Just as the Italian film "A Beautiful Life" is ingenious, "Persian Lesson" also incredibly makes an impossible possible.
The Russian-German and Belarusian co-production of "Persian Lessons" was a great surprise. This film set in World War II, with an unexpected idea, makes us believe that the theme of World War II is far from exhaustive. It's a film labeled "Based on True Events": In 1942 in France, in the German-occupied zone, The Belgian Jelly Gilles, with a cart of Jews, was escorted into the woods, where he lay himself down before the Nazis strafed him, and subsequently, claimed to be Iranian. Earlier, the Jews in the same car exchanged a Persian book for Gilles half a loaf of bread, because the German captain Koch was looking for an Iranian to learn Persian, and this book became Gilles's life-saving straw, but he did not know Persian at all. Just as the Italian film "A Beautiful Life" is unique, "Persian Lesson" also incredibly makes an impossible possible: Gilles, who does not know Persian at all, creates a fake Persian to deceive Koch, and succeeds.
It's a movie full of suspense: What would Gilles do? Will he be debunked? Everyone has such a question. Gilles, played by Naville Perez Biscayat, is small, wide-eyed, taciturn, and seems unfazed. At first, the instinct to survive allowed him to use the identity of an Iranian, and when it really needed to be tested, everyone understood that it would be an adventure. Gilles's rival, Koch, who was in charge of German food, was interested in Persian because he wanted to go to Tehran after the war to open a restaurant because his brother was there. Koch does not trust others easily, and the contest between Gilles and Koch in the movie is very layered. Even during the first interrogation, Koch got Gilles through—Gilles answered some common-sense questions—but on the next few occasions, Koch added layers of weight, first asking Gilles to teach Koch 4 words a day, and then suddenly adding to 40. Gilles was assigned by Koch to help cook in the cafeteria, and no one would deny that Gilles was full of wit, he pre-made up Persian related to restaurants and food, and confused, "it is easy to make up 40 words, but it is completely impossible to remember, and the words will be more and more", Koch's preset vocabulary is more than 2000. Gilles was almost desperate. When Koch asked him to register the list of Jewish prisoners, he had a flash of inspiration: Couldn't the roots or parts of the letters of these names be combined into the new Persian language?
The idea of creativity makes the whole film new and unique, with Gilles creating new words based on lists and Koch reading and memorizing word cards on the other—twists and turns in between, when Gilles says two different interpretations of the same word, koch is suspected and punched and kicked, but the strange thing is that the nonsense spoken by Gilles in his coma turned out to be fake Persian: "Mom." I want to go home. Koch understood and dispelled suspicions about Gilles. Gilles and Koch spoke in pseudo-Persian, and even Koch wrote a poem in a language that did not exist in the world. Gilles later encountered a danger of being exposed, and a real Iranian came to the camp, but eventually the danger was overcome, relying on the Jews gilles who had helped gilles.
Playing Ras Edinger in Koch, contributing to the wonderful performance, this is a loyal Nazi, but also a complex and changeable person. He grew up poor and later became a cook; he joined the Nazi Party in a confused way, had a disagreement with his brother, and missed his brother; he was sometimes grumpy, harsh, and fierce, such as the time when he almost showed his stuff to his female subordinates, to Gilles, but sometimes he was very warm, such as saving Gilles from being slaughtered several times; he denied that he was a murderer, and wrote poems that seemed to long for peace, but he was indifferent to the killing of Jews, thinking that they were unknown; when he escaped, he also released Gilles, and it was for a gamble... His relationship with Gilles was based entirely on gilles teaching him Persian, and in the end, he used a fake passport to speak fake Persian in an attempt to enter the Iranian border, and people thought he was talking gibberish, and he was extremely angry: "How can you not understand." At this point, he must have understood that he had been deceived.
The climax and shock of the film lies at the end of the film, because the Nazis destroyed the list of all the slain Jews, and when the Allies ask gilles if they remember a few of them, Gilles said, "I remember 2840." In the shots of people's surprise reactions, Gilles slowly announces the names one by one. These names are the source of Gilles's falsified Persian,
They fooled Koch, but they were also deeply engraved in Gilles's heart, behind these names, there was a living life, how could he forget? (Liu Weixin)