Holocaust drama ‘Past Life’ fails to convince
Every family contains secrets. But for the Jewish families that survived WWII, those secrets take on an especial weight, one that grows heavier as time passes no matter how much distance they put between themselves and the Holocaust. As with all secrets, it’s only through confrontation of that past that absolution can be obtained.
That’s the emotional premise behind Israeli director Avi Nesher’s overstuffed yet underwhelming drama about a pair of Jewish sisters struggling to uncover the truth of their father’s secret past. Despite the seriousness of the subject matter and the characters’ complex emotional journey, the film turns into something of a thriller with twists that, given the context, beleaguer believability.
A chance encounter kicks off their hunt. It’s 1977, and little sister Sephi (Joy Rieger) leaves Jerusalem to perform a concert with her classical choir in Germany. She’s a gifted singer with a delicate beauty and aspirations to compose. Polite and demure, she’s rattled when an older German woman approaches her in visible distress and begins berating her father, the “murderer.” The woman’s son, Thomas Zielinski (Rafael Stachowiak), himself a budding German composer of some notoriety, steps in and begs forgiveness for his mother’s behavior. The war, it haunts people.
The encounter haunts Sephi. She confides in big sister Nana (Nelly Tagar), who is far less shy in sharing a piece of her mind. The brash, chain-smoking journalist resolves to uncover the truth at all costs. Their father did something in a cellar in Poland that made this old woman call him a murderer, and she wants to know what. While Sephi would prefer not to rock the boat, Nana is convinced their father’s sins will metastasize in his children. The lies and the pain must be exorcised.
Part mystery, part melodrama, “Past Life” takes an irreversible turn for the silly when the film proposes a secret diary must be found to stop the ravages of cancer, and sets the clock ticking on a tepid thriller
To Nesher’s credit, “Past Life” never
feels exploitative — a chief danger in mining the Holocaust for drama. But it also never fully coheres. Nesher is trying to cover too much ground – wartime trauma, survivors’ guilt, familial dysfunction, artistic inspiration, the very concept of Israel — with too little.