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DIVIDED WE FALL Send This Review to a Friend
Powerful, unusual and gripping, "Divided We Fall" must not be allowed to fall through the cracks. A year 2000 Oscar nominee for best foreign language film, the Czech import directed by Jan Hrebejk deals with the Nazi occupation and the persecution of Jews in its own special way. Imagine that you are confronted by an escaped Jew trying to save his life but hiding him could cost you yours. What would you do? Heroics are easier when required of someone else. This is a story about reluctant heroism, characters marked by contradictions and a most unusual ploy to escape danger, which ironically becomes even more immediate just when you think it should be over. The well-acted and directed film did not win an Oscar, but its commercial release in 2001 makes it a deserving candidate for this year's best lists.
Under the Nazi occupation, Josef (Boleslav Polivka) and Marie (Anna Siskova), are trying to get along as best they can. They are personally tormented by Marie's desire to have a child, which she has been unable to do. It is Josef's fertility problem, not hers, but they do not realize this right away. Their lives are shook up when David (Csongor Kassai), the Jewish son of Josef's former boss, turns up as an escapee from a concentration camp, where his entire family has perished. Josef doesn't want to risk hiding David in his home, but his humanity leaves him no choice.
Josef needs to seem like he is an obedient Czech who goes along with the Germans. He gets help on this score from Horst Prohazka (Jaroslav Dusek), a coarse collaborator who visits frequently and lusts for Marie. Will he discover David? It turns out that Horst, who has an ugly side to him, is not beyond redemption, but not before he threatens Josef's situation by wanting to house a Nazi with him in reprisal for Marie's rejection of his advances. But if Marie were expecting a child, there wouldn't be any room to house the Nazi. An immediate, inventive solution is required.
Upon liberation, Josef, thought of as a collaborator, is in deep trouble. Now he needs his hidden Jew to prove he wasn't on the Nazi side. The film takes various twists, interesting because they are based on character as well as circumstance, and director Hrebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky, working from Jarochovsky's novel, build strong emotional tension, partly eased with gallows humor.
"Divided We Fall" is a knockout of an accomplished film that earns its place among other major films dealing with World War II and the holocaust. A Sony Pictures Classics
release.
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