THE TRUCE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Miramax Films Director: Francesco Rosi Writer: Francesco Rosi Cast:John Turturro, Rade Serbedzija, Massimo Ghini, Teco Celio, Roberto Citran
A current movie, Marlene Gorris's "Mrs. Dalloway"--which is based on a novel by Virginia Woolf--depicts a shellshocked soldier returning from World War I who takes his own life. It's not at all unusual for veterans who have been to the front to return home with emotional difficulties. Imagine, then, what it's like to survive the Holocaust, being incarcerated in a labor camp or, even more momentous, a Nazi death camp like Auschwitz. After being worked for sixteen hours a day, living on one bowl of watery soup and perhaps a piece of bread, witnessing fellow inmates tortured and hanged, shot, or gassed, you're more than likely to lose your spirit, your very soul. "The Truce," a movie equally somber and humorous, focuses on one such survivor named Primo who is liberated from Auschwitz in April 1945 by Russian soldiers and faces an uphill struggle to regain his spirit. Based on the book of the same name by the chemist Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who, like Rupert Graves's shellshocked character in "Mrs Dalloway" took his own life, director Franceso Rosi's film traces the revitalizing of Primo's senses, principally his erotic feelings, in a relatively high-budget movie which was begun in 1987. Though no American or British characters are depicted, this Italian-French-German-Swiss co-production is principally in the English language, while shards of Russian, Italian, and Greek dialogue remain untranslated.
The biographical narrative, fully dramatized rather than in a documentary format, deals with the months immediately following the liberation of scores of inmates in Poland's Auschwitz concentration camp by Russians in April 1945. While the movie opens upon a violent battle scene as the Russian troops approach the camp, the remainder of the film is more of a meditation by Primo, his reactions to the adventures he undertakes as a refugee eager to return from Poland to his home in Turin, Italy. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the movie is its glorification, indeed its deification of the Russian soldiers and civilians alike. As Primo was not a Communist sympathizer or in any way a shill for Soviet ideology, this veneration provides a bold contrast to Mark Jonathan Harris's views in his 1997 documentary "The Long Way Home." "The Long Way Home," produced by Moriah Films in affiliation with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, chronicles the odious procedures to which these refugees were subjected from the end of the war in 1945 to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Israel in 1948. Unlike Franceso Rosi, who directed "The Truce," Harris observes that the American troops who liberated the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich looked at the inmates with disgust, even throwing up at the sights and smells they encountered. There, the homeless and solitary Jewish refugees were rounded up into barbed-wire camps not unlike those they faced from the Nazis, while government higher-ups even kept military guards outside to prevent the Jews from "scattering" and "creating anarchy." Even worse, in the Lithuanian town of Vilna, five who tried to return to their homes were murdered, a note stuffed into one pocked which read, "This will be the fate of the surviving Jews." Even in Britain, Labour Party Foreign Secretary Nye Bevin once raged that the "Jews are a pestilence."
No such problems for the survivors in Primo Levi's memory. Jews and non-Jews alike, they are picked up by Russian trucks of the Red Army and sent into Cracow and resettlement camps of Katowice, spending a good deal of time wandering through Russian towns in a roundabout journey that would take them to their homelands.
One refugee center features a beautiful, blond Russian woman who takes a fancy to Primo (John Turturro), amused by the refugee's open-faced shyness and inability to put his feelings and thoughts into words. A chemist by trade, Primo is put to work classifying the medicines that arrive daily at the camp, and through the alluring woman who invites him to a small party in the home of the supervising doctor, he begins to regain his sexual feeling. Primo's rehabilitation is aided by his relationship with his best friend,Cesare (Massimo Ghini), who sees the humor amid the darkness and while not verbalizing his philosophy, makes clear to Primo that laughter, not the chemist's drugs, is the best medicine. Primo is likewise charmed and occasionally humiliated by a boisterous companion known simply as "The Greek" (Rade Serbedzija), an opportunist and bon vivant who makes the best of his situation by selling clothing and even managing a makeshift Russian brothel. In only one case do the local citizens turn away from the refugees, when they discover that the mostly Jewish exiles have recently been liberated from Auschwitz. Otherwise, these people are treated virtually like conquering heroes by the people they meet, most poignantly by an offering of beer and food by an Austrian woman who had once written to Hitler advising him not to start a war. (The letter did not reach Der Fuhrer, but the SS got their hands on it and burned down her shop.)
From time to time the film bursts forth in unadulterated bliss, particularly when focused on a raucous night of entertainment. Hundreds of Soviets cheer in the audience, as performers burst forth in song and a cocky Russian does a respectable imitation of Fred Astaire, sword waving about, to the music of Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek." Filmed in Ukraine using Italian and Ukrainian crews, "The Truce" features a pulsating soundtrack of largely European hits like "Chardash" and "Hungarian Dance" and "Moskva Majskaja." John Turturro's toned-down performance is contrasted with the vivacious presentation by the large ensemble, allowing us to watch the hero's transformation from a near-zombie to a life-affirming human being.
Since the movie is more a reflection on life by its principal subject than a plot-driven story, it moves along at a pace as meandering as the train which takes Prime to Italy not by the logical southern route through Odessa but by a northward detour into Russian, Polish and German cities. Yet the story moves along inexorably as Rosi traces the movement of the train on a map of the area, stopping here and there to reinforce Primo's conviction that the joys of life outnumber its miseries.
Rated R. Running time: 127 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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