As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I am never sure how I will handle films depicting the events which claimed the lives of so many of my family. "Musíme si pomáhat" had its Perth première at the Festival Film season held at a wonderful open-air auditorium at the University, a place which has for me always represented a celebration of life, and each visit on a balmy summer night is an expression of my great joy to have this beautiful sunny city as my home. My father, now nearly 84, loves coming here, expresses his joy at being alive, having come through unspeakable horrors, and sees each year he stays fit and healthy as a gesture of defiance to those who were so eager to snuff out his existence more than six decades ago.
In watching Josef wheel the pram in that final sequence past the ruins of his war-devastated home town, I could see his great joy to be alive, to have come through the horror which ultimately had one of his own countryman put a pistol to his head and tense his finger on the trigger. All the sacrifices he made, having to put at incredible risk the lives of himself and his wife, withstand the grossness of the Nazi toady Horst (Würst), submit to associating with the loathsome German occupying forces, and ultimately insist on his wife having sex with David, have yielded their great reward. He has his son, biologically David's son, but in all reality his. He has his marriage, and they all have a future which they will now carve out of the ruins. It is an incredibly hopeful ending.
Reading some of the other comments on imdb, I feel a few missed the point, especially the Californian guy who thought it was German language film (it's Czech, mate!) and those who were troubled by the camera shakes. I could clearly feel that these were expressions of Josef's moments of utter panic, when time for him seemed to distort into flicker-frame slow-motion and he was clearly struggling hard just to retain control of speech and movement. At one point he says that he had shat himself. I think I'd have done the same, and my mental camera would certainly have shaken.
Ten out of ten. If you haven't yet seen it, do!
In watching Josef wheel the pram in that final sequence past the ruins of his war-devastated home town, I could see his great joy to be alive, to have come through the horror which ultimately had one of his own countryman put a pistol to his head and tense his finger on the trigger. All the sacrifices he made, having to put at incredible risk the lives of himself and his wife, withstand the grossness of the Nazi toady Horst (Würst), submit to associating with the loathsome German occupying forces, and ultimately insist on his wife having sex with David, have yielded their great reward. He has his son, biologically David's son, but in all reality his. He has his marriage, and they all have a future which they will now carve out of the ruins. It is an incredibly hopeful ending.
Reading some of the other comments on imdb, I feel a few missed the point, especially the Californian guy who thought it was German language film (it's Czech, mate!) and those who were troubled by the camera shakes. I could clearly feel that these were expressions of Josef's moments of utter panic, when time for him seemed to distort into flicker-frame slow-motion and he was clearly struggling hard just to retain control of speech and movement. At one point he says that he had shat himself. I think I'd have done the same, and my mental camera would certainly have shaken.
Ten out of ten. If you haven't yet seen it, do!