The theme of World War II has always been one of the easiest to produce good works.
In addition to the war films that hit the battlefield, many films focusing on Nazi concentration camps are equally impressive: Schindler's List, The Pianist, A Beautiful Life, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and so on.
Last year, a new film of its kind was screened at the Berlin Film Festival and the Beijing Film Festival, and it set off a warm response during the screening. Many viewers are eagerly awaiting it, seeing it as the "annual expectation".
Recently, this movie finally came late, met with the audience, and ranked first in the Douban weekly word of mouth list with a super high score of Douban 8.5.
Now, let's talk about it-
Persian Lessons
Persischstunden
The Persian Lesson is an adaptation of the German-language novel The Invention of a Language by the writer Wolfgang Kohlhaze. Its story is mainly inspired by real events.
The film was originally going to represent Belarus to compete for the Oscar for best international film, but because the composition of the team did not meet the Oscar filing criteria, it missed the Oscar, which made people sigh.
In order to make this film well, the film enabled a strong creative team.
Director Vadim Perlman has previously directed the Russian blockbuster drama "Betrayal" and the Oscar-nominated "Dusty Homeland".
Like the director, the two male protagonists involved in the performance are also well-known and powerful.
Actor Naver Perez Biscayate, known as "Na Teacher", although the name sounds strange, he starred in "120 Hits Per Minute", which is a classic LGBTQ movie.
Another actor, Ras Edinger, is the bearer of the German showbiz circle, who has starred in the high-scoring drama "Babylon Berlin" (Douban averaged 9.3 in three seasons).
In terms of narrative tone, the film is quite similar to "Boy in Striped Pajamas" and "Beautiful Life".
They all construct a rather unique set of emotional relationships in the narrative: the officer's son in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and the Jewish boy in the concentration camp, the father and son in "Beautiful Life", the Jewish male protagonist and the Nazi officer in "Persian Lesson".
These closely related emotional relationships have played a decisive guiding role in the main story line of the film.
Although "Persian Lesson" itself is very literary and artistic, the story it tells is full of ups and downs and full of strange colors.
Gilles, a Jew who did not know Persian at all, in order to survive, under the pseudonym "Reza", created a set of "fake Persian" and taught Nazi Captain Koch a lesson. During this time, he not only created 2840 words in the concentration camp, but also made this set of "fake Persian" a common language between the two people, which can communicate fluently.
The film is very restrained in terms of camera language.
Most of the time in the film, it is dominated by cool colors, which convey a repressed emotion in color.
As far as the eye can see, it is full of despair: lonely mountains, piled up dead bodies, cold winter...
Only when the two protagonists are alone and communicate "false Persian", there will be a rare warm color, which sets off the good side of human nature.
It uses the real and cruel situation of the concentration camp to tap into the huge potential of Giles in a desperate situation.
During the contact, in order to get him to prove his Persian identity, Koch tried to make things difficult for him.
For example, after a few days of learning "Persian", Koch felt that his progress in learning 4 words a day was too slow, and asked Gilles to translate 40 words at a time. This meant that Giles not only had to make up 40 words that day, but also memorized them so that he could answer Koch in class without showing his feet.
Faced with this problem, Giles was disheartened and felt that he was cornered: don't say that he had to make up 40 words at once, even if he made it up, he would be difficult to remember.
Fortunately, by chance, Giles was given a job of recording refugee information.
So, on a whim, he took the name of the refugee as the root of the word and made up his own set of "Persian languages".
Since then, a cat-and-mouse game with life as a bet has been staged.
Once the identity is exposed, there is only one way to die...
By learning this "Persian language," Giles and Koch developed a complex and contradictory relationship and gained a deeper understanding.
It turned out that Koch was a captain officer in charge of the back kitchen. As a child, he was born into poverty and had a hard life. Later, with his own efforts, he became the chef of a restaurant and joined the army by mistake.
He had no interest in power or slaughter, and only hoped to flee to Iran after the war, open a restaurant in Tehran, and spend the rest of his life in his own right.
After understanding Koch's motivation for learning Persian, it is not difficult to find that the fake Persian in the film is actually given three layers of meaning by the director -
On the first level, there is the cruelty of killing. These Persian words, adapted from the names of Jews who have died or are about to die, are naturally cruel.
On the first level, it is the yearning for life. With this Persian language lesson, Giles walked on thin ice under the eyes of the Nazis, trembling and trying to survive.
There is also a layer of yearning for the future. Koch had high hopes for the language and wanted to make a living in a foreign country.
So, when Koch praises the language as "so beautiful" and uses it with great interest to write poetry, it is a great irony:
The poem he casually read was a large piece of dead life. And the language he spoke of was made up of the "dirty Jews" that the Nazis hated the most.
Although the film does not clearly point out, through some details, it is not difficult to see that Koch most likely also has a layer of hidden identity - gay men.
He stated that he had studied Persian in order to reunite with his brother in Tehran and open a restaurant of his own. But the colonel pointedly pointed out that in his archives, there was no mention of him having an older brother.
And, when he asked Giles what he said in Persian, "I love you," Giles asked him if he had someone he liked. At that time, he was full of shyness and wanted to say goodbye, only saying that sooner or later he would meet someone he loved.
During World War II, the Nazis not only slaughtered Jews, but also persecuted homosexuals, so for this reason, Koch was unable to show his gender orientation in front of people.
The reason why the director did not let him clearly show his gay identity is likely to be wrapped in another concern, that is, he does not want the audience to make too much sympathy and pity for this role.
Toward the end, Giles and Koch have a big discussion about the Unknown.
At that time, Gilles planned to give up his life, join the refugees, and move with them to Auschwitz in Poland.
Koch arrived in time, dragged him back, and said bluntly: "You are different from those nameless people!" ”
In response, Gilles righteously gave a counter-attack: "You say they are nobody, but because you don't know their names, you deny that you are an executioner, but you are a cook in charge of the executioner." ”
Like the movie "The Reader", "Persian Lesson" wants to explore the meaning of life and the aid and abuse of ordinary people.
War is never a war of one person or several people, even if Koch is not a murderer with a knife in his hand, he is also an accomplice of the executioner, a screw in the killing machine, and his hands have long been stained with blood.
As the saying goes, "No snowflake is innocent when an avalanche occurs."
Until the end, when Gilles, who survived, repeated the 2840 Jewish names he remembered, the film successfully pushed the emotions to a climax, completing its reflection and accusation of war.
At this point, in response to Koch's "nameless" theory, Giles finally gave the answer with action: every Jew persecuted by the Nazis had a name, just like every survivor in this world.
Every life has the meaning and value of his survival.
None of them were nameless.
Steelball