Plus tard tu comprendras (2008) - film review

France, 1987.  The news is dominated by the trial of Klaus Barbie, a former Gestapo chief who was directly responsible for the deportation and murder of thousands of French Jews during the Second World War.  Aware of his Jewish ancrestry, Victor starts to explore his family history and learns that his maternal grandparents were among those who were sent to the death camps.  Yet, try as he might, he cannot get his mother to speak to him on this delicate subject...

The Holocaust is to this day a sensitive and highly emotive subject in France.  The complicity of the Vichy regime in Hitler’s Final Solution during the country’s period of occupation during WWII has left an ugly open wound on the French consciousness - one that, judging by present-day sentiment, will probably never heal.  Yet, as Amos Gitai implies in this powerful adaptation of Jérôme Clément’s autobiographical reflection on the Shoah, staying silent on the subject is not the answer.  It is a story that has to be told if there is any hope that France’s unwitting involvement in a shameful historical episode can be expiated and the nation’s guilt unburdened.

Plus tard tu comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand) is a deeply ironic title.  When you pause to reflect on the scale of the Nazis’ crimes and the enormity of individual human suffering that was involved, it is immediately evident that no human mind will ever be capable of understanding the Holocaust.  Just how can anyone hope to comprehend such a tide of barbarity that unleashed evil on an industrial scale and saddled humanity with an eternity of guilt?  But knowing is not the same thing as understanding.  We may never understand, but it is important that we, and future generations, know what took place.  Films such as this play a vital part in this on-going education and transmission of knowledge.

Amos Gitai has earned considerable international acclaim for his forceful (and somewhat biased) exposés of his native Israel, films such as Kadosh (1999) and Kippur (2000).  Plus tard tu comprendras is an atypical work, Gitai’s first feature to be made in France with an entirely French cast, a low-key drama which addresses the Holocaust in a subtle, intimate manner, with little of the director’s trademark didacticism.  Gitai still employs his familiar motifs, the elliptical narrative and fluid camerawork, using settings to make a connection between the past and the present, but the film is a far more modest and considered work than he is perhaps known for, and all the better for it.  There are some subjects where whispering can be far more effective than shouting.

Intense, understated performances from a highly respectable cast headed by Hippolyte Girardot and Jeanne Moreau give the film a raw immediacy and solemnity which, coupled with Gitai’s lyrical cinematic style, make the film extremely moving.  Plus tard tu comprendras is a timely film that reminds us of the absolute necessity of keeping alive the memories of the Holocaust, not for the benefit of those who directly suffered (whose numbers are rapidly declining), but for those who must live with the consequences.  How else is mankind to avoid hurling himself into the abyss once more if not by learning from the errors of the past?  No, we shall never understand, but by the same token we cannot afford to forget.

© filmsdefrance.com 2010

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