Left Luggage
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Movie Reviews of Left Luggage
Movie Review: A hauntingly beautiful, serious tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
This film stayed with me long after the credits rolled. Other reviewers have already summarized the basic plot, so I'll focus on what I see as some of the underlying themes. The date is 1972, the place is Antwerp, Belgium. In other words, we are in Central Europe in the middle of the Vietnam era, which is also the post-Holocaust generation. On the surface, the film is about personal encounters between several different types of Jews. On a deeper level, it explores the various ways in which the Jewish people of that generation were attempting to cope with the cultural and emotional devastation of the Holocaust.
Each character in the film is trying to recover their own "left luggage" -- the pieces of their pre-Holocaust past that will make them feel whole again. For Chaya's father, the luggage is literally two suitcases of family memorabilia that he buried during the war, and is now obsessed with finding again. But. as his wife says, the "left luggage" is not really the old suitcases -- he is looking for himself. Chaya's mother, in turn, is dealing (or not dealing) with her memories of the Holocaust through denial. She attempts to live a "normal" life of going to the hairdresser, baking cakes, watering her houseplants -- but it comes across as tense and strained.
Neither of Chaya's parents understands why their daughter does not come to visit more often. On her part, Chaya feels totally disconnected from her parents' Jewishness. She is more concerned with the anti-war movement on campus.
Mr. Kalman (the Hasidic father) also lost his family during the Holocaust. They were shot for refusing to spit on the Torah. Now, he holds to the religious traditions of Hasidism as his lifeline to the past. He expects his three sons to be Torah scholars who will carry on the family tradition, and is having difficulty accepting the fact that his four-year-old son, Simchah, is a slow learner who has not yet begun to talk . When Simchah finally does say something ("Quack! Quack!"), Mrs. Kalman is delighted, but Mr. Kalman can only say, "My son is saying quack-quack when he should be reciting the Four Questions at the seder?" The father does not know how to love a son who is not a Torah scholar.
It is Chaya, the secularized nanny, who finally brings little Simcha out of his shell and gets him to start talking. Meanwhile, she has to come to grips with her own Jewish self-hate and the issue of antisemitism. Up to this point, being Jewish has seemed irrelevant to her life, and she has been "passing" among her gentile friends. Now she is confronted daily with an anti-semitic (if pathetic) elevator operator who goes out of his way to be nasty, Nazi graffiti on the park benches, and a "best friend" from college who turns out to be prejudiced against Jews and makes tactless remarks when she finds out that Chaya is Jewish.
I won't tell you any more, because that would spoil the film. I will say is that that this is a serious dramatic tragedy, not a comedy or an action film. Come to it with an open, feeling heart, and you cannot help but be moved.
Movie Review: "I am a donut"
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, for me, that was the key line in the film when Maximillian Shell referred to when JFK said those historic words "Ich bin ein Berliner," he was actually saying, "I am a donut" in German. People excused JFK's malaprop rather than mock him, because they knew what was in his heart.
One needs to look deeper into people, before making quick judgments.
This film captures that, using charming Chaya's (Laura Fraser) coming of age journey, as a young Jewish woman living a life with little real meaning or direction, until she happens upon a deeper understanding of who she is, through finding deeper meanings in others. The film shows how people may try to run from who they really are, but sooner or later they must confront it, if they are to mature.
The transformation of Chaya begins when accepting a job as a nanny to a Chassidic family.
Happiness, tragedy, and imperfect people all serve to find that deeper understanding for Chaya. It are dramatic words from the wonderful Isabella Rossellini, as the Chassidic mom, to Chaya, as a "daughter of Israel," which signals the completion of the transformation.
Yes, the film's title, and Chaya's dad's (Maximillian Shell) search for what was left in the past, has symbolic meaning. It, the musical score, and every character in "Left Luggage" contributes, in this heart wrenching mosaic of a film. It left me interested in every character in the film, even the concierge. Though all actors were marvelous, the film just wouldn't have worked, if Laura Fraser hadn't pulled off her role so well.
Movie Review: Serious, Moving Film
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a lovely film, filled with nuances, based on a book of the same name. I could write a very long review if I had the time. This just a crude summary.Chaya is a 20 year-old philosophy student, in 1972, in Antwerp, Belgium. Her parents are both holocaust survivors. Chayas father is obsessed with finding a suitcase that he buried, for safekeeping, over thirty years ago, just before he was interred by the Germans. He had taken his most prized possessions and buried it in a friends backyard. Now, he cannot find the location of the house.
Chaya herself is not religious. If anything she finds her Jewishness an annoyance. Nevertheless, she takes a job working as a nanny for an Hassidic family. She does not fit in at all, but Chaya bonds with one of the children in the family who happens to be slightly handicapped or learning disabled.
The father of the Hassidic family is also a holocaust survivor. In a very dramatic moment he shows Chaya the picture of the baby brother he lost in the holocaust. The photo looks exactly like Chaya.
Over time, Chaya develops an appreciation for her Jewishness and becomes sensitive to anti-semitism. She does not become religious and is never accepted by the Hassidim. I felt the doorman at the apartment building where Chaya worked and one of Chayas girlfriends were designed to illustrate different extremes of anti-semitism.
The ending of the film is very literary/symbolic. On a higher level, the film is about identity and acceptance.
Movie Review: A movie for thinking and feeling
Summary: 5 Stars
As others have already mentioned, this movie explores the psychological trauma of European Jews in the post Holocaust generation. It also looks at the life of Chaja, a young assimilated Jewish girl, who becomes connected to her people through her connection with a Chassidic family for whom she works as a nanny.
Although the film is clearly emotionally moving, particularly at the turning point, it is also intellectually stirring, as viewers are drawn to consider the meaning of virtue, community and survival.
It is for that reason that I disagree with reviewers who are opposed to the film because of its nudity. The filmmaker uses the nudity to juxtapose the values and culture of the general Belgian youth of the time to that of the conservative, religious values of the Kalman family. The swimming scene appears immediately after a scene in the Kalman home. It is shocking, both because of the content and because of the use of light (low lighting in the scene in the Kalman home, and a brightly lit day in the succeeding scene).
I rented this movie, then bought it, and am considering buying a copy for a friend. I've watched it several times. That's how much I like it.
Movie Review: Hauntingly Sad
Summary: 5 Stars
One often wonders why some Jews are so successful. We have so many great scientists, bankers, businessmen, politicians, artists,musicians... who are Jews! Watch this movie and there is a clue. The strict adherence to tradition is awfully hard and their parents' of expectations from and requirements of their offsprings are equally shocking. No wonder some of them, like the main supporting character in this film, would refuse even to talk even when they are already five-- they are made to recite long and incomprehensible scripts at such an early age. Was that the reason why Einstein started to talk only at five? Little wonder that those who passed such hurdles are different.
So what is the message in this film? Better get localized, goes drifting along and borne by the air as the heroine in this film, rather than get drowned like the five years old? But the grief and sadness... this film is hauntingly true and bitterly sad. There is a lot of drama and tragedy in it and a lot of weight...