SILENT RUNNING
Wartime drama tells how mime artist Marcel Marceau helped Jewish orphans flee across the Alps to evade Nazis
ACTIONS speak louder than words in writerdirector Jonathan Jakubowicz’s wartime drama, based on the early years of mime artist Marcel Marceau, who was instrumental in rescuing hundreds of Jewish orphans during the Holocaust.
In 1945 Nuremberg, General George S Patton
(Ed Harris) addresses hundreds of American troops with a stirring speech about the unstinting courage of untrained civilians during the war.
“I have just heard an incredible story. I’d like to share it with you...” he growls.
We rewind to 1938 Strasbourg where Jewish butcher’s son Marcel Mangel (Jesse Eisenberg) sneaks out at night to entertain patrons of a seedy bar with his silent pantomime routines.
Marcel’s proud father, Charles (Karl Markovics), witnesses the spectacle and rebukes his son for clowning around dressed like the Fuhrer.
“It’s not Hitler, it’s Chaplin,” asserts Marcel.
Soon after, Marcel begrudgingly joins his brother Alain (Felix Moati), neighbour Emma (Clemence Poesy) and her sister Mila (Vica Kerekes) at the German border to take delivery of 123 Jewish orphans under the aegis of the Save The Children Foundation. Among the terrified throng is Elsbeth (Bella Ramsey) from Munich, who witnessed her parents (Edgar Ramirez, Klara Issova) being killed by Nazi officers outside the family home.
At first, Marcel is too self-obsessed to connect with the children’s desperate plight. “I have an alive Jewish father. That hasn’t made my life any easier,” he snipes. Marcel uses his comedic performance skills to coax the children out of their suffocating grief and teach them how to hide in trees “like a squirrel” to evade capture.
Transformed by his experience, Marcel changes the surname in his passport to Marceau and joins the French Resistance alongside Alain, Emma and Mila. They transfer to Lyon, headquarters of Obersturmfuhrer of the SS, Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighofer). Resistance is galvanised by nail-biting encounters between Barbie and members of Marcel’s cell that send chills down the spine. Eisenberg delivers a heartfelt lead performance as the clown, who cries genuine tears as he witnesses Nazi hatred of his people.
He kindles a smouldering on-screen romance with Poesy, whose role is underwritten.
Sentimentality seeps into frame to offset acts of sickening screen violence, culminating in the first crossing of perilous Alpine terrain with German soldiers in pursuit.