In the outlandish Holocaust drama Lessons from Persia, director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) creates horror, humor, romance and self-congratulatory drama against a grim backdrop of forced labor and human meanness. He is acting with an unstable balance of sentimentality.
At the beginning of the film, Gilles (Nahuel Perez Biscayal), a French Jew captured by the Nazis, exchanges sandwiches with fellow prisoners to obtain ancient documents written in Persian. Sentenced to death by the firing squad, Jill manages to dodge the bullets by begging for mercy while frantically waving her book in the prisoner’s face. “I am Persian!” he exclaims.
Miraculously, the commander, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), just needed a Persian. The Nazis dream of opening a restaurant in Tehran after the war, and recruit Jill, who pretends to be Reza, to teach them the language. Jill improvises. Knowing nothing of Persian, he invented words and eventually developed an imaginary language, using the names of prisoners recorded in his journals as a memory device. This is an outrageous pretentiousness, and when Koch takes this trifle with diligent rigor, he can’t help but laugh nervously.
A seasoned prima donna, Eidinger highlights the tragic absurdity of men who blindly follow orders. His performance underpins the film’s clumsy tonal shifts.
Ilya Zoffin’s script incorporates a high-tension atmosphere as Jill struggles to keep the play going. Losing words can give you a headache, and brown-nosed section leader Max (Jonas Ney) has his eyes wide open. Pointless, lackluster detours to petty sexual drama between the Nazis are peppered here and there, and more effectively, the alleged erotic relationship between Jill and Koch serves as a reminder of their bond. uncover confusion.
While less outlandish than “Jojo Rabbit” or “Life is Beautiful,” and as rare as it is, this movie also carves out history with the magic wand of cinema. As Perelman’s saccharine sensibility takes over, the film becomes a banal tale of human resilience and compassion, or similar, as if it were a duty.
Persian lessons
Unrated. German, French, Italian, English, Farsi, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. at the theater.
