to rely on them to get the viewer to touch the intimacy of his characters. Once he has put us in his world, We can no longer leave. And the task is not easy because Sødahl is not formed that we understand what it feels like in a situation like Anja faces. deep down, What intends is that we immerse ourselves in the chaos of emotions that flood it. How to face the news of our next death? Hope, It starts a few days after the celebration of Christmas holidays. The story is structured, So, for days. With the passing of those days, Anja's mood changing as his hopes of healing are mutating (Hence the title of the movie). His heart passes, So, of fear for possible to the illusion of the improbable, From the acceptance of relief to impotence for not being able to resolve its conflicts for itself, of love of contempt, From suspicion to the expression of trust, of affection for resentment, From reproaches to remorse ... and, however, Everything works consistently without being lost.
If we wonder what this movie wants to tell us, We would say that Hope It is a thorough analysis of couple relationships. In this sense, We are, at least, With two levels of reading. On a first level, Hope It tells us about everything that, In the heat of daily coexistence, We hide, even, to those we have closer to us. When the tape starts, Anja seems to live a fully satisfactory relationship. However, the crisis that is unleasive will reveal that this is not exactly. Put in a borderline situation, cracked your future, There is no excuse that sustains silent to keep what is hidden after the future of everyday life, that is to say, all those pending and unresolved litigation that have been accumulating over time. Broken all the deadlines, cornered at what seems inevitable, It no longer makes sense to extend its solution and everything sprouts from the catacombs of our injured hearts.
But, And here is the best of this movie, in the background, What Maria Sødahl comes to reveal to us is what exactly is to have an affective relationship with another person. In this sense, pays attention to a fact as irrefutable as generally forgotten, both in the cinema, as in life itself. That perfection does not exist. That we all have defects. That nobody is always up to what is expected of him or her. But if, in the background, There is true desire for affection and understanding, Those imperfections remain like what they are: The a day -to -day footprint is not simple, but complex, The brand of our humanity developing in this world so human that we have built. And there is no more. Attentive at the end. GERARDO LEON
