Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
4/4
Narrated by Judi Dench
Rated PG for Thematic Elements
The wide range of human nature amazes me. We are capable of both great evil and great good. I mentioned "evil" first and "good" second not because I am a pessimist, but because that's how the story goes. The film begins with acts of terror and horror, but we see that just as people can force children from their parents and slaughter millions, there are others who can take in children they do not know for no incentive other than the goodness in their hearts.
As Adolph Hitler gained more power and spread the evil of the Third Reich into Austria and the Sudetenland, life in those areas became more and more hostile and dangerous. Getting out was, due to the legal requirements, next to impossible. When word of the Jewish peoples' plight reached London, the English Parliament approved a plan for Jewish children under the age of 17 to be shipped out of their home countries and into England. This is the story of those children.
What surprises me is the wide variety of stories the film tells. There's no way a narrative film could have done the subject justice. There are too many stories and singling out one would leave so much unexplored. Due to the time constraints, we are given a sampling of many stories (each one very different from the next), but enough information about each person's experience is enough to get the tell a complete story for each (even if I was hungering for more). Each person becomes someone we understand and care about. I can't say I remember their names, but that's because there are so many of them.
For all of that, the film doesn't lose its emotional power. No one story sticks out more forcibly than another, but that's okay. Director Mark Jonathan Harris as made a collage of different stories and experiences into one emotional and historical mosaic. This makes it a different, but no less powerful, experience than a movie like "Schindler's List." Judi Dench, with her soothing but confident narration, is the perfect person to narrate this film. Harris resists the urge to overuse her. She speaks only when it it necessary to give background to set up the next chapter in each story.
There are two things worth noting about this film. First, there is a plentiful amount of primary documentation, be it pictures of the interviewees and their families, or archive footage to set the stage. In fact, there is so much of the latter, all of which is so specific, that I was convinced that Harris had filmed the footage himself. This material personalizes the story in a way words or rehearsed images cannot. Some of it, like the images of smiling children before they were forced away from their homes and families, is manipulative, but it gets the job done. Harris never overuses or exploits any of the material at his disposal.
The second is the candidness in which the interviewees speak about their experiences. Not only are they extremely open about what they went through (I never got the feeling that someone was holding something back or that there was a hole in their story), but time has allowed them to offer a perspective on it. Some admit that they behaved poorly at times, or they now understand why some of their guardians were cool towards them. This is fascinating because most films, even documentaries, are stuck in the moment. They focus only on the now. By having the subjects give opinions or have views on what they went through makes it a much fresher and vivid tale.
I'm not the biggest documentary fan. By the nature of how they are made, they can be distancing or extremely dull if not put together well ("Terror's Advocate" is an example). But "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" is not a hack job. Far from it in fact. It has the emotional and cerebral punch of even the best narrative films, and the skill in which it is put together is something that one can savor as it is unfolding. Not only is it that, but it is both a superior historical document of a little known but important part of history and an outstanding film in general. Of all the documentaries I've seen, this one is the best.
Narrated by Judi Dench
Rated PG for Thematic Elements
The wide range of human nature amazes me. We are capable of both great evil and great good. I mentioned "evil" first and "good" second not because I am a pessimist, but because that's how the story goes. The film begins with acts of terror and horror, but we see that just as people can force children from their parents and slaughter millions, there are others who can take in children they do not know for no incentive other than the goodness in their hearts.
As Adolph Hitler gained more power and spread the evil of the Third Reich into Austria and the Sudetenland, life in those areas became more and more hostile and dangerous. Getting out was, due to the legal requirements, next to impossible. When word of the Jewish peoples' plight reached London, the English Parliament approved a plan for Jewish children under the age of 17 to be shipped out of their home countries and into England. This is the story of those children.
What surprises me is the wide variety of stories the film tells. There's no way a narrative film could have done the subject justice. There are too many stories and singling out one would leave so much unexplored. Due to the time constraints, we are given a sampling of many stories (each one very different from the next), but enough information about each person's experience is enough to get the tell a complete story for each (even if I was hungering for more). Each person becomes someone we understand and care about. I can't say I remember their names, but that's because there are so many of them.
For all of that, the film doesn't lose its emotional power. No one story sticks out more forcibly than another, but that's okay. Director Mark Jonathan Harris as made a collage of different stories and experiences into one emotional and historical mosaic. This makes it a different, but no less powerful, experience than a movie like "Schindler's List." Judi Dench, with her soothing but confident narration, is the perfect person to narrate this film. Harris resists the urge to overuse her. She speaks only when it it necessary to give background to set up the next chapter in each story.
There are two things worth noting about this film. First, there is a plentiful amount of primary documentation, be it pictures of the interviewees and their families, or archive footage to set the stage. In fact, there is so much of the latter, all of which is so specific, that I was convinced that Harris had filmed the footage himself. This material personalizes the story in a way words or rehearsed images cannot. Some of it, like the images of smiling children before they were forced away from their homes and families, is manipulative, but it gets the job done. Harris never overuses or exploits any of the material at his disposal.
The second is the candidness in which the interviewees speak about their experiences. Not only are they extremely open about what they went through (I never got the feeling that someone was holding something back or that there was a hole in their story), but time has allowed them to offer a perspective on it. Some admit that they behaved poorly at times, or they now understand why some of their guardians were cool towards them. This is fascinating because most films, even documentaries, are stuck in the moment. They focus only on the now. By having the subjects give opinions or have views on what they went through makes it a much fresher and vivid tale.
I'm not the biggest documentary fan. By the nature of how they are made, they can be distancing or extremely dull if not put together well ("Terror's Advocate" is an example). But "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" is not a hack job. Far from it in fact. It has the emotional and cerebral punch of even the best narrative films, and the skill in which it is put together is something that one can savor as it is unfolding. Not only is it that, but it is both a superior historical document of a little known but important part of history and an outstanding film in general. Of all the documentaries I've seen, this one is the best.
Comments
Post a Comment