A universal struggle
Film explores the power of choices
“Fugitive Pieces,” based on the novel by Anne Michaels, focuses on a man’s struggle to reconnect with the world. When Jakob (Robbie Kay) is only nine years old, his parents are murdered by the Nazis and his older sister is taken away. He escapes but he is utterly lost. At an age where the world should be a magical place full of things to discover, he has discovered the human capacity for evil.
The boy is rescued by Athos (Rade Sherbedgia), a Greek archaeologist doing work in Poland. Athos smuggles the boy to his home on the Greek island of Zakynthos, also under Nazi occupation. After the war Athos and Jakob move to Canada, where Athos obtains a teaching position. Jakob comes to manhood (now played by Stephen Dillane) and becomes a writer and meets the beautiful Alex (Rosamund Pike), a woman who falls in love with him but can’t deal with his obsession with the past.
It is that last which is what “Fugitive Pieces” is really about: how for survivors like Jakob, the past can never be completely dead and buried. Tragedy comes to all lives, and we grieve and eventually move on. For those who experienced the horror of genocide, there can be no closure, no sense of having come to terms with the inevitability of death in life. There was nothing at all inevitable about what Jakob experienced. Ironically, it is in befriending the young son of two survivors who are his neighbors in Canada that he begins to see beyond himself.
As the story shifts back and forth in time we come to understand that for Jakob life is not linear. Watching a woman prepare something in the kitchen makes him recall being a boy and watching his mother. Listening to music inevitably makes him think of his sister, who was studying piano. Life may be for the living, as the cliché has it, but for people like Jakob, living means integrating what he has experienced into who he is. He can’t live in the past, but neither can he bury it.
Directed by Jeremy Podeswa, himself the son of a survivor, the film treats Jakob’s dilemma with sensitivity and compassion. It’s not easy to be a survivor and live in the present. His young neighbor struggles because for his father, every action is a reminder of the past. Honoring and embracing the memories without being consumed by them is a difficult task, and one that we see cannot be handled by everyone. As Jakob, Dillane lets us see his travels along that long, dark path. Sherbedgia – who will be a familiar face if not a familiar name – brings a gentle world-weariness to Athos, determined to help young Jakob even when the boy isn’t sure he wants to be helped.
“Fugitive Pieces” is, in the end, a drama about good people struggling to make the right choices in life. In different ways and in different degrees, it’s a struggle we all face.
Daniel M. Kimmel, a Boston-based film critic and author, reviews Jewish films for the Advocate. He lectures widely on a variety of film-related topics and can be reached at daniel.kimmel@rcn.com.
“Fugitive Pieces” opens at the West Newton Cinema on Friday, May 9. Check theater for showtimes.
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