Francesco Rosi, working from a memoir by Primo Levi, recounts the reawakening to life, the reconciliation to life, of a Jewish Italian chemist on his roundabout journey homeward after his release from Auschwitz. Rosi trusts the audience to fill in the recent past without any graphic Schindler's List reminders. The measure of the concentration-camp horrors is in the modesty of the ensuing triumphs, culminating in the sensual luxury of a bite of milk-dipped bread at home in Turin, following closely upon the emotional climax of the movie, an eerie confrontation with a work crew of captive Nazis in the dead of night in the Munich railroad station. (This is not Rambo: the hero doesn't mow them down with a machine gun.) A great deal is done in this movie without words, with simply a deep, drinking-in kind of gaze; and John Turturro is very touching as the desiccated thirster, almost prayerfully appreciative of every drop, too weakened and beaten down to demand more. Rosi, unembarrassed by the nakedest of emotions, slices into a scene at a subjective angle, seeks out the savory detail, individualizes this survival story. And from its very first moments -- the liberation of the camp by Russians on horseback, the low-angled cameras erecting immense edifices of stone-gray sky over the dwarfed figures -- this is a movie of uncommon beauty, with crisp and clean and luminous color no matter how bleak the surroundings, how subdued the palette. Rade Serbedzija, Massimo Ghini, Agnieszka Wagner. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.