MOVIE REVIEW
“Run Boy Run”
Grade: B+
Starring Andrzej and Kamil Tkacz. Directed by Pepe Danquart.
Not rated. Showing 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. $18 general admission (plus $3 Cobb Energy facility fee). Info at www.ajff.org. In German, Polish and Russian with subtitles. 1 hour, 47 minutes.
Bottom line: Conventionally plotted drama of Polish child's Holocaust odyssey is seriously moving.
At this late date, you might think that the Holocaust has been detailed from every conceivable angle. But a tragedy so large leaves unending room for interpretation.
"Run Boy Run," recounted completely from a child's perspective, is an affecting drama that immerses viewers anew. Commanding the prestige opening night slot of the 14th Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, German director Pepe Danquart's film screens at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
The film is based on the true story of a 9-year-old who escaped the the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and survived (sometimes barely) until World War II’s end in the Polish woods and at remote farms, working for short stints for meals before departing for points unknown to avoid discovery.
As seen through the eyes of the brave child who assumed the name Jurek Staniak and identified himself as a Catholic to help obscure his true identity, the film revels in the grandeur of Poland’s forests but also shows how that beauty turns harsh in the icy rain and snow of a Polish winter. In Jurek’s sad-eyed view, people are much the same way: sometimes kind and charitable and sometimes fearsome and cruel.
One of the film’s stronger aspects is how even the meanest, most anti-Semitic Poles rarely seem dismissably evil as much as they do caught in a web bigger than themselves. (The SS often hot in pursuit of Jurek, they’re another matter.)
Twin brothers Andrzej and Kamil Tkacz portray Jurek with a naturalistic ease, helping viewers get fully invested, though the story (based on the children’s book by Uri Orlev) is rather conventionally plotted in an episodic fashion. Still, the only significant false note is French composer Stephane Moucha’s intrusive orchestral score that telegraphs what emotion the audience is supposed to feel when such help isn’t needed.
Director Danquart told The Associated Press before the drama had its world premiere in Warsaw early this month that “Run Boy Run” is “not really a Holocaust movie. It’s more the adventure of a kid in the middle of the Holocaust.”
I’d argue that it’s equally both and equally good at being both.
