“We are all products of
history,” says a dying father to his son William. The scene is from the
poignant narrative film Sarah’s Key,
a 2010 French-English film directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner.
How true! Of course we are all products of
our history, whether we like it or not. History may be the thing of the past,
but no one must forget history and history must shape our present and put us in
right mode for the future. The difficulty is when we refuse to learn from
history and make the same mistakes over and over again, as it happens in the
world today.
Director: Gilles
Paquet-Brenner
Film Clip
The film is about a journalist’s (Julia
played by Kristine Scot-Thomas) quest to go behind history to know the truth
about the deportation of hundreds of French Jews to concentration camps in Auschwitz
during the Second World War. Most of them died there, though one of the two
little girls who escaped the camp managed to survive. The journalist takes it upon herself to find out where and how that little girl Sarah, who escaped in 1942, is
in the present. Her journey takes her to different places and different people.
She has also to face the reality, though with a little relief at the end, that
her family too is somehow connected to the whole episode of that deportation.
Does she find Sarah? How does she confront her? The answer to these questions
makes the crux of the whole narrative and is depicted with utmost precision,
raising curiosity at each stage.
The film goes back and forth between 1940s
and 2009. This also adds to the poetic narrative, though very heartrending in
certain places. However, nowhere does the director attempt to portray a melodramatic
tale, even as the issue is painfully stark and inhuman. He, rather, tries to
draw an optimistic tale.
The Second World War and Hitler’s Anti-Semitism
have inspired many films. This film is unique in its portrayal of the sordid
tale as it dances between melancholic pessimism and incorrigible optimism.
- Melwyn Pinto SJ
I agree with the writer's statement:'History must shape our present and put us in right mode for the future.' Often people tend to ignore history, but it is vital to our understanding of everything around us. Thereby it helps us in discovering ourselves. Knowing history can help us lead better lives by avoiding the wrong footsteps taken by our predecessors.
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