May 19, 2008: Fugitive Pieces – a moving film adaptation of the acclaimed novel

By Michael Regenstreif

The film version of Fugitive Pieces, which opened across Canada earlier this month, is director and screenwriter Jeremy Podeswa’s adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Anne Michaels about the life of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust as a young boy only to be haunted by it through the rest of his life.

As the film opens, we witness seven-year-old Jakob at home in Poland with his parents and 15-year-old sister, Bella, a talented pianist adored by Jakob. From a hiding place in the house, the young boy witnesses Nazi soldiers murder his parents and abduct his sister. Bella’s uncertain fate at the hands of the Nazis is one of the things that will continue to affect Jakob.

Jakob flees the house and hides in the forest where he’s rescued by Athos Roussos, a Greek archeologist. Athos smuggles Jakob back to his home on Zakynthos, the Greek island that managed, against all odds, to protect the Jews living there during the Nazi occupation of Greece.

Athos raises Jakob as a son and, after the war, moves with him to Canada.

As an adult, Jakob channels his childhood memories into his writing and becomes an acclaimed poet.

His first marriage, to Alex, a woman who doesn’t really understand him, fails. But Jakob eventually finds love and the promise of happiness with Michaela.

As the film ends, Michaela is pregnant; she and Jakob have found happiness and are looking forward to the arrival of their child. It is an ending that leaves audiences happy for Jakob and his wife.

Fugitive Pieces convincingly shows how the psychological devastation of living through the darkness of the Holocaust affected Jakob and those around him, at the time, and throughout his life.

It also captures the trauma of other Holocaust survivors, like the couple who are neighbours of Athos and Jakob in Toronto, and whose son, Ben, finds with Jakob, the kind of relationship his father was unable to give to him.

Another aspect of the film that is particularly moving is the portrayal of the righteousness of Athos and the other Greeks of Zakynthos.

In the book, Jakob and Michaela are killed in a tragic accident and do not live happily ever after. After Fugitive Pieces was shown last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Podeswa and producer Robert Lantos – both the sons of Holocaust survivors – decided the deaths of Jakob and Michaela left film audiences too devastated and exchanged the tragedy for a happy ending; reportedly to the chagrin of author Michaels.

Despite the changed ending, and that the character of Ben, central to the book, is of lesser importance in the film, Fugitive Pieces, set in Poland, Greece and Canada, is a sensitive and moving adaptation of Michaels’ novel.

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The May 5 edition of the Bulletin was a special issue that focused on Israel @ 60.

The issue of Maclean’s magazine dated the same day had a front cover that screamed, “60th ANNIVERSARY: WHY ISRAEL CAN’T SURVIVE.”

Turning to page 28 of the magazine, the sensationalistic line from the cover is repeated as the headline of the article. But underneath the title is a qualifying statement: “Sixty years on, the country is facing a choice of two futures: it can be Jewish or democratic – but not both.”

Oh, so Maclean’s is really saying that Israel can survive by choosing to give up either its Jewishness or its democratic principles. That’s rather different than what it says on the cover and the headline.

But then, the five-page article by Michael Petrou actually concludes that the choice, of being Jewish, or being democratic, will eventually have to be made if Israel and the Palestinians cannot forge a two-state solution. Again, that’s a very different conclusion from what was said in the intro. And the intro, as we’ve already seen, was very different from the headline and cover.

That Israel and the Palestinians need to find peace via a two-state solution has long been obvious. It has also long been Israel’s policy and it’s what I’ve heard, for years, from most Israelis I’ve talked with. As U.S. Senator Barack Obama has stated, what is needed is for “the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region.”

Shame on Maclean’s for a grossly misleading cover, headline and intro statement that did not reflect the article and fell far short of its usually higher journalistic standards.