Reviews

Bem-Vindo Bilal is a seventeen-year-old refugee that has traveled from Iraq to Calais. He hopes his final destination will be in Britain to be reunited with his girlfriend. The stigma and hardships of refugee life are one of the most prevalent factors in this film. Bilal has faced trauma that stretches both throughout the film but also invokes a past. Bilal was clearly traumatized by having to put a bag over his head when he tried to smuggle himself to Britain in a truck. We later learn that officials forced a bag over his head at other point in time prior to the film as torture. Bilal has an uncommon resilience despite the challenges of his situation. He resolves to learn how to swim in order to swim across the English Channel. This goal leads him to meeting Simon, the swim coach who supports Bilal. Simon has an interesting character development throughout the film. At first he is very hesitant to help the refugees in any way, given there are strict laws against this sort of thing in France, but he nonetheless did maintain a slightly negative attitude. Bilal changes this. Simon tries to help and shelter Bilal and his friend, but the authorities of France threaten him. The legal status of these refugees comes across as highly ambivalent and the authorities themselves come across as extreme. Despite the difficulties in maintaining a leveled depiction of European law towards refugees, the film works well the develop the dark mood. There are rarely happy endings for the refugees. Bilal's failure to swim across the English Channel, after coming so close, seems to be the best representation of this. These people were treated with ambivalence by the states and for those lucky enough to receive the kindness of ordinary citizens, it was quickly stripped away. Overall the film might have been improved if it worked to incorporate the refugee experience within the camps. We get a short depiction of this early on but Bilal seems to just kind of pop into the narrative without a coherent backstory. Not all refugees were able to find a couch to sleep on like Bilal did. His experience may have been exceptional. I found Bilal to be rarely be afraid. I cannot imagine that someone in that situation would not at the very least express more emotion towards the prospect of unknowingness and unpredictability towards one's future.

"The Way Back" is certainly a wonderfully shot film, with beautiful landscapes and does a great job capturing the daunting terrain. The men who escaped from the Soviet Gulag in Siberia certainly had a journey cut out for them. With that being said, there were certain positives and negatives about the film. One, it had a sound portrayal of Gulag life. From the very beginning you see how quickly time in the camp is turned to savagery. Rations are hoarded or traded or stolen. All that matters is survival, rather, your own survival. There is certainly a camp hierarchy in place with the "criminals" calling the shots. This was a useful tactic that the guards employed in order to create fear and order within the barracks. The hard labor of the camps was also depicted well in the film. The labor of the Gulag was an imperative aspect that came with many dangers for the men. Any one caught not doing their job would be shot. We see close moments such as these in the film, especially when Jim Sturgess' has a moment of hallucination and tries to walk out of the mine. Life was grueling and difficult, with few moments of hope. "Mister Smith," Ed Harris' character sums it up well later in the film: "In the camps some saw death as freedom." Despite some of these positive aspects, the overall journey left me in disbelief. The whole thing was like the ten biblical plagues. One thing after another, I was surprised they weren't all dead sooner. That being said, there are questions about the veracity of the story itself as even though the film is supposed to be based on a true story, the 1956 memoir that it is based upon is heavily disputed. Yet the purpose of the journey was not entirely lost on the film. For one it gave us a reflection of Soviet life that we didn't see in the Soviet Union through the scene with the destroyed Buddhist monastery. This was a reflection of what life would have been like in Soviet Russia as the monastery was completely destroyed and desolate. Churches were demolished and priests were shot and taken to camps. Under the communist regime religion was banned, yet another aspect people found solace in taken away. Overall the film showcased an immense amount of strength on the part of the escapees and the struggles of maintaining hope. An interesting story whether fact or fiction.

I think this film does a decent job depicting the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II. The movie spends a lot of time establishing a pre-war normalcy that is uprooted in the later parts of the movie. Lily Kawamura's (Tamlyn Tomita) family is well established and prominent among Japanese American elite circles. They are educated and well dressed and prove themselves to be just like any other American. Japanese Americans were just like any other Americans. Yet the contingencies of war took that all away from them. The movie in the beginning does capture a bit of the tensions between non-hyphenated Americans and the Japanese Americans, mainly through the interactions with Lily's father (Sab Shimono) and Jack McGurn (Dennis Quad). What the movie best achieves though is a depiction of life within the internment camps and the costs of upheaval for many Japanese Americans. Lily's family is forced to give away everything and depart from their home in San Francisco and partake in the forced internment. This tears Lily apart from her now husband Jack, which is certainly emotionally distressing but the whole love story between them is so painfully awkward and horrible to watch that it is hard to fully feel any emotions one way or the other. I think Alan Parker would have done a better job focusing a bit more on the internment experience rather than this irritating love story. With that, the internment experience showed the further trials that Japanese Americans had to face. They were asked to remain loyal to a country that took everything away from them. The film shows the internees struggling to reply to the infamous "Loyalty Question," question numbers 27 and 28 on a survey that all internees had to take. The question essentially asked them to either declare themselves to be fully committed American citizens, and potentially fight for their country or: "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attacks by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government power or organization?" These sort of questions had immense repercussions for those who answered no, as we saw in the movie when Lily's brother was sent to the Tule Lake internment camp with the rest of the "no-no boys." The tensions between the Nisei and Issei generations held a lot of sway in the film as well, another aspect that was well represented in terms of camp life. Overall the film depicted a complicated time in American history but lacked in the romance aspect of the film.

This is certainly a harrowing film to watch, but an incredibly important one as well. The depiction of Samira's life in the detention camp during the Bosnian War is emotional and raw. The film gives an accurate illustration of Bosnia in the early 1990's, and the actors and actresses in the film show a true representation of the lives of people in these detention camps. The relationships in this film are incredibly complex as well. Samira is notably involved with the captain of the Serbian forces that are holding these women in detainment. After being raped by Serbian men she is doing the best she can to survive in this situation. This form of "survival sex" is a representative aspect of camp life. Though excruciatingly difficult to watch, Samira's role in the film brings into question a larger discussion about morality and strength. Through the figure of the captain the viewer is able to discern that pain is not just physical, there is a wide spectrum of hardship that these women faced in the camp. Psychological pain was just as real, if not more so. Despite the fact that Samira is choosing to form a sexual relationship with the captain, there is no consent here. Some of the women disagree with her decision, finding it to be morally questionable. But this brings one to wonder, where is the role of morality in the camp setting? If the victims don't even have it, who does? It seems paradoxical that morality itself can even exist in such a setting. Despite these harder questions, there is certainly an omnipotent display of strength of Samira's part. In many ways she will never leave the camp. This experience will remain with her for the rest of her life. The film gives a viewer a glimpse of that as we watch Samira try to assimilate once more back into "real life." A task she may never fully surmount, as she must now take care of her child who she conceived with the captain. Will her strength be derived from taking care of this child who will forevermore remind her of her horrific experience? Or must it come from her resilience once more? The film wonderfully depicts the complexity of the human emotions and experiences both inside and outside of the camp. A difficult task to undertake, especially if it is to be done right. Overall the film does a great job of playing with these complex but critical issues.

This film is complex in not only does it seek to depict an experience within one of the Jewish concentration camps during the Holocaust, it is also the story of a special relationship between a father and son. To some viewers this relationship might appear at first glance to be over romanticized. How can someone possibly look back on such an experience with the acuity and detail that the film illustrates? Not only that, how can the experience, one that is surrounded by so much horror, come across as being wholesome? In order to refute such a view it is best to understand the film as being told through the eyes of a man who is trying to create a story as it actually was. Guido's humor throughout the film was his strongest attempt to carry through a life that almost could have never existed within the confines of the camp. Once again, to some viewers, to have such humor be a central piece of the film can be a disturbing aspect when it is under the circumstances such as the Holocaust. But such a representation serves a higher goal. By trying to view the very fact of the concentration camp itself as some sort of game makes it more believable to the sensible human that accepting the fact that such a tragedy actualy happened. Of course, the film has some historical flaws, namely the fact that the chances of having a child escape is nearly impossible. There is no way a child could have flown under the radar for such a long time. But the film is not entirely supposed to give an accurate historical representation, it instead focuses on the endurance of the human spirit and how certain relationships allow us to survive moments in history that, without such support, would have forever crushed the human soul. Just as relationships can carry us through the world, we must be ever conscious of the relationships that seek to tear us apart. Guido and Doctor Lessing are a prime example of this. From the foreshadowing moment when Doctor Lessing asks Guido the answer to the riddle: "If you say my name I am not there anymore, what am I?" The answer was silence. Representative of the silence the doctor held within himself about the fate of his close friend Guido and other Jews. Guido's right to a place within the world was not only silenced but trivialized when the doctor helps pleads for Guido's help in solving a riddle as Guido lives at the brink of death. The doctor laments that he cannot sleep with such a burden on his mind. It is a riddle that keeps him awake at night, not the deaths of his countrymen. The film thus incorporates various levels of commentary on our relationships with the people we surround ourselves with.