Fighter
(Documentary)
Picture: C
Sound: C- Extras: B- Film: B
Two friends who survived two of the greatest scourges of
the 20th Century takes the journey of their late lifetime in Amir
Bar-Lev’s documentary Fighter (2000), in which writer Arnost Lustig and
Jan Wiener go back to Czechoslovakia.
World War II has been finished for over half a century, while The Cold
War had melted a mere decade ago, yet the pain and emotional scars of stories
rarely (if not ever) told unfold at feature length.
They both managed to survive Hitler’s invasion of
Czechoslovakia, then they had to deal with Communism! There are happy moments and incredible tales of darkness and
survival, but their tales remind us that all these events are nowhere nearly as
distant as old documentary footage could trick us into the false comfort of
being. Some choice footage is featured
here with great context. That alone
makes this a must-see work, but there is more.
As the program goes on, old pains of the past arise and
the two old friends find themselves At odds and not talking as a surprise twist
in this trip. There is also the search
fro a woman in Italy Jan had once met and had help from, but the Italian locals
are far from courteous, which is unacceptable and ignorant. Jan finally does find her, but her memory
has faded of him. The Italian tendency
for alienation is something Jan was not counting on, that kind of complacency
that made Italian Fascism (originally known as Corporatism) possible and
rampant to begin with. This is a point
the filmmakers and men shockingly miss.
This critic did not.
The full screen image is shot on what looks like PAL
analog format and is average, but just fine for documentaries, but the stock
footage is all film (35mm and 16mm).
The color on the strange Communist dance clip is almost as strange as
the piece itself, being that Communist countries were trying to all kinds of
competitive color stocks as a way of not importing the likes of German Agfa or
American Kodachrome. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono is sometimes a problem to hear and location work is part of the
problem. However, the transfer could
have used a higher kilobits-per-second rate.
Extras include extra footage, some of which could have stayed, plus a
photo gallery, trailers for this and other First Run DVDs, and an audio
commentary by Bar-Lev and videographer Gary Griffin.
The cover of the DVD case has Jan waving his fist at a
Nazi Swastika, but that does not do the film justice. Some more fists should be waving, and a hammer & sickle
should be added alongside the Nazi symbol.
This is a documentary that covers that rarer territory of Communist
atrocities we have not heard enough about, and have certainly not been
documented enough. This is not to
choose between two scourges, but to make sure people do not underestimate the
value of this work.
- Nicholas Sheffo
