Aftermath true story7/27/2023 They were uprooted when the Nazis destroyed the Jewish cemetery during the war and, as was not uncommon across Eastern Europe, repurposed as paving stones around town.ĬRITICS’ PICKS: What to watch, where to go, what to eat His brother has made it his mission to collect the town’s Jewish gravestones. It doesn’t take long, however, for Franek to find out what seems to be behind this. Though he won’t say why, Jozek is also noticeably on edge: He keeps an ax near for protection and is not surprised when a rock gets thrown through his window late at night. and didn’t even return for their funerals. As surly as his brother, he has angry gripes of his own, like the way Franek abandoned their parents to immigrate to the U.S. Jozek, however, is not the forthcoming type. Franek has shown up to find out what scared them off. If you don’t know what happened in Jedwabne, don’t look it up, for one of the pleasures of this brooding, disturbing film is how adroitly and carefully it reveals its secrets.įranek has returned to an unnamed rural town to visit his brother, Jozek (Maciej Stuhr, the son of Polish star Jerzy Stuhr), because Jozek’s wife and children have abruptly moved to Chicago and refused to tell anyone why they have abandoned Jozek and their homeland. It was the excellent notion of writer-director Wladyslaw Pasikowski to use the true story of what happened in the Polish town of Jedwabne, an incident revealed in historian Jan Gross’ equally controversial 2000 book “Neighbors,” as the inspiration for a fictional drama. Not as a polemic but rather as an especially effective film noir. The narratives of competing victimization between Poles and the international Jewish community over who suffered most during World War II remain unresolved even decades after the fact, and it is into this maelstrom that “Aftermath” has inserted itself. If the celebrated William Faulkner quote “The past is never dead, it’s not even past” is true anywhere, it’s in Poland, where this film was made and caused a national sensation. Instead there are only Poles, grappling to different degrees with a history that is as difficult as it is complex. Its devastating story involves Jews and the Holocaust, yet not a single Jewish character appears on-screen. “Aftermath” is a bombshell disguised as a thriller.
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