Based on the semi-biographical writing of George Tabori, inspired by his mother, "My Mother's Courage" offers one of the more surrealistic views of the Holocaust I have ever seen. It is an excellent follow-up to "The Nasty Girl."
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michaelf8 December 1998
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Theo Robertson25 January 2005As I said in my review of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL I am not a fan of holocaust movies and find them to be consistently over rewarded at film festivals . I also find them to be a poor subject for a movie for several reasons not least because how can you successfully translate so much human suffering into a movie ? The answer is you can't . But MY MOTHER'S COURAGE ( As it is known in Britain ) is a lot going for it not least because it doesn't go in for a sweeping spectacular scope in order to tell a story . This another problem with the holocaust genre - the narrative often starts before the Second World War with smiling Jewish families , the Nazis invade Eastern Europe ( 1939 in the case of Poland . 1941 in the rest of the region ) the families are deported and the story continues until liberation in 1945 giving little time to concentrate on detail . This movie is different since the main part of the running time revolves around a train journey , and it's little details like toilet facilities on the train that make MY MOTHER'S COURAGE such a human tale of suffering , narrative wise this film doesn't really concern itself with millions upon millions of murders by the Hitler regime over a period of years , it's more concerned with a day in the life of Nazi victims who are going to end up in one of their death camps hence we've got a human story that humanity can relate to more . I also wish to stay something that may possibly make me unpopular and that is the way some of the Nazis are portrayed as being decent human beings . No don't pick me up wrong , I'm not sticking up for Nazism but scene where Elsa sits in the train carriage with the German officer towards the end of the film is unique as is Elsa's monologue towards the officer
Have you worked it out yet ? I found MY MOTHER'S COURAGE beautiful , haunting and touching , far more so than say SCHINDLER'S LIST and yet I have only awarded it four out of ten ! That's because the director Michael Verhoeven has made it into an inaccesible self referential pretentious art house movie of the worst kind . The story starts off with the real life George Tabori ( Son of Elsa ) addressing the audience then walking into a film studio where this production is being made and talking with Verhoeven and the cast . I have no idea what the point of all this is but it fails to work . We also have to endure ridiculous scenes where Tabori walks into the narrative and talks addresses the audience and says " Good morning " to the Nazi guards ! I wouldn't say this totally failed attempt to out do Lars Von Triers in a bizarre post modernist contest totally ruins the movie but it comes very , very close indeed and the story would have worked much better without this ridiculous gimmick -
debo-mills11 August 2008As the other reviewer says, the bizarre and confusing beginning to this film almost put me off sticking with it: I couldn't figure out what was going on when the narrator talked both to the modern girl passing by in Budapest and the older woman who used to be his neighbor, and action in the story was stopped while he pointed out details in Nazi costume, etc. This merging of the past and present, and actors playing themselves playing an historical character (!) added nothing to the film except confusion.
Once this nonsense is over, however, things proceed in a regular fashion as the narrator's mother is arrested while walking the street, herded onto a train bound for Auschwitz, and then successfully confronts the Nazi commander and is allowed to return home.
Now I love Pauline Collins, and she is a fine actress, but I felt she was miscast here, maybe she is just too much of an English icon for me to believe her as a Jewish Hungarian. And sorry, but what "courage" did she exhibit? She meekly went along with the other deportees even though she had a "Red Cross Exemption", didn't offer the thirsty girl one of the plums in her purse (that bugged me!), and only spoke to the Nazi officer because her neighbor dragged her bodily across the floor and shoved her out the door in front of him. If the neighbor hadn't done that she would have got on the train with the others without a word. And why didn't she mention the girl who had been captured by mistake? She returned home seemingly without a thought for those left behind. I realize that we are viewing the film with hindsight as to what fate awaited the deportees, which Elsa didn't have and that as far as she was aware the others were just being sent off to another country, and perhaps in the book there is some mention of her feelings about the others she left behind, but in the film she comes across as meek, somewhat selfish, and driven more by naiveté than courage when confronting the officer.
This film left me with the thought "Is that it?" -
Yes, vile human beings orchestrated it, the worst crime in mankind's memory after every incident of slavery, and disbelievers of any form of deity refuse to accept whatever God's reason for allowing mankind to put his children through this. A Hasidic Jew exclaims his disbelief as thousands of Jews are put aboard the train to Auschwitz, "the Jewish bakery" one official calls it, and all you can do is sit there in disbelief as a Hitler lookalike plays with a globe (ala Charlie Chaplin) as they wait for the train to arrive.
Told through the surviving son of the title character (a remarkable lady played by Pauline Collins), torn from her family by her son's presence in London and her husband's arrest. Believing that everything will turn out well as long as you're a good person, Collins heads to what could change her views and really see human beings as they are at their worst. With the kindest eyes and a spirit of forgiving and tenderness, Collins is guaranteed to break your heart.
What is off about this film is the somber but dark humored mood. I can't believe that the writers are making light of the tragedy, but at times, it's so direct and abrupt in the Nazi glee at the impending slaughter of millions of Jews that I had to wonder what side the writers were on at times. Rape, drowning, torture of the disabled, human humiliation of the elderly are all presented directly with seemingly little emotion. This is less a story of one woman who tries through unending strength to make it through rather than just a document of a shared experience between strangers on a train facing an unbeatable enemy.