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Words Of A Witness
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A mother's remarkable "Last Letter"
is haunting, unforgettable.
866910
MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News
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- Danny Raskin
he appears as an apparition, a
ghost, a spirit from the world
beyond.
We don't know her name, only that
she is a Ukrainian Jew whom, we
quickly deduce, was murdered by the
Nazis.
She isn't even speaking to us but to
her grown son, Vitya, who is some-
where far away, well beyond the reach
of the Nazis.
We are her intended listeners, of
course. As long as the wicked strike
the weak, there will be intended lis-
teners.
The Last Letter, a fictional mono-
logue that quietly reverberates at every
moment with the clarion blast of
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The Last Letter was originally pre-
sented on stage, in a collaboration
between the legendary documentary
filmmaker Frederick Wiseman ( Titicut
Follies, High School) and the remark-
able French actress Catherine Samie of
the Comedie-Francaise. The filmed
performance airs May 3 as part of
PBS's Independent Lens series.
The broadcast includes two shorts,
as well.
In Zyklon Portrait, a short film-
poem that's a Holocaust film without
Holocaust imagery, family photo-
graphs, underwater photography and
hand-painted images draw a personal
elegy out of historical minutiae in a
powerful meditation on Zyklon B, the
chemical compound used by the Nazis
as a genocidal weapon.
Through a striking combination of
documentary and experimental
approaches, The Walnut Tree offers an
eloquent meditation on survival,
examining Holocaust memory, the
family and the role of photography in
history.
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4/28
2005
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truth, is a brilliant and mesmerizing
addition to the canon of Holocaust
films.
An adamant affirmation of life, love
and human decency, the one-hour
piece is adapted from a chapter of
Vasily Grossman's suppressed 1960
novel, Life and Fate. The Russian
author died in 1964, long before a
Swiss publisher finally released his
masterpiece in 1980.
The Last Letter's septuagenarian Samie
is Catholic, but as a child, she joined
her mother in guiding Jews across the
border to Switzerland during the war.
It is that experience, no doubt, which
infuses her work here with the aura
and gravity of a witness being sum-
moned.
Surely, it is nothing short of amaz-
ing that there are only a few brief
moments when one gets the impres-
sion of an actress delivering a perform-
ance.
Wearing a Star of David on a simple
black dress that, in silhouette, looks
like a shroud, her character recounts
how life changed after the Nazis occu-
pied her town.
The closet anti-Semites showed
their true nature, even to a respected
doctor like herself.
It is her nature, though — proud,
defiant and incapable of self-delusion
— that elevates and inspires us.
She lovingly describes the books she
packed when the Jews were ordered
into the ghetto. Then, instead of
despair or denial, she discovers dignity
behind the fence.