Escaping into Films

My wife and I tend to watch a lot of movies--too many, in fact. Perhaps we are tired at the end of the day or, lately, so weary of the horror that is the Trump presidency that we eagerly escape into the alternate reality of film since TV offers so little. Or blame Netflix, which makes it all possible.

So instead of venting my feelings about the latest racist outrage in Virginia, and the response, I savor memories of three striking films we saw this week, none of them mainstream Hollywood offerings.

The most memorable is a 2009 Italian movie with a perplexing title: THE MAN WHO WILL COME, directed and written by Giorgio Diritti. If I had known that his story was based on the massacre of 770 innocent villagers in central Italy in 1944 (the Marzabotto Massacre), I probably would not have ordered it, but the violence is offset and beautifully counterbalanced by the way the film unfolds: quietly, through the eyes of a beautiful little girl who seems fearless as she watches Nazis kill her family members and neighbors. She retains a hope that the baby brother being born will save her from the trauma of having lost an earlier brother, which caused her to become mute.  As a result, the film has a silence enhanced by a lack of soundtrack and by a remarkably understated style as one scene of village life unfolds after another.  The sense we are given is that life is a balance of good and evil, of violence and compassion; above all, of redemptive love, which keeps little Martina going and turns her into a little mother-figure caring for her infant brother. The style of the director, who gives us impressions of life in war-torn Italy, somehow minimizes the impact of the war and death and makes the dialogue almost unnecessary. 

THE PROMISE is a 2016 film of artistry and power about the Armenian genocide a hundred years ago, but the main focus is on the love triangle between an Armenian doctor, his lover, and the American reporter who also loves her. The cast in this long movie is strong, the impact unforgettable, as, once again, the theme of love and war is treated with artistry and originality.

Finally, another tale of wartime Europe but with an upbeat ending.  THE EXCEPTION concerns the exile of the aged German Kaiser (Christopher Plummer) in Holland in 1940, which is given a fanciful treatment and becomes secondary to the love story between a Jewish spy and the SS captain she loves and whom we come to like as a human being.

As someone said, the past is always a work in progress. And art of this type can give us an intelligent escape from present reality.