JEWISH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Both the passion for life and the spirit of survival are captured wonderfully in the form of Thomas Beck, the central figure of this HBO Europe-commissioned documentary. An over-tanned hedonist with an enormous personality, Beck is front and centre of this alternately sad and funny profile from British directors Sam Lawlor and Lindsay Pollock.
alternately sad and funny
The 80-ish Hungarian journeys through the villages and streets of his childhood, recounting his joyous life as a boy before Nazism razed his country and its Jewish people. With Beck’s razor-sharp memory and beaming white teeth as our guide, his recollects painful memories of his teenage years spent either in concentration camps, fleeing German troops or charming his way into their confidence. (Beck’s recounting of the moment a Commandant he’d befriended pulled a pistol on him and asked him who he really was, provides one of the film’s most captivating scenes.)
Adding to the film’s sense of destiny and fate is the presence of Edith Grieman, who as a 14-year-old concentration camp internee would cuddle with Thomas into the night to fight the fear of persecution and execution. Now living in Melbourne (just a few blocks from Beck’s home, incredibly), Grieman and Beck had not seen each another in over 60 years until the production got wind of their email communications. Beck’s on-film journey is interspersed with interview footage of Grieman, recounting her own horrors and reminiscing about the calming influence of Beck, the boy.
Lawlor and Pollock are a ghostly presence, perhaps fitting given the haunting nature of their project. The directors are only heard once, when they question whether their subject betrayed other internees by aligning himself with senior Nazi officials for his own survival"¦ the film (whose title has multiple meanings), finds its own interaction with Beck, such as in allows a few extra frames here and there, to catch the wily old gent in a moment of self-reflection.
Audiences should be grateful for the journey through Beck’s post-war life, too; his commitment to positivity extends to several marriages, very set views on vodka and smoking, and a penchant for a young man’s partying ways.
His veneer is breached on a couple of occasions, and these moments prove to be some of the most gruelling in the film. Memories of the last time he saw his sister and the story of a Russian doctor who was slain by Russian troops for performing abortions on victims of rape are as harrowing as you’d expect. The film ends on a hopeful high (and a funny, brief post-credit outtake), but the burden carried by Beck and his fellow survivors is never trivialised.
