TRUCE, THE (Tregua, La) (director/writer: Francesco Rosi; screenwriters:Tonino Guerra/ Sandro Petraglia/based on the book "The Reawakening," by Primo Levi; cinematographer: Pasqualino De Santis/Marco Pontecorvo; cast: John Turturro (Primo Levi), Massimo Ghini (Cesare), Rade Serbedzija (The Greek), Stefano Dionisi (Daniele), Teco Celio (Colonel Rovi), Agnieszka Wagner (Galina), Roberto Citran (Unverdorben), 1996-Italy)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A slow, meandering train ride back from the dead, for the Jews liberated by the Russians from the concentration camp of Auschwitz, Poland, towards the end of WW11, April of 1945, marks this morosely dramatic English-languagefilm directed by the 75-year-old noted Marxist and politically orientated Francesco Rosi (Salvatore Giuliano, Three Brothers). It was filmed in the Ukraine, supposedly in the same places the then 29-year-old Primo Levi was detained at. John Turturro is Primo Levi, the nativeTurin chemist and author of many books on his confinement, including this autobiographical look at his observations on survival and what it means to be liberated, and it also offers his lifelong take on what the dignity of man means to him.
The film should be like a meditation, as the introspective Primo wants to get it out of his system what it meant to be a Jewish prisoner and how it was unbearable to come out of that camp and think that you could still be human. Turturro plays the tragic role with an understandable quietude (his voice barely rises above a whisper) and with an emotional understatement, conveying a deep sadness in his gestures and deep reflections, showing how difficult it is for him to see the light of day again without feeling atrophied and lost. He is the reason for any success the film has. Unfortunately, the rest of the film, as worthy an effort as it is, about a subject matter that merits to be told again and again, as its Holocaust tale can't be told enough to the world for its message to sink in and should be told in a multitude of ways; nevertheless, as compelling as the film was at times, it also shot itself in the foot by trying to tell a conventional story while the more powerful and personal tale of Primo Levi was somewhat sacrificed by these very typical Hollywood episodic scenes of how the other characters reacted to their liberation and with Rosi's added attempt to attain some comic relief from these diverse characters being poorly accomplished. He, thusly, diminished the power of the concentration camp story. The meditations of Primo Levi and soberness of the story were the thing to shoot for here, and all one has to do is read Primo's book and see how much more gripping those images were there when read than the screen images that tended to be tedious and somewhat diverting after awhile.
The film significantly begins as mounted Soviet cavalrymen appear on a hill outside of the camp, where the buildings are left burning from the battle just fought, as the fleeing SS guards leave the bewildered Holocaust prisoners behind, who are left looking up in awe at their liberators.
When in Cracow, waiting to get a train home while placed in the transit camps by the Russians, Primo is allowed to wander in and out of the camp and he meets in town a hustler and pleasure-seeker, known by the sobriquet of 'The Greek (Rade),' who steers the frightened and unworldly Italian youngster to places of food, and gets him to carry his heavy duffel bag and sell clothes for him as payment for his expertise in getting along. The Greek soon abandons him, admonishing him for being hopeless, as he leaves him with this advise: "Before you can forage for food, you need shoes on your feet." Primo is left with a strange sort of respect and admiration for him, while also resenting him for leaving him in such a manner.
The Russians are portrayed in a somewhat enigmatic light, positive for their role as liberators and providers of food and shelter, but are also ridiculed for their rigid ways and for being a nation that is used to slavery as a normal way of life and thinks nothing of the misery of others; but, who for the most part, at least, in this film, they are shown to have no bias against the survivors for being Jews. There is only one incident where the Poles in a marketplace, shun away from Primo because he is a Jew from Auschwitz, that is when he is trying to sell them a shirt.
The Russians continally round the survivors up cattle-like and put them on trucks without telling them what is going on, but the survivors feel relieved when the Russians are sent to the front and they are left in the transit camps only with the civilians. The survivors just can't wait for the war to be over and for them to get on the train and go home. Luckily for Primo, he gets to work in a hospital as a doctor (labeling the medicines) and when there, he develops a crush on a luscious blonde nurse (Wagner), but is too tongue-tied to tell this sometime prostitute with a heart of gold how he feels about her.
Music is the universal language of healing, and when the Russians put on a musical show for their victory celebration, with one of their soldiers militarily dancing like Fred Astaire to the Irving Berlin tune 'Cheek to Cheek,' it brings joy to the survivors en masse, as they begin to dance with each other.
Primo, in proud defiance, wears his concentration camp coat with the Jewish star on it, as if it was a badge of honor, wanting to show others who he is and let them sort out for themselves what to think of him. He becomes an onlooker, observing the destruction left in the wake of the Nazi terror through-out Europe, as the train is finally there for them and it follows the map shown on screen, across Poland and Russia and when derailed, the refugees trod on by foot until they catch another train, as it heads back down through Austria and Germany before Primo returns at last to Turin.
A tubercular camp survivor (Dionisi), who is guilt-ridden why he survived and his family and friends got wiped out by the Nazis in Venice, feels relieved to toss the starving German slave-prisoners he sees on the road a piece of bread, as these members of the 'Master Race' grovel at his feet for it.
Primo meets up with 'The Greek' again, while he is passing through Russia. 'The Greek' somehow is running a bordello there. In Austria an old lady who wrote a letter to Hitler to end the war, but the SS responded by burning her house to the ground and her husband left her, gives him time to reflect on what the outside world is like, as she offers him and his friend Cesare (Massimo) some drinks and food. Cesare keeps reminding Primo, don't be so glum, it is laughter that is the cure all for this misery we have undergone.
In a very sensitive scene, he meets a guilt-ridden woman camp survivor, who did God knows what to survive in the camp, who Primo has a brief affair with and becomes human again.
Perhaps, the most moving scene in the film or the phoniest (which is my take on it), take your choice, is his return to Germany, where he makes eye contact with a Nazi soldier in the Munich train station, but the haughty soldier does not know why he is being stared at, but then Primo opens up his concentration camp jacket and the soldier sees the Jewish yellow star and without a word being said on either side, he bows down as if asking forgiveness. But for the ungodly, non-religious, and non-Communist Primo, who was arrested as a Partisan freedom fighter and not because he was a Jew (he concedes that before the war he wasn't even aware of being Jewish), it is not forgiveness that he wishes to grant but that the Holocaust be something that is viewed as so horrible an event that it won't ever be forgotten by mankind. For Primo Levi, "God cannot exist if Auschwitz exists."
As for the film's title, Rosi explained, "Life is a truce between the moment we're born and the moment we die." This holds true with Primo Levi's belief that war is continuous. The spiritual awakening for Levi is what came about on his circuitous route home, where he found a reason to live again.
The Truce ends on a near-note of normalcy, in which one finds Primo back at home by his desk, as if this nightmare never happened. But in his last look at us, we realize that he can't ever return to the way things were before, the price of survival has too high of a price tag on it for him to believe in normalcy again.
I just couldn't help feeling that this earnest attempt at capturing the mood of that horrific event, lacked whatever it takes to make this a first-rate film. The story was there from Primo Levi's book, the right actor played him, but most of the other decisions Rosi made in the filming of the story, failed to bring it to life and make it convincing.
REVIEWED ON 11/11/99 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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