Susan Granger's review of "Adam Resurrected"


If you've been waiting for a surreal, abstract film that tries your patience and defies comprehension, this cinematic 'psychic crisis' is for you.
Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum) is a Holocaust survivor, a German-Israeli circus clown and magician-turned-Berlin nightclub performer and sometime resident of the fictional Seizling Institute, a massive, Bauhaus-style experimental 'rehabilitation' center in the Negev desert. His mind is totally traumatized. He survived the death camps because he, literally, became the 'pet' of sadistic Commander Klein (Willem Dafoe), living in a pen with a Jew-hating German Shepherd and groveling obediently on all fours. When his own family, among others, was marched into the gas chambers, Adam was forced to serenade them on the violin as a Weimar diversion. A man in ruins, a shattered soul, floundering after the Allied liberation, he lives off money he stole from Klein and makes his way to Israel.
While he astounds the asylum's medical staff with his psychic abilities, Adam's greatest challenge comes in the form of a barking boy who is introduced to him by the chief, Dr. Gross (Derek Jacobi). Raised on a chain, this feral child (Tudor Rapiteanu) actually believes he's a dog. Can the unhinged man-treated-like-a-dog find redemption, even spiritual resurrection-to-sanity by rescuing the boy-who-believes-he's-a-dog?
Adapted by Israeli-born Noah Stollman from Yoram Kaniuk's 1968 stream-of-consciousness novel and chillingly directed by Paul Schrader ("The Walker," "American Gigolo," "Affliction"), it veers into the complicated territory of edgy, dark comedy, as Adam struggles with the turmoil known as 'survivor guilt,' punctuated by sexy romps with beautiful Nurse Gina Grey (Ayelet Zurer).
Jeff Goldblum ("Jurassic Park," "The Fly") traverses this psychological prism with compelling abandon, delineating and dissecting Schrader's and cinematographer Sebastian Edschmid's heavy-handed symbolism. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Adam Resurrected" is an inexplicable 3. It's eclectic and esoteric, a sardonic turn-off to a mainstream audience.