Movie Review: One Day You’ll Understand (2008)

October 31, 2008

In Search of Family History Despite the Threat of Pain

Jeanne Moreau and Hippolyte Girardot as a mother and son in “One Day You’ll Understand,” directed by Amos Gitai. (credit) Kino International

As the trial of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie plays on television in the background, a Frenchman named Victor (Hippolyte Girardot) combs through documents, hoping to uncover the truth about his family’s past. At first glance, in the opening minutes of Amos Gitai’s “One Day You’ll Understand,” the connection between the prisoner in the dock and the businessman in his office is mysterious; but in the course of Mr. Gitai’s subtle, contemplative exploration of memory and loss it becomes clear enough.

Barbie, who as head of the Gestapo in Lyon was responsible for the death and deportation of thousands of French Jews, represents the public face of the Holocaust in France. Victor and his mother, Rivka (Jeanne Moreau), live with the private, intimate consequences of what Barbie and his collaborators did. Not that Rivka herself dwells on such things. A Jewish woman whose dead husband had signed an official document attesting to his Aryan identity, she lives in a quiet bubble of old-lady elegance, surrounded by keepsakes and visited by her fond children and grandchildren.

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Posted in Arts and Culture, Film & Film Making