As the other reviewer says, the bizarre and confusing beginning to this film almost put me off sticking with it: I couldn't figure out what was going on when the narrator talked both to the modern girl passing by in Budapest and the older woman who used to be his neighbor, and action in the story was stopped while he pointed out details in Nazi costume, etc. This merging of the past and present, and actors playing themselves playing an historical character (!) added nothing to the film except confusion.
Once this nonsense is over, however, things proceed in a regular fashion as the narrator's mother is arrested while walking the street, herded onto a train bound for Auschwitz, and then successfully confronts the Nazi commander and is allowed to return home.
Now I love Pauline Collins, and she is a fine actress, but I felt she was miscast here, maybe she is just too much of an English icon for me to believe her as a Jewish Hungarian. And sorry, but what "courage" did she exhibit? She meekly went along with the other deportees even though she had a "Red Cross Exemption", didn't offer the thirsty girl one of the plums in her purse (that bugged me!), and only spoke to the Nazi officer because her neighbor dragged her bodily across the floor and shoved her out the door in front of him. If the neighbor hadn't done that she would have got on the train with the others without a word. And why didn't she mention the girl who had been captured by mistake? She returned home seemingly without a thought for those left behind. I realize that we are viewing the film with hindsight as to what fate awaited the deportees, which Elsa didn't have and that as far as she was aware the others were just being sent off to another country, and perhaps in the book there is some mention of her feelings about the others she left behind, but in the film she comes across as meek, somewhat selfish, and driven more by naiveté than courage when confronting the officer.
This film left me with the thought "Is that it?"
Once this nonsense is over, however, things proceed in a regular fashion as the narrator's mother is arrested while walking the street, herded onto a train bound for Auschwitz, and then successfully confronts the Nazi commander and is allowed to return home.
Now I love Pauline Collins, and she is a fine actress, but I felt she was miscast here, maybe she is just too much of an English icon for me to believe her as a Jewish Hungarian. And sorry, but what "courage" did she exhibit? She meekly went along with the other deportees even though she had a "Red Cross Exemption", didn't offer the thirsty girl one of the plums in her purse (that bugged me!), and only spoke to the Nazi officer because her neighbor dragged her bodily across the floor and shoved her out the door in front of him. If the neighbor hadn't done that she would have got on the train with the others without a word. And why didn't she mention the girl who had been captured by mistake? She returned home seemingly without a thought for those left behind. I realize that we are viewing the film with hindsight as to what fate awaited the deportees, which Elsa didn't have and that as far as she was aware the others were just being sent off to another country, and perhaps in the book there is some mention of her feelings about the others she left behind, but in the film she comes across as meek, somewhat selfish, and driven more by naiveté than courage when confronting the officer.
This film left me with the thought "Is that it?"