Fugitive Pieces, a 2007 is a film streaming on Amazon Prime, spans a period of roughly 35 years, beginning in 1942 and concluding the late 1970s. At the outset, Jakob Beer (Robbie Kay) the protagonist of the film, is sharing his first-person account of how, as a seven-year-old Jewish child in Biskupin, Poland, he was concealed by his parents behind the kitchen wall.
Jakob watched silently, through a tiny crack, the seemingly unbearable execution of his parents by the Gestapo and then he witnessed the dragging away of his beautiful teenager sister, Bella. Jacob, fearing he was next, managed to extricate himself from his hiding place and run to a nearby forest. After what appeared to be days of running, Jakob found a spot and dug himself a deep body hole alongside of a river bog. After a few days, he was finally noticed and befriended by a Greek archaeologist, Athos (Rade Sherbedgia). Athos and his colleagues were excavating ruins in this part of the ancient Polish city. It seemed no accident (it was Beshert) that Jakob and Athos found and then needed each other.
As the movie progresses, Athos decides to take several days off from work to be with Jakob. Athos is hoping that Jakob can assimilate back into society. However, during the few days away from work, Athos’s archaeology colleagues are caught and executed for violating Nazi laws. Athos describes the deadly excavation scene, “the Nazis came and destroyed all of our archaeologist evidence since they believe that there can be no culture but their own which they alone created.”
Athos manages to smuggle Jakob back into Greece, where he keeps him hidden in his home. It is only under the kindness of Athos’s care that Jakob begins to re-connect with the human race – although he cannot keep from reliving his daily war nightmares and the images of his the killing of his parents and Bella’s disappearance.
While hiding, Jacob meets several of Athos’s friends who are sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. In one scene, a female friend, who has been bringing food and other items to Athos and Jacob, is seen being rounded up as a potential collaborator by the Nazis. Not wanting to be treated as a criminal, she steps out of the roundup and begins to run away. After only taking a few steps she is immediately gunned down in view of Athos’s hiding place.
Eventually, the war ends, and things in Greece slowly normalize. Athos receives an offer for a professor’s post in Toronto, Canada. Athos and Jakob move to Canada where Athos begins writing his memoir called Bearing False Witness: History and Memory while the older Jakob (now played by Stephen Dillane) pursues an advanced degree and begins his own memoir.
By coincidence their next-door neighbors are Holocaust Survivors who also have deep scars from the war. After the neighbor’s wife has a baby, they name the child Ben. As Ben grows up he idolizes Jakob, spending more and more time with him. Eventually, tension and continuing struggles develop between Ben and his father, who can’t shake the horrid memories of the Holocaust and his time in the camp.
After Athos’s death, Jakob is again all alone and is searching for a loving and nurturing relationship. He eventually enters into a marriage with the effervescent, bohemian Alex (Rosamund Pike), hoping that she will provide him with the spark as well as the desired escape from his horrid past. Jakob also maintains his lifelong relationship with Ben mentoring him with his writing and piano playing.
But Jakob continues to have his own repeated nightmares and obsessions with his past. This turns out to be constant block between Alex and Jakob eventually destroying their marital happiness.
One scene presents Jakob describing to Alex “how a woman in the concentration camp kept a family picture under her tongue for more than three years. And at any time, she could have been found out and shot.” Jakob writes, “My obsession with the Holocaust makes my head explode.” Over time, Alex is so emotionally exasperated with Jakob she says, “is this what you want, just to be sitting in your mental darkness forever?”
After finding and secretly reading Jakob’s diaries, Alex remarks to Jakob, “To live with all these ghosts requires solitude.” And as expected the two split up.
Fugitive Pieces is adapted from the novel (The Five Senses), written by Anne Michaels. The director and screen writer Jeremy Podeswa continually vary the timing and chronology of the film with its layering of flashbacks within flashbacks. So much so, that at first it takes a bit of getting used to. But once you settle into these movie devices and the back and forth, they do enhance the character development. They also assist in explaining a wonderful narrative of transformation from deep despair to hope and eventually true love.
One can’t watch this film without calling out the cinematography work by Gregory Middleton. His art helps to solidify the transition of Jakob. The film’s landscapes are strikingly beautiful with lushly photographed scenes of Toronto and the idyllic Mediterranean sunshine of the Greek coast.
But this film is not only about the Holocaust; it also is about memory, how we use it, how we measure it, how we must treasure it, how we must not be enslaved by it.
For a film about the Holocaust, it is gentler than we might expect. A lot of that quality is caused by the gentleness and peaceful presence in the role of Athos of Rade Sherbedgia, a character actor who you have probably seen many times in many other films but never know his name.
Some actors have a quality of just smiling at you and making things heal. And Stephen Dillane’s (the older Jakob) always worried, continually haunted face gives Athos the right person to play off of, if only Athos, too, were not so absorbed by his past and feelings of loss
If Fugitive Pieces has a message, it is that life can heal us, if we allow it. I found this movie to be highly emotional, inspirational and with its exceptional writing style, so pure, it was almost like listening to poetry.
Note this movie is Rated PG-17 and has scenes of violence and sex.
Jeffery Giesener, former CEO of SourceMob, has both public and private company experience. Today, retired and enjoying life in San Diego, he’s a freelance writer who has a passion for both cinema and baking his Mom’s (OBM) European recipes.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World