Film, kids and attempted authenticity

 

The French film The Worst Ones raises questions about how far filmmakers should go in trying for authenticity, particularly when their work involves young people. Directors Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret cast real kids for a movie about a filmmaker (Johan Heldenbergh) who's trying to capture life among teenagers in the Picasso neighborhood of a town in northern France.  Forget Paris glamor; this town is full of housing projects and folks who’ll never be living upscale lives. Heldenbergh's Gabriel wants to make a tough film called Pissing in the North Wind. He's looking for the kind of teens who cause trouble. As it turns out, the film is less interested in the town’s teenagers than in the director's ideas about who they are. Independent and assertive, the director wants to show that Lily (Mallory Wanecque) is pregnant. She's not. Ryan (Timeo Mahaut) is asked to scowl and fight. He can’t suppress his smile. Jessy (Loic Pech), a real-life wise-ass, is pushed into a love scene. Melina Vanderplancke's Maylis doesn't like the idea of being on camera. The movie’s young cast gets to you,  and The Worst Ones' film-within-a-film approach proves more revealing than gimmicky.

Poles who helped save Jews

Jessica Chastain starts in The Zookeeper's Wife, the latest big-screen drama to deal with the Holocaust.

Israel has awarded the title "Righteous Among the Nations" to more than 26,000 Gentiles, brave souls who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. To date, more Poles -- 6,620 in all -- have received this honor than individuals from any other nation, a statistic partly explained by the fact that Poland became the epicenter of Nazi efforts to annihilate Europe's Jews. Beyond that, Poland had the largest pre-war Jewish population of any country in Europe, numbering 3.5 million.

Among those honored by Israel are the characters in The Zookeeper's Wife, a movie based on a true story that was recounted in a best-selling book by author Diane Ackerman. There's an inherent pitfall in such heroic Holocaust stories, the most notable being that they can be seen as having defining power concerning a historical crime that never should be seen through a life-affirming lens. That's why overall context is so important when it comes to Holocaust dramas.

Having said that, it's also true that stories about those who risked their lives to save Jews deserve to be told, and few are more intriguing than those recounted in The Zookeeper's Wife.

Prior to the war, Warsaw's zoo was run by Antonina and Jan Zabinski. During the war, the Zabinskis managed to hide 300 Polish Jews at the zoo, using the zoo's facilities to conceal them from the Germans.

As a cover for their efforts, the Zabinskis turned the zoo into a pig farm. They convinced the Nazis that they could raise pigs to feed German soldiers. They would nourish the pigs with scraps collected from the Warsaw Ghetto. Jan made trips to the ghetto, where he covered Jews in garbage and smuggled them to safety.

On screen, Jessica Chastain plays Antonina Zabinski, a woman with a special affinity for animals. Johan Heldenbergh portrays her husband, Jan.

For reasons that may have more to do with international marketing than with historical authenticity, everyone in Zookeeper's Wife speaks English, employing a variety of accents with Eastern European flavor, an approach that already compromises the material.

It should also be noted that Chastain is a wonderful actress, but there are many fine Polish actresses who easily could have tackled this material.

Director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) opens the movie with an idyllic passage in which we learn that the zoo functions as Antonina's Edenic paradise. She makes her morning rounds on a bicycle while a baby camel trots happily behind her. A couple of more clicks in the direction of cuteness and we'd be talking Dr. Dolittle.

It doesn't take long for the Germans to begin bombing the zoo as part of its invasion of Warsaw. Animals die, and Antonina, Jan and their young son (Timothy Radford) are terrorized.

Daniel Bruhl plays a Nazi zoologist who arranges for some of the zoo's best animals to be shipped to Germany for genetic experimentation. German soldiers shoot the rest.

Bruhl's character flirts with Antonina, who tries to keep his interest alive while warding off his most flagrant advances; she knows that this zoologist -- sort of an animal-oriented Mengele -- must think of her as an ally if she's going to continue her life-saving efforts.

Caro's treatment of ghetto life and of the Polish home army remains sketchy and not entirely satisfying.

The script has been tailored to showcase Chastain, who gives a credible performance. Portraying the character who does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to saving Jews, Heldenbergh mostly is asked to look grave. Bruhl's SS zoologist manages a neat trick: He's bland and menacing at the same time.

The Jews in the story become little more than props used to support Antonina's gentle heroism, although the story of a Jewish girl who's raped by German soldiers proves harrowing.

In all, The Zookeeper's Wife is a medium-grade drama that has been given the look and feel of a prestige offering.

If you want to see a remarkably shaded and far more agonizing story about the interaction between Poles and Jews during the war, try Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness, a movie that offers nuances and hard-core realities that Caro's effort doesn't begin to approach.

Bluegrass in Belgium? You bet

But music isn't the only stand-out in The Broken Circle Breakdown. You'll also find plenty of heartbreak.

An adorable kid with cancer. A soundtrack loaded with country music. Guys wearing cowboy hats, and driving pickup trucks. A woman ornamented with enough tattoos to decorate a small fleet of sailors on shore leave.

These are but a few of the ingredients that made a committed urbanite like me less than eager to watch The Broken Circle Breakdown, a Belgian import built around characters who are fascinated by America, particularly the alternately rhythmic and plaintive tunes that once helped downtrodden residents of Appalachia cope with hardscrabble lives.

Initial reservations aside, I'm certainly glad I ignored by own biases because director Felix Van Groeningen hits an emotional jackpot with this story about two lovers whose initially giddy but ultimately troubled relationship gives the movie its beating, vibrant heart.

Alternating between the couple's problematic present and its often delirious past, Van Groeningen tells the story of bluegrass musician Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) and his tattoo artist wife Elise (Veerle Baetens), who also happens to be a fine singer and who's quickly incorporated into Didier's band.

Along with their fellow musicians, Didier and Elise enjoy an upbeat bar-band life that's enriched by music, camaraderie and care-free exuberance.

Although he's initially thrown by Elise's unexpected pregnancy, Didier seems to adapt to fatherhood quickly: He clearly loves his daughter Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), and has more than a little difficulty coping when she's diagnosed with cancer. We know about Maybelle's grave illness from the start because the movie opens in the hospital where the six-year-old begins her treatment.

Many of the musical scenes and much of the courtship between Didier and Elise play at levels that are so upbeat they're dizzying. The underlying question, I suppose, is whether Didier really understands the pain at the heart of some of the music that he plays. Is he playing with authenticity or is he playing at authenticity?

Van Groeningen keeps bringing the movie to a boil and then taking all the fizz out of it, showing us again and again that a fun beginning doesn't always lead to a pleasant conclusion.

Broken Circle Breakdown -- named for the tune Will the Circle be Unbroken -- often flirts with corniness. Didier has a shaggy, purportedly endearing quality that's borderline annoying: An appreciative Elise enjoys his antics -- at least until she no longer can.

But as the movie progresses, Van Groeningen strips away the excitement of new love to show us depths of pain and sadness that may have been there from the start. Scenes in the present don't just alternate with the past, they comment on them, gradually expanding our knowledge in ways that give them new meaning.

Toward the end, there's an almost over-stuffed quality to the movie, which tries to jam an awful lot into an essentially narrow frame.

In one late-picture scene, for example, Didier unleashes his rage during a performance, ranting about the way religion has undermined the science that might help those suffering with cancer. By that time, the drama has shifted to focus on the different ways in which Didier and Elise try to cope.

You come away from Broken Circle feeling that life doesn't always make sense, but knowing, too, that sometimes music can help some folks carry on despite the pain.

True to the movie's dual concerns -- music and personal tragedy -- Van Groeningen also understands that not everyone can bear the worst burdens. That knowledge keeps his movie from turning into one more helping of cinematic self-help. Broken Circle Breakdown makes for an emotionally rich experience in which not all pain and suffering can be eased.

For some, there simply can be no comfort. Others choose to play on. I wonder if Van Groeningen isn't asking us to respect either choice.