Sarah's Key--the film

I recently saw the film version of Sarah's Key, adapted from the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay. Historically, it was very enlightening. I knew, in a sketchy way, that the Jews of Paris had been rounded up by French authorities during World War II, and in fact I had once visited the Marais quarter where the community was centered before its destruction. In 1990, when I was there, there was already very little left of anything that would label it as having been a Jewish area, except for some faded Hebrew lettering on a shop window or two, and the famous Goldenberg's deli, which is now closed. The movie indicates that the Marais' transformation from poor immigrant neighborhood to wealthy, hip enclave is now complete and its slate of suffering and betrayal has been wiped clean. There appears to be no trace left of what happened there in July, 1942. 

I began reading the book some time ago, but after about 2 or 3 chapters, I put it aside and never went back to it. Perhaps I had already read too many novels about the Holocaust and needed a break. Perhaps it was the book itself. I'm not really sure.

The movie and the book twine together two stories, one Sarah's, and the other, Julia's: 

Sarah is a 10-year old child living with her parents and 4-year old brother in a flat in the Marais when the authorities come to arrest them. To save her brother, she hides and then locks him in a closet, promising him that she will come back to let him out when it is safe. Her efforts to keep this promise and its unfulfilled sad aftermath are very compelling. 

Julia is an American-born journalist who has lived most of her life in Paris, is married to a Frenchman, and has a young daughter. Julia and her husband are planning to move into his parents' apartment, their home for the 60 years since World War II, and which is now being renovated. Julia's magazine has given her the assignment of looking into the history of the infamous roundup which locked thousands into the Paris Velodrome (indoor bicycle track) in the summer heat without sanitary facilities or even water. The detainees were on their way to the Drancy transit camp, and ultimately to Auschwitz. Julia's discovery that her husband's family's apartment is the one where Sarah's family lived is a secret that has been kept from most of the family for all those decades. It is essentially a metaphor for the shameful hidden behavior of France and many of its citizens during the war, something that is still little known or explored, unlike the massive re-examination of Germany and Germans; or, through The Diary of Anne Frank and its accompanying literature and scholarship, the Dutch.

Julia investigates records and interviews people in France, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Florence, trying to find out what became of Sarah. She is the necessary device required to tell Sarah's story. However, the film's concentration on Julia's personal story, her marital problems and unexpected pregnancy, seem extraneous and somewhat distracting. In my opinion, the film would have been much more effective without those details.

Kristin Scott Thomas gives a fine performance as Julia, however, and the young French actress, Mélusine Mayance,  who plays Sarah in her childhood years, conveys her intelligence, terror and suffering with a unique combination of innocence and maturity. Charlotte Poutrel, who plays the adult Sarah, seems to do very little except look beautiful and sad.

On the whole, Sarah's Key is moving, but the shifts between Sarah's wrenching story and Julia's clichéd one are jarring and break up the momentum of the film and dilute its emotional impact, ultimately making it emotionally unsatisfying. This is a movie worth seeing, at least for its exploration of France during World War II, but is certainly not of the caliber of other Holocaust-centered films, such as Life is Beautiful, Sophie's Choice, Enemies, a Love Story, or also concerning France, Au Revoir, Mes Enfants.  

Listening to The Help

For the past week or so, I've been listening to The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. I resisted reading the novel, a bestseller, for quite a while, thinking it might be clichéd, rather than original. I kept thinking of films such as Imitation of Life and Pinky, which explore charged relationships between the races, as does The Help. But, on the recommendation of every member of my book club, and because it was the only remotely interesting audio book available in the library, I decided to give it a try. After just a few minutes with Disk 1, I was hooked.

The plot follows 3 main characters. Skeeter is a young white woman, newly graduated from college and frustrated with the limitations and social conventions of the genteel life in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. She is something of a misfit—as the only remaining single woman amongst her friends, with unconventional looks and a height above most of the available men in town, and she wants to be a writer. 

Aibileen and Minny are African-American maids working in white households, where they raise the children, do all the cooking and housework, and live in constant fear of being fired for even the most trivial of mistakes. Living in the pre-Civil Rights Act South, they and the rest of the African-American community face both overt and covert prejudice, which may be expressed in a myriad of ways, from verbal humiliation to physical violence, to even death in some situations.

Skeeter is stymied by her lack of options, the banality of bridge games and luncheons with her friends Hilly and Elizabeth, and is also disturbed by the way her friends treat and talk about their maids. One day she asks Aibileen if she thinks her life could be different, a tentative step into the forbidden territory of dialogue between blacks and whites; a question not well received. 

Skeeter takes the only writing job she can find in Jackson, as the household hints columnist for the local newspaper. Since she knows nothing about running a household, she turns to Aibileen for advice. Skeeter conceives the idea of writing a book about the conditions black women endure working as domestics in Jackson and enlists Aibileen's help in this area too. Aibileen is reluctant and wary, but eventually tells Skeeter her story. She also convinces her hotheaded friend Minny to participate. 

As I delve deeper and deeper into The Help, I find that I am completely caught up in the plot, which is quite complex, weaving together the relationships among the principal and supporting characters, mainly women. I wonder if I would feel the same passively reading the book, or if it is the complex and nuanced performances of the actors who bring the characters to life?

I have advanced about two-thirds of the way through the disks and the plot remains compelling. I plan to complete listening to the book early this week and take in the newly released movie by next weekend. I wonder how I will feel about that adaptation? It will be interesting!

Aspiring Young Women Writers

Revisiting the 1979 film My Brilliant Career, based on the 1901 book by Australian writer Miles Franklin, about the author's path to publishing her first novel, got me to thinking about other aspiring young women writers of the 19th and early 20th century. I have fond memories and a strong identification with some of those authors, the characters that populate their novels and stories, and appear, perhaps, in subsequent film adaptations.

The first author that comes to mind in this category is Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women and other classics. Just in case you have forgotten (or somehow never read it), the leading character in Little Women is Jo March (based on Alcott herself), and the setting is Massachusetts, during the period of the Civil War. The feisty Jo longs to publish a novel, reads everything she can get her hands on, and behaves somewhat unconventionally for a young woman of her time. How many girls and young women have aspired to a literary life because of Alcott's Jo, even though she ultimately chooses a happy family life over a writing career? I kept rooting for Jo to also get that book written and published, even though she married the delightful Professor Bhaer, had a family and ran a school. But that was the nineteenth century, after all, and we have seen some changes since then!