(Arts & Enter ainment Love Story Michael Fox Jaap became a principal of one of the schools and had ample time to write letters to his beloved. So as not to embarrass and provoke Manja, Ina's sister would secretly deliver the missives and Ina's replies. Jaap and Manja, and later Ina, were among the few lucky ones who were deport- ed to Bergen-Belsen instead of Auschwitz. But it was a full-time job staying alive, and Jaap and Ina lost track of each other until after the war. Jaap and Manja got divorced lickety-split after the liberation, and he and Ina married in 1946 and moved to the U.S. They mark their 60th anniversary as the film begins, but they're far from finished. Jaap and Ina discuss the suffering wrought by discrimination and each generation's obligation to build a better world. Their lives, and their ongoing love affair, make a perfectly eloquent and optimistic statement. 0 Special to the Jewish News M ichele Ohayon's elegant Steal a Pencil For Me is, in a sense, two movies woven into one. For stretches it plays like a shining love story set against the dark backdrop of the Holocaust, while at other times it is a sober Holocaust documentary accented with a saga of sur- vival. The great accomplishment of this beauti- fully crafted film is that it loses nothing in the transitions. Most moviegoers will be captivated by Jack (Jaap) and Ina Soep Polak's inspir- ing relationship, and Steal a Pencil For Me springs its great hook on viewers in the first minute: Jaap was in the same camp with his wife and his girlfriend. As he recalls wryly, that was no easy thing. Jaap married a girl named Manja in the late 1930s in Amsterdam, but they soon agreed they were a bad match. When the Nazis invaded Holland, however, the couple decided they'd be better off together and agreed to stay married until the war was over. But Manja was quite the flirt, to hear Jaap tell it; and left to himself at a party, he found himself smitten with a fresh face. Ina was 10 years younger, and her father owned one of the largest diamond-polishing operations, Jack and Ina Soep Polak's wedding kiss, 1946 Steal a Pencil for Me screens 7:30 which is to say she ran in different circles than Jaap, an accountant from a poor family. Their relationship did not pick up steam until they were interned together in Westerbork, a camp (Jaap notes ironically) that the Dutch Jews had built a few years earlier as housing for fleeing German Jews. Now it was a way station from which 2,000 people a week were shipped to Auschwitz although they didn't know the destination. So life in Westerbork was far from awful. Jaap had arranged for Ina's family to be housed in the same barracks as he and Manja, which meant they saw each other every day, often taking evening strolls together. "He won my heart by sheer persis- tence Ina recalls. p.m. Thursday, 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, March 27-30, at the Detroit Film Theatre in the DR. See next week's JN for a story on The Counterfeiters, this year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, which screens 7 p.m. Friday-Sunday, March 28-30, at the DFT. Mack Comedy George Robinson Special to the Jewish News T he Jewish community of Memphis, Tenn., has a long and colorful history. Filmmaker Ira Sachs, a native Memphian, is fond of pointing that out. "My mother's family came to Memphis in 1854:' he notes, "and my father's came in 1900:' Roots, however, are no guarantee of comfort. As the 42-year-old Sachs has said in many interviews, growing up gay and Jewish in Memphis in the 1960s, he experienced more anti-Semitism than he did homophobia. Either way, he felt like an outsider much of the time, and that sense of non-belonging has fueled all three of his feature films, including his charming new comedy, Married Life. "I went to a preppy all-boys junior high school 1973-74:' Sachs recalls. "I was called a like: and kids threw pennies at me At the same time, he adds, he was active dlo March 20 2008 at a large Reform congregation, president of the youth group in Memphis, where the Jews were "a prominent and powerful community, both affluent and influential." The result, he says, is that "you vacillate between being an outsider and part of a powerful community" And that dilemma — that doubled vision — is at the heart of Sachs' films: The Delta, 40 Shades of Blue and Married Life. "For me, being gay and being Jewish overlap and become one he says. "I have a strong identification with the outsider. Class is also very significant in my films. I come from a privileged background but also from a place of empathy with those who don't:' That empathy, he notes, comes from the Judaism in which he was raised. In Married Life, the empathy takes a peculiar but delightful form. The film is based on John Bingham's long-forgotten '40s British crime novel, Five Roundabouts to Heaven, a noirish tale of unfaithful hus- bands and wives and incip- ient murder; but Sachs and his regular writing partner Oren Moverman (the Israeli screenwriter who co-wrote I'm Not There) have turned it into a deft, dryly funny black comedy of manners. Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) is a seemingly Chris Cooper as Harry and Rachel McAdams as Kay happily married execu- in the new film Married Life tive with a loving wife, Pat (Patricia Clarkson), and a loving mistress, Kay he knows the most. Self-knowledge and (Rachel McAdams). Harry is devastated at knowledge of others can lead to empathy. the thought of Pat's suffering if he were to That kind of understanding seems to me leave; the only fair way out is to poison her. to be the central tenet of Judaism." Although the story is told by Harry's best friend, Richard (Pierce Brosnan), Sachs and Moverman handle shifts of per- spective cannily and give real insight into Married Life is scheduled to open all four of protagonists, most of all Harry. Friday, March 21, at the Landmark As Sachs puts it, "Harry begins know- Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak. (248) ing the least, but by the end of the film, 263-2111.