Out of the Ashes
by Joseph Sargent
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Beau Bridges, Bruce Davison, Christine Lahti, Jonathan Cake, Richard CrennaDirector: Joseph Sargent
Brand: Showtime Entertainment
Producer: Edward Wessex
Producer: Gerald W. Abrams
Producer: Lee Levinson
Producer: Marianne Moloney
Producer: Robert Halmi Jr.
Writer: Anne Meredith
Writer: Gisella Perl
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-04-20
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Showtime Ent.
Movie Reviews of Out of the Ashes
Movie Review: Absolutely spellbinding and unforgettable
Summary: 5 Stars
This film, based on the memoirs of Dr. Gisella Perl, is an incredibly powerful, moving, soul-searing, and unforgettable experience. Some people feel that there are too many books and movies about the Shoah, or that after awhile they all start to seem the same because the tale of horror is all-too familiar, but this film is moving proof that that's not the case at all. Every person's story was different and unique in some way. How often have we got something from the perspective of a survivor who was a doctor, and a female doctor no less, at a time when men largely dominated the medical field? Additionally, this story is told in the present day, with flashbacks inserted every so often, instead of told in a linear format or just starting in the present and then having the bulk of the movie be one long flashback before reverting back to the present.
Dr. Perl became the first female doctor, and the first female Jewish doctor at that, in her native village of Sighet in Hungary. Even though her father initially disapproved, ever since she announced her plans as a young girl, she proved to him that she could be an observant Jew, a good doctor, a wife, and a mother. Becoming a doctor didn't cancel out her faith or a more traditional female role, as her family had feared. She was well-liked and trusted by her patients, and was doing very well for herself and for her family. In addition to being an inspiration for having survived what she did, she was also living proof that women can have both a career and a family, instead of just one or the other.
In the present day (a few years after the war), Dr. Perl is being examined for American citizenship. Though she passed all of her medical boards to be allowed to practise medicine in the United States, the question remains of her character and if she collaborated with the Nazis. There's an ocean of misunderstanding between her and her three interrogators, men who were living comfortable lives while she and her family were being treated like sub-humans, while she lost her entire family and had to do the unthinkable to try to save her own life. People who were in the camps often had to do things that many in the outside world would consider immoral, uncivilised, or unthinkable, but one must understand that this was another planet, with its own set of rules and morals. No one should judge anyone else for having done something to preserve one's own life. It's not as though these things were done willingly or voluntarily. "Dr." Mengele seemed to have a great deal of liking and respect for Dr. Perl, and made her work in the excuse of an infirmary at Auschwitz, even once assisting with a Gypsy patient who was pregnant with her second set of twins, a woman who was later murdered after giving birth and taken to be dissected. She was also once called upon to give the infamous sadistic Irma Grese an abortion. However, Dr. Perl did far, far more good than harm, often risking her life to save her patients, doing things that she would have been shot for had she been discovered doing, such as hiding a sick woman during selections in the infirmary and using her and the other doctors' blood as the pretended blood sample of a woman who had typhus. And since her specialty was in gynecology and obstetrics, she gave about a thousand women abortions, performed without any tools no less. She knew that this would save these women's lives, and that if they survived, they could go on to bear another child someday, a child who would be born in freedom. Her goal, her driving force for surviving, was to continue helping to bring life into the world, keeping these Jewish women alive so they would keep their people alive and produce children who would continue to propagate their people, replenishing their ranks after how many people the Nazis slaughtered, a million and a half of whom were just children. It is this message that she is trying to get across to the men deciding her fate as an American citizen and as a doctor.
I'd highly recommend this film, both for its moving and gut-wrenching story and for its unique perspective and structure, quite different from what one usually expects from a film about the Shoah. Christine Lahti as Dr. Perl gives an absolutely brilliant performance, and everything is brought to life so vividly that one can almost feel as though one is right there in that moment, place, and time. I was even moved to tears a few times, something that rarely happens when I watch a film. It's the kind of thing that stays with one for a long time afterward.
Summary of Out of the Ashes
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